The American Gun Control Debate
I used to be 100% in favor of harsh and strict gun control laws. But lately I feel torn.
On the one hand, I think gun control has been shown to be a very effective method of reducing mass shooting and other gun violence in countries like Australia.
On the other hand, I'm not particularly interested in repealing the constitutional right to bear arms, as lately - largely in light of the autocratic tendencies of President Trump - I have had largely negative attitude towards strengthening the federal government.
Where do you stand on this debate? Do you support stronger gun laws in America? Why or why not?
On the one hand, I think gun control has been shown to be a very effective method of reducing mass shooting and other gun violence in countries like Australia.
On the other hand, I'm not particularly interested in repealing the constitutional right to bear arms, as lately - largely in light of the autocratic tendencies of President Trump - I have had largely negative attitude towards strengthening the federal government.
Where do you stand on this debate? Do you support stronger gun laws in America? Why or why not?
Comments (2133)
Here's my legislation:
Basic handguns and rifles allowed but on a licensed basis i.e. you have to pass a competency test and undergo strict background criminal and mental health checks to own one. Everything beyond that including semi-automatic weapons banned. Simple. (And no impact on the much coveted 2nd amendment as owners still have the right to bear arms just not all arms—the latter point being in principle already conceded by acceptance of the illegality of machine guns and etc.)
Predicted result: A little less freedom (for owners of dangerous guns). A lot less death and injury for everyone else.
Well, that's at least better than the status quo.
Hey, you are not a law maker are you?
Quoting Baden
See, it was not hard. But some of the most brilliant minds(according to them) could not come up with that.
The problem I see is and always has been the implementation and enforcement of any kind of controls, even the simplest as you state them.
How many people are actually qualified to do mental health checks on all of the people that own guns, how many would be needed?
How many people are actually qualified to do competency testing for any kind of weapon? I doubt that there are enough to test the millions of people that own guns.
Criminal checks would not be a problem, supposedly, because everyone in the USA has a social security number and/or identity of some kind and the interstate cooperation between police forces is fantastic. So it would be easy to track down and check up on all registered gun owners. Except that there are so many that are not registered and there are a lot of fake IDs used to get jobs never mind guns.
Who would have to foot the bill for all of this? The general public, the gun owners? What would happen to all of the people that have been employed to do all of these checks once they had finished.
What about the security of the data bases used to hold all of this information? If so many other government and private sites are being hacked, would you like to have so much of your personal data in one place like that? It would almost be like a shopping list for someone that wants a gun. The would know where you live, what kind of gun you have and be able to guess when you are not home by your work details.
I don't think too many people would be willing to register their guns if they had to go through all of that. Guns can and are bought on the street and someone that wants one will get one.
Quoting Baden
I would prefer less freedom for dangerous owners of guns. But yes, less death and injury would help.
Quoting Sir2u
Quoting Sir2u
Yeah, it's probably easier to find problems in legislation that hasn't been crafted by members of a legislative body, with all of the experience, skills, and processes that that involves.
Similarly, with regards to implementation, I would want to hear from, or be advised by, the relevant authorities, like the police. Or at least know a great deal about it.
I'm not going to pretend that I know better than them. I am not an professional. I don't have that expertise. I have not done the groundwork. I have not spent the time and resources that one would expect to go into a project like this. But hey, you're free to speculate.
For any proposed piece of legislation, however uncontroversial, I could ask dozens of important questions about who implements it, who pays, how it is enforced, what is done to protect abuse and so on, but they don't really have any bearing on the determination of whether to do the legislation unless there is reason to suppose they do not have satisfactory answers.
Imagine a discussion between a couple over whether to have a child. One might ask - but what will we feed them, how will we toilet train them, how will we teach them road safety, at what age will we allow them to have a mobile phone etc etc etc. But those questions are not part of the decision about whether to have a child, because we know that there are acceptable answers to them [pax, ye antinatalists. I am not saying that means the answer is always 'yes, we should have a child'. I am saying that it will turn on, amongst other things, the issues that concern you, like what are the moral implications of creating another being that can suffer, rather than how many hours of screen time per day we will allow them].
Not much of the discussion has actually been philosophical, it is mostly peoples' opinions.
Quoting andrewk
You are right about that, many countries have succeeded in restricting guns. But how many of them had the amount of guns that are in the US?
Quoting andrewk
So why has it not been done already, surely there are sufficient experts in the country to arrange for all of these problems to be resolved efficiently. This then, is obviously one of the reasons why legislature has not been passed.
If they thought that legislation would work they would have implemented it years ago. Most of the problems with any laws that are passed is the implementation of them, if they are not going to be enforced for whatever reason then it is a waste of time to pass them.
The other reason is the financial loses that it will incur. There are millions of registered guns that pay for permits. Gun manufactures pay taxes and provide jobs to thousands. Sales tax is paid on the guns bought. Hunting permits bring in cash to places that have very little to offer except hunting a few months a year. There are plenty of financial reasons not to bring in laws.
My impression is that that is not the reason. If it were the reason, the debate would be about the details of draft legislative bills. But it is not. The debate is about whether there should be a bill at all, and the NRA seeks to stop the discussion ever getting beyond that point to issues like working through the practical details. They would fear that if it got to the stage of discussing implementation they would have lost, as it would indicate that the electorate was accepting gun regulation as potentially reasonable and practical, rather than some devil-inspired commie plot.
The reason it has not been done already is simply that the NRA is enormously powerful and does not want gun control legislation of any form, no matter how practical and affordable it may be.
The NRA might be powerful, but if the US public wanted something like gun bans there would be gun bans. The last yanks I talked to about this were living outside of the US, and they said that they paid too many taxes already, and that they were not willing to let the government tax them more so that people could have their guns taken away. Especially as the major part of gun crimes were committed with illegal guns that could not be confiscated.
Gun controls will not work, for many reasons. The only way to stop gun violence is to remove the guns.
There are an estimated 270,000,000 guns in the country, if it takes a dollar for each one to be picked up how much is that. Would that money not be better spent on education? Most think it would.
Why would a gun amnesty cut funds in education? I mean, it's not going to be free, but it certainly won't cost in the billions. How much trash is generated in a week in the U.S? If it cost 1 dollars to pick up every one of those trash bags... See where I'm going with this?
Where did I say that it would cut funds to education?
In case you have not noticed there are a bunch of teachers striking because of low pay, there is a deficit in nearly all states of qualified teacher, and they are having problems with security in the schools. would it not make more sense to bolster education? Would it not make sense to start proper training facilities for gun use and teach people the dangers of firearms?
How much money do you think the government has already spent across the country in legal costs to try and implement gun laws? I will try to find the article again, but it said basically that millions have been spent in court cases that have come about because of the government trying to put restrictions on guns.
And I seriously doubt that a general amnesty would work, not many would willing give up their guns.
Quoting Akanthinos
Some of the estimates go over 300,000,000, A realistic amount to pick up each gun, including people going house to house with court orders to require the people to hand over their weapons, the cost of each court order, the cost of finding out who has guns so that the court orders can be issued. Take into account how many man hours it will take and multiple that by the minimum wage, let's say $10, we wont count the multitude of high priced lawyers that will be fighting it ever step of the way. I think that you are well into the billions, and that is if you don't run into any serious problems.
And then there is the transportation cost to take into account. And the storage of all those weapons with plenty of security because obviously you don't want anyone stealing the guns again after you spent all of that money getting them. And then there is the destruction of them. Wow, that does not sound cheap.
Quoting Akanthinos
No, I don't see where you are going. There is absolutely no way to compare the two procedures. At least when I lived stateside the people happily took their trash to the edge of the road and the guy just had to pick it up and throw it into the truck.
Hey but maybe they could convince people to to the same with their guns.
As noted above, all the problems you mention have been solved in other countries. Sure the solutions cost money but spending money to provide security is a fundamental role of government, not an optional extra. IIRC for Hobbes, it was the only role of government. Given what the US spends on defence and on spying on its own citizens, that principle seems to be perfectly well accepted there.
Yeah, maybe. And then someone shoots up your school, and suddenly you see things differently.
Did you check to see how many there were? There was a big difference between what they had in Australia and what they have in the US. Remember size counts, especially with a problem like this.
Quoting andrewk
OK, so I ask again. If it is so easy, why has it not been done already? Because of all of the problems involved in doing it maybe.
The only way to solve the problems of a country is through education. I have said from the beginning that if you don't want people to have guns, then you need to educate them to not want guns.
This question was answered in my antepenultimate post.
You responded with an opinion, based on a handful of expat Americans whose opinion you sought, that Americans don't want to pay for gun control. I suspect your opinion is mistaken.
OK.
You responded with your opinion, based on who knows what. I suspect your opinion is mistaken.
It's almost as if the Secret Service knows that it's dangerous for the average citizen to possess a gun.
It is similar to the idea that if everyone has a gun, those who arrive in an authoritative role will have difficulty in knowing who the aggressor is. It almost happened to armed bystander, the "good guy with the gun" when Representative Gabby Giffords was shot in Tucson, AZ.
It happens and even properly trained firearm users can and do make mistakes.
Indeed. That's why it's time to ban assault trucks.
There's no such thing as assault trucks.
I'm going to steal an answer from Quora:
"Since trucks are hugely useful and valuable parts of our everyday life, and aren’t typically bought or designed to kill people, that would seem to be an overreaction, with costs much higher than the benefits.
"To that extent, they are very different from guns (which is the facile and childish analogy that is being attempted to be drawn, and which fails).
"I would, however, be supportive of prohibiting civilians from driving motorised weapons (or 'assault trucks') like this on public roads:
"Since there is no social merit to permitting anyone to drive an armed Abrams tank down a street in Nice, and they are designed explicitly as weapons, there is good reason to ban them. That analogy with guns is a good one."
Neither are guns.
Right, guns are designed to shoot bullets that's all. They have no knowledge nor control of what people do with those bullets.
Out of the millions of guns in the USA, how many have actually been used for killing people? I really doubt that it is even 1%.
And no one even needs a truck to assault and kill people, any old car will do. Just look in the newspapers, it is happening more and more.
They're weapons. Why don't you look that one up in your dictionary?
I have a dream...
Well at least we could start by banning evil people.
And then the guns could live in peace. :victory:
that one day all people will be treated equally
that no one will be a racist, sexist, or even suffer from superiority complexes
that politicians will stop lying
that commercials will tell the truth
that people will stop using products that hurt the earth
that people will learn to read books again
etc, etc.
We all have dreams.
And nightmares.
That is what you said, not me. :smile:
I just want the evil ones banning.
I seriously think it would be easier to pick up a couple of thousand people than several million guns, And there would probably be fewer complaints about it as well.
It is quite difficult to pick which people will go crazy, as many can portray a decency to the public. But I do agree that if authorities would be enabled to disable those with a record of criminal activities, then future crime would be reduced.
A truck can be a weapon, too.
It usually is when followed by a funny little face, that's a dead give away. :wink:
Quoting Lone Wolf
More research needs to be done to try and find out why people feel the need to kill each other, the findings would probably apply to more than just guns and be more beneficial in the long run.
Nor does one not have to not commit to this either. :confused:
More practical than banning people, but still incredibly impractical considering human nature, the history of humanity, recent widely reported events, the frequency of such events, and the likelihood that such events will continue to take place until effective action is taken.
Banning guns is effective action? How so?
:brow:
Strawman phrased as a question. It [i]would be[/I] effective action, under the right circumstances. Otherwise it would likely be unsuccessful or even counterproductive. So it's about working towards achieving the right circumstances, and that's where I'm interested in sensible and practical suggestions.
:meh: Like that?
Quoting Sir2u
Because we are depraved.
We call him "Quick Draw Straw." Let every outlaw of straw beware!
Wrong, it is a simple question that needs a simple answer.
Quoting Sapientia
Simple and practical suggestions seem to be in short supply right now. Maybe knowing what the "right circumstances" are might help. Would you care to enlighten us about them?
Yep, you got the hang of real quick.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Speak for yourself young lady, I am just crazy. :lol:
You know, there's a simple test to check whether an alleged strawman is actually a strawman. Show me where I claimed what was suggested.
Wrong. It was clearly a loaded question. Don't play dumb. My response is to recognise it as such.
Quoting Sir2u
I don't think I need to enlighten anyone here. We already know about American gun culture and factors which play into that, like the NRA.
Sure, and I suppose you weren't suggesting anything, either. No one is suggesting anything at all.
Funnily enough, the frequency of which I accuse others of strawmanning my position corresponds with the frequency of which my position is strawmanned.
A weak or sham argument set up to be easily refuted.
A straw man argument is a rhetorical device that deliberately misrepresents and weakens the argument of the other side.
A straw man is a fallacy in which an opponent's argument is overstated or misrepresented in order to be attacked or refuted.
Then it was not a strawman because it was not even an argument.
Being a loaded question does not make it a strawman. But why do you think it is loaded?
Quoting Sapientia
No problem, you suggested that there might be "right circumstances" that would make it effective to ban guns so I thought that you might know what they were. Sorry about that.
No. I never use google.
Quoting Sapientia
No, could you tell me.
Quoting Sapientia
No, could you tell me.
Quoting Sir2u
Ah, I see what you're doing. Let's see: [I]do[/I] play dumb.
Quoting Sir2u
If you say that this is a strawman, then in some way it is supposed to be refuting an argument that you made by refuting something else instead. Exactly what is being refuted here?
But let's not get into discussing little things like this.
I think that your idea about there being some sort of condition or circumstances under which gun banning might be accomplished sounds interesting. Could you expand upon it a bit?
Dolphins are interesting? How so? Could you expand upon that a bit?
That's why the suggestion is to ban people from possessing guns. :brow:
There's a difference between something being used as a weapon and something being designed as a weapon. The primary purpose of a truck is for transport, and the benefits of that use outweigh the risks of it being misused for violence. Whereas the primary purpose of a gun is to kill and/or hurt people.
The claim being made is that instruments designed as weapons – particularly when very effective – are too dangerous to be allowed, except in certain circumstances and with strict regulations.
Your analogy is a bad one that attacks a strawman (as if the pro-gun control argument is just that anything that can hurt people ought be banned).
:naughty:
Quoting Sapientia
Way to go man.
That really does show how interested you are in having a serious discussion.
Wait a minute, does that answer fit the description of a strawman?
But why should all of the people be punished for the sins of the few?
Quoting Michael
No, the primary purpose of a gun is to fire bullets. What the people do with them is something else.
I don't know if this is supposed to be sarcasm.
Health and safety.
Besides, I reject the premise that not being able to own a gun is a punishment.
I don't think it is, which I find quite concerning. It shows the extent that some people are willing to go to.
Elephant? What elephant? :monkey:
A true statement is rarely sarcasm. People decide what to do with artifacts, they have no choice in the matter
Quoting Michael
Health and safety of whom? More people are affected directly and indirectly by cigarettes, booze and drugs. And lets not forget the people killed in car crashes, house fires and industrial accidents.
Everyday sickness kill more people than guns.
Quoting Michael
Never said it was, but banning guns means that you have to take away the ones that do exist. And that is punishment.
Unless one is being paid by the NRA, I wonder what one gets out of trying to deemphasise the problem. :chin:
Well, to say that the purpose of a gun is to shoot bullets is like saying that the purpose of a car is to burn fuel to spin wheels. It's nonsense. That's how they behave, but their purpose isn't their behaviour. Their purpose is the primary use to which they were designed to serve. In the case of cars it's transport; in the case of guns it's killing and/or hurting people.
Everybody.
So? As I said to Thorongil, the claim isn't just that things which happen to be dangerous (whether by accident or misuse) ought be banned, but that things designed to kill and/or hurt people ought be banned.
Besides, there are already bans on things like drugs precisely because they're dangerous, and I would say that in a lot of case these bans are warranted for that very reason.
I ask again; so? I don't understand how the existence of accidents is supposed to undermine claims that gun control is a good thing.
I reject the claim that taking away guns is a punishment. If anything it's just the rescindment of a privilege.
What I gathered from Thorongil is that these are attempts to make our position look absurd by trying to associate it with absurd, half-baked suggestions which fall apart upon analysis.
If you say so.Quoting Michael
Guns are designed to shoot bullets, people decide whether to shoot at a target on a shooting range, a deer in the woods or people in the street. It is silly to blame an inanimate object for the behavior of people.
Quoting Michael
You say that you want to improve health and safety right, would it not make more sense to look at the things that cause more deaths each year first and solve those problems before moving on to the smaller stuff.
Nobody is doing that.
The legislature is quite capable of passing gun control legislation whilst scientific institutions look into how to prevent house fires.
By saying that guns need to be banned you are saying that they are to blame for the deaths, that if they did not exist there would be no problems.
Quoting Michael
The legislature is quite capable of passing legislation to pay for scientific institutions to look into why people kill each other. So why do they not do so?
Let's see. Based on what he has said, it seems that his proposal is to either ban people or wait until we can fix them so that they don't try to kill each other anymore.
Because most of the mass shootings stem back to an imbalance in the mind within one person or very rarely two and mental illness cannot be seen but only expressed. When it is expressed in the non verbal way with a firearm, people listen and begin to think about where the motive part of this action was formed.
No it isn't.
Ask them, not me. But what does this have to do with gun control?
It has everything to do with the reason behind people's desire to control firearms.
I have never said that I am against gun legislation, what I have said is that I do not see how it will help as the people here are proposing to do it. A total blanket ban on arms will not work. It is not cost effective, it will not stop killings by people that want to kill, and as far as many people in the USA are concerned it is a violation of their rights. All of this has been explained in previous posts.
Gun controls should be focused on people that are obviously dangerous, criminals and mentally ill, and more money should be spent on preventing guns getting into their hands.
If it was easier to tell when people were not fit to own guns then the police would be able to act against them. That is called gun control. Science could give them the tools they need.
Amen.
Here's someone who actually designed a gun, basically saying that he designed it so that it could be used to kill lots more people.
Focused by whom? The government? And do you want the government going even deeper into the bowels of healthcare and what constitutes mental illness?
Quoting Sir2u
Ah, yes, just throw money at the problem. I'm sure the government will spend it wisely, :up:
What is your point? It was not his fault that his gun was used by a bunch of idiots for purposes other than what he wanted it to do. He thought that the simple threat of a weapon like that would end the wars.
I thought the point was obvious. He designed a gun, not just to shoot bullets, but to shoot bullets at people. Otherwise none of it would make any sense whatsoever.
"What ever is necessary for the health and safety of the citizens" is the motto of those that believe banning guns is the solution to killings, so why should they complain about a thing like that?
Quoting Buxtebuddha
So taking all of the guns off the people will be done for free? I have already discussed this in previous threads, you can read about it there. And I really do not think that any scientific investigation into what you consider a serious problem is "throwing money at the problem". I would call it seeking a solution.
What? :lol: How about you respond to the content of my reply? Thanks :up:
Quoting Sir2u
I don't support a blanket ban on all firearms, but nice try.
I thinking banning AR-15's is also a solution sought in fixing a problem. Do you disagree?
I think you should read what he said again.
"and consequently, exposure to battle and disease would be greatly diminished."
His purpose in designing it was to stop or at least reduce killings in the battle field. He thought that if people new that it was useless to fight against a machine like that they would stop doing it.
Battle fields are where soldiers fight, not where people have guns in their houses. And again we come to the real problem, it is the people that decide upon the target, not the guns.
I did reply, if you cannot understand it I am sorry.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
So exactly what is it that you do support?
Quoting Buxtebuddha
No I do not disagree. But I think that is roughly the equivalent of closing the barn door after the chickens, pigs and horses have run away. There are supposedly 5,000,000 AR-15's in the USA. Would banning the sales of them now really make that much of a difference? And it would not be cheap to remove those already out there.
But let's look at another quote:
“I was in the hospital, and a soldier in the bed beside me asked: ‘Why do our soldiers have only one rifle for two or three of our men, when the Germans have automatics?’ So I designed one. I was a soldier, and I created a machine gun for a soldier. It was called an Avtomat Kalashnikova, the automatic weapon of Kalashnikov—AK—and it carried the date of its first manufacture, 1947.” - Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47
Now, for what reason could a soldier require a gun? Ah yes, shooting bullets... That explains it all perfectly. The full picture. Nothing more to examine here. Case closed.
I asked you how you would carry out the solution you've proposed and you've yet to answer. If you want to sidestep providing any substance to your argument, fine.
Quoting Sir2u
I'm more interested in what you support, seeing as I asked first, I think you should tell before I do.
Quoting Sir2u
As I've been trying to do, you need to explain why your alternatives will make the difference. At present, you've made baseless assertions, so I have no reason to take you seriously until you do.
A toothpick is just a tool designed to pick stuff. Whether or not it's used on teeth has nothing to do with its design. And a fishing pole is just a pole which may or may not be used for fishing. It has nothing whatsoever to do with people or fish or people using fishing poles to catch fish. It doesn't suit my agenda to give a complete picture, so that's how it is. Understood?
I had already answered your question, in case you missed it here it is again.
Quoting Sir2u
Quoting Sir2u
Quoting Buxtebuddha
I have stated my position several times, if you do not understand then please feel free to ask for clarification on any of the points I have made.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Once again, I have already explained everything in previous posts, feel free to go back in the thread and read them. As for you trying to explain, how can you explain your position when you have not even stated what it is.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
At present, you've made absolutely no valid assertions, so I have absolutely no reason to take you seriously even if you do.
No, they were designed to shoot lots and lots and lots of bullets. What the stupid people did with those bullets is not the gun's problem. If the people decided that it's purpose was to kill then that is the people not the gun, all the gun can do is shoot bullets not make decisions about where the bullets go.
Quoting Sapientia
That is the simplest way to admit that you are wrong. You don't even want to talk about those "circumstances" you mentioned?
I stand corrected. :lol:
And candles were simply designed to produce light. It had nothing whatsoever to do with us wanting to see things better in the dark.
I would be more inclined to talk about it if I thought that there was a genuine reason behind your request, or if I thought that it would be productive. But I think that you're already largely aware of the situation in the US, as are other participants, and I think that you're very much set in your ways and can't be reasoned with. You've demonstrated in this discussion and others an unwillingness to concede, even when it would be reasonable to do so.
Try using a little less sarcasm in your writing, it might help people take you as a serious person. Even if you are not one.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
I could answer as some people here do and reply that I have no idea because I am not in a position to make those decisions or that I am not a law maker so it does not correspond to to me to decide.
But as I have said before, I have explained how I think these things could be accomplished. Go back and read them.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Which is a hell of a lot more than you have done yet.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
How do you propose anyone prove that they are right without the proposal first being carried out, that is really pathetic. What I suggested is a possible way to solve the problem, I have never stated that it is the only way nor that it will work.
And the truth is I don't have to prove anything to you, it is you that is saying that I am wrong so it is up to you to prove that I am.
Please explain why my idea would not work, after you have read them of course.
As you say,
Quoting Buxtebuddha
So sad, especially from someone that tries to act as an intellectual.
So far in this conversation your contribution has amounted to little more than "you are wrong" "you are incorrect" and a few insults.
Let us hear how to solve the problem from a true intellectual, please enlighten us with your wisdom.
Same answer as always when there is nothing to say. How can you know whether it would be productive or not until you tell us whatever you have to say.
Quoting Sapientia
I have no real information about the situation in the USA that what I read on the internet.
Quoting Sapientia
If I am given a real reason to believe something I will believe it. Try giving me a real solution to the problem of guns in the US, At least something better than those that I have proposed that you think are useless.
Quoting Sapientia
No, I have demonstrated that I am not going to be bullied into excepting your ides that I consider incorrect, just as you fail to concede even when it would be reasonable to do so.
Try coming up with some reasonable ideas and tell me about them, but please don't repeat "ban the guns" unless as someone recently said you are prepared to specify how this would be done.
I went on to explain why I doubt that it would be productive.
Quoting Sir2u
You're trying to understate it, as you are wont to do, but one can learn a heck of a lot about it through media, including the internet. You don't actually have to be there.
As for the rest of your post: been there, done that, but I don't need to develop it to the extent that you've pressed for. What you do with it is up to you. Like I've said, the culture needs to change, and tighter gun controls need to be implemented. The sooner, the better. And those who pose as obstacles need to be challenged and overcome.
If it is, then you need to explain how exactly most gun owners don't in fact use it in this way.
Quoting Michael
I fail to have registered any other reason offered in favor of banning guns.
Yeah (although I'm slightly unsure of the metaphor employed here).
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Did you know that the government will be the one in charge of regulating or banning guns, if such things are passed? Your concern here works both ways.
Better mental health screenings and treatments. Better policing. Universalized gun-violence restraining orders. Reform of existing laws. Etc.
Got news for you, it does not. It only means that you have nothing at all to add to the conversation.
So you pass your useless life telling other people that that they are dumb while being totally unable to show any reasons why they are. You refuse to even, out of courtesy, read the thread where thy information you ask for is and then say that other people are "intellectually disingenuous". Have you looked in a mirror recently?
I will, because of your obvious inability to understand the situation, review my position one last time. After that I expect you to provide reasonable information as to why I am wrong or shut the hell up.
I believe that because of the number of weapons already in existence and in the hands of the general public there is no feasible method of a total ban on guns. The shear cost and man power required is beyond that of a government that cannot solve the health and homeless problems that exist.
Any general ban on sales will make no difference on the present situation and probably little on the near future. There are according to government statistics about 300 million guns in the USA and over five million AK47 type arms among them. The only difference a ban will make is that decent citizens will no longer be able to buy them, criminals will still be able to obtain them freely.
Making gun license obligatory is sort of ridiculous because it cannot be enforced. No one actually knows who has most of the guns, except those of the honest people that already abide by the law and get permissions. A ban would mean that these are the first people to be punished.
A ban on sales to people with possible or actual mental, criminal problems or lack of proper training seems to be the best way to go if any sort of a ban is to be imposed. Unfortunately that will come at a serious cost, people will have to be hired and trained to oversee the mental health, criminal records and adequate training of anyone that wants to acquire a license.
A lot of those that really want guns for ill use will be able to find them without this hassle so the sales ban will be limited to catching those that do actually apply for permits. Unless this method is instituted in a very strict way it will not work either as has been shown to several times already by fully licensed killers buying the weapons days before the deed.
Scientific study of why people kill would help with to prevent future mass murders. But who is going to foot the bill for this?
A proper education is another way to help alleviate the problem. I am sure you can figure out how this will help.
Over to you now, this is my opinion. Go ahead and show me where I am going wrong.
Because, in most cases, its primary purpose tends to be reserved for emergencies. The primary purpose of a fire extinguisher is not ornamental, it's to extinguish fires when they arise. Likewise, the primary purpose of a gun is to be used as the weapon it is, to be fired at live targets in order to kill or disable. But I suspect that you already know this, so the real question is why you're coming up with inventive ways to skirt around it.
Quoting Thorongil
Well, additional reasons have been given, so I wonder why it is that you've failed to register them. It's not just that they can hurt people, it's part of a cost-benefit analysis, and this cost-benefit analysis is not going to be identical if you switch from, say, civilian use of assault rifles to civilian use of trucks.
I understand that, but if you're someone that screams at the top of your lungs about "muh freedumbs" and how terrible the government is, then throwing money at gun violence - through the government - makes a whole lot of no sense.
Quoting Thorongil
And this looks like what? Are we to stereotype and shame every "mentally ill" person into some category that says, "likely to shoot up a Waffle House" or "drive a minivan through cafes"? Who also is going to provide mental health screenings and treatments? The government? Private health providers? Who's going to assemble and sort the information? What happens when professionals disagree on person x's mental health and danger to society?
Quoting Thorongil
I agree that better policing is important, but as above, what does this look like? Are we to give police more power? What sort of power? Better training, more funding, what? Do we want to fund the NSA/HLS even more, which will mean the giving up of certain privacy privileges, other freedoms, etc.?
Quoting Thorongil
I don't know what this is, but traditional restraining orders provide very little practical defense against whomever the order is placed. The order merely serves as a warning and fuel in a court room after shit has already clogged the fan.
Quoting Thorongil
What sort of reform on what existing laws? Will they be federally mandated or left up to the states?
~
As I've said before in this very thread, living in a society - any society - is inherently restraining and unfree, so the idea that giving up one's freedom is some absolutely calamitously terrifying event every single time is just silly. Obviously unjust restraints are, well, unjust, but no matter the side or perspective taken on gun violence in America, a giving up of some freedom, however big or small, is inevitable. And it would seem that a great many people don't understand that. If you want to keep your AR-15 but have the NSA spying on you when you sleep, okie dokie. If you want to fire a bazooka in your backyard but have the government judge your children as potential mass murders because they are "x, y, or z", that's fine too. Personally, I'd rather give up my AR-15 if I owned one than the above. Perhaps I'm crazy though and should be placed on a list of mentally ill nutjobs who may kill people. *shrug*
But giving up your precious AR-15 (if you owned one) would be a "punishment", whereas being the victim of a school shooting is apparently something worth putting up with until we can "fix" humanity. (Yeah, like that's ever going to happen. And be careful what you wish for. Sounds like the stuff of dystopian fiction, like A Clockwork Orange. And besides, who's going to foot the bill? They may take our lives, but they'll never raise our taxes!).
So who is going to pay for the regulation or banning of guns. If you think that the government would just be throwing money at gun violence makes no sense then you must have another candidate to foot the bill.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Maybe the government would not be so gung ho to the idea of throwing money at gun violence but who is responsible for the safety of the people?
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Are you beginning to actually see the problems I mentioned?
Quoting Buxtebuddha
The people who believe they have the right to their guns see banning them as a threat to all of their rights, whether they are right or wrong I do not know but that is what they think. And now it appears that you are also afraid of losing your rights and privileges. If it makes for a safer country and you are not doing anything wrong why would you be worried about someone listening to you phone calls?
So when are you going to uncover your plan to save America? We are all waiting for it.
They're wrong, clearly.
You're assuming it will cost an obscene amount of money. Have you taken a look at the US budgets recently? They run into the trillions of dollars. Exactly how much do you think the things I suggested will cost? Whatever the figure is, I'm quite sure there are some superfluous expenditures that can be cut to pay for such measures (if they even require federal funding).
Quoting Buxtebuddha
I would defer to the experts on mental health.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Many mass shooters display these very warning signs. And no, this is not a "gut feeling" hunch. There are clear patterns to the behavior that leads up to mass shootings (assuming this is what we're concerned about here, as opposed to gangbangers in South Chicago).
Quoting Buxtebuddha
No law will ever be perfect. You apparently agree, though, I take it, that we ought to have better mental health screenings and treatments? If so, then you can go research such things yourself.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Good.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/gun-control-republicans-consider-grvo/
Quoting Buxtebuddha
There are loads of gun control laws already on the books. They need to be better enforced, scrapped, or rethought based on effectiveness. I think it ought to be left to the states. New Hampshire doesn't have the same level of gun violence as California, for example, so a one size fits all approach by the federal government would be counterproductive.
What proof do you have to back up this statement? Or is it just another of your silly personal opinions?
Quoting Thorongil
Quoting Sapientia
I just noticed this gem. Talk about confusion. I don't know what to think now. So many people have been blathering on about guns being made to kill and then Sappy says most people have them for emergency use only and that is why they do not get used for killing.
I would say that there is something wrong with someone's think processes.
Come on mate, what did you expect from them. They have no idea how to even look at the problem never mind solve it.
But I have an idea that would solve the problem, the one here in the discussion not the one in the US, let's just pretend that we understand what they are gabbling on about and maybe they will get their self esteem up to a reasonable level and be able to live a normal life. It must be awful try to cover up ones inferiority complex all of the time by belittling other people.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope
Quoting Sir2u
I presume you're talking about your own confusion. There is indeed something wrong with someone's "think" process, and that someone is you. The statement of mine which you're referring to is consistent with my previous statements.
First of all, it's both true and obvious to anyone not in denial that guns were designed as weapons, not merely to shoot bullets. I've given more than enough analogies to show the fault in your account, as well as having quoted a few actual gun designers themselves and pointed out that your limited account would lack explanatory power to such a degree that one wouldn't be able make much sense of things in relation to what was said. (If I were you, I think I would've conceded that point some time ago, as it's frankly embarrassing not to at this stage. But I get it: you're too stubborn to do so, and especially to [i]me[/I] of all people. Your pride is at stake).
It's also true that in most cases of gun ownership, a guns primary purpose tends to be reserved for emergencies. Yet, nevertheless, gun crime still occurs and is a big problem, especially in the US, given the disproportionate statistics of gun crime in the US compared to other countries.
If you need some time to wrap your head around all of that, then I suggest you think it over. But those statements are consistent. There's no contradiction implied. If you think otherwise, then it's down to you to attempt to demonstrate that. And if you do attempt it, then good luck, and please quote what I've said, rather than trying your hand at paraphrasing it (which isn't one of your strong suits, truth be told), so as to avoid misrepresention.
You don't seem to have understood. The primary purpose of a fire extinguisher is to put out fires even if the vast majority of fire extinguishers are never actually used. The primary purpose of a gun is to kill and/or hurt people even if the vast majority of guns are never actually used.
And, of course, to say that the purpose of a gun is to shoot bullets and not to kill and/or hurt people is as wrong as to say that the purpose of a fire extinguisher is to spray water or fire or powder and not to put out fires.
Yes. We could do this all day. It works with practically anything. What have we had so far? Guns, swords, bombs, cars, toothpicks, fishing poles, candles, and fire extinguishers. And the list could go on. It's quite amusing.
How about pens? Why, they were simply designed to spread ink, rather than to be used for writing.
Welcome to the charade. :party:
A gun is an artifact. Human beings apply the form to, and therefore invent the purpose of, the objects we create. If a gun is used to fire bullets at another human being with the intent to kill or harm, that is the gun's purpose. If a gun is used to shoot bullets at a target or hammer nails, that is its purpose. No one would walk up to the target shooter or hammerer and say, "excuse me, you're using this object incorrectly." The "correctness" of an object's use is determined by the human being and his or her intentions, not by the object's nature (even though the nature of the object will place certain constraints on what the object can be used for).
Moreover, this is not to deny that artifacts have a typical purpose when being used. In the case of a fire extinguisher, it is most typically used to put out fires. But this example doesn't align with gun use in the US. The vast majority of gun owners do not typically use their guns to "kill or hurt people." Most gun owners use their guns to shoot targets at gun ranges or shoot non-human animals, either for sport, as population control, or for sustenance. As for human beings, the number of them killed or injured by guns is on par with the most conservative estimates of defensive gun uses, but most of the latter do not involve firing the weapon, whereas most gun related deaths and injuries are either suicides or accidents.
A gun's primary purpose (in the sense of what it was originally designed to do) would be to discharge a small projectile at great speed. Guns don't kill people on their own.
Imagine that humans went extinct. An intelligent alien species visiting the Earth, having no knowledge of the past existence of human beings, would not be able to conclude in coming across a gun that the purpose of this object is to "kill or hurt human beings."
And this is as ridiculous as claiming that a fire extinguisher was designed to spray water rather than to put out fires because they don't put out fires on their own and an alien would not be able to conclude that this is its purpose.
You were far more reasonable when you suggested that the purpose of (some, at least) guns is for hunting or sport. And I'll grant you that (in those cases where that's true), in which case we have a starting place for sensible gun control laws; bolt-action rifles and shotguns for hunting and sport, and perhaps stretching to handguns stored in accredited shooting ranges that can be rented out for target practice.
I didn't say that. I said that "the purpose of (some, at least) guns is for hunting or sport."
Quoting Thorongil
It's not mutually exclusive. Even if I am wrong in saying that the primary purpose of a gun is to kill and/or hurt people, you're still wrong in saying that the primary purpose of a gun is just to discharge a small projectile at great speed. How things work and the purpose they serve are not the same thing.
So you don't deny it either. Why not just come clean now?
"The people who believe they have the right to their guns see banning them as a threat to all of their rights, whether they are right or wrong I do not know but that is what they think."
You replied,
Quoting Sapientia
I then asked,
Question #1
Quoting Sir2u
This is the statement that I asked for proof of.
You answer with a link to this,
slippery slope
You said that if we allow A to happen, then Z will eventually happen too, therefore A should not happen.
The problem with this reasoning is that it avoids engaging with the issue at hand, and instead shifts attention to extreme hypotheticals. Because no proof is presented to show that such extreme hypotheticals will in fact occur, this fallacy has the form of an appeal to emotion fallacy by leveraging fear. In effect the argument at hand is unfairly tainted by unsubstantiated conjecture.
Example: Colin Closet asserts that if we allow same-sex couples to marry, then the next thing we know we'll be allowing people to marry their parents, their cars and even monkeys.
Question #2:
What the hell has a slippery slope fallacy got to do with proving your statement. It makes absolutely no sense to say that asking for proof is any type of a fallacy. I think you are just blowing wind because, like every other time you have been asked to prove something you have no answer.
But if you think that I am guilty of this type of faulty reasoning, please show me where.
Quoting Sapientia
Yes definitely, that is what I am talking about.
You have been going on for so long saying that guns were designed to kill people and that their purpose is to kill people that I find it hard to believe that so many people have bought so many guns with the intention of kill people, even though only in an emergency, and then just have them sitting there for years and years.
Do you really think that all of those people bought those guns to kill people with?
Because, if you say that guns are made for killing, that is the only reason that they have bought them for. That is a serious thing to say, that means that there are maybe 300 million killers loose in the USA just waiting for something to happen so that they can kill someone.
Quoting Sapientia
That is exactly what a pen does, dispense ink. What the person holding it does with the ink is of no concern to the pen. And pens get used for drawing, tracing, marking and sometimes for cleaning ears Just like the gun, they have many uses.
Quoting Sapientia
I created a machine gun- Mikhail Kalashnikov
What did he say? That he created a machine that fires a lot of bullets, that was the weapons purpose, the reason he invented it.
It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine - a gun - which could by its rapidity of fire - Richard Gatling
What did he say? That he created a machine that fires a lot of bullets, that was the weapons purpose, the reason he invented it.
Rapid firing of bullets was the reason they invented the machines, what the would be used for is something totally different.
If you really want to stretch things, I guess that you could say that they were both actually try to save lives by inventing them. One by saving his countrymen the other by ending wars.
Now please don't start telling me how pathetic my way of thinking is and that you are the only one that is right, because that is bull. Your opinion on anything or your interpretation of what something means is just as valid as mine, unless as you keep on insisting there is absolute proof of something. "Enough analogies" are not proof of anything.
So lets get something straight right now, if you are not prepared to answer or have no sensible answer to Question #1 do not even bother answering Question #2 or even replying to this post. Because I do not want to read anything else unless you answer them.
Put up or shut up.
Oh but I do understand, I just think that it is wrong.
Quoting Michael
Actually the primary purpose of a fire extinguisher is to make the environment non supportive to the fire thereby extinguishing the fire. That is why there are so many types of them so that they work in the different types of fires.
Quoting Michael
So you believe as well that all of those people actually bought the guns to kill people with? That is sad.
Read what I said to Sappy about that.
Quoting Michael
Your half right, just not the half you think. Why are you so sure that you are right?
So take your games home with you and let us have a serious discussion.
The door is over there on the left, close it on your way out if you please.
The purpose of designing guns is to shot bullets thereby giving humans the ability kill other humans quickly and efficiently.
Hopefully, you'll also be able to see that this similarly applies to innumerable other things, like candles and pens.
Here's your next task: admit that those who see banning guns as a threat to all of their rights are being unreasonable, given that it's an example of the slippery slope fallacy.
Oh right, I see. Thanks for that.
Quoting Sir2u
Are you sure about that? Because I thought that it was of great concern to the pen.
Good thing we've you two around to set us straight.
[hide="Reveal"]
Do you really think that I don't understand what
Quoting Sapientia
means. :confused:
Answer the question if you can.
How do you know this, prove it to be true. So many millions of people just have to be wrong so that you can be right, not going to happen
Quoting Sapientia
But I do restrain from insulting people, which might be something you should learn to do. What was that word you used? Oh yes, DINGBAT.
So either come up with an answer or shut up. Or are you scared to admit that you are blowing hot air.
Now, when you've composed yourself, please try to understand the following:
1. In contrast to what you said about not knowing whether those who see banning guns as a threat to all of their rights are right or wrong, I know that they're wrong, because they're wrong in the sense that it's an instance of the slippery slope fallacy. If you don't see it, then you don't see it. Some people are more adept at spotting fallacies than others.
2. I've criticised you before for inaccurately paraphrasing what you presumably think I've said or meant, and then turning that on me in the form of a loaded question, as if I'm somehow responsible for that. But I'm not, and yet you keep doing it. You know how to use the quote function, and you know how to copy and paste, so it's easily avoidable.
Like I've said, people buy guns knowing what their primary purpose is, and, typically, they don't expect to use them for that purpose except in emergencies. Your misleading simplifications of what I've said and your [i]non sequiturs[/I] are not my problems, they're yours. I hope you can resolve your problems without relying on my help, because I do so begrudgingly.
Not good enough. How is it an instance of the slippery slope fallacy?
Quoting Sapientia
If you actually wrote properly no one would have to presume what you said, it would be clear. And who gave you the authority to criticize me. Just who do you think you are to take the liberty to do such a thing?
Quoting Sapientia
I am still not clear on what you mean by a "loaded question". My question was simple.
Quoting Sir2u
All you needed was an answer the statement that "banning guns is an effective action".
This is something that you have repeated but never explained exactly what you mean by it. So how would it be effective.
"Quoting Sapientia
What has this got to do with the price of jellybeans? Of course I know how to quote and copy/paste, that is how I have been answering your posts.
Quoting Sapientia
To which I replied that by doing so it makes them potential killers. Due you deny that?
Quoting Sapientia
I have stated things as you have written them, if there is any misleading it is not my fault that you have trouble expressing your thoughts. And I would certainly like to see an example of my non sequuntur, could you point some of them out for me.
I don't care if it's not good enough for you. I don't have to meet your standard. It's an instance of the fallacy because it fits the description.
Quoting Sir2u
I did write properly and clearly. Michael understood what you failed to understand, which indicates that your understanding, and not my writing, is where the fault lies. And are you joking? This is a philosophy forum. What did you expect? I won't be going easy on you of all people.
Quoting Sir2u
Then look it up.
Quoting Sir2u
Must I spell everything out to you? I find it hard to believe that you didn't catch my drift. The suggestion was that if you'd have done that instead of botched attempts at paraphrasing, then we could've avoided this problem. You should be questioning me on what I've actually said, rather than your version of it.
Quoting Sir2u
We're all potential killers anyway, whether we buy a gun or not.
Quoting Sir2u
No, you haven't done so in what I'm objecting to. The evidence is there for all to see. You're in denial. And yes, I'm sure you would like me to jump through some more of your hoops, but I can think of better ways to spend my time.
No it does not fit the description.
As for the rest.
Sappy said "Blah blah, yak yak"
Whatever, nothing of value there.
Yes, it is. If more people saw it that way, then there'd be a better chance of getting the regulation required. The situation over there is to some degree comparable to how the situation used to be with smoking, when it was promoted and advertised on a much larger scale, and more widely viewed as a good thing, a cool thing to do, and not as harmful or dangerous as it actually is.
The land of the free and the home of the mass shooting.
I don't think that most people here are going for all or nothing, but rather somewhere in between. I think that most people here on my side of the debate are going for tighter regulation, because they recognise, as I do, that a total ban would be problematic as things stand. I view a total ban as an ideal. It would make more sense if things were different. And you totally misunderstand the goal if you think that it's to eradicate crime entirely. I can assure you that no one here is stupid enough to think that.
And I don't think anyone here on the other side of the debate is saying "do nothing".
I wanted to leave this here, just to give some perspective about where, say, I fall in the debate. This guy is to the right of me by a considerable margin.
Why is banning guns an ideal, then? Imagine that we do eradicate all crime. You would still apparently object to people owning guns. Why? You ought to know how bizarre that is.
What's bizarre is your reply. :brow:
Banning guns is an ideal because it's a better way of reducing gun crime, and accidents involving guns, and the more serious risk to survival that gun shot wounds cause when compared with wounds caused by other weapons such as knives, but there are even greater obstacles in the way than there are in the case of tougher regulation.
If the dire consequences that arise as a result of gun ownership and lax regulation did not arise - including the consequences relating to crime - and had no chance or very little chance of arising, then of course my position wouldn't be identical to my current position. I would see gun ownership as much less of a problem or not even as a problem. But that's pie in the sky.
It is not an ideal but rather a goal by those who might be more short sighted than others. Even if a majority of American citizens could be convinced of it today, what happens in 20 years when our government has changed along with the rest of world? Who do we appeal to in order to get our rights of self protection back? And if they can take our right to self defense away, whose to say that we will even have our first right of freedom of speech left unaltered?
Crickets.....that is what you would hear from those in the role of power at the time. Allow the citizens of the USA to rearm themselves? In a time of crisis? Are you insane?
I'd say that this is more than shortsightedness. I'd say that this is seeing things through a kaleidoscope of fear and ignorance. Stop with the scaremongering and do what's right. #NeverAgain
It's like why do I have to stop chewing gum in class because a few others stick the gum under the desk sort of thing, except with guns and not gum.
It is as logical as all of us having to give up speaking to one another in public because of a few people who cannot help themselves but scream "Fire" in a movie theater or a crowded casino.
There are just too many guns in the USA, the attitude of the people towards their guns and the fact that it is not the good majority of the people that are the problem but a very small percent that do.
If they start now with an educational program that teaches people the benefits of not having guns, start reviewing all of the people that already have them and begin a restrict control of who gets one in the future they might make a difference in a couple of generations.
They can't even successfully educate people in the basics of reading and arithmatic.
Mandatory registration of currently owned firearms would have to be voluntary and then it gets into that hairy idea of confiscation of non registered firearms after a certain date and just tramples our rights.
No, instead just have the government take control of any ammunition manufacturer. That way there is no need to take our guns when they have all the bullets.
You have got to really dig deep to get to that line of thinking. Anyone have a shovel?
Quoting Hanover
Exactly. Guns for civilians are as essential as verbal communication in public and breathing. What would we do without them? I don't know how I'd cope without my precccciiiooousss.
It's a Constitutional thing that'll never ever change.
Yes exactly. Now you say "Cool" and we're done.
That is why I said "in a couple of generations". They have a long way to go.
But that problem is not just the American society, that is a world wide problem right now. Many of today's kids do not want to learn.
Cool.
I know, I was just joshing. I would hope you'd be able to at least get rid of AR-15 type guns at some point. I think that would help. But the arguments around here do tend to go in circles.
And the only way to change culture (=behavior) is through education.
Positive behavioral changes do not usually happen by themselves, they take conscious reasoning and control.
Negative behavioral changes in behavior, unfortunately, do not. Negative behavioral changes are often the results of mindless follow the leader/example type of thing. "Dat's cool, I gonna do dat".
I think you're right in general, but education in the US is a cultural battlefield in its self.
I can dig that.
Being a millennial myself, and having experienced all sorts of different schools in several states, I don't see a gun issue when shootings like the Texas one happen, I see the effects of bullying and the utterly toxic and psychologically warped environment that is now the prevailing habitat in schools across America. It's pernicious, and I've seen first hand how most students aren't willing to be better or to check their own behavior and how it affects others. The world's just a fucking joke and a meme to kids of my generation, and the consequences of their actions have no bearing on their behavior. It's sickening to me, and I get tired of seeing people blame guns and Nazis and whatever else when there are some seriously fucked up shit going on schools and other places that contribute hugely to people doing even more terrible things.
Oh, but I'm sure people will scream on and on about how we need better mental healthcare too and yada yada. Yeah, I think we should. For everyone, including the little shitfaces who won't ever shoot up a school but do contribute to someone who might. Too bad that'll never happen, because nobody wants to address mental health because it's the silent plague of modern society. "Ban guns" may sound easy, and there are many measures we can and ought to take, but whether it helps those individuals who do want to kill people as an act of revenge...I don't think so. And until we start treating the issue by the ends and not the means, the situation - whether reported on or not - will continue to fall into itself.
So it's genetic, like Downs syndrome?
"Doth the Lord desire holocausts and victims?"
It's a combination though isn't it? The last thing you need in a toxic bullying environment is easy availability of guns.
I guess, if you think the opposite of behavior is genes - which I don't.
Quoting Posty McPostface
Saint Liguori, what a lad.
Quoting Baden
Yes, but the issue is hardly categorized as a compromise or combination, either in media or by those who are most vocal about gun legislation. One reason why is because the seeds of gun violence and mass shootings in America doesn't just stem to guns, but lots of other touchy subjects nobody wants to deal with.
So obsessive behavior is not behavior, that's news.
You would take away the scissors and explain why they should not do that. Education.
Taking away the scissors without an explanation is the same as oppression and leads to resentment and frustration, which in turn might lead to violence.
No, I would take away the scissors and replace them with guns. Upgrade. :up:
Of course it should be followed by an explanation! I was only talking about the [i]first[/I] thing that you should do. (For those who need a little help: it's about priorities, and relates to the talk about a combination of issues, and why one aspect seems to get more attention).
Sorry, but if you would explain instead of getting snarky it might help.
Sorry, but a snarky partial explanation is the best I can offer you. Have a nice day. :smile:
The extent that yanks will go to in order to justify their quite irrational obsession leaves me nonplussed.
But then the yanks can be weird sometimes, present company are not counted in that generality. :wink:
Unfortunately, we live in interesting times.
The next big question is
How far are they going to rise before we all get wiped out in the conflict?
Yes, and that's why guns should be banned.
It is a nasty combination and one that can be reduced by responsible gun owners keeping their firearms locked up, securely held and our children properly trained in what to do when they see a gun, how to handle it and who to notify if you stumble across a firearm.
Bullying has been around forever and in the past, the two foes would meet outside afterschool, under the bleachers and it would be attended by many and there would be one victor and one loser.
Now? In the age of technology and shock tv, you get kids filming a brawl that will be cast worldwide if not in real time. Imagine the magnitude of that kind of bullying, bullying that spreads like wildfire on social media that leads to being ostracized.
The one objective commonality is that it is males that are expressing themselves this way with a firearm or firearms. Something more than the availability of firearms to teenagers is going on in the home. Young men (hunters mostly) have learned how to use guns before the age of 10 for generations and school shootings were almost nonexistent. Something within our society, within the familial structures has changed.
It might have to do with two income families shifting from oddity to normalcy. And the reason I say that is as a stay at home Mom in 2002, I was checking on the kids playing in the driveway when I noticed two of the boys who lived next door using a hammer and a screwdriver trying to break something on the sidewalk. So I walked over and asked what they were doing and they had a handful of bullets and they were trying to crack them open to get to the black stuff that SNAPS are made of, so they could make more to play with. I asked them to give me the bullets and asked where they had gotten them? They said they were their Grampa's and he didn't know they took them. I asked them to bring me the rest of the bullets and I would return them to Grampa when he got home and then gave them a lecture about what I was worried about and how bullets and firearms should be handled.
Now, what happened after I talked to Gramps, I don't know but I did what I could given the chance I had.
But many gun owners aren't responsible. Is there a way to force them to be so short of threatening to take their guns off them?
You do not need to be a gun, or even explosives, collector to be dangerous to your kids. Most parents are careless with house cleaning products that are poisonous or flammable. Lots of parents don't have child protection locks on doors to places that can be harmful to kids.
But I would like to ask how many of these mass murderers used their family's guns to kill people?
I know that there have been many accidents and murders with the house protection weapon caused through carelessness or ease of access. But mass murders usually acquire their weapons just for that purpose and most families have no idea they have them.
Except bullying isn't an epidemic exclusive to American schools. In fact, boys ages 11-15, in nations such as Canada, Switzerland, France, and Ireland have reported being bullied more often than boys in the USA. The only epidemic exclusive to the USA is the virulent obsession with guns.
But in your eagerness to blame everything save for the weapons themselves, perhaps you missed the important detail that one of the victims of the Santa Fe High School shooter was a girl who repeatedly turned down the shooter's increasingly aggressive advancements, until she publicly stood up to him in class. She was killed the following week. She did not bully him. She merely told him no multiple times and he could not accept rejection. This is precisely the toxic masculinity that we often speak about on the Left, and women have every right to fear for their lives over it.
Also the shooter literally had images on Nazi symbols on his now deactivated social media accounts, so it seems weird that we can't literally blame Nazism when the proof is in the pudding.
And around we go again. This response leads to a dead end, remember? There are other dangers, so it's alright to keep guns and explosives?
Quoting Sir2u
It isn't worth the risk, and that there have been many accidents and murders is reason enough. If such weapons could not be acquired in the first place, then it wouldn't be a problem. Reduced arsenal, reduced options.
That is a truer than true statement.
Quoting Baden
I honestly don't know if there is "a" way because multi generations that have lived through different times than our current environment. So a multiple prong approach is necessary to address those underage, their parents and those elders who currently own firearms.
I think one of the best systems we have in place, which is voluntary and costs money, is to expose children to firearms in a controlled, safe and instructive environment. They are taught how to handle the finding of a firearm, they are made comfortable in informing an authority of the firearm, they are taught that firearms are not cool but are to be respected. They are taught such a different perspective than those who are not properly exposed. We have to teach our children to be leaders and not afraid to "tell someone" who can do something about it. See something, say something...is drilled into their psyche.
As far as those of us that are beyond our parents reach that have not been professionally trained? It's a crap shoot Baden. There are times when you can get adults to understand a new idea of how to look at things and then there are not. The adults willing to understand a new idea are not the same folks who leave their firearms/ammo or both unsecure.
Wouldn't it be less of a crap shoot if training was compulsory?
Yes, and females report having less affairs and sexual encounters than men, so women must all be telling the truth, even though its statistically impossible, :up:
Quoting Maw
Did you even read what I wrote?
[hide]Quoting Buxtebuddha
Quoting Baden
Quoting Buxtebuddha[/hide]
Quoting Maw
Toxic masculinity is a horseshit and repulsive idea employed by sexists like you who want to make predatory and abusive behavior singular to the male sex. A creep is a creep, but if you want to fit people into your own perverted categories, go right on ahead, just don't expect people to take you seriously when you do.
Quoting Maw
Yes, I'm sure Pagourtzis reads Mein Kampf, speaks fluent Bavarian German, has blonde hair and blue eyes, owns a Nazi Party membership booklet, yodels from the Alps, hates every Stein in the world...
Ah, so when confronted with statistics that are at variance to your armchair analysis, those surveyed must simply be liars. That's the precisely type of absurd obtuseness I've repeatedly come to expect from you, Buxtebuddha. I guess the real epidemic here is that boys in various developed countries are lying! I did read your post - a vexing experience as usual - and it's filled with indigent scrutiny including bullying ( "What's behavioral is the epidemic of bullying in middle and high schools", "I see the effects of bullying and the utterly toxic and psychologically warped environment that is now the prevailing habitat in schools across America") and some strain of millennial nihilism ("The world's just a fucking joke and a meme to kids of my generation"), while being at best dismissive ("The American obsession with guns is not behavioral", "I don't see a gun issue when shootings like the Texas one happen") and apathetic ("Ban guns" may sound easy, and there are many measures we can and ought to take, but whether it helps those individuals who do want to kill people as an act of revenge...I don't think so") because it A) ignores the indisputable fact that the preponderance of guns is the only correlative answer as to why American gun violence far outstrips that of other developed nations and B) misses the point entirely, because gun violence is not reducible to school shootings, but is an every day occurrence in America.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Let's be clear: toxic masculinity does not preclude the fact that women can be also abusive, predatory, or creepy. These are not exclusive phenomenon. But you are hopelessly clueless if you cannot acknowledge the extremity of toxic masculinity in practice, including Isla Vista, his imitator, and now the recent Santa Fe shooting.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Ah, so any modern form of Nazism is innocuous, because it needs to fit a certain stereotype in a certain time period that not even Hitler himself measures up to. Breathtakingly brilliant.
Reports don't always reflect reality.
Quoting Maw
You're enjoying practicing your writing skills right now, aren't you? Please, just look into my eyes when you finger your keyboard, it's hot.
Quoting Maw
How many fiery hoops did you leap through to get from "bullying is a problem" to "Buxte's a nihilist"?
Quoting Maw
I'm allowed to be dismissive, right? You're being dismissive, so why can't I?
Quoting Maw
I didn't know discussing a topic on an internet forum makes me apathetic toward the uh...topic. Hmm, yeah, makes perfect sense, bruh.
Quoting Maw
You're indisputably a moron. There, see? I can throw big absolutist words around too!
Quoting Maw
Solving gun violence is also not reducible to banning guns as the sole solution. I offered but a window into some of the other factors that can go into mass shootings. If you're not willing to entertain those, whatever.
Quoting Maw
I deny that toxic masculinity exists. Most people stand with me in that denial. Toxic femininity also does not exist. What does exist is the occurrence of ill deeds committed by people prone to immoral actions. If you want to pigeon hole every bad man into your pseudo-scientific categorization, go right on ahead. However, and as I said before, don't be surprised when few outside your clique take you seriously.
Quoting Maw
Actual Nazism is a stereotype? :lol:
As I was mucking yesterday, I began to think about the changes we can make to help keep the legal guns, in the legal hands of adults. Real change takes time and we are changing, slowly but we are changing.
Since the Parkland school shooting there have been changes in gun control but it won't ever be recognized because without complete confiscation, there are people around the world that will not be content with what Americans have rights to. Fair?
I will mention the changes that have been made, though I doubt the moves will ever be recognized on the world stage and that is okay with me. I want to turn our eyes inward to better our nation and am tired of giving two bits of a shit of what works in other countries because you are right, it is a cultural thing, a living right and one that is protected as vigilantly as our right to freedom of speech. One that no matter how many changes are made it will never be enough. Is that because of the controls that others have on their own lives that they have to live by?
Two of the largest nationwide private companies that sell firearms to the public, voluntarily raised the minimum purchasing age from 18 to 21. Knowingly taking a loss from those who are responsible firearm owners for the sake of public safety.
Some private businesses cut ties with NRA customers that used to receive discounts as a result of being a NRA member. Private businesses cutting ties with prospective clients is not a way to succeed in a capitalistic society. Yet hotels, car rental businesses and other associated businesses that rely on loyalty programs cut ties to do their part in the control of guns being used in a nefarious way.
Ironically, the one change that will make a difference has been made in Florida and five other states and has nothing to do with stricter gun control. No, it is implementing the 'Red Flag' legislation that allows the temporary taking of guns and ammunition by law enforcement officers and family members from people who pose a risk and show warning signs of violent behavior.
Do you have any other ideas? I genuinely want to entertain them.
I don't own a gun, however it is very easy to own a gun and keep it in storage, whether in a case or just in a closet.
Source 1, massive decline in gun violence: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-had-a-massive-decline-in-gun-violence-in-the-united-states-heres-why/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e3cda9da3cbe
Source 2, amount of gun ownership: http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2018/feb/20/kevin-nicholson/which-higher-number-people-or-number-guns-america/
Source 3, more crimes committed with illegal guns than legally obtained: http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2018/mar/12/john-faso/do-illegal-gun-owners-commit-most-gun-crime-rep-fa/
I don't really understand that question. I think it's a human right, as do most Americans. I think it works because of the standards of living in America.
Quoting tim wood
Because none of these atrocities have been realized.
Quoting tim wood
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Quoting tim wood
No right in the Constitution is absolute, this is why they are amendments instead of articles. However, no right in the Bill of Rights has ever been overturned, and it should stay that way.
Quoting tim wood
Um, yes it is. Gun violence is by definition a crime.
Quoting tim wood
Not really. The American civilian population in the current day is considerably greater than the American military population during Vietnam. Overall the amount of gun violence is decreasing overtime, and I think that's a good sign. Even the amount of mass shootings have been decreasing over time. The news media over blows things out of proportion to make certain crimes seem more egregious than they really are, and even though they are very sad and devastating, it's our price for freedom.
The left always brings up instances of countries where guns are banned and the crime rate is significantly lower than others. Well here's some conflicting evidence http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22288564
Take a look at this chart:
Homicide count in 2009
Brazil 43,909
Denmark 47
Iceland 1
UK 724
US 15,241
Iceland had ONE homicide. So there's clearly more at play here than banning firearms.
The way you put it there it looks like Iceland has way less homicides than Denmark or especially the UK. So do Monaco and the Vatican I bet.
But here are actual rates per 100,000 population (rates offering the only meaningful comparison) for more recent years:
Iceland: 0.91 (2015)
United Kingdom: 0.92 (2014)
Denmark: 0.99 (2015)
And the difference disappears. (All in the top 50 lowest for homicide rates).
And the US?
United States: 4.88 (2015)
Down there at no.126 just behind that glorious bastion of freedom, Kazakhstan.
+In Iceland (from your bbc source):
"...acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test.
Police are unarmed, too. The only officers permitted to carry firearms are on a special force called the Viking Squad, and they are seldom called out."
By all means, implement all that in the US and you might make some progress.
Something to think about, however, is how guns could stop potential homicides. The Texas church shooting was stopped by a bystander in the NRA, not the police or other authorities.
I'm also all for more rigid background checks, however I disagree with most police officers being unarmed.
But again, gun murder rates over the past few decades have overall been declining, so I see no problem that should be fixed as of now.
It's not a straightforward picture, I agree, but I think someone posted a comparison graph earlier in the discussion that showed a strong correlation if not between gun ownership and reduced gun homicides at least between stricter gun laws and reduced homicides in the US state by state. I'll try to dig it up.
It would be a good start to enact compulsory training. You need a license to drive a car, and so should you to carry a gun. Disarming the police wouldn't be practical at all as things stand admittedly but in a perfect world you could get there. Which means you won't. So, let's forget that one for now.
Quoting ep3265
If they could be declining faster then that's still a problem as in more people getting unnecessarily killed is always a problem regardless of the base comparison.
That is a crime, a juvenile and unintentional one, but still a crime. In my mind a crime is an act that is directly stated as unlawful. And I see nothing wrong with the opening of options, and calling that openness of options "freedom". Many people in America are overweight, and I praise God everyday we have the freedom to do something like that. Many of my coworkers smoke cigarettes, and I and my father smoke pipes. Are any of these things good for you? No. Should these particular acts be celebrated? Not really. Should we be thankful that we're allowed to do all of the right things, and all of the wrong things as well? Yes absolutely, because then your destiny is more so determined by your own actions (ignore hard determinism for a minute.)
But really I feel to truly be free one must first restrict his or her actions to things that they find better themselves
I have a pistol that goes with me everywhere and protects my life and the lives of everyone around me.
I have a scoped hunting rifle that helps me hunt deer, elk, moose, and antelope. I am a meat hunter not a trophy hunter. My State is covered with all these animals and they taste good and are very nutritious meat.
I have a shotgun which I use to guard banks, shopping malls, construction sites, liquor stores, and other places that I guard for a living from robbers, burglars, arsonists, and other criminals.
I have an assault rifle with high cap mags that helps me defend the U.S. Constitution from all enemies both foreign or domestic.
Australia cannot say that. Australia is dependent on the USA to defend them from all enemies both foreign and domestic.
The USA is the arsenal of democracy. There is a gun behind every blade of grass. I am glad.
Anyone who is not glad about that should move to Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand, Scotland, Singapore, Wales or someplace else outside the English Speaking World.
For a more Romantic twist on this issue and my response, I would have to say:
"God created all mankind.
Samuel Colt then finally made them all equal."
Quoting hks
I've been checking the news every hour or so this day of Thanksgiving to find out if there has been another hideous gun attack somewhere -- shopping mall, church, day care, hospital, Macy's Day Parade, a bar... So far, so good.
While I am neither for nor against the personal ownership of assault weapons, now that this particular genie is out of the bottle everyone must also have an assault weapon of their own to be able to defend themselves from everybody else. And everyone must also have the legal right to carry them in public to defend themselves in public. Especially true during these times of Islamic Jihad against the non-Islamic world.
The same is true of any kind of weapon or tool, such as machetes, knives, baseball bats, hiking sticks, tomahawks, hatchets, spears, arrows and bows, slings and sling shots, cars, trucks, pots and pans, boiling water, bar stools and chairs, etc.
I think protection against your own government is the only valid reason for owning a weapon.
Could you not have a law that its OK to stockpile arms but illegal to bear them? That way the streets would be save (no guns) but you could still form a rebel army in case Donald Trump gets out of hand.
So when God says 'Thou shall not kill' he probably means animals as we as humans. So we don't need guns for killing animals either.
Quoting Devans99
Ah, the love that Americans have for the defence from their Constitution.
Translation: born and bred US citizens shouldn't stay in the USA because they disagree with you.
By that logic, anyone who is glad about guns should move out of the USA so that anti-gun laws can finally be passed.
So let me correct you:
Born and bred in the USA should leave the USA if they cannot support the U.S. Constitution including all the amendments.
And you had best square your act away and stop using fallacies. You are a Sophist.
The 2nd Amendment was instituted to facilitate the Body Politic in defending the Constitution and the Nation from tyrants. However it has mostly seen its main application in self defense against crime on the streets such as robbery and murder.
Nations like Australia and England that have managed to rid their islands of guns have simply promoted knife crimes.
I guess you don't believe in freedom of speech. Maybe you should leave the USA.
But I feel a moral obligation to refrain from paying them any lip service for it.
You realize don't you that the amendments were put in place by people who didn't agree with the constitution and wanted to change it? i.e. if everyone who had disagreed with the constitution had always left, you wouldn't have your gun amendment. So, it's a self-defeating argument you're proposing.
Quoting hks
Well, the last exhalation was just a sigh. But you are under no obligation to respond and we won't ask that you leave for having opinions we disagree with. We're rather American like that.
That does not equate this:
Quoting hks
Your original comment wasn't about the US Constitution it was about you being glad about guns and people who weren't glad should move according to you. Just some opinion wasting space on this forum then. I wasn't putting any words in your mouth as you're quite capable of making an ass out of yourself without my help. All I was trying to do was helping you figure out the inanity of your position.
Quoting hks
I think the amendment is quite clear, but a lot of people suffer from dyslexia when it comes to the 2nd Amendment.
Sure, people understand the " the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed", but the trouble seems to understand the A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State part of the amendment at all.
What is the problem to understand what a 'well regulated militia' means and that the militia it is intended for the protection of the State called the United States, the goddam government?
What is the difficulty to understand that when written this kind of national defence was totally logical and rational? (And btw. would be if the US wasn't a superpower protected by two large oceans.)
Nope, the thinking has transformed to this whimsical loonie idea that any moron, that has enough money to buy a semi-automatic version of an assault rifle, somehow belongs then to this mythical "well regulated militia" and the free State isn't the US government, as that is the bogeyman for these idiots who fear their own government taking their guns away. As if having an arsenal of guns is somehow a deterrence to the sole superpower that has the biggest security apparatus in the West. As if the actual way of preventing your own government of falling into tyranny wouldn't to be an informed active citizen that takes part in the democratic political process.
You should confess your sins up front when you sin like this.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
The District of Columbia wanted among other things a ban on handguns so strict that even a policeman, the famous Heller in that case, wouldn't get one.
Even in Europe a total ban on handguns would stir up a debate about basic rights of the citizenry. The UK is more of an exception here (with it's handgun ban) and typically the most strict gun laws you find in Asian countries. Hence when the US Supreme Court decided, not uninamously, but by a majority decision, that the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975 was unconstitutional, it has nothing to do with my point: that the Free State referred in the 2nd Amendment is the US, which is represented by it's government and the whole idea is about defending the state. It doesn't say "Any man or woman has the right to bear a firearm to counter the threat of the government becoming tyrannical (or liberal), if he or she feels so." That simply is crazy, yet it is a perfect way for some to be have this delusional idea (or hubris) that they are somehow so free and independent, because they own firearms. As if that would be the guarantee that the US cannot fall under authoritarian rule. The safety valves for that are totally somewhere else.
That was the original intention of the 2nd amendment.
Which then goes against the "well regulated militia part" intended for the protection of the state, if you haven't noticed.
Or, wait a minute, does it mean that the well regulated militia takes care about the whole system?
Because if you have to rise up in arms against your own government that ought to be defined by the Constitution, you've already lost any trace of democracy and a justice state in the first place. Everything in the Constitution starting from the independence of the three branches of government is designed to prevent autocratic rule. Preventing tyranny from the inside comes from an informed citizenry who will not vote for autocratic people who want to wreck the whole system. And any autocrat will easily deal with the "2nd Amendment people" just by allowing them to keep their guns. If the citizenry desperately wants to ruin their own republic, owning a rifle won't prevent it.
In fact thinking that you need a rifle against your own government could be intrepreted in that you simply don't believe the whole system works in the first place. So what are you going to do? Shoot the mailman because he is a government employee? That solves all the problems, really?
I'm in favor of whatever would work to significantly diminish gun violence. And I'm willing to try very radical things to attempt to diminish gun violence--anything from a complete ban on ALL firearms to manditorily arming and training everyone, and everything we can think of in between those two extremes. Whatever would work is cool with me. But we need to actually try to do something. We can't just ignore it or just make some completely insignificant token move as if it's going to do anything. I don't care one way or another about the second amendment. My only goal would be to virtually eliminate gun violence.
I walk among my fellow state citizens, who have decided, as a whole citizenry, that not only should you be allowed to carry a concealed weapon but you should do so in accordance with state, local and private owners posted laws/rules. We legislated 'trust' in our local government, to 'trust' us as individual citizens, to make the life altering decisions of carrying a gun/firearm.
The places you listed are privately owned establishments and they have made their rules about firearms abundantly clear with signage that will be respected.
Is your real question whether or not I fear my fellow citizens being armed?
In a Utopian world man would have no sense of fear of harm to himself and his family. However to remove an emotional response, to a fundamental need of self preservation would be dehumanizing, no?
(dehumanizing- in the sense of removing a fundamental aspect of what makes us up as humans emotionally)
Its not an argument. It's a fact. I wouldn't ask you to read a history of the U.S., but there's a wikipedia article on the 2nd amendment that would help you understand the original intention. Ok?
What does that have to do with my comments? I wasn't saying anything about emotions.
Quoting Terrapin Station
You are asking people to think of everything we can between two extremes and I am suggesting that within all the good that can come from different ways of helping curb illegal gun violence, comes human emotion. If the human emotion and connection isn't recognized than all the "thinking" about everything in between those two extremes becomes irrelevant to the gun owners who accept the responsibility to own and carry a firearm.
I'm not advocating thinking, but doing.
We have to actually make some major changes by doing something. One thing we can try is simply banning firearms.
Then the question, which is obvious even from the Wikipedia article, was the fear against a standing professional army, which btw you have now as the last remnants of that idea of an armed militia, the selective draft, has been ended and only about 1% of the people serve in the military. But what you do have are many incorrect memes putting words into the mouth of George Washington as if he was warning to be armed against the republic he was founding.
What?
This forum provides a fascinating window into how people in various places make up their own USA and react to it. It makes me wonder if I'm doing the same thing. Do I just have a cartoon version of the history of Iraq, for instance? Do I actually understand so little about Europe that I can't really be said to understand the world I live in?
I guess it's possible, but is there any way to rectify that? I notice that you, ssu, won't even consider the possibility that there's something fundamental you don't understand about American history. Am I also so convinced of a completely erroneous conception of China, for instance, that I wouldn't take advantage of an opportunity to learn even if it was handed to me?
What if we're actually all like that: so enamored of our own bullshit that we're each, for all practical purposes, living in separate worlds, unable to communicate with one another?
Hmm.
However here the reference to the 'well trained militia' part is also important as otherwise you can have mob rule. One only has to note the much different path that the American revolution took from the French revolution or from many other revolutions. Once the first "populist" was elected later, many institutions of the republic had already settled down.
Basically the issue is that while a citizen of a republic ought to be critical and sceptical about the government, this shouldn't grow into total distrust and paranoia. If you have to start fighting with a rifle in your hand your own Republic, in my view that republic has gone astray and died a long time ago.
The USA was originally envisioned as a loose association of states with common interests. The federal government was supposed to be distant and fairly unimportant to the average citizen as the ideal was maximal decentralization.
Did you read what the wiki article explained about Madison's view?
I would encourage you to stop focusing on what makes the most sense to you and focus more on actuality. Human life is often counter intuitive.
Yet I presume that as the anti-gun lobby has also raised similar questions about the amendment phrasing (and I think was central in the supreme court minority thinking), I think you don't get my point.
One might make the case of owning firearms for self-defence against crime, although people will have various views about it. Yet the idea that the Republic is your potential enemy and that you would get protection from having guns against the government, especially on like the US, is in my view not "healthy sceptism", but paranoia.
What should I focus on?
Quoting ssu
What do you mean "especially one like the US"?
I hear what you are saying and I understand your impatience with remaining in a 'reactive' position and you would like to move into a 'proactive' position, I get it, I do.
Quoting Terrapin Station
What I am suggesting, is that you entertain that idea understanding that not everybody holds the same position as you.
I am sure you are aware that many people believe in the right to carry a firearm and their belief is just as real and just as solid as yours' is.
What I am trying to convey, that seems to keep being missed, is the emotional basis in which both perspectives can be based in.
A suggestion of "One thing we can try is simply banning firearms" is to dismiss those that are not of the same belief as you, as though those who support the right to own a firearm are being summarily dismissed.
Does it seem fair to summarily dismiss their position, which is viewed as "proactive" and tell them that the solution to our nations issues with firearms is for them to surrender their firearms and remain in a "reactive" position?
Fair enough
Quoting tim wood
Absolutely I would feel comfortable.
Quoting tim wood
What makes you think that carrying a firearm indicates that there is something "wrong with my community"?
Quoting tim wood
A firearm is not a "necessary adjunct of ordinary attire" it is a choice and each person has their own individual reasons and frankly it is none of anyone else's business why they make the choice they do.
When did wearing a cross around one's neck "become a necessary adjunct of ordinary life"? I don't know but I know their right to freedom of religion protects that person's choice to wear that religious symbol regardless of my own personal choice to do the same or not.
Quoting tim wood
:confused:
Well, you have the largest security apparatus in the West. And strongest Armed Forces.
In addition to this, there arer very legitimate concerns of citizens as they become increasingly over-powered by the digital and military might of the police and army. In its turn, armed forces of order are responding to an ever greater capacity of gangs and terrorist organisations to create havoc in this super-connected and hyper-technological society.
Republicans and especially Democrats, must quit gun control as an identity and electoral weapon, and reach agreements to implement plans leading to the demilitarization of society.
In past centuries, it was common to carry weapons with you, because borders were poorly defended and crime on the streets and countryside were rife. In the Middle Ages, each town needed its own borders of stone, and kingdoms cut down woodlands because they could not keep them free of bandits and gipsies. Guns were quitted, at least in the civilized world, when they became increasingly unnecessary. Thus, the de-escalation of weaponization in society can only work as part of a greater plan to build safe urban environments where citizens´ rights are protected and there are no safe havens for crime and terror.
I'm not at all talking about a right to bear arms though. I'm not stating any belief at all about that.
What I'm saying is akin to this: let's say that we have an acidic solution and we want to make it neutral. But let's imagine that we have no idea what will make the solution less acidic. So I'm advocating experimenting --let's try doing x to the solution. If that doesn't make it less acidic then let's try y. Just keep experimenting until we get the results we're looking for. The thing is that we have to actually start experimenting to get the result we're looking for.
I would emphasis the part "very symbolic" as it has far more to do with symbolism than anything else.
Quoting DiegoT
The fear that Americans have of their own government is perhaps something very unique considering the US is a Western democracy. So either people fear Obama taking away their guns and turning the US socialist or Trump turning the US away from a democratic republic to corrupt fascism. In both cases there isn't much trust on the institutions of the Republic.
The right of the people is the interesting part because it written in a way where the right was already there before it talks about. To keep and bear arms does not require revolutionary dictionary or grammar understanding. Keep means to have and bear means to be in active possessions Arms meant any weapon that may be used against the enemy and since it gives no condition, you do not need one to keep and bear one. The shall not be infringed part is the mandate on the amendment with regard to people in keep and bear arms.
An example of the structure in modern time would be ," a well informed public, being necessary for a civilized society, the right of the people to spread true information, shall not be infringed". It is important to know that there were arms regulation at the founders time, but this was at the state level where you certain hand guns restricted and canon size having laws. The first 10 amendments apply to the federal government only than as Barron v. Baltimore says. But since the 14th amendment made a majority of rights in the 10 amendment applicable to states.
The regulation would technically be unconstitutional, but the courts would not risk today's weapon with no regulation. Reading the federalist papers would help give context to the founders reason for citizens being armed. Oh, another proof against the argument about arms being for military purpose is a draft of the second amendment that the founders made but discarded for the one we have said" a well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, for the common defense, shall not be infringed".
Guns are for the cowardly and faithless. Gun bans are for the cowardly and faithless.
Ah damn, you're right. No other countries have done this.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Fuck yeah dude, legislation that will ultimately decrease homicides, suicides, and obviously school shootings etc. is super cowardly. Instead, let's train students to fight school shooters, even if it costs them their lives. That's the definition of brave!
Did I not just qualify them all as cowards? You are seeing words, but not reading them.
Legislator=brave. :rofl: :cry: :rofl:
What about the inner cities, where gun violence has been a reality for over a half century. Were those guns purchased legitimately by means of legislative procedure? NO. But a few white communities are affected over a couple decades, and suddenly gun control becomes an issue. Go figure.
'Murica ain't 'any other country' if you haven't realized by now.
A present for you:
Where is this "shown", please?
No, it doesn't. But there is a real live fact here, hidden amongst the emotional stuff: if there are no (available) guns, no-one will be harmed or killed by guns. This simple fact cannot be denied, no matter that the issue is more complicated than just that.
I didn't hear about the garlic festival shooting. Was the perp a vampire?
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/03/us/el-paso-shooting/index.html
:vomit:
The purpose of the second ammendment was to allow the civilian population the same access to weaponry that the government has in the case that the powers of the government decide to overstep their boundaries in the eyes of the majority. An example would be the employment of Marshall law, the military used to control the citizenry.
A platoon of infantrymen is armed with 30 Rifles chambered in 5.56 with the capability to fire accurately up to 500 meters. 9 rifles with automatic fire capabilities which can be used for suppression in maneuver tactics so that the other 30 personnel can move closer with a perceived enemy pinned down by coordinated fire. A platoon is nothing compared the amount of men the military service has.
This does not include heavier weaponry such as artillery, main battle tanks, crew-served machine guns able to accurately fire upon a target over a kilometer away. If anyone has seen what a .50 cal round can do, they will understand where I'm coming from. If you don't, simply google it if you can stomach it.
The perceived threat is the military in the grand scheme of things, NOT Joe Schmoe who became excessively upset his boyfriend/girllfriend, or even extremist group personnel. Is Joe a threat? Of course, but not as large as a threat as the government entity trying to care for me.
30 people can do massive damage to an area when the citizens do not have the same weapons and tactical knowledge when they themselves are highly trained and capable.
It's hard to comprehend just how many people have to die for some kind of pragmatic change to happen.
Actually, contrary to what you say, if the citizenry are unarmed, and the military is armed, the citizenry will be subdued with very little "damage". But if the citizenry is armed and decides to take on the military, that's when you'd have "massive damage".
You need guns to prevent your government introducing a decent health care system. Crazy. Raving bonkers.
Thinking you will fight the military is what on the old left was called "infantile adventurism". No. IF we devolve to civil war between the army, navy, marines, and air force on the one hand, and citizens armed with whatever guns they can get their hands on (including assault rifles, the war will be nasty, brutish, and short--with the citizens getting the nasty, brutish, and short end of the stick.
Why do so many people kill themselves with guns?
A) it is a proven method and
B) it is a fast method, therefore:
C It is generally not revokable (like, say, poison or gassing which requires more preparation and gives one more time to abort)
The general pattern is that more people are killed in places where there are more guns. One has more guns "floating around" in socially unstable situations where gun controls are lax.
Most guns in the possession of Americans are not "floating around". They are in houses and that is generally where they stay. If the mere presence of guns in a county led to high rates of death, then the annual death total of homicides would be in the several hundreds of thousands. It isn't because most people are not homicidal. (Most people are not homicidal most of the time. The problem is that when someone gets in a homicidal mood, the time delay between feeling like killing somebody and having the means to do so is very, very short.
I am no friend of the NRA (God damn the NRA to hell), and I am not pro gun. I am anti-gun, really -- especially pistols.
More, next post
Charles Whitman kicked off the contemporary period of mass shootings in 1966. From the top of the University of Texas Main observation deck (200+ feet above ground), he fired at individuals for 96 minutes, killing 14 and injuring 31 more, plus his parents who he had murdered earlier in the day. Probably unlike most mass murderers -- but I don't know for sure -- Whitman had a brain tumor in the amygdala which may have been causing the increasingly intense violent urges he had been experiencing.
A lot of "casual" murders seem to occur because people have been prepared mentally to be ready to kill. This happens in gangs, certainly, but not just in gangs. Events happen which trigger the urge (or the social requirement) to kill; a gun is at hand, the offending victim is close by, and the killer has no "Superego" brake on their behavior.
Most people, gun owners or not, are not heading toward murder, they are not close to murdering anyone, and they won't murder anyone. But a few (numbered in the scores of thousands) ARE heading towards attempting murder. A few, I don't know how few--probably a few hundred--are mentally preparing themselves to kill a batch of people who fit sort of imagined category of enemy. Easy access to guns is what is absurdly dangerous for this two groups. They may be few, but if the doors to the gun mart are wide open, they will walk in and arm themselves.
We didn't impose controls on the casual purchase of jet fuel and fertilizer to prevent thousands of people from stuffing vans full of the stuff and blowing up Oklahoma court houses. We imposed controls to prevent a handful of lunatics, terrorists, and the like from getting their hands on powerful bomb making material and blowing up god knows what next.
Similarly, we need tight controls on guns (damn the NRA to the hottest pits of hell) to keep them out of the hands of a small number of people, where it is a matter of life and death.
Let me close by citing the case of a school board member who blew up a school (children inside) because he was irked off about property taxes.
On May 18 1927 "A school board member named Andrew Kehoe, upset over a burdensome property tax, wired the Bath, Michigan school building with dynamite and set it off in the morning of May 18. Kehoe’s actions killed 45 people, 38 of whom were children."
Crazy.
Your politicians are not going to kill you. That would deprive them of the opportunity to continue to make fools of you. In any case, this hysterical fear is probably best dealt with by mental health professionals. No-one here is going to be able to help you.
In the case of mass civilian uprising, there probably would be civil war--some civilians opposed to other civilians, and some units of the armed services siding with one group or another.
Subversives have plans to infiltrate the armed services, and propagandists plan on targeting the military with messages urging them to join the revolution.
But rest assured, you and your inexperienced buddies who have no training on how to fight a civil war are not going to just grab your hunting rifles (or assault weapons you bought) and march down the freeway and capture many objectives. One tank could eliminate the lot of you. A few strafing runs by the airfare would cut your "troop strength" in short order.
Depending on which side you are on, I might throw Molotov cocktails at you.
Underestimating the perceived enemy is as deadly as not perceiving an enemy at all.
The good thing about the citizens at large is that most combat arms Marines get out of active service after 4-8 years and carry a wealth of knowledge on techniques, tactics, and procedures.
So you’re right in saying my buddies and I aren’t going to get our good ol’ reliable hunting rifles to make contact head on with an Abrams. Mostly because no one is that silly.
Will victory still be a tangible goal? More likely than your perception of how war works will seem to allow.
Also, they should just ban white men from owning guns. That'd solve a lot I think.
It would be okay if it would be interpreted by the judiciary to account for a changing world. “Original intent” is bullshit. The problem is the right wing judiciary. What exactly about the Constitution do you find fault with? I think the interpretation is the problem. Conservatives are always crying foul over “activist judges,” but conservative judges are the most activist of all.
The American rebels will be able to use asymmetric, guerrilla methods too, but they will have to learn and build up expertise. That's somewhat hard to do around here since the police, highway departments, the government, and the public-at-large take a dim view of blowing up our nice highways, what with citizens getting blown up on their way to work, etc. Same for blowing up big buildings, leveling blocks of the city, etc. They just don't like it one bit.
Back in the 1950s and 60s, so I am told by some old students that were around then, a certain kind of chemistry majors would concoct explosives and see how well they worked--out in the country. That's harder to do these days. Maybe the labs at the universities are watched a bit more closely.
How about building surface to surface or surface to air missiles? It used to be OK to experiment with rockets, back in the Sputnik days. Homeland Security would track you down, now. Drones, of course... one should stock up before they are clamped down on.
This is all purely theoretical, of course. As a long-standing pacifist I don't have any experience blowing things and people up, but (like many pacifists) the idea certainly crosses my mind every now and then, and I wonder... Just how could that be done???
Were you in the armed services, regarding your reference to Afghanistan?
By the way, the Second Amendment became important only quite recently relative to the founding fathers' ideas. One of the Supremes described the claim that Amendment II means everyone has a right to own a gun as "Stupidity".
2. How on earth did Gandhi manage without guns and all those other unarmed revolutionaries? The idea that the ability to do violence is what keeps you safe is rather naive. It has always been the ability to galvanise a large majority behind a single cause.
It is unrepresentative swill. But a specific discussion is beyond this thread.
Right. I suppose someone might be interested in starting a new thread on the subject, but not me. I am trying my hardest to be a good American. You could only guess what I’ve been through.
Diana Ross? "Stop in the name of love." I think you are right about dicking-around with the constitution, although I can see dubious benefits being proposed by Leftist do-gooders as well as ultra Right nut-jobs. Its not the right to bear arms that is the problem so much as contemporary fire-power. The framers of the law did not envisage cheap, readily available, high velocity automatic weapons and unlimited ammunition in a society with a burgeoning element of mobile, post-industrial paranoids.
Organised the successful overthrow the British colonial establishment and convinced the population it was necessary, while not knowing how the world worked. Well, at least you have someone to blame. That's always nice.
Practice is what veterans would more than likely take care of. They’d teach the citizens how to fight.
Being an expert in explosives, I can tell you industrial grade dynamite are not hard to acquire, and Homemade Explosives are not hard to make.
Missile systems... can’t really think of anything other than finding a battery and attempting to seize their assets.
Yes I have served and continue to serve to this day. It’s not much, but it’s work, it pays the bills, and allows me to take care of my family which is what I care most about.
If this is true for MOST armed service personnel (including the high ranking and highly trained), then problem solved - we don't need a massively armed citizenry. If nearly all military personnel just blindly follow orders, then armed citizenry can do no more than annoy and delay. Your example of a couple Afghans with an AK and a rope (no wonder Charlie Bronson always carried a rope) highlights this problem. Guerilla fighters that are extraordinarily out-gunned can use hit and run tactics, to ensure the large enemy suffers higher casualty rates...and hopefully this can lead to winning by attrition (even George Washington - whose arms were significantly more comparable to the British than an assault rifle vs a drone today - basically just had to keep his army alive until the British decided it was no longer worth their effort). But what would a war of attrition between the US government and its citizens look like?
It seems to me that it would mean the end of 'the grid' and along with it 'modern civilization'? Sure I can go hide in a cave in Montana. And if I get a good group of capable like minded individuals together, we might be able to make the US Government abandon their ground efforts in Montana...Hooray?!?! What do we win? The ability to live in an 1800s style community that has to run for the hills every time we hear one of those strange flying machines from the capitol?
Oh, and also, this type of insurgency only works against modern technology because the powerful nation values (or at least kowtows to the whims of its citizenry) the lives of non-combatants. Once that doesn't matter, the government can just wipe me and every other living thing in Montana off the map.
So, since guns barely help even in these extreme scenarios, and they seem quite problematic as a regular part of crowded, civilized, society; then it seems worth it to remove them...But like Bitter Crank said, it is not going to happen in America without a Civil War.
What is freedom according to you?
You might want to do something about this guy too, folks.
That's a tough one, emigration isn't so easy.
So you don't want freedom but money?
Perhaps your idea of freedom is simply different from mine. Responsibility doesn’t allow me to not make money. Is there a land I do not know about where my family is taken care of and happy without any monetary cost? If so I’d gladly trade my pipe and Jameson for the opportunity provided there isn’t a sinister plot behind it all.
Until then however, I shall enjoy my smoke, and drink as I relax watching my children play gayly in the backyard while my wife enjoys the breeze, and landscape after a decently fulfilling day of dutiful paid service.
That should be pretty soon, then. :worry:
Quoting Maw
Quoting NYT
As a long time reservist and coming from a country with obligatory conscription with the vast majority of adult males having served in the military, I find this whole debate absolutely bonkers, totally crazy. Yet it's very American in the way it puts the individual at the center. It's as the discourse has been hijacked into a realm of ideals that doesn't have much to do with reality and how people in real life behave. Hence it's a discussion totally alienated from reality.
The idea of people having guns to defend themselves from a Superpower state that somehow would start to act like a loose cannon is basically just ideological masturbation on how special Americans (and their Constitution) is. It gives this fantasy of 'being free' or 'standing on your own feet'. It has absolutely nothing to do with reality, nothing to link it with any historical facts of any political crisis or civil wars. Even the United State's own Civil War and how quickly the two sides organized themselves into huge armies lead by generals ought to tell the people how absurd the idea is. It simply goes against any thorough understanding how societies behave and organize themselves in a civil war or in real political turmoil. Above all, I think it paints this hugely condescending idea of the military and the people working for the nation as if they would be something 'different' from the 'ordinary citizens'.
To put it simply, if any nation collapses and the monopoly of violence of the state (or the state itself) vanishes, people will under no time form militias which are organized quite like armies. The pistol and shotgun of Joe Sixpack and his own individual actions are quite useless to anything else than to inflict harm to some unarmed person that happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The arms of the military will be in no time in use and hand guns and small arms owned by civilians won't decide the course of the war. Perhaps talking about societies behaving in a collective manner sends the wrong vibe to many, but just look at history.
Well said.
You seem to describe some basic wants that should be possible right after you have your basic needs fulfilled. I would say that's about freedom of choice and the existence of opportunity. So if that's good for you, it should be good for others, right?
How do you go about maximising the freedom of choice and opportunity for as many people as possible? Or do you reject that freedom (for now described as choice and opportunity) should be universal? If so, why?
Quoting Benkei
It seems as I said before, not everything I described can be bought with money.
Quoting Benkei
In my experience, freedom is dictated by the powers of the people in charge of the lands political system. In a republic, freedom is determined by representatives. In a dictatorship, one person holds the power and he/she decides what freedom is for their people. "Freedom in a political sense," is as variable as everyones favorite dessert. What I believe freedom to be may not be good enough for others. They should have the right to live somewhere they agree with the freedoms which are dictated by laws.
Freedoms should not be universal. Thats why we have prisons for rapists, murderers, and the like.
That point has been made plenty of times before, and what you say is true. Of course a tyrannical government turning on it's people would be a much bigger threat. But it's also hypothetical and extremely implausible in the US, so back in reality, it's not a [i]credible[/I] threat, but in fact only functions as pro-gun propaganda or paranoid delusion.
Some unhinged Joe with a gun on the other hand... now that's a very real threat, as a number of US citizens have been unfortunate enough to find out.
Quoting Baden
Hear, hear.
I was in the parking lot designing a bird costume for camouflage when POW! A body went down and I started humming a Jimi Hendrix song.
Clinically mentally ill people are more likely to get hurt by others than to hurt people intentionally themselves, unless in self defense or defense of others they care about. Mass shooters are more likely than not to not have a clinical mental illness.
Quoting frank
Are you being funny here? Because I don’t understand you.
How do you know?
I saw what he did there.
From psychologists on the news.
An incident... which occurred whilst he was designing a bird costume for camouflage? :brow:
I'm pretty sure he was just trying to be funny. (Emphasis on the "trying" part).
Yes, I guessed that was part of the joke.
Hey, cut me some slack. I'm traumatized.
Rest assured, the perpertrator of the next atrocity is already stocking up, practicing with video games, and getting ready to act. It's a pathology deeply embedded in the American psyche.
'The shooting came days before the National Rifle Association annual convention was set to begin in Houston. [Governor Greg] Abbott and both of Texas’ US senators were among elected Republican officials scheduled to speak speaker at a leadership forum sponsored by the NRA’s lobbying arm this Friday.
Abbott has campaigned on gun rights.
In 2015, he wrote on Twitter that he was “embarrassed” that Texas had fallen behind California in gun sales. “Let’s pick up the pace Texans,” he wrote.'
I have a feeling that we're, for good reasons of course, hyperfocused...on guns (they kinda jump out at us, hard to ignore guns and what they can do).
I recommend we change tack and put motives for using weapons, guns included in the spotlight. You know, try and solve the real problem - why do people wanna kill each other?
Or maybe the US should ask the other countries to the left which seem to have it all figured out.
Quoting Maw
In Gun We Rust.
Quoting Streetlight
Fuck. :shade:
Guns have a very high lethality index i.e. if you use 'em, death is guaranteed except in some rarest of rare circumstances. This means guns will top the list of non-illness-related causes of death.
Here's food for thought: The police and the armed forces are equipped with a wide range of guns. Who's done a study on how many lives an armed officer or soldier has saved?
What happened in the aftermath of the Port Arthur Massacre in Tasmania, 1996, is often referenced by gun control advocates in the USA. The then-Prime Minister of Australia, announced a gun amnesty and immediate tightening of gun possession and licensing laws (see story).
But the Australian electorate is a very different beast to the American. There's no constitutional right to bear arms, and there's no history of gunslingers and gun glorification that the US has. We're also a more compliant society, generally - witness the very large uptake of mask-wearing and vaccination against COVID in Austriala, while defiance of same became a cause célèbre amongst US libertarians.
Overall, I think many Americans have a highly distorted idea of the meaning of freedom and civil liberty, and one that is very dangerous.
One I did read some years back, completely busted the myth of the 'good guy with a gun' that the wretched NRA frequently talks up. Their propaganda is, if more citizens own guns, then they're more likely to be able to shoot/disable/kill the psychotic mass-murderers before they can inflict havoc.
I can't remember all the detail, but the study showed that the number of 'righteous shootings' by armed citizens in the prevention of a crime was (I think) in the single or very low double digits for a given year - maybe 10 or 12 - compared to tens of thousands of suicides, murders, and accidents causing death using guns.
The hopelessness comes from the fact that, even if by some total fluke the US drastically tightened gun sales, there are already more guns than citizens in the US (121:100) :angry: I really do think it's a lost cause. Politicians will gnash their teeth, 'thoughts and prayers' will be offered, but then it will be business as usual until next time - which is never far away.
Anyway, here's an interesting thought:
It's permissible to sell guns only for defense.
People buy and use guns for offense.
Something's gone horribly wrong, oui?
Offense is the best defense?
It's basically MAD (mutually assured destruction) being played out at a smaller scale, with conventional weapons. Throws into question the rationale/justification for nuclear weapons!
If I fight for the sale of tobacco (chewing, smoking them), wouldn't I put myself in hot water?
Only about 53% thinks the rules should be stricter but then if asked about specific policy (more extensive background checks, barring guns to mentally ill) for some issues there's broad bipartisan support (85% and 90%) and (70% and 92%). Laws have been passed and presidents elected in the US with less popular support.
Meanwhile, "we should be careful about having a reflexive reaction" (some asshole in a position of power) because God knows reacting to bad shit is stupid. Nobody in the world ever does that. Nobody sells shares when a company makes a loss because it will become clear that that company "was at risk" and someone somewhere should've noticed that before it actually happened but we won't create a system allowing people to notice this earlier because we should be careful to not have a reflexive reaction.
:snicker: I'm not known for subtleties, they remain an enigma to me. However, in my humble opinion, killing with tobacco is what I would call subtle as hell. The fact that we allow tobacco companies to do their business in the face of respiratory illness and cancer epidemics is something worth pondering upon, oui?
No problemo! Communication gap is a documented malady of communication.
The Condom Principle
Better to have it (condom/gun) and not need it than to need it and not have it.
It appears that many of our maladies, at an individual and at a social level, are effects of some rather "useful" heuristics. The double-edged sword was, in my humble opinion, invented and designed for amateur swordsmen/women.
It's not normal, obviously. I would be wondering what kind of rot has seeped into society that's causing it.
And so we should.
Meanwhile, let's ban guns right now everywhere whilst we work that out.
The former task should be easier and provide immediate safety. The latter much harder and might not even work.
Given the last and the current US presidents, and the recent propensity in the US and the world towards authoritarianism, I'd say keep the second amendment right where it is.
There's never a real debate, here, when there's money to be made. Thus far, the more guns, the more money. That may change when we each begin to make our own cheap versions, though I suppose there will always be a market for high-quality firearms, like there is for high-quality booze. By that time, though, gun control won't be a possibility.
It can be about both. 1) fix whatever it is that makes people want to shoot people, and 2) make it harder for people who want to shoot people to shoot people by making it harder for them to get guns.
I can't for the life of me think why. I don't see how the two things are in the least bit related. If some government went barmy and demanded something of me I didn't want to give it, the government is going to win, hands down every time, my .22 hunting rifle is no match for fully armed AFOs, let alone the army. Even some of the arsenals that our lunatic American cousins amass in their garden sheds will be no match for the even better armed (and equally reckless) police force. Has there ever, even once in history, been a case where someone has refused to obey some law and the police have gone "we'll leave it, he's got a gun"?
If ever we (the people) needed to rebel against our government we'd need at least some portion of the army on our side (as we always have). Quite frankly the adolescent nutjobs with more bullets than braincells are exactly the people I'd rather stayed home during any actual revolution lest they fuck it up for everyone by forgetting which bit of the grenade to throw and which to hold on to.
There's absolutely no justification for having any less stringent gun laws on the basis of untrustworthy governments. The two issues are not even tangentially related, let alone one being a solution to the other.
Civilians with guns are not going to stop the US military, there have been a number of militia uprisings within the US in the last two decades and they have all been handily defeated by federal forces. This is just role-playing fantasy.
The last group of people I would trust with our democracy are the gun nuts.
Especially for weapons that are for killing humans.
Maybe I've misunderstood the suggested legislation?
One thing I noticed about myself today was something of a change in how I received this. It's an image I've seen before, and I think I've even posted it here in a debate a while ago. When I did, I commented on it much like you did: a kind of 'look, everyone else can do this, why can't the US?'. It's also what seems to be the predominant reaction wherever I've seen that graphic used. But my reaction today is quite different. It's simply: of course the US can't do any different. This graph is not proof that things can be different. It's proof that things can't. That enormous, murderous gap shows that the US is much too invested in whatever the hell it is, to do otherwise.
If that is so, then one needs to really have a good hard look at oneself when one's reaction to this graph is: 'look, things can be different, see'. Because that reaction is an attempt at mastery, of falling back upon a superior knowledge, something that, in the midst of all the terror, acts as a panacea. I think this is a mistake. There is no panacea. That graph needs to be taken literally and seriously. Not: things can be otherwise. But: things cannot be otherwise. That graph should offer no consolation. It should offer only more horror. And the question to answer is why that is the case. Because short of demanding the impossible - which is what, ultimately, needs to be done - that graphic only shows that US has in fact earned, rightfully, its place at the top-right of that chart.
There ought to be nothing in that graphic that offers any hope. Only the complete absence of it. And until that is confronted, nothing will change. That graphic should not function as a darkly snarky "gotchya" - which is how I used to treat it.
Quoting Maw
Peasants with guns have been besting professional militaries for decades (throughout all of human history, really), including the US military on several occasions.
And fighting against a guerilla on your own soil, against your own people? A modern military wouldn't stand a chance, no matter how much barbarism it is willing to resort to.
Laying waste to someone else's country and people is one thing, laying waste to your own - that'll be the end of whatever nation was so foolish to try.
If you are going to use historical precedence to justify your argument you ought to look at actual examples of US militia fighting against and being defeated by superior federal forces. US militia uprising are not the Viet Cong. They are not the Taliban. Otherwise, the argument that 2A is a viable bulwark against some sort of abstract military takeover remains a vague hypothetical in contradistinction to the tangible and on-going problem of gun violence and mass shootings that currently plague the country. We are sacrificing tens of thousands of lives to firearms each year in order to shelter an adult fantasy.
[quote=McVeigh in prison in 2001]Waco started this war. Hopefully, Oklahoma would end it. The only way they’re going to feel something, the only way they’re going to get the message is, quote, with a body count.[/quote]
:o Ough ... chilling.
Whatever it may be, you can be certain even less will be done to correct it than is done to control guns. It's not the government's problem to find out why kids are massacring kids and do something about it, is it?
Presumably you'd have some evidence for this conclusion?
Cause that's the way that things are designed in the US. It's the policies with broad support that are usually the most difficult to pass.
Really? The Governer and Lt. Governer of Texas are talking about mental health problems today. Not that they'll do anything about it, but they'd rather talk about this than the fact that the only recent changes to Texas gun laws were to make it even easier to buy one.
It's not just the fantasy of being able to take on the U.S. military that's disturbing, it's that the fantasists believe they represent or could ever represent 'the people' rather than a small minority of extremists thereamong. This invalid self-identification also serves to extirpate as non-people the real enemy, the democratic majority, who disagrees with them, and highlight that it's democracy per se their guns are aimed at.
Hear hear.
Chris Murphy
Enthusiasts want guns for self-protection, hunting, or because it's a fun hobby. The claim that it's to prevent tyranny is cover, to provide a facade of nobility to their hobby, and it's utter nonsense.
How did things get out of hand? NRA propaganda played a big part. They created the memes that created the sense of self-righteousness so many have.
A miracle.
We are caught in a whirlpool of violence in which gang members are arrested for gun crimes, then processed and released back into the streets. Most gun ownership is not promulgated by a desire to keep the federal government in check, but for feeling a need to protect oneself and one's family from lethal criminal attacks. I know, all those statistics about suicide and accidental shootings. But the cops usually aren't there when the crime occurs, they can only pick up the pieces of carnage and seek the culprit.
---
In general, for all the talk, one thing can be sure: nothing will change. Until it is accepted that nothing will change, nothing will change.
Another school shooting will happen within at least 3 months. More children are already dead, they just don't know it yet.
:snicker:
The shooter had no criminal record or mental health history.
It's definitely not. Canada has 34.7, the USA has 120.5 (from 2017).
Then it has considerably increased since I saw Michael Moore's documentary. He entered Canada and an interviewed Canadian said he always felt relief when coming back from the US. It was said the number of guns was comparable. Now you can compare everything, that's true... Especially Michael Moore.
So in Canada the number is about four times as small. Is the number homicides per year four times bigger in the USA? In Canada, about 800 murders are committed annually. What about the USA? 3200?
This is what happens when children are not private property or capital.
I dream that I am proven wrong.
It was then that our elected “leaders” decided gun manufacturing sales were more important than childrens’ lives.
So like everything else in this stupid country, we’ll have to keep waiting for things to get so bad that to do nothing will trigger a mass revolt. I’m thinking something like a Sandy Hook every week. That may work. A few months/years is apparently too long an interim. But who knows? Maybe every day is needed.
Same with climate change, incidentally. Evidently once-in-a-generation storms, floods, wildfires, droughts, and temperatures isn’t quite “rock bottom” enough.
You have to be in awe of the power of ruling class propaganda.
Quoting Benkei
1) how much more extensive? in what way are our current background checks insufficient? the texas shooter had no criminal record nor documented mental health issues. should everyone who wants to buy a gun get a psychologist sent to their homes for an evaluation?
2) background checks already bar those iirc (i have been through 5) voluntarily or involuntarily committed to mental institutions. but outside of what qualifies as mentally ill? should be the bipolar not be able to own guns? how about the depressed? has anyone considered that such a law might discourage the mentally ill from seeking care?
Anyway I don't think the gubberment should take anyone's guns except in one single case: they should absolutely take the guns of anyone who is worried about the government taking their guns. There should be a questionare with a single question that reads: "are you worried about the government taking your guns?", and anyone who ticks yes gets their guns taken from them permanently. Literally everyone else can keep the guns.
To be fair I am pessimistic that gun control, absent any coupling with deeper, structural social change, will be very effective. Left activists rightly point out that the selective nature of policing in the States means that gun control will largely be used as an additional weapon to target minorities and the poor. Which historically has been the case. But at this point, take all of the fucking AR-15s and smelt them then pour the molten down the throats of conservatives.
Works for me
You're asking the wrong guy since I'm not a US citizen and think widespread gun ownership is idiotic. I think only hunters and cops should own guns. Everybody else that have them for sport can leave them at the local firing range and they get to own one gun at a time. There are no reasons to own them otherwise and certainly don't need to keep them at home.
Given the actions of governments world-wide over the past few years I would beg to differ.
Tyranny is not something we can look back at and marvel over. The events of the past years have shown that government still is the foremost threat to peace and humanity, as it always has been.
Force is the language of tyrants, force is the language of government, and all peoples who would wish to remain free should speak it.
And owning an assault weapon will do nothing to stop it anyway. This is just another bullshit excuse for the grotesque amount of guns in the US.
Stop repeating gun manufacturer propaganda.
We have more shootings because we have more guns. The manufactured “debate” about this is over. Guns should be heavily regulated. Bringing back the assault weapons ban would be a start.
They have to do something drastic and new and permanent!
They have to face the illegitimate power the gun lobby has.
Is it not the case that per head of population there are more guns in Canada.
Why do they not have as many difficulties with guns as America does?
Surely Americans must look at western Europe and see that a gun-totting citizenry is not the way to go.
It is exactly what would stop it.
If government goes too far, they'd have to contend with a population that is already armed.
Waging a large-scale counter-insurgency on its own soil, against its own people? That'll be the end of whatever empire is foolish enough to try.
You've simply asserted the 'large scale' without any basis whatsoever. Why would it be 'large scale', on what possible grounds might you believe a 'large scale' revolt of gun owners that didn't also include large numbers of the police and the military? It's just a fantasy.
You're taking a known risk to thousands of children's lives to secure the possibility of something you've no grounds to think would ever happen or even be required. It's madness.
You don't think people would be prompted to resist against government tyranny? As people have throughout history?
Quoting Isaac
It's you who is living in a fantasy, I'm afraid. A fantasy in which government is man's best friend, of which we have nothing to fear. It is not. It has been and always will be the greatest enemy to peace and humanity.
Implicit in your views seems to be "the end of history" fantasy. That we've finally arrived at a point in time where large-scale corruption, war and atrocity are a thing of the past. That "man has figured it out".
If you had asked me 20 years ago, I might've been swayed by that idea. Today, not so much.
Force is the language of tyrants, force is the language of government, and all peoples who would wish to remain free should speak it.
Can't imagine being more neutered than being so scared all the time I have to carry a gun everywhere.
I just can’t imagine being so trusting as to put faith in others with guns to protect my life.
If trained soldiers came to your door, you would shit your pants and surrender immediately. We know it, you know it, so no idea who you think the act is convincing here.
The police don't carry guns here because they don't need them and neither do we because we don't have a gun culture. So, it's not an issue.
I do indeed think that. What I object to in your argument is the idea that if a government ever became that tyrannical it would nevertheless utterly retain 100% obedient control over the military and the police. It's a position without any grounds or precedent.
Quoting Tzeentch
It's nothing to do with what we have to fear. I think we have very good reason to be utterly terrified of our governments, I seriously believe they (and their corporate masters) might just bring about the end of civilisation.
What I object to about your argument is the pretty loathsome idea that the absolutely miniscule chance that an armed 'people's militia' will prevent such an outcome is worth the thousands of children's lives which must be sacrificed to maintain it as an option.
I don't think a hypothetical tyrannical government is so likely that the current situation in the USA is a worthy sacrifice.
I'd say history and in recent times the track record of the United States military (the world's most advanced military) speak to the contrary.
Peasants with rifles are apparently not so easy to get rid of, no matter how much barbarism one is willing to resort to.
do you think your position would change if the crime rate was 10x higher than it is around you? or if there were break ins and shootings in apartments/residences near yours? how about if you were a member of a marginalized population that has historically been the target of hate crimes?
well that's kinda what we're dealing with because the us is a multitude of different cultures with different levels of crime and poverty.
Turns out gun nuts are just pussies scared of the shadows in their own heads. And if children have to die for them, so be it.
massachusetts is not indiana which is not texas.
learn the fucking difference you dumb foreigner. crime rates, cultures, and poverty levels differ drastically as do gun laws.
Because you're afraid to give up the Call of Duty simulator in your head.
, he yelled from his glass prison.
What role are you playing?
That of the broken prisoner with Stockholm syndrome, or the king's dog?
Neither can stand to see others defy the power they so meekly subjugated themselves to.
Can you explain how making it easy for people in violent neighbourhoods to get guns makes them less violent? It seems you are making the argument for gun control here.
he yelled surrounded by the real life corpses of children as he fantasied about being opppresseedddd.
In the US the problem in society seems to run far deeper than people shoot each other because they have access to guns. If the guns were removed would we see more knife crime? If so then the problem is the people and having guns does not make someone kill.
Remove/address what is driving people to commit such insane crimes would be a better path to take rather than blaming guns for violence.
Government serves us by enforcing a system of social relations that's conducive to mutually beneficial interaction and general personal security. The cost is we play ball and obey the law. Overall, it's a reasonable trade. Fretting about Mad Max scenarios, or fantasising about vanquishing tanks and planes with guns is a sad and delusional way to live, and completely unnecessary.
Mental health problems exist in every country. Access to guns is the distinguishing factor.
Like I said, what if guns were taken out of circulation yet the degree of violence continued with cases of stabbings that effectively made little difference to the kill count?
Maybe it more or less something to do with items like education, wealth disparities and employment. Maybe lack of paid holidays? Extortionate healthcare?
Blanketing the issue with ‘guns’ seems a tad naive to me. I can see it is useful as a device for political haranguing to gain votes though.
Why Does the U.S. Have So Many Mass Shootings? Research Is Clear: Guns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_0e4chKXQ4
Real world experience shows that it does make a difference. See this.
So you've said before, yet provision of any actual historical data examples remains lacking.
ppl in violent neighborhoods go through the same background checks as everyone else. the texas shooter surely had a background check. people can also lie on background checks and maybe they can get away with some lies like on mental health because mental health is usually confidential.
sure we can use more gun control, sure we can raise the age to 21... but will this stop a determined mass shooter? i'm a skeptic on this one. guns are readily available, especially in texas. parents buy them for kids. average gun owner owns 3. iirc about a quarter of guns acquired are not purchased thru a licensed dealer.
we all want these shootings to stop but the enforcement aspect is very very difficult.
As of right now? I would probably agree.
But given the events of the last years, it is not obvious that things should stay that way.
Quoting Baden
You speak as though the United States military, with all their planes, tanks, cruise missiles and artillery strikes never lost a war against armed peasants, when in fact that's all they did in the past decades.
The difference would be that in those wars the US could afford not to care about the land and people they destroyed.
not cod, gta.
No, it would do nothing to stop it.
What you’re doing is repeating propaganda. You’ve been sold an idea, and a silly one. It’s a fantasy created to justify the grotesque amount of guns in the United States.
All people like you do is enable the continued killing of children. That’s all.
The reason for these deaths is the gun supply. You have mental health issues around the world. The US is an outlier on deaths and mass shootings because of the amount of guns combined with the ease of access/ownership to guns.
Speculation about what drives people to do what they do — who knows. Upbringing, culture, material conditions, lack of healthcare, poor education, abuse/neglect, etc. True, the US is awful in many respects — without guns. Add hundreds of millions of guns, including assault weapons, into the mix — with very few regulations — and you have a recipe for exactly what we see.
All enabled by those who have been brainwashed by the weapons manufacturing industry to fetishize guns and the 2nd amendment. We can be real men if we own one. We can defend ourselves — like the Vietnamese — when Big Government comes for us one day. Etc. You see them crawling out from under their rocks right here on the forum.
If you lived up a mountain or in the middle of a forest, it might not be too easy to take you out, though I doubt you'd survive long there anyhow, and 99% of Americans don't live up mountains or in forests; they live in urban areas or on open land. In the amazingly unlikely event your government went nuts and decided to wipe you all out and the military said, 'fine, let's do it', it would take an even more amazingly unlikely scenario for you stand a hope in hell against them. Anyhow, the fact that you spend more than milliseconds of your time entertaining this is suggestive of an inability to rationally assess risk. You're more likely to be killed by a shark in your bathtub than to live out this fantasy.
Is this supposed to be serious?
“What if”? We know the answer. Look around the world. Less guns, less mass shootings. Same rates of mental illness.
Making this obvious problem about mentally illness is an NRA talking point. Stop imitating Ted Cruz.
No it isn’t. It’s only difficult in this country because of the fetishizing of the 2nd amendment and cultivation of gun culture. The NRA has had enormous political power for decades. They’ve done such a good job brainwashing the population that even if they disappeared, the gun obsession would continue.
Are you going to transfer the post from "Easy Plan for Gun Control" here.
Second amendment as holy writ.
Arming teachers (i.e., MORE guns).
Viet Cong.
Protecting ourselves from big government.
“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
_____
Just off the top of my head. Expect all of the above from the gun fetishists. :yawn:
Meanwhile, a lot more kids will have to die.
When I get to a desktop, yes.
it is. klebold and harris got their weapons from friends/acquaintances as other mass shooters have. the government is simply not able to keep guns out of the hands of bad people. we can ban felons from holding guns and try to screen them out, but again if a determined felon wants a gun he's likely going to get one if he has friends. you just think the government/law enforcement has a much wider reach/capabilities than it actually does. there are more guns than people in this country and any attempt to confiscate would be met with serious backlash as it should.
have you looked into why the texas shooter did what he did? it didn't have much to do with gun culture. he was from a broken home, no upward mobility, worked at wendy's full time, no hope, bullied relentlessly over a speech impediment, wasn't graduating hs, got called a faggot by his peers for wearing eyeliner. other shooters draw on racist manifestos. blaming it all on gun culture is not accurate.
iirc he was challenging ppl to boxing matches out in the park before doing the shooting someone should have flagged him as dangerous. stop the problem before it gets to that point. we need strong communities that can catch things like this. he showed many red flags.
Both of course are examples of American exceptionalism; Americans being exceptionally stupid and myopic when there are plenty of comparative examples to limit and control gun ownership in other countries. Australia confiscated over half a million privately-owned guns through a mandatory government buy-back program, which helped decrease the suicide rate by 57% (down 74% in 2010) and homicide by 42% seven years after implementation. Japan requires a background check including criminal records, a mental health check, a strict limit on what type of gun they can buy, and a strict limit on how many gun shops are allowed to operate in each prefecture. America can also reinstate the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which, as you can see from the chart, helped limit deaths from mass shootings until the GOP allowed it to expire in 2004.
The US government can also clamp down on firearm manufactures from making certain firearms, which coupled with mandatory buybacks, can greatly limit the amount of semi-automatics and automatics from the marketplace. The government can also end gun-maker liability protections (and impose heavy heavy fines and hold executives responsible).
I am being rational. I am stating that removing guns may not really change that people want to kill other en masse in the US. Obviously the ready availability guns eases mass murder BUT it is a symptom of some unstable minds. We can speculate what causes first then maybe dig to the root of the societal unrest that causes many to walk around in fear in the US.
It is interesting to see how people from US react when living in Europe. They feel safe. Is the fear due to guns? Maybe. It would seem to be the most obvious reason people are scared knowing so many people have guns. I am just asking if there is something else being missed.
I’m not from the US and find carrying guns bizarre. I am not interested in your politicking or attempts to paint me whatever colour suits your biases. I don’t care for it in the slightest but go ahead and continue if you want to be met with silence.
Yes, clearly there is an issue with gun control. I am from a country where I have literally never seen an armed police officer let alone someone else carrying a gun.
US culture is not like other countries. I am just saying there may be a much deeper problem in US society because it is a cultural attitude held, and impressed, by the ruling body.
The US is a strange country.
It addresses all that. The US is no more violent, has no more mental illnesses, and has no more crime than other developed countries. And even excluding the US, the same pattern emerges; the more guns there are the more mass shootings there are. Which is fucking obvious.
So put in steps to make mass murder harder, e.g strict gun regulations. And then at the same time address the causes.
"“Instead of running from the threat, she engaged with the threat and saved several lives last night,” Chief of Detectives Tony Hazelett told news outlets Thursday."
I wish. Apart from the over abundance of guns in the US is the fact that those guns can last for many generations. It's not like your TV set wearing out and being replaced or your car collapsing and being replaced. Each new gun produced does not replace one that is trashed. But a nation that cannot refrain from indulging in war is unlikely to stifle the production of weapons for its citizens.
Exactly. Why most gun debates are superfluous.
"are u an unlawful user of marijuana?" "are you a terrorist?" "have you ever committed espionage against the us gov't?"
i guess it stops felons which is good? presumably the background check screens a criminal database but i think thats the extent of it if it does that. presumably if u self report being committed to a mental institution they'll tell you no. the background check is basically just there for you to send the message that you're a good, proper, patriotic american and that if you go shoot up a school the responsibility is on you and not the shop bc u passed the background check.
i guess the most important thing is that they're able to link a gun to a name.
Well … no. When it comes to homocides the US is WAY ahead. I have actually looked at the stats too you know ;)
True, around 80% of those are gun related … would all of those 80% have not found another means to commit murder though? It may well level out at around the same as some European countries. It well not be the case at all that taking guns out of the equation would reduce the homocide rate to something comparable to other western nations.
Clearly more strict regulations in the US are required for gun ownership. Having gun ranges seems okay to me but simply don’t let people take their guns home? The whole thing is completely foreign to me.
From the article:
The homicide rate is higher because there are more guns. It's easier to kill someone (or 20) with a gun than with a knife. That's precisely the problem.
Compulsory buy-backs and ban the sale of ammo. That's what the UK and Australia did.
It isn’t. Stop the gun supply, and you lower mass shootings.
Quoting Moses
Quoting Moses
The United States, like every other country, has people with mental health issues. They are often a product of bad conditions and show warning signs.
The difference is the amount of guns. I’ll repeat this as many times as necessary. Michael posted at length an article that cites research on this issue.
The issue is the supply of guns. Government can very easily control and regulate this— as many other countries have done.
Indeed.
The numbers of deaths caused by gun fire will very likely remain high because there is a surfeit of hand guns, rifles, and assault weapons. GUNS=DEATH.
As for the mental health of Americans, I would think that we are no crazier than people in other countries. At least, most of the people I have met in my life have seemed perfectly sane, even if they held insane political and religious views. I live in one of the states with the lowest rate of gun deaths (less than 10 per 100,000) and a liberal political culture (MN). Maybe if I lived in Mississippi I would think differently.
How much violence occurs in one's vicinity depends on where you live in the US. This map shows the distribution:
"Mass murder by gunfire" accounts for a slim fraction of gun deaths, 38 or 513 out of 19,384 murders carried out one-by-one in 2020, depending. ("Mass murder" is not clearly defined. It might be 20 at one go, or it might be 3, depending on the definition. Of course, it's crazy that we even have a statistic for mass murder, however vaguely defined.)
I like to cite the case of the Bath School massacre perpetrated by Andrew Kehoe on May 18, 1927, in Bath Township, Michigan, under the category "Nothing New Under the Sun." 38 elementary schoolchildren and 6 adults were killed, and at least 58 other people were injured after dynamite placed in the school was detonated. Kehoe, the 55-year-old school board treasurer, was angered by increased taxes and his defeat in the April 5, 1926, election for township clerk.
Prior to his timed explosives detonating at the Bath Consolidated School building, Kehoe had murdered his wife, Nellie Price Kehoe, and firebombed his farm. Arriving at the site of the school explosion, Kehoe died when he detonated explosives in his truck.
Was Kehoe insane? He was certainly obsessed -- the dynamiting of the school required considerable planning preparation. Apparently losing this election was intolerable (See Trump, 2020).
Are all of you just completely unaware of what an insurgency is and how it works?
We can talk about how likely it is for a government to misbehave to where a large part of the citizenry is willing to take up arms against it, but if that were to happen the army isn't going to stop it.
If the citizenry is unarmed? All you have is hopes and prayers that it never comes to that. An unshakable faith in the incorruptibleness of power structures - one that I do not share.
The power structures of the US and the EU, and probably of just about every other country in the world, are already corrupt. The only question is whether they'll turn violent.
No, you’re being incredibly irrational.
It has been considered, and studied in fact. What you’re asking me to do is ignore the glaringly obvious for the hypothetical. Maybe the US is an outlier for some completely mysterious reason— sure. Maybe that’s it. Maybe God hates us more— who knows?
Anything to avoid the rationality we employ on any other issue that hasn’t been engineered to be controversial by powerful interests.
It’s incredible. In any rational society, it’s obvious what the problem is. Here, it’s “perplexing.” “What is causing this?!”
It definitely has NOTHING to with the 400 million guns.
Absolutely.
Take the US out of the picture and ask the same question: is country X exceptional? Why are there so many people who want to kill? Must be video games or culture or …
We should treat people with mental illness. We should have better healthcare. We should improve our culture and conditions. In the meantime: control the gun supply and the availability of guns.
Flood any country on earth with guns and you’ll get more deaths by guns, more mass shootings, etc.
Simple and obvious to any rational observer who hasn’t been sucked into this false “debate.”
So maybe it’s not guns, because we’re more violent than other countries for some cultural reason — and definitely not because of guns.
I have no clue as to why you’d want to come to this thread with hypotheticals when this problem is cut and dry. If you’re not a gun fetishist, what’s your point? “Maybe it’s not the guns”? Or “let’s talk about mental health”?
Come on.
There have been plenty of government overthrows in countries that don’t have close to the amount of guns the US does. Besides, guns weren’t needed to take over the Capitol building last year. Just a few thousand imbeciles whipped up into a frenzy.
Bottom line: Control the gun supply and harshly regulate accessibility. 400 + million guns is grotesque.
You bore me. Bye
This is too stupid to engage with further
There's always been a high supply of guns in the US, gun ownership levels are consistent since at least the 1970s; the number of school shootings has increased drastically since the 2010s. Numbers have been very high in recent years. Peak levels. I suspect a mental health crises.
https://www.statista.com/chart/19982/number-of-us-k-12-school-shootings-per-decade/
Says the guy who, after a tragedy caused by the sickening amount of guns in this country, wants to "rationally" inquire about literally everything else.
Be bored somewhere else.
The supply of guns has increased substantially in this last decade, as I've shown in a previous chart.
Guns sold in the last two years went from an average of 1 million a month to 2 million a month. 2021 was the second highest year since 2000 for gun sales.
This has also been studied. The evidence is clear: it's guns. This is why the US is an outlier compared to other developed countries. Your gut feelings about "suspecting" a mental health crisis notwithstanding.
What am I to make of what you said? That you apparently find it hard to envision governments doing unacceptable things to its citizenry? I don't find that hard to imagine at all. In fact, American history has more than a few blemishes that I guess you're quick to forget.
Just put a little bandaid over it and trust that your government won't do it again, eh?
Christ almighty.
History is full of lots of things that aren't coming back. You know, theoretically, we could all go back to riding horses and buggies everywhere instead of using cars, but being concerned about that happening to the point where you feel the need to build a stable in your backyard because IT HAPPENED BEFORE SO IT COULD HAPPEN AGAIN would be irrational. Similarly, if you know anything about how modern governments work, their relationships with business and the creation and directing of wealth, the idea that they would randomly decide to throw all that away so they could kill the consumers that keep laying golden eggs for them is if anything batshit crazier than us all going Amish.
Sorry to hear that others don't succumb to your persecutory delusions.
The government could come for us, so lets make sure we have a glut of guns, make billions of profits for gun manufacturers (who definitely aren't involved in setting the debate or influencing government), and cling to the fantasy that we'd heroically fend off the military.
Makes perfect sense.
But: ONE TIME SOMETHING HAPPENED SO IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN! YOU ARE NOT RESPONDING TO HIS ARGUMENT!
@Tzeentch
You are not going to be taken seriously nor do you have any actual argument unless you can provide a plausible sequence of events that would lead to the outcome you fear that takes into consideration a cost analysis for the parties involved. The powerful tend to act in their own best interests. That's how they get to be powerful. And that's a presumption that should form the basis of any analysis of their future behaviours, not morality or immorality or anything else. They are not out to get you, they are out to get something from you. So, whatever oppression they inflict is likely to be a bit more subtle than knocking you off.
You will never be an "insurgent" kindly go back to playing a video game with your mountain dew instead of enabling the regular murder of children. Comic-con is a far better place to play out your fantasies than the blood-stained walls of classrooms.
Quoting Maw
Yep. As long as nothing changes and kids continue to die, these LARPers will simply say anything from one end to the other.
This one is new - at least to me - and particulalrly horrifying. Like, imagine the saftey issues with this. A fire? Hell, say a shooter did get in? Like, these people would rather pick a fight against... doors, rather than address mass gun murder.
The percentage of households in the United States owning one or more firearms from 1972 to 2021 has stayed essentially the same (43% vs 42%). America has long been a country of guns. It has not long been a country of school shootings.
We ought to focus on gun ownership if we're talking about america as being a county of guns. Not how many are manufactured. That's not necessarily the same as getting into the hands of the public. Increased gun sales tend to follow mass shootings.
Walking, talking pile of shit Ted Cruz and others have suggested it.
Unsurprised that Ted Cruz would forget a key incident in American labor history that shows how that's a god awful idea. Instead of 19 children shot Cruz would prefer over 500 burned to death since we can't ban fire.
Yeah, I know about Cruz's suggestion. Meant that ths was the first time I'd heard it suggested in general after a child gun massacre. But yeah, that incident does come immediately to mind hey? Just nuts.
It has been both. They increase with an increase in guns and deregulation. As has been shown.
But feel free to ignore all of that and cherrypick data. This way we can all stay baffled by why the US has so many mass shootings compared to other counties. It can’t possibly be the guns. And if it is, there’s nothing we can do about it. All so we can pretend we’re safe from the boogeyman.
I've looked, but I don't see that you've transferred the post from the "Easy Plan for Gun Control" thread. Maybe I missed it. You indicated you'd move it.
And it is also full of things that are. If there's one thing that runs like a red line through history it's the corruption of power structures and the subsequent abuse of civilian populations.
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting Streetlight
:yawn: Why are you so interested in talking about me? I don't even own a gun. But it's cute that you're trying.
For denizens of a philosophy forum you sure react like school children upon hearing an opinion you don't like. Many the animosity is insecurity?
Perhaps provide some good reasons why you put all your faith in the United States government.
And yet that's exactly what you're refusing to talk about. The likelihood.
There is a serious, deathly serious, consequent risk to keeping the guns around, so it is absolutely fundamental to any 'argument' you want to make that the countervailing risk is assessed in terms of likelihood, and yet it's exactly this likelihood which you're diligently avoiding supplying.
We know horrifically well the risk that existing gun laws produce. To have any argument that isn't just a monstrous disregard for children's lives, you'd need to show that the risk from restricting gun ownership is greater. And yet, thus far, you've barely shown it even exists.
There is, of course, some chance that an armed populace might one day be needed, but, given the very high chance (given historical precedent) that any revolution would involve at least some of the armed forces, and that most gun owners would be useless in any actual revolution, your scenario under which guns are required is vanishingly unlikely.
It's not your identification of the problem I'm objecting to, its your solution.
I don't need to have faith in the US government to not have faith in mass murderers.
One of these is a genuine problem; the other is largely a paranoid delusion getting in the way of addressing the mass murderers.
Quoting Streetlight
Quoting Streetlight
Quoting Streetlight
Quoting Streetlight
Quoting Streetlight
:yawn: You got nothing.
I appreciate the ideas but think it's just too late for the US to regulate gun purchase. There are too many weapons already out there in the hands of people. There are more guns in the US than people. Some people own dozens of guns. Controlling guns in the US is like trying to reduce the amount of sand in the Sahara.
The only way out would be to outlaw, not just all trade of new weapons, but also weapon possession. Ban all these weapons, collect them by force and burn them... I cannot imagine that happening. There's no way out, except a revolution.
Merged OP. Please tag ucarr rather than respond to me.
Thanks for the reminder. See above.
Part of your argument is that if a citizenry would be in a position where it wanted to revolt, enough members of the law enforcement and military apparatus would join them to make armament of the citizens unnecessary.
- This implies that you agree some form of insurance needs to be in place to protect a nation's people from its own government.
- What makes you so certain that law enforcement and military units would side with the citizens to a sufficient degree? During the rise of communism in Russia, they did not. During the rise of nazism in Germany, they did not. During the era of racial segregation in America, they did not. In 1989 in China, they did not, to name just a few examples.
To move forward we also need to agree on whether or not a large armed citizen's revolt is an effective way of toppling a government. I think history clearly shows the effectiveness of irregular warfare and the failure of large nations to combat it, despite extreme advantages in manpower and technology.
Given that it cannot bomb and destroy indiscriminately, a nation fighting a large revolt on its own soil against its own people is unimaginable. Even with indiscriminate destruction bordering a genocide, (i.e. WWII Germany in Eastern Europe, the US in Vietnam) they couldn't manage it.
Most nations who tried could barely control a rogue province.
:yawn:
No, it’s just that we don’t use persecutory delusions to justify the status quo.
(The status quo being the killing of children because of the abundance of guns.)
Nothing. I'm not remotely certain. Thousands of children's lives could reasonably be saved if America had stricter controls over the ownership of guns. If, on one side, there's a strong chance of saving thousands of children's lives I don't see how it's a moral requirement to be 'certain' those guns aren't needed for a revolutionary resistance, a reasonable guess is sufficient.
On the contrary, if you want to risk thousands of children's lives, it seems very much that the onus is on you to show that it is absolutely certain those guns will be needed. Anything less than a very high certainty that private guns will be needed to alleviate a greater risk is clearly inadequate.
Quoting Tzeentch
In Russia...
In Nazi Germany...
In 1960s America the military and police were not recruited, but the neither did the protestors use armed insurgency to get what they wanted so the example is moot.
In 1989 China...
Quoting Tzeentch
The effectiveness is irrelevant. It could be a 100% effective method. The relevant factor is the likelihood. What is the likelihood of a revolt, involving only private armed citizens, emerging as the only (or least harmful) method of removing a tyrannical government.
It's vanishingly unlikely on three grounds...
1. It's vastly more likely, given historical precedent, that the military would be involved in any revolt and so private weaponry would be redundant.
2. It's extremely unlikely that the people currently armed would ever for a cohesive unit opposed to government tyranny, especially in America. Government's there are becoming increasingly right-leaning and most gun-enthusiasts are also right-leaning. You'd have to envisage either a left-wing tyranny or a sudden arming of left-wing militia. Neither show any signs of likelihood.
3. Modern warfare is fought on three fronts - informational, technological and territorial. Weapons are only of any use in the third. What we'd need for a revolution are hackers and bloggers, not rednecks with guns
Even if all those things came about and a new gunless America found itself under left-wing tyranny and wanting to rebel, you're asking us to envisage a revolutionary mass so powerful that it can overthrow the entire armed forces of the US, but which can't manage (for some reason) to just break into an army barracks and steal all the guns there.
Lol. Yes and what a discussion it was. “You put all your faith in government.” :yawn:
Paranoia, delusion, and mythology find a way to continue on. Don’t look for logic.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Tzeentch
If your argument is that law enforcement and militaries siding with the civilians is enough of a safeguard against tyranny, then you must agree that they did not do so to a sufficient enough degree in these examples.
Or perhaps relying on law enforcement and the military alone is not enough.
Quoting Isaac
The example is not moot. It's an example of how tyrannical modern governments can be, including western ones, and that law enforcement and militaries are more likely to stand by and watch it happen than to side with whoever is being oppressed.
Quoting Isaac
What makes you believe private weaponry would be redundant?
Civilians fight in such wars, and they own firearms exactly like the ones used in such wars. Moreover, militaries are potentially at a major disadvantage when fighting against another stronger military. That's why in these types of conflicts irregular approaches to warfare are chosen (i.e. insurgency) and often come out on top.
By your own example you've shown that militaries and law enforcement are often not enough to make a significant change.
Quoting Isaac
Why could the Polish, Afghans, Iraqis, Vietnamese, etc. form cohesive fighting units, but not Americans?
And what do you mean with cohesive?
Quoting Isaac
Tyranny has no political affiliation, and considering the last two US presidents, and the West's recent trend towards authoritarianism per Chinese model, I politely disagree.
It's a slippery slope. We may go down it, or we may not. I don't trust people enough to blindly assume it will not happen.
Quoting Isaac
Yes and no.
Modern warfare between modern nations is fought on multiple fronts, not all of which are physical.
But during irregular warfare all such rules and concepts go out of the window. The US military had to reinvent itself multiple times during its wars in the Middle-East, and still ended up losing them all to farmers who fought with nothing but the most rudimentary weapons.
There is no violent crime where you live?
Not all violent crime requires a gun to deal with if you train your police properly. We have special armed units to deal with exceptional cases. Anyhow, I never in my entire life here felt I would need a gun to protect myself and I can't ever remember it even being a topic of conversation. It's certainly not a matter of political debate. Any political party suggesting we should infuse our society with deadly weapons to make it safer would be considered morons and immediately lose power.
I have lived in dangerous neighborhoods in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Never carried a gun.
Ukrainian authorities had to effectively beg for weapons, and of course had to make it legal for civilians to walk around with guns for self-protection. It’s amazing the desire for firearms and weapons when it finally comes down to it.
I understand that. All I know is that if I am ever confronted with an armed robber or murderer, I would like to have a gun.
Sounds reasonable, but I'm not so sure. In the case of an armed robber, having a gun makes you a deadly threat and its presence might cause the criminal to kill you before you kill him/her. It's probably better just to be robbed than significantly increase the risk of being killed. As for murderers, most don't announce themselves and challenge their victims to a duel. They kill unexpectedly. In addition, gun accidents are more common than gun murders. Putting all of that together, it's not clear to me having a gun is more helpful than harmful except maybe in an exceptionally violent environment. My suspicion is we underestimate just how violent our surroundings would have to be for a gun to actually make us safer rather than increase our risk of being harmed.
I can’t disagree with that. At best a gun can serve as an equalizer in such situations, giving the weak and vulnerable an upper hand in the admittedly rare chance violence occurs to them. But of course there is no guarantee of a favorable outcome, and the risks of carrying one is endless.
Quoting Baden
The United States corporatocracy is very skilled at getting a large percentage of its citizens to believe anything. The gun manufacturers and their lobbying firm, the NRA, also own their Republicans and the followers. It also fits in nicely with their “Government is the problem” mantra.
We’re also a very frightened country. Abnormally so. Also a product of the corporate media.
In defense of my countrymen, however, the majority of the population nevertheless wants gun control.
Americans will always need more guns. Otherwise the gun shops would be out of business. We could prevent some of the shootings years down the road.
And you could also debate the effectiveness of buyback programs.
But again, I think the inconveniences proposed are small. So small, that it's not even worth our time to debate their effectiveness. If you decide to buy a gun on Monday, you might have to wait until Friday to pick it up from the shop. How is waiting a few days destroying the lives of gun owners? I've never heard a real complaint to that.
With someone like Ted Cruz being an elected official, you might be on to something.
Even today all those B&W TV shows of the '50s and '60s, like Gunsmoke, are available and have followers. But I think there's a trend away from games of gun violence, so there is hope a future America will be less inclined to imaginary and actual violence. There's even a chance the 2nd amendment wil be reinterpreted by a future Supreme Court. When little boys have other interests the entire culture might change.
Edit: Whoops, I neglected to include modern computer games that are more violent than the stuff of past generations. Guess we'll see.
An astute observation. I think a lot worse thinks have to happen before (wo)mankind realizes a wrong road has been taken.
Living here in Texas, I see a lot of adults who like playing cowboy, and identify with the cowboy myths perpetuated by westerns.
Yes. Guns are part of a culture. Gun people think slaughters are acceptable risks.
This is a reasonable statement, and as long as you are a responsible gun owner - I have no problem with you having firearms for self-protection.
The problems are caused by gun owners who are irresponsible, or worse- crazy. That's what gun control measures should address. It would be ideal to seek controls that minimize impact to sane, responsible gun-owners but impede the crazy and irresponsible.
I suspect they have a mental block - they refuse to see a relation between the proliferation of weapons and gun violence. It's true that mass murderers are mentally deranged, and so they think no further. It is impossible to identify and treat all such potential murderers. Maximizing gun rights assures that some crazies will obtain guns and kill.
It's not a risk, it's the goal itself. They want the big scawarry gubberment to be afraid of gun wielders. Well, mission accomplished, the cops were so pussified they allowed a kid to shoot other kids one by one in the face for an hour while they themselves intimidated parents outside the school. Slaughters are not risks they are designed outcomes, not merely acceptable, but desired.
In the meantime, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy for the cops: too scared to do their literal fucking job descriptions, they are reduced to murdering the mentally ill and sleeping women because they're the kind of people who can't unload an AR-15 into a classroom. These are not risks. These are intentions. This is everything going to plan.
Literally none of this is an accident. All of this is built-in, all of this is the goal. People need to stop apologizing for this stuff as though these are 'risks'. I was even wrong to say above the cops were scared. They were not scared. It is simply not their job. Their only job is to beat on the weak, that's it. Everyone someone ascribes failed good intentions, and not simply intentions straight-up, they are apologists for mass murder, nothing less.
If we had conscription and more conventional wars, the number of school shootings would decrease (in the US anyway).
The US has a lot of undeclared wars all over the planet.
Yea, but they fight them with drones.
After Uvalde, mass shootings continue over the weekend across the U.S. (May 29, 2022)
:o And legislators just keep sitting on their hands, as they've done for years. Expect more.
Quoting Texas elementary school shooting: What do we know so far? (May 27, 2022)
Quoting Cory Booker (May 25, 2022)
"What this means is that it will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer or import handguns anywhere in Canada," Trudeau said in a news conference.
"In other words we're capping the market," he added.
If passed, the new anti-gun legislation will fine gun smuggling and trafficking "by increasing maximum criminal penalties and providing more tools for law enforcement to investigate firearm crimes," Trudeau said.
The new legislation would also require that long gun magazines "can never" hold more than five rounds.
"Gun violence is a complex problem, but at the end of the day the math is really quite simple: The fewer the guns in our communities, the safer everyone will be," the Prime Minister said.[/quote]
-The man with the golden gun
-Silly guns
-Guns go West
-Top gun
-Gun crazy
The naked gun 2.5
-Guns, God, and government
-Guns of a stranger
-Inspired guns
-6 guns
-Hobo with a shotgun
-Nude nuns with big guns
'Machine gun preacher
-Outlawed guns
-Great guns
-Guns on the run
-Guns of Navarrone
-Sex, drugs, guns
-Guns on a mission
-The savage guns
-Loaded guns
-Stick to your guns
-Four guns go to the boarder
-27 Guns
Etcetera etcetera...
Wouldn't be "End of a Gun" appropriate?
The world is a parody of itself and children and minorities will die because of it.
There's simply something wrong in a society where people find it natural that they should need guns to protect themselves and their family / their property with guns. I don't hunt, so I don't want guns in my house.
If I really need a firearm, I think my government will give me one for free. At least until I'm under 60.
First off. How did things get this out of hand? And secondly, how much more government redundancy and representation is needed to make Americans feel safe regarding our democracy? More senators per state? More term limits? Ranked choice voting? What can take most of the guns out of circulation?
Hmm... Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky, Tony Judt and many others have been saying for decades that this did in fact happen and that the numerous client states and enemies of the month and endless wars and incursions around the world, along with the military industrial complex and the Cocacolonization of world culture indicate that the USA is indeed an Empire.
What was Mark Twain's quote after the US subjugated the Philippines? ' America can't have an empire abroad and a republic at home.'
Are you allowed to open-carry a flamethrower in the US? :chin:
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/01/us/tulsa-police-incident-active-shooter/index.html
Bat Masterson and others with their tales of the Wild West. Every generation having veterans of a previous war. ???
Quoting Tom Storm
:100:
"A well-regulated militia" did not slaughter 19 children and 2 teachers last week in Uvulde, Texas. Or slaughter 10 in Buffalo, New York over a week before. Or 4 yesterday in Tulsa, Oklahoma. "A well-regulated militia" is not the target of any proposed firearms regulations or restrictions. Well-regulated militias are "acceptable risks", not radicalized assholes with readily available, legally purchased military assault rifles with high-capacity magazines full of hollow-point ammo and festooned in kevlar body armor. :death:
There is no "gun debate" in this country; it's been over for a quarter century and the mostly rural, ethno-nationalist, nativist, populists have won, legally stockpiling arsenals for an ever-imminent, 'murican reckoning ... Which Definitely Will Be Televised :eyes: :point:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/691243
(follow the "demographic crisis" links) :fire:
The scale of mass American gun violence is really, really hard to comprehend. Individual events are one thing but - look at these dates:
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting
Well if this actually is an empire maybe we should work harder on that towards a more democratic society?
Wouldn't past wars be an incentive to seek more peace? I don't think North Korea gets out much and they are very military oriented. Not sure the last confrontation they've had in recent decades.
Horrible state of things. Particularly that screaming teenager thinking he knows anything about anything.
Andrew: "They [the NRA] say that high capacity rifles are the final line of defense against a tyrannical government."
Uvalde lady: "We are already facing a tyrannical government when we have things like this happening."
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/america-built-by-religious-fanatics-who-promoted-armed-struggle-paul-auster-20230306-p5cpqm.html
Are you an Auster fan too?
One is the manufacture and sale of guns which has resulted in a glut of guns suitable for purposes ranging from squirrel hunting to near-warfare. Estimates vary, but there seem to be around 300 million guns in the US.
Two is the rhetoric surrounding guns. The NRA has not always been an organization promoting a rabid firearm fetish. The change to its present presentation occurred in the mid 1970s, when the NRA expanded its membership, quite purposively recruiting conservative voters.
The Second Amendment was for a long time a rather dull topic. Gun control and the 2nd Amendment, became a cause célèbre after 1977 when anti-gun-control NRA members took over the NRA at their annual convention in Cincinnati.
There have been periodic surges of violence in various countries, including the US. The late 1980s to mid 1990s saw such a surge in the US, then the rates declined -- and then in the past few years went back up. A quick and dirty summary would be rates peaked in 1972, 1992, and 2018 (give or take a year).
There are factors apparently accounting for some of the waxing and waning of violence. Various suggestions have been made. Here's a chart that reflects a possible contemporary influence:
I am definitely in favor of Americans understanding the history of their country. I am not sure, though how this 'honest conversation' will change behavior.
In fairness that is a brief excerpt from an entire book, not yet published but highly relevant, I feel. I'm continually baffled by the American attitudes towards ownership of guns as a fundamental right. Why not poisons, explosives, torture instruments? I just don't see the rationale, other than it being a vicious circle - because so many others have guns, I need one also. I'm sure that's also why there are so many police shootings - they never know whether the guy they just pulled over in a traffic stop has a gun, so it's shoot first, ask questions later. In any case, I don't see any solution on the horizon, we all know that it's only a matter of time - and not much of it - until the next mass shooting death in America comes over the airwaves, and I don't see anything changing it.
But note, it's been 40+ years that the the NRA and conservatives have been grinding away on guns. And every mass shooting provides fresh justification for gun ownership to those already so inclined.
There is a devious activity going on; we just had an example of it in Northern Minnesota. This week the Itaska County Commissioners voted in favor of a non-binding resolution opposing any form of gun control. The resolution was sponsored by some conservatives, including the sheriff if I remember. This sort of resolution seems similar to attacks on libraries by conservatives. The primary object is less to get rid of a particular book like "Heather Has Two Mommies" but rather to find, collect, and animate their 'base'. As a side benefit they probably will get some of the books they don't like pulled.
Wait until someone invades Australia. Boomerangs won’t accomplish much. A defenceless populace is a servile one.
On the other hand, China probably won't invade Australia with troops equipped with small arms. Against a shark what can a herring do? Sing out a Te Deum when when you see that ICBM and the party will be "come as you are".
They probably won’t invade with the US continuing to shoulder their defense burden. But should the US step aside, an unarmed populace will have to welcome their new overlords or hide in the outback.
The fear is not China invading Australia, but Taiwan, which then turns into a global nuclear confrontation. Gun ownership won't have any bearing on that either. It'll be fought by remote control.
Whether we like it or not, every society or country has been built with the use of violence and wars. The thought of the past was: "kill before you get killed" and it seems that in some states of America they maintain this thought so deeply.
You put USA as an example but all the American continent is violent itself. Just check our Honduras, El Salvador or Nicaragüa. They have never lived in a sense of "peace" or "calm" since they got the independence from the Spanish Kingdom.
It isn’t me who is denying you your fundamental right to defend yourself.
Interesting concept -- Taiwan invading Australia, but why not? Will it be in the interests of the US to protect Oz from Taiwan with nukes? Don't know. Would you prefer PRC or Taiwan to be your invader and benevolent overlords?
If you are really very strongly against being invaded, then you might want to keep a gun handy to off yourself before the new management does it for you. .
Quoting javi2541997
This is basically true. Just off hand, I can't think of any group that gave up their land willingly without a fight. There hasn't been any unoccupied territory on earth for the last 20,000 years, at least, so anybody who wanted to move their operations had to take land and resources away from somebody else. The taking of occupied land is generally a little more violent than a garden club plant swap. Somebody, maybe many somebodies, are going to end up dead, and the conquerors are not going to apologize.
When it comes to territorial acquisitions and mergers, humans just aren't very nice.
The actions and violence have become more sutil. Instead of deploying soldiers or bombing with planes, the "international" enterprises and organizations land in your territory and force you to live accordingly to them. We do not die but it is another type of violenece.
A good example could be how the African continent is now disputed between superpowers. None lands with violence but it is clear that the territory is been exploited by China, Russia, EU, etc...
I hear you. I doubt that much of this is held in place by a deep reading of politics or scripture. It seems more emotional, a form of tribalism which has become embedded in cultural identity in some parts of the US. I wonder if it even properly counts as Christianity? It seems somehow too shallow and propagandistic.
A lot of what goes under the banner of Christianity in today's America is deeply aberrant.
although I have to believe that it's not all it is.
Ninja is a ancient warrior who comes from Japanese culture... it never existed in Chinese/Taiwanese history and army.
No, it’s the govament. Speaking of which, they just forced Americans to be prisoners in their own homes for over a year, wear masks etc, and all the 393 million guns in the nation did nothing to stop it. Australia’s Covid response was similar in strictness. What needs to happen before the guns come out? Death camps?
OK, I've tortured you long enough.
Tensions between the US and China with respect to Taiwan have been daily fare on the news here for some time. "Will they or won't they" invade? "Can they or can't they" defend themselves? The nuclear angle figures into it, but the nuclear angle with respect to Russia is more common.
Will we insert ourselves between China and Taiwan? Will China resort to nukes if we do? If we don't, how long can Taiwan hold out? And most importantly, what about Taiwan's chip factories? (That would be computer chips, not potato chips. Fortunately, the US is self-sufficient in the area of potato and corn chips.) High end computer chips are neither designed nor made in China -- most of that is done in Japan and Taiwan.
I’m pretty sure that if the government sent goons to an American’s house and threw them in a quarantine camp like they did to their own citizens in some Aussie states, there would be some violent standoffs. But the US has a Bill of Rights.
Not sure how it covers the right to be free while infected with a, shall we say concerning, virus.
Not sure what that means.
I fear for Taiwan, after what the PRC did to Hong Kong. Of course, we've stopped hearing about that now - wonder why that is? - but Taiwan is a proud and functioning democracy and a highly functional culture. It would be a travesty to see the communist jackboot on its neck (apart from being a possible cause of a global conflagration.) It's one of the scariest tensions in the world right now.
(Anyway I've drifted totally off-topic now so we better leave it for this thread, take it up elsewhere.)
It absolutely is NOT held in place by any sort of deep reading of politics, scripture, or anything else, save some sort of dark, nihilistic claptrap.
Tribalism strikes me as an accurate term. Some parts of the US have been more violent than others since the beginning. I like to contrast the New England Puritans to the Southerners. The Puritans, arriving from Eastern and SE England who became "Yankees", believed in the efficacy of the state as the means to achieve a better society. The southerners, deriving from the Cavaliers and Scots/Irish fringes, were implacable individualists. The Yankee culture was transplanted across the northern tier of states as far as the Upper Mississippi Valley (leaving an imprint on city names, speech styles, forms of government, and community involvement). The coastal southern planters spread across the south, taking with them speech styles, forms of government, and slavery of course. The southerns generally had difficulty cooperating as states (at least until the Civil War). The southern states were reluctant to cooperate in the construction of canals and railroads.
In more recent years, a sort of cowboy fascist gun, don't tread on me, anti-government, etc. culture has developed in various parts of the country--mostly rural areas. A lot of these yokels are anti-urban.
I can't succinctly trace out how this kind of fascist tribalism was hatched and disseminated, but if you were going to start looking under rocks, you'd want to start with conservative protestantism, parts of the south, parts of the Republican Party and conservative politics, parts of the military (places like Colorado Springs, Colorado), and so on. It didn't just happen by accident.
When one looks at gun violence, for instance, one sees substantially less of it in the northern Yankee influenced states than in the Cavalier/Scots-Irish influences states. The same goes, generally, for health, education, and welfare stats. The Yankee areas are healthier, better educated, and better off than other parts of the country.
I live in the Yankee state of Minnesota. Alabama is the bottom and we're the top (per Cole Porter, not sexual position).
:rofl:
Oh sorry, “Centres for National Resilience”. It’s right next to the Ministry of Truth.
No, we put 'em out back.
'stralia is big. You folk think Texas is big. It isn't. Some of our states are as small as Texas.
A reflection . . .
When I was in high school in the early 1950s I belonged to the NRA. I recall the American Rifleman being about target shooting and both small game and large game hunting. I dropped out when I entered college in 1954. A decade later the Vietnam conflict began and I had completed my military service and was a captain in the USAF Reserves. I remember seeing a copy of the magazine with a cover showing military men with weapons. Firearms became weapons. Hunters switched from the beautiful bolt action rifles of the past to ugly military-style semi-autos.
Recently, in urban areas in my state, there have been car-jackings by armed teenagers. Occasionally they shoot car owners who offer no resistance. In one incident a car owner shot back and, although several teenage girls escaped from the car the driver was injured and later died. He was twelve.
How does one try to protect one's self or family? Unfortunately law enforcement merely picks up the pieces. Yes, I've read of the probabilities of family tragedies due to having a firearm handy in one's dwelling. But there are three hundred million guns out there, and they are mostly well-made to last several generations.
The US followed an insidious path to a now intractable problem. Given the streak of rabid individualism that runs through that culture, the refusal by so many to see oneself as a part of a commonweal, there can be no meaningful solution.
A lesson for the world.
There are places where I would want to own a gun if I were to live there. New Guinea, for instance, is said to be a very dangerous place to live, with frequent home-invasions and assaults. But living in Sydney Australia, I've never felt the need. Gun ownership is very low, by US standards, and I've never seen a gun drawn or heard a single shot fired (outside a firing range during Cadet training in my teens.) So it's likely that the huge numbers of guns in circulation in the US and the extraordinary number of gunshot deaths, becomes, as I said, a vicious circle - fear of being shot drives the uptake of guns, which dramatically increases the risk of being shot. Classic vicious circle.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, the gun problem is intractable.
On the other hand, for those of us in the middle class life is pretty good, despite stubborn inflation. When we go to a restaurant it is crowded with patrons, and when I go to a local fitness gym it is full of young people enjoying life. Driving and shopping are relatively safe when you look into the statistics. The parks are full of lively activities and I suppose theaters are not doing badly, although we don't go to movies - so much is available at home. And immigrants keep pouring in, looking for a better existence. I only wish we would immediately give them employment opportunities.
1) it’s the guns.
2) the Republican Party will continue to block any solutions, because they care more about money than children’s lives.
Simple truths get lost in a sea of bullshit, so it’s worth reminding ourselves occasionally.
There really is a sickness deep in the soul of America. Actually, no, 'sickness' is the wrong word. I guess the right word is 'evil'.
Washington Post has a feature on the AK47 machine gun, (Might be paywalled, should be accessible via fresh browser session.) Chilling reading - those wounded by the high-velocity bullets from these weapons are liable to lifelong injury and disfiguration.. Not that the NRA gives a toss.
A transgender shooter. It might not be as uncharacteristic as we’d like to admit.
source What is wrong with these people? Does delusion have absolutely no limits?
Look at the face of the governor. We can see the madness ruling his brain. I feel bad for the children, they were born into the worst family possible.
What do you mean?
Why evil, and not mental sickness?
Most mass shooters are male.
So how does this being a transgender shooter suggest that it isn't uncharacteristic? I'm pretty sure transgender mass shooters are a significant minority.
I thought the shooter was a male. I was wrong. It was indeed a female. So it is uncharacteristic after all.
Sure it can. Before that it was car accidents. Maybe we should ban cars.
There should be armed guards at schools in the US, perhaps even teachers, in my opinion. The most recent shooter picked one target over the other due to lack of security.
Banning cars would cause insurmountable damage to the country and the economy, and so car accidents are an unfortunate price we have to be willing to pay.
I can't say anything of the kind about gun ownership.
Or is the idea that children want to commit mass murders becoming as commonly accepted as the idea that school shootings "sometimes happen"?
I'm just saying, if your young'uns are massacring each other with assault rifles, your gun legislation is not the only thing that's rotten.
A faulty argument. The purpose of cars is not to protect us. If cars were not a viable means of transportation we would not have them. If guns If guns are not a viable means of protecting our children then why still cling to them? The simple reason is that they give us the illusion of power, of being in control. Is there a point at which it would become clear that we need to protect ourselves from the very thing that is supposed to protect us?
Utilitarian concerns don’t mean much to me wherever we are speaking about basic human rights. Banning cars would be unjust. Banning guns is unjust.
It’s meant to be faulty. Guns and cars don’t just go out and start killing people. It leaves out the motives and reasons why one would pick up a gun and shoot someone in the first place.
How so? We have a basic human right to own firearms?
Why can I not own a firearm if I didn’t shoot anyone or do not intend to?
But schools are not the only place where this happens. Should there be armed guards everywhere? Should there be armed guards protecting every church? Every grocery store? Every playground? Every beach? Is this how you want to live?
An armed guard may decrease the number of people murdered but what is the acceptable number? Not allowing guns in public places would help, but that is regarded as a gross violation of the sacred right to carry.
Asking me a question doesn't answer mine. You said that banning guns is unjust, and prior to that referenced basic human rights. So are you saying that we have a basic human right to own guns? If not then that comment was a non sequitur.
It’s unjust to ban my weapons if I didn’t shoot anyone or do not intend to.
Why is it unjust? Is it unjust because you have a basic human right to own a gun?
Everyone should carry a weapon as soon as they are competent enough to do so, in my opinion.
It’s unjust because they are mine, I am entitled to them, and I have done nothing to justify taking them away.
Why are you entitled to guns? Do you have a basic human right to own them?
Mental health problems exist all over the world. Rates are not higher in the United States than elsewhere. The reason we’re an outlier in mass shootings is that we’re an outlier in the amount of guns (and the ease of acquiring them).
Plenty to say about mental health, but this is not a mental health issue, it’s a gun control issue. When you have a country run by gun nuts and politicians bought by the NRA, it creates an environment where anyone can get a gun — including assault weapons.
Result: same rates of mental illness, but much higher rates of mass shootings. It’s not that complicated, despite efforts to make it seem so.
Is this a quiz? I am entitled to my guns because I own them. I have a basic human right to defend my life, liberty, and property, and owning weapons extends from this right.
Most people with cars do not just go out and start killing people, but it has become distressingly evident that more and more people with guns are going out to do just that.
There is a continuing effort to make cars safer for all involved. Can the same be said for guns? The evidence all points in the opposite direction, to increase the capacity to harm or kill.
So your argument against gun control is that it is unjust for the government to take away your property (without good reason)?
Firstly, the utilitarian concerns I mentioned before might be good reasons to take away your guns. Given that we don't live in the Minority Report and can't know who is going to shoot someone in the future, we ought to err on the side of caution, assume that anyone could be a potential shooter, and so take guns from everyone.
Secondly, what about only making it illegal to sell or trade guns and bullets? You're entitled to keep what guns and ammo you own, but you're not entitled to come into possession of more. Would that be just?
Quoting NOS4A2
Are you saying that because you have the right to defend yourself, you have the right to defend yourself with guns? What about with dynamite or with tanks or with fighter jets?
If someone has the motive and desire to run people over they will do so. If they don’t, they won’t. The same is with guns or any other object that can be used as a weapon.
Indeed.
Gun worshippers have no real argument. So don’t expect much except motivated reasoning.
Anyway - we require licenses and training to drive a car. It’s not a human right to own one. It’s not a human right to own a gun either. This is true despite what years of gun manufacturing propaganda — linking guns with “freedom” that so-called libertarians lap up like slaves — has to say about it.
:rofl:
So, you do think that children should be sent to school carrying guns as long as they are competent to do so! What kind of hell do you wish to live in?
Quoting NOS4A2
But the fact of the matter is that the frequency and extent of damage is nowhere near comparable.
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
“Government is the problem.”
Simple slogans for simple minds.
True, but also: it’s laughable to say people who want to do something WILL do something, and that having easy access to particular means is irrelevant. Yes, I suppose you could run someone over with a bicycle or try to kill people by knife…but the results are going to be much, much different than a truck or AR-15.
So the mental gymnastics is fun to watch, but don’t try to make sense of it.
It stands to reason. Protecting yourself against guns with guns is not effective. Arming our children with guns won't work. At a minimum they need their own tank.
That’s why utilitarianism is unjust. You’ll punish people for things they haven’t done.
That is what I am going through right now. After a mass shooting the state moved to restrict more guns. In this country I am no longer able to purchase a handgun, though I already own one. I don’t think any group of men should possess the absolute monopoly on violence; I believe I have a right to defend myself, with weapons if necessary; and am a responsible owner of guns. Yes it’s unjust to punish me and others for crimes none of us committed.
Yes I believe I ought to be able to defend myself with whatever I want.
I think murderers and criminals will think twice about harming others if they know everyone is packing. So I think the world I want to live in is a peaceful one.
Often a necessary price we have to pay to live in a safer society. Judges and juries are not infallible. Sometimes they imprison innocent people. That's an unfortunate injustice that we just have to accept.
The same, I would say, with taking away people's guns. It's a necessary injustice to limit the far greater injustice of innocent children being killed at school.
Quoting NOS4A2
On what grounds? You have a basic human right to defend yourself with the most powerful means available?
Or they might think: "I'll kill you before you can kill me."
If I have enough money to buy a tank, I should be allowed one. A tank never killed anyone on its own.
This is why I have a nuclear submarine off the coast of Europe: to deal with the rampant sarcasm over there.
:lol:
Though by that measure, we might have to judge @NOS4A2 as being sarcastic too as I honestly don't believe he'd disagree with anything I've said.
Then why don’t you put everyone in prison? You’ll eliminate violence entirely.
You wouldn't deny me an armoured vehicle or grenade launcher, would you @NOS4A2? As long as I was competent to use them.
I doubt I could muster enough conceit to find any desire to control your's or anyone else's life.
Because that's a far greater injustice than the injustice it tries to solve.
I'm against the death penalty because of the possibility of false convictions, and killing innocent people is a greater injustice than whatever injustice would follow from not killing guilty people.
I'm not against taking away people's guns, because taking away good people's guns isn't a greater injustice than the injustice that would follow from not taking away bad people's guns.
It's a utilitarian approach to choose between injustices. There's always going to be injustice, that's just a fact of life. A good society is one that knows how to weigh one injustice against another.
I think it far more likely that the collateral damage might become great enough for you to rethink the whole thing. No one would be safe. You cannot protect against a hail of bullets coming from every direction with a gun.
You don't think kids committing mass murders is a mental health issue?
Ok then.
Thanks for biting the grenade on that. The idea of allowing everyone to have whatever weapon takes their fancy / they can afford is cool in a sort of Mad Max way. I'm sure it would eventually result in good behaviour and a perfectly peaceful society (because everyone would be dead).
So injustice is beneficial so long as it suits your concerns. I cannot abide by that, myself.
It's hard to say. Over time, I've come to realize that he holds his views sincerely. I have to respect that.
Perhaps. But I doubt if everyone owned a gun people would start shooting each other.
The Nashville shooter is 28. "Kids" aren't committing the vast majority of these mass murders. Adults are.
Not everyone would start shooting each other, but more would. Or do you think that if more people have guns then fewer people would use them?
https://rockinst.org/gun-violence/mass-shooting-factsheet/
I don't think it's likely that someone would start shooting if he knew that everyone else would start shooting back.
I believe he was talking about school shooters in particular.
"Records show 70% of school shootings since 1999 have been carried out by people under 18: report"
https://www.insider.com/seven-ten-us-school-shooters-known-ages-children-under-18-2022-5
But that the shooter chose a softer target than one of higher security shows that she at least thought twice about it, I think.
Are we not talking about mass shootings here? @Tzeentch mentioned "mass murder" so I presume we are. The above includes anyone who got shot in a school, including very young kids who got their hands on their parents guns and likely didn't know what they were doing. That's a different issue.
I'm only saying that I think Tzeentch was writing about school shootings in particular, if his initial post is any indication. If so, his claims aren't that misleading.
If countries with the same rate of mental health issues have a lower rate of mass shootings then something other than mental health must explain the higher rate of mass shootings. One explanation is the higher rate of gun ownership. Another is that there is something almost unique about US culture and upbringing that people are more violent than in more civilised countries. Perhaps their obsession with gun ownership fuels that.
It is not a question of what a potential murdered would do but of what others think he will do.
The thing with children committing these acts is that it shows how early the cart has gone completely off the rails. When it's an adult we can easily attribute it to their individual "messed up nature", while with kids it's a lot more complicated. They aren't fully responsible for their actions.
Quoting Michael
An option worth investigating, don't you think?
And I don't think the keyword is "violence" here.
I believe what drives actions like these is an incredible resentment, hatred, a desire for revenge, etc.
Is no one but me interested in what exactly causes such an amount of hate to manifest in relatively young children?
That's not normal where I'm from.
But is there more resentment and hatred in Americans than in, say, Brits? Or is it the same, and it’s just that Americans have more guns and so more violent means to express their resentment and hatred?
It’s certainly important to consider why people do what they do, but it’s also important to consider what enables them to do what they do. And it might be easier and faster to limit their opportunities than to limit their motivations.
Had you made the minimal effort to read the discussion you were interjecting yourself into, you would have seen what I had said about it earlier:
Quoting Tzeentch
Which countries would that be?
Also, there are different kinds of mental unhealth and not all of them result in mass shootings. The prevailing mental health problem in the US seems to lead to a certain percentage of mass shooters. Other countries might have mental health issues that result in less violent reactions.
Quoting Michael
I think that could be part of the explanation. Its hard to settle on a specific breakdown of contributing factors but it seems to me that mental health is a significant factor yet gets ignored by and large. Mental health care in the states is horrible, and its unsurprising mental sickness seems so abundant there.
And I cannot abide by the claim that you being able to own a gun is more important than a child being safer from gun violence.
Guns certainly don't help in making these tragedies less deadly. That's for sure.
Quoting Michael
That's the question, isn't it?
If the answer were no, wouldn't we expect to see similar events carried out with other weapons happening in the UK? People have committed massacres with common household objects like kitchen knives. Stomach churning to think about it, but alas there it is...
Americans are from outer space. I don't think you're taking that into consideration. We evolved in a different galaxy, so you have no frame of reference for understanding us.
I never made that claim, I'm afraid. But I wager that for anyone who would murder a child, with a gun or otherwise, such an injustice is worth the utilitarian benefit.
Two contributing factors are the availability of high power semiautomatic weapons and the idea that guns are the solution to a host of problems ranging from bullying to lack of acceptance to feelings of loneliness and helplessness. Those feelings have always been around, but knowing that others are acting on it in this way makes it seem like a more viable option.
Because mental illness implies a lack of agency, that the shooter doesn’t know what s/he is doing. Most of these acts, the shooter knows damn well what they’re doing.
Normalizing this stuff is part of the problem.
@NOS4A2, society isn't just about you though.
Besides, your gun isn't going to help much if someone already has theirs pointed at you.
De-escalation seems the safer (or more civilized) path; check evidence for different countries/societies.
CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Nashville shooter blasts their way into school (Mar 28, 2023 · 2m:21s)
There was even a game released where players can assume the role of 'school shooter'.
Mass murders that wouldn’t happen without powerful weapons. Japan, Italy, Brazil, Britain, France, China…all have people with depression, anxiety, despair, violent ideation, suicidal ideation, etc. None have the rates of mass shootings that we do. Why?
To argue it’s because we have a greater rate of mental health issues is factually incorrect.
One has to really try hard to avoid the obvious: it’s guns.
We’ll finally reach the lower levels of mass shootings achieved by…every other nation on earth.
Opioid crisis solution: give EVERYONE opioids!
All of this is a natural consequence of one stupid belief drilled into American brains for decades: everything the government does is bad. This belief was developed by the corporate sector so as to reduce regulations and increase profits.
On the contrary, it’s the go-to argument of the NRA-owned GOP. It also happens to be completely bogus.
In fact some research suggests that mental illness was a factor in 4% of mass shootings.
In China, about a dozen seemingly random attacks on schoolchildren killed 25 people between 2010 and 2012. Most used knives; none used a gun.
By contrast, in this same window, the United States experienced five of its deadliest mass shootings, which killed 78 people. Scaled by population, the American attacks were 12 times as deadly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html
Each dot is a country. If I told you the y axis was number of mass shootings and the x axis was number of guns, what do you think a rational human would conclude?
Any guesses on what country the top right dot is?
I'm getting tired and bored from this thread. I think it's amazing media still report on them and politicians offer thoughts and prayers. It's not going to change.
Right wing conservatives have sacrificed their own citizens for the remote chance they could defend themselves against tyranny or invasion. Of course, the reality is those same people are deeply afraid of the world they live in and are most likely to cower in fear if either would happen. Owning a gun is no substitute for bravery. Quite the opposite if you buy it because you're afraid in your neighbourhood.
That's because it stands to reason that people interested in killing people probably also like doing that online, whereas most normal and healthy people only like to pretend to shoot people. I was a bit of a counterstrike master myself but never owned a gun and have zero interest in it.
Guns are meant for shooting things dead. I can understand needing one if you're a hunter but otherwise you have no business owning them. And in my view that should include governments.
Suppose a child is neglected or abused at home, bullied at school and implicitly told by society that this makes them worthless. That child (or young adult) then goes to commit a mass shooting.
No mental illness, but full agency and "just evil"?
Quoting Mikie
I never argued it was about the rates. Different types of mental illness manifest in different parts of the world, often relating to their culture. Think for example of Japanese "honor culture" and the effect it has had on mental health there.
Quoting Mikie
Sounds like there's something "under the skin" in China, doesn't it?
And as an outsider looking in, it seems like there's something "under the skin" in America too.
You sound too interested in what people look like under their skin. Better stay away from guns!
No one is arguing that, as far as I can tell. People are just raising the perfectly legitimate issue that having kids (or adults) who are pushed to the point of committing mass murder is a big societal issue. especially if (as you say) only 4% seem have diagnosed mental health issues. That means we're accepting living in a world where 96% of people who massacre innocent children are apparently fine, normal, upstanding human beings (who just erroneously have access to guns).
Of course if we removed their weapons the world would be a safe place and it goes without saying that I'm in favour of very strong gun control (like we have in England - virtually no mass shootings).
But the pro-gun lobby aren't denying the US's unique status in gun-violence, so pointing it out doesn't progress the debate.
There is, however, a very serious societal problem if that large a number of people are pushed that often to mass murder. It's not necessarily a problem unique to the US, but that doesn't make it not a problem.
The thing is, I don't think the two are unrelated and I think it harms the anti-gun campaign to keep brushing it aside. The gun lobby not only need people to be allowed to own guns, they need them to actively want guns. and they need them to want guns with a strong passion. So the mental health (and societal) issues which lead to the desire for mass shooting (regardless of ability) are a key tool in the gun lobby's arsenal.
They don't want this issue addressed because it would reduce demand for their products even if they were legal. You're aiding that agenda by sweeping the issue aside.
The view from the ground here is that in some parts of the US, people are fiercely protective of their ability to own fire arms. Gun sales always spike when legislation for limiting gun ownership is considered. People are afraid that they won't be able to get that hand gun in the future, so they go ahead and buy it now. So that demand is high and not manufactured by anyone in particular. It's just part of the culture.
Mass shootings get a lot of media coverage. I think that actually perpetuates it, oddly enough. But gun violence goes on all day everyday in the form of gang violence, drive-by shootings, and red-neck family members shooting at each other. I mean, lives are destroyed and families are left in despair pretty frequently. We don't really need mass shootings for that. Mass shootings just get the coverage because they're so bizarre. Prevalent, but bizarre.
Yes, which is why I dedicated an entire thread to it here.
Not sweeping it under the rug. But the issue here is gun control, and since other countries don’t have the mass shootings we do, despite the same problems with “mental health,” we should be emphasizing that.
And I don’t see the gun lobby pointing out the US’s outlier status. If they do, they talk about mental health. It’s simply the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” slogan masquerading as concern for healthcare — which the same people want destroyed.
Yes, but you act as if this hasn’t been researched. It has— and the conclusion: it’s the guns.
Why are so many people depressed in Argentina? Thailand? Canada? Those are good questions. But the question, “Why do we have so many mass shootings in the United States?” is what I’m interested in.
I needn’t spell out what that conclusion is. So let’s talk about gun control. Hard to do if we’re distracted by NRA talking points about mental health.
I agree and would add that it is not just guns but a "gun culture" that promotes the idea that guns are the solution to two major threats, the government and criminals.
But I guess that's just a "NRA talking point".
Perhaps if guns were banned and a sharp rise in school stabbings was observed, it would get people's heads out of the sand, hm?
Both of whom have guns and other weapons. How would you defend yourself and your family from these threats?
I don't defend myself against the government. For one, I do not buy into your paranoid deep state conspiracies and the need to defend myself against the government. For another, no matter how many guns I have the notion that I could defend myself against the military is absurd.
As to owning a gun to defend myself and my family against criminals, it is not as if they are going to wait until I get my gun, load it, and point it at them before they point their loaded gun at me or a family member. Perhaps you sleep cuddling a loaded gun, but I think it far more likely that a gun in the house will do me or my family harm than good.
You can defend yourself with an unloaded shotgun. Just cock it and that sound will generally cause invaders to flee. Unless they're on drugs, in which case you probably want it loaded.
Guns can definitely be used for defense. If you choose to go without, just know that your final victory was that you didn't live in fear.
Or something along those lines. :grin:
Happiness is a warm gun
You woke up this mornin', got yourself a gun
Bang bang he shot me down...
Etc.
The reason most countries can afford to disarm their populace and claim moral victory is because American weaponry protects them while they sleep. A country like Ukraine, on the other hand, who does not find itself under the umbrella of American protection in any legal sense, has to beg western countries for the weaponry to defend itself. They reversed on their gun control, of course, handing out guns to the public on the eve of war. Now all they need is an ID card in order to get a gun. I guess it’s never too late.
That’s the ironic part about your position and all this huff and bluster about disarming your fellow citizens. You can afford not to be paranoid because other people have guns, because others have the will to defend you wherever you yourself refuse to. Should they ever need your help, though, I have a good idea how helpful you will be.
Of course a gun can be used for defense, provided you are prepared for an attack and in a defendable position. Outside of that, successful defense is unlikely. A motivated shooter will generally have the advantage, and bullets flying around from random shots might find you anywhere.
I guess if you find that trench warfare has broken out in your living room, it's hard to say who'll have the advantage. You'll probably have to Jackie Chan the situation.
So which is it, the government protects us or we have to protect ourselves from the government?
Quoting NOS4A2
Should the US government need my help they would give me a gun. But this scenario is so unlikely as to not be taken seriously. If active military and reserves are not sufficient they would go to the millions of able bodied younger people before being desperate enough to ask an alta cocker like me to pick up arms to protect the country.
One nation defending its territory from another nation's aggression requires armaments to be used against the attacker. Civil order and peace within a nation is a different, separate issue.
All the armaments of the United States armed forces--from ICBMs to pistols–do not contribute to the peaceful relations among our fellow citizens. What maintains peacefulness in society is the collective desire to avoid conflict as one goes about one's life. Internal peacefulness is not maintained by 300,000,000 guns either.
Quoting NOS4A2
It's the 300,000,000 guns owned by 200,000,000 Americans--some of whom are demented anti-social thugs, that contribute to paranoia. Those 200,000,000 gun owners are NOT defending me or you. Mostly they are enriching gun and ammunition manufacturers at a high cost to society.
People with guns protect you. Is that so difficult to admit? I guess one can be proud of this privilege and sleep soundly while others defend you while you sleep, but in any case, call Uber Eats and the police and see who reaches you first.
SOME people with guns protect me, and part of what they protect me against is other people with guns. It is not guns for all or guns for none.
Collective defense and individual defense are one and the same. What you are speaking of is the monopoly on violence, which is hardly collective or individual. This sort of violence is exclusive to someone like you and me.
The pure anarchism of the world government permits that a nation can defend its own borders, but while the government class gets to claim this right and abuse it to all ends, they refuse to extend that right to their own citizens. Why do the chosen nobility and their armies get to defend their borders but a single man cannot? So much for collective defense. This is the defense of state interest and nothing more.
True -- they go hand in hand. We wouldn't have the amount of guns nor the ease of access if it weren't for this gun culture, which has been deliberately manufactured over the years by gun companies -- but even if we had the gun culture with less guns and rational regulation, there would still be less shootings.
Quoting Tzeentch
The health of the nation is important, no doubt. The same people who argue for more guns also argue against medicare-for-all and other programs that would help people, so pretending to care about "mental health" is laughable coming from them.
But yes, if we're serious about less violence overall, we should try creating a better society. In the meantime, guns need to be regulated rationally. Give me a nut with a knife over a nut with an AR-15 any day -- just ask the Uvalde cops.
Quoting Fooloso4
As has been shown over and over again. To a paranoid gun manufacturing shill who's convinced himself that the government is nothing but evil, you have to be ready 24/7, carrying around a weapon at all times. Too many wild west movies as a kid (which were part of the gun propaganda, incidentally).
Anyway, yeah it's a ridiculous position. Not only paranoid, but also failing to look at other countries and failing to see that if the government wants to arrest you, they will. Daydreams about insurrections aside. It's just a life based on fear and a pathetic notion of "freedom."
Well, so far you haven't shown a great deal of interest in the iceberg of suffering that underlies these killings either.
Carry on.
Absolutely, and not only is paranoia used to justify having a gun (you know, to "protect yourself against the government" and "criminals" -- which is absurd enough), but it's also used to justify REGULATING guns. How? Well, any talk of gun control becomes the slippery slope: you want to BAN ALL GUNS and "disarm" your fellow law-abiding citizens!
Actually, there are a number of rational things to do:
* Requiring licensure and training, similar to driving a car (or truck, or motorcycle, or plane, or operating complex/dangerous machinery).
* Universal background checks.
* Wait periods.
* Banning assault weapons (except in rare circumstances)
* Better regulate gun shows and private selling.
* Harsher penalties for non-compliance.
Etc. etc. Plenty of sensible ideas, many of which are used in other countries who, lo and behold, have less gun deaths and whose governments haven't capriciously attacked its citizens.
I have -- in Deaths of Despair and elsewhere. Places where it's appropriate to highlight or emphasize the issue of mental health. Making mental health the focal point in a thread about gun control or when the topic is mass shootings is, as I mentioned, an NRA talking point and diversion tactic.
If fentanyl deaths skyrocketed in country Z, and it turned out country Z was an outlier not in drug use but in the amount of, and ease of access to, fentanyl -- then call me crazy, but my first priority would not be to discuss the prevalence of substance abuse. It would be to restrict the amount of, and ease of access to, fentanyl.
Why do the rich get to drive cars and a single man cannot?
Oh wait, a single man can -- if he has the means, and goes through the proper training. It's almost as if the claim that a "single man cannot" is paranoid. :chin:
How has that approach been working out?
So long as he abides by the rules you’ve set out for him. That you get to set the rules and I don’t only fuels the paranoia, because someone will take the same power, using the same mechanisms, and take them away almost entirely, like a vast majority of the nations in the world. The idea that this will never happen is far more ridiculous than believing it will.
Apart from being a very odd argument, this exemplifies the genetic fallacy. It wouldn't even matter if the KKK invented gun control, it's either a good idea on its own merits or it isn't. And examining whether or not it will save lives seems a reasonable way to approach the debate. Fallacy-ridden rhetoric randomly strewn with emotive language less so.
Quite well, in terms of guns.
I wouldn't argue for even something as strict as this, but it goes to show...
(If you meant literally fentanyl, which was only an example, it's still being smuggled in illegally to the US from China through Mexico, so the amount is still quite abundant in the US.)
The same motives with the categories broadened. A compliant populace and safety from the unvirtuous inheres in both, I’m afraid.
You've just aptly described the justice system. Should we stop punishing criminals then?
A justice system requires that we punish the guilty and protect the innocent. But you would see them restrict my rights when I have done nothing to deserve it.
Indeed paranoia -- at least to those like you who view this as some kind of nightmare scenario. In my view, way too HOPEFUL. It won't happen.
But if it did, can you imagine? We'd be more like that hell hole Japan -- practically no mass shootings or gun violence. What a dystopia. But wait -- even Japan doesn't fully ban guns. Ah well.
I guess requiring a driver's license was also government overreach, on their way to banning cars for its citizens. What came of that? Guess it may happen eventually, and isn't paranoid at all to think it will...
Last I checked I’m a part of society. Restricting my rights does not benefit me. It benefits you personally.
And this really summarizes the heart of the matter, the taproot belief from which these absurd analyses emerge: a weird kind "individualism" a la Ayn Rand and company.
I guess the same people aren't in favor of stricter voting ID laws, or even registration. Why should I be inconvenienced when I've never committed voter fraud, and don't intend to?
Why should I have to sit in line for a driver's license, when I've never been in an accident and don't intend to?
I don't recall anyone asking ME if this was OK.
See the above post. I personally benefit only in that I am disturbed by children and other victims of gun violence being needlessly murdered and I won't be if they're not. But the argument is based on society's responsibility to prioritize needs, desires, and rights among its citizens.
I believe both, that no one’s rights should be restricted and that innocent people do not deserve to die. So any attempt to ameliorate the situation should be fit for both. You believe only one. So any restriction of the former is justified so long as it serves the latter.
Maybe you can, but I cannot abide by controlling people’s lives and letting them control ours. The ease with which you advocate for it only hardens the heart and closes the mind on the matter.
Your rights are socially instituted and involve not only you but those who you may endanger in their exercise. You have no natural right to run around with any kind of weapon you choose. Let's get that straight first.
My rights are restricted every time I drive a car. My freedom, my liberty, is restricted. If I want to go through a red light or drive on the left hand side of the road, I could be punished for it. Those are the rules, the laws. People create laws. People in government, voted in by and supposedly representing its citizens. That's how societies work -- at least republican style democracies.
By all means voice your opinion for why we shouldn't have any rules whatsoever. You'll be laughed out of town, and deservedly so.
I believe rights are naturally founded, derived from human nature, and not the edicts of those in power. I believe I and others have the right to defend our lives from those in power and those who would otherwise threaten it. Guns in particular are a great equalizer in this regard.
I'm not controlling anything. People can do anything they want. You can go shoot up a school, obviously. Is that your idea of true "freedom"? Is creating laws that discourage or punish those acts "controlling"?
What a strange view of the world.
And if all those restrictions disappeared tomorrow would you start driving through red lights and murdering your fellows?
No they're not but put it another way, if you were designing an ideal society, would you really make it such that people could privately own any weapon they could afford? You realize what would happen would be an arms race among the rich and unscrupulous that would lead to them controlling society's resources and enslaving those they could outgun. Feudalism, basically.
A pretty poor example, then.
Especially, since the "war on drugs" is a great example of how ignoring root causes impedes the solving of the problem.
I would.
Of course I oppose any monopoly on violence. Arms races and the control of resources by that monopoly is occurring right now.
I'd probably go through more red lights if I thought the rule wasn't enforced, sure. Murdering people, no.
People make up rules for many reasons. Sometimes they're justified, other times they're unjust. Some are commonsensical, others are aren't. I'm glad that we have made rules that punish people who break them.
True, we don't need a state for this. But to argue against any and all rules is absurd.
Of course, you could oppose it morally and I may even admire you for that, but the result is you'd be enslaved by those with the resources to outgun you. So, you better hope you don't get what you wish for.
To argue that only those in power get to make rules is absurd. No man is good enough to be another’s master
So be it. I suppose the one consolation is that history looks kindly on the just, while those who control us live on in a rogues gallery.
I'll repeat the example, with bold:
If fentanyl deaths skyrocketed in country Z, and it turned out country Z was an outlier not in drug use but in the amount of, and ease of access to, fentanyl -- then call me crazy, but my first priority would not be to discuss the prevalence of substance abuse. It would be to restrict the amount of, and ease of access to, fentanyl.
It's not a war on drugs or guns. It's saying that, all else being equal, country Z has a problem with this particular object. Other countries don't have the fentanyl deaths we do not because they don't have more potential drug abusers, but because they don't have the amount of fentanyl. Pretty simple.
A flawed example, of course, because it's harder to get fentanyl than it is to buy an assault weapon. Now imagine saying, "What we need to do in order to fight fentanyl deaths is to increase the availability of fentanyl." That would be absurd.
That's a little fatalistic isn't it? It sounds like you're saying that since controlling people is bad and freedom is good, we should let human nature take its course regardless of the consequences. Isn't it possible that controlling people is sometimes necessary and that's just a bitter pill we need to swallow?
Quoting NOS4A2
Nothing in what I said suggested any of that. People create rules, not some elite class of people, not "those in power," not the deep state. People. In any society. In hunter gatherer societies. People make rules all the time. Rules are a good thing, and so is authority -- provided they can be justified.
So I repeat: to argue against any and all rules is absurd.
Since people make rules all the time, and since you’re a person, what rules have you made?
It's a flawed example because illegalizing drugs has not led to a decrease in drug use, and it can even be argued it led to the creation of ever more deadly drugs.
Human nature has already taken its course and I’ve long resigned to my fate as someone’s serf. I can only hope that I pass before it self-immolates.
On the subject of rights, let's look at the Bill of Rights:
Let's use an originalist interpretation. Something Scalia talked a great deal about but failed to do when he decided Heller.
A well regulation Militia was needed because there was no standing army. With a standing army a militia is no longer necessary to the security of a free state. In addition what is at issue here is the security of the state not of an individual within the state.
The right to keep and bear arms is a right that is contingent upon the necessity of securing a free state.
Scalia ignored his own principle of originalist interpretation when he arbitrarily inserts "in common use" and applies it to common use today rather than then. He inserted it for two reasons. One, there are considerable differences between a knife or musket and a semiautomatic rifle and he wanted to assure that those who had guns could keep them. Two, he knew there must be limits to the weapons that might become available to the public. A limit the Founders did not see as necessary because they could not imagine that there could be such weapons.
The Bill of Rights does not include the right of Yahoos to keep and bear high power automatic weapons. This is very far from a musket toting well regulated militia.
Which is the bigger problem, someone with a mental illness or someone with a mental illness in possession of a semiautomatic rifle?
The constitution still allows slavery and taxation. I do not look at it as any standard-bearer of rights, but nonetheless, the bill of rights says “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”. We do retain the right of yahoos to keep and bear weapons.
"By the people" does not mean by a person over and against the people It is a collective term consonant with the "general good" and the interests of a free state. Automatic weapons in everyone's hands threatens the general good and a free state.
Exactly, “the people” is in fact not the people, the flesh-and-blood residents of a given jurisdiction. Like the “general good”, it’s some abstract universal found floating in the mind of a collectivist, and rather than apply to all people, it apples to some people.
In my family, often enough. Plenty of them.
Otherwise I vote for rules directly via referenda, and I elect others to do so. Those others are also people. If I don’t like what rules they create, I vote them out. There are other ways of creating rules as well, at the local level.
But I guess the point there was supposed to be something about “statism” blah blah blah
I don’t want to make drugs illegal. I don’t want to make guns illegal.
This shooter bought a gun legally, incidentally.
But “illegalizing” drugs does work in some cases. I don’t hear about many Quaalude addictions anymore…
The “war on drugs” was never about drugs anyway. It was about criminalizing minority life. Ditto “law and order.”
We have been through this before. More than once. I don't know if it is a genuine failure to understand the concept of the general good or the failure to acknowledge the importance of anyone but yourself.
Ding ding ding. That one.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html
So yeah, maybe it really is a mental health crisis after all: the mental illness of gun worshippers that enable this to happen.
Ah finally it's clear. You have a theory of law stemming from the middle ages. No wonder almost all your ideas are regressive.
The American Founders were collectivists?
Worth highlighting how stupid this statement is, lest it slips through the cracks.
Nearly every country on earth has a military, whether aligned with the US or not. Every other nation on earth has less mass shootings than us. You can have a peaceful country, a military, and legal domestic gun use.
Ukraine wasn’t attacked because its people weren’t allowed to stock up on AR-15s. It has a military. To somehow get all of this mixed up with domestic gun policy shows how far one must go to make sure kids continue to be murdered because you think Murray Rothbard is cool.
You make rules for family. Very good. You can govern your own household. Except it doesn’t follow that you or anyone else ought to have the same authority of over people who are not your kin.
But then you sell your own and anyone else’s authority to the next political campaign. In this we get the greatest political theory known to man. “I make a mark next to someone’s name. if I don’t like what they do I put a mark next to someone else’s name in a few years. Something something democracy”. Except it’s the rule of some people over others, what with politicians with constituents in the millions.
Your insistence on controlling people and restricting their rights betrays whatever obsequious obedience you’ll display at the ballot box every other year, and whatever nonsense you speak in the name of democracy. You participate in the charades of the greatest monopolies known to history, and advocate for corporatism of the worst kind. Sorry, man, that’s a hard pass for me.
Legal positivism is quite medieval. But then again maybe you’re speaking of some other theory, perhaps one arising in the disco era. No wonder.
No need for sour grapes. What’s your hip political theory called?
It works against specific drugs, but because the root causes aren't addressed it's a matter of time before the next one comes along. The problem never truly gets solved.
From that thread...
Quoting Mikie
Literally the first thing you say.
So - in a discussion about the state of the nation's mental health (in the broad sense), you think it's fine to immediately remind everyone that the availability of guns is also a very big factor.
So why, in a discussion about gun control, is it not OK to remind everyone that mental health (in the broad sense) is also a major factor.
This is essentially the problem with modern politics in a nutshell. the only reason you don't want to talk about mental health is because that what the NRA (the baddies) talk about so that means you mustn't.
Just like if Trump says it a Lab leak, it must not be. If the Republicans oppose a war, the left have to be for it. If the right are opposed to lockdowns (for their own selfish reasons) then lockdowns must be our saviour...
We've got to get out of this stupid knee-jerk polemicism. Yes, the NRA use the mental health angle. Of course they do, they're going to use anything which promotes their agenda, they're not going to only select those things which are false (because they're the bad guys and bad guys always lie). Some things they say are going to be perfectly valid because they're not morons (evil, perhaps - but not stupid).
It's no good avoiding ground simply because they've taken it, it just makes your arguments look weak, like you can't concede even a millimetre of your opponent's arguments lest that millimetre is enough to destroy yours. But it won't be.
Quoting Mikie
I agree, but the means by which it is emphasised matters. simply making the claims you've made about the US's outlier status are solid and no doubt effective. Insinuating that anyone talking about mental health is associated with NRA "talking points" just makes you look weak and doesn't help the argument at all.
At the same time there are also still considerations of morality embedded in law (albeit becoming more and more remote), which I believe primarily stem, ultimately, from empathy. But this shouldn't be confused with natural or divine rights, because my view is they arise from the relationships we have with each other, instead of being intrinsic. Natural law just commits the naturalistic fallacy and divine law is basically the same. Whether natural or God-given: potatoes.
The positivist approach doesn't convince because I do believe in civil disobedience being lawful as protecting a higher norm under circumstances. Again, how we reach moral intuitions somehow informs, or should inform us, when laws are unjust and should be disregarded. But from a practical point of view legal positivism certainly is the simplest and most straightforward approach and answers the pertinent questions most of the time.
Finally, realist theory of law. Well, that's just a confused jumble to me which has nothing to say about the underlying principles of law.
So, to sum up, I don't have an integrated and consistent theory of law but I know very well what it isn't.
An anarchist who whines about his rights. Who do you think will protect your rights?
Quoting NOS4A2
This is why a constitution with stable laws is so important. It is a check against what may happen as the result of the next political campaign. It is not a perfect instrument, but in an imperfect world it is the best we have devised.
Quoting NOS4A2
Once again this points to the importance of stable laws. Those in power cannot do whatever they want and cannot make whatever rules they want. And if they attempt to they may lose their power in the next campaign.
Like it or not you live with other people. Your interests do not outweigh theirs. It is the role of government to find and maintain a balance of competing interests. In practice it is far from perfect. Do you have a better solution?
Quoting NOS4A2
You may not think it necessary for anyone to exert control over you, and perhaps it is true, but that does not mean there is no reason to control the actions of others. One important reason for this is to protect your rights.
Thanks for the summary.
I do not believe rights are conferred by god or nature, which is absurd. Rights can only be conferred by men. But the idea that only man in his official or government form can confer rights is equally absurd.
We have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds to develop some sort of moral fiber and the results are nothing to be proud of. But since one cannot intervene in someone else’s life all of the time, and since one must have some idea of when and for what reasons one should intervene in another’s life, one must formulate principles on the matter. I prefer natural law and natural right because they take into account human nature and justice.
If I watch a swallow build a nest and lay some eggs I come to understand that he is doing what swallows do. Since it is in his nature to do this for the sake of his survival, and since he is not harming anything else, I afford him the right to build his nest and lay his eggs, and for the same reasons, to defend them if necessary. For these reasons I do not destroy his nest and steal his eggs, and believe he has every right to defend his nest and eggs if I were to do so. It is from these reasons that I would not dull his beak in the off chance he pokes someone’s eye out.
Observations of nature can inform one’s judgement and principles far better than any observations of law or constitution, in my opinion.
The same principle applies, whether to my family or anyone else. Just because they’re my family doesn’t give me the right to “govern” them any more than anyone else. Either it’s just or unjust.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes we all know your tired, boring views on majoritarianism and general hatred of democracy in general. Has nothing to do with me.
Quoting NOS4A2
(1) Rights are made up. (2) Rights being restricted isn’t the issue— the issue is whether doing so is just.
Gun “rights” don’t exist any more than the right to drive a car. Except there’s training involved in driving a car.
Quoting NOS4A2
Says the guy who voted for, and has passionately defended, Donald Trump at every turn. :rofl:
Hard pass on your paranoia delusions. Read more Ayn Rand and keep trying.
Certainly not you. Certainly not the government. Neither of us can name one right in the Bill of Rights that has not been violated. So how can you trust that they will protect your rights?
The problem of quaalude addictions certainly was solved. Banning or heavily regulating guns could work too, as they do everywhere else in the world. Sure, people could use knives or whatever — but that’s not the topic. The topic is guns— which is why we have the number of mass SHOOTINGS that we do.
Do you not see mass shootings as a problem?
If you do think it’s a problem, what is the solution?
If it’s vague aspirations about solving the problem of mental health, then we’re going in circles. If you want to discuss sensible gun control measures, by all means give your ideas.
If you have no ideas on this issue, then stop with the NRA diversions. Not interested.
Maybe you didn’t get the gist but your continuous invoking of democracy is a trite piece of propaganda to disguise your deep-seated authoritarianism. That much is obvious.
It's funny you're reacting with such hostility to the suggestion that mental health is an important aspect to this problem.
Top-notch tribalism.
Carry on.
Because it’s mostly disingenuous when the topic is gun control. If it’s not, then yes, I repeatedly acknowledge the obvious point that people driven to kill people is a problem.
Quoting Isaac
But it is an NRA talking point. Given what I know about Tzeentch, it’s no coincidence that this is the angle he wants to emphasize. I don’t buy “hey I’m just asking questions about mental health” nonsense for a second. If you do, then have at it.
Go on then, what do you believe that you know about me? :chin:
An interpretation of human nature you mean. A fairly sick one, too.
Quoting NOS4A2
Says the Trump voting corporatist. Maybe Freud was on to something… :chin:
Ayn Rand fails once again. Keep trying.
Not hostility, but impatience. Impatience with NRA talking points about “mental health” being spewed disingenuously on a thread about gun control, to avoid talking about gun control.
We get it: no gun control measures, because the “real” issue is mental health. Carry on.
You’re right, it’s just a complete coincidence that someone who continuously spews libertarian ideology just happens to want to talk about the “mental health” factor on a thread about gun control.
I’m sure you’re sincere. You’re fooling yourself, but that’s OK.
Sean Hannity wanting to talk about Hillary’s emails on a thread should Trump’s crimes is also just good faith questioning as well.
I don't have particularly strong opinions on gun control in America, since I don't live in America.
How exactly are concerns over mental health incompatible with libertarianism again?
But you have an interest in American mental health? Why America? Why not Argentina or Japan?
Oh yes, it’s because the topic is mass shootings, of which America is an outlier. Not an outlier in mental health issues, as has been shown. Given this, a truly impartial observer’s first question would be, “Why does America have so many mass shootings?”
Then maybe the 400 million guns and the fact that anyone can get their hands on one would be of interest to them. In which case they’d say, “Why does the US have so many guns and such lax gun regulations?”
That would be genuine discussion.
Sure. Psychology has always been an interest of mine.
Quoting Mikie
Well, I never claimed I was a "truly impartial observer" - I just asked a question about mental health and why the subject seemed always conspicuously absent from these discussions, and was treated to your tirades.
Besides, why are you concerning yourself with what kind of questions I "should" be asking?
If you're not interested in what I bring to the discussion, no one is forcing you to reply.
It's a bit ironic you aim your accusations of insincerity at me.
This hits the nail on the head, really.
I trust that they will protect my rights because they do in fact protect my rights and yours as well, albeit imperfectly. If you cannot see that it is because you are blinded by your ideology. The saying:
holds true in this case. Good laws are better than no laws. The goal should be to improve them not do away with them because they are less perfect.
You cannot live in society and not live according to its laws. You can work to change its laws, but cannot live as if you are above or free of the law.
If you have been paying attention to what he has actually said I find this accusation incomprehensible. He has stated several times that he thinks mental health is a serious problem that should be addressed.
The question under discussion is gun control. Mental health is certainly an issue in the gun control debate, but the problem is the attempt to shift focus away from guns, to take gun control off the table and focus only on mental health.
I think if you had paid attention then the thin-veiled contempt wouldn't have gone over your head.
These arguments often get heated and personal. Where did he express contempt for the claim that mental health is important?
With regard to thinly veiled contempt, your accusation that what is at issue went over my head did not.
They do not protect your rights, and the ongoing attempt to restrict your rights is evidence of this.
I am down for any law that is just and protects the rights of the individual. Laws that protect the state, its own interests, or some other interest group are unjust and do not protect the rights of the individual.
You own private property because that right is protected by the government. You are able to speak freely because the government protects you by limiting its own power.
Quoting NOS4A2
Sometimes, in order to protect the rights of an individual constraints are put on the rights of other individuals. If you are a business owner, for example, you cannot hire children to work in a sweatshop.
Quoting NOS4A2
That is an overly broad, vague, and simplistic generalization, intended to pit the government against the individual. The interests of the state are not necessarily antithetical to the interests of the individual. The example, chosen to stay on topic, is gun control.
The self-centered, myopic view is that gun control violates individual rights. Does it? The majority of people favor gun control. The prevalence of guns violates their right to life. Right now, judging by government inaction, the state and powerful special interest groups such as the NRA are aligned with the interests of individuals who oppose gun control.
Suppose legislation is passed on gun control. Whose side would the government be on? On both sides there are the interests of individuals, but the interests and rights of more individuals would be served by limiting the right to sell and own and carry guns.
Setting up the state as the enemy of individual rights is nothing more than crass and empty rhetoric.
It's the details where things go awry. Over 300,000,000 guns out there, how would one start to deal with the sheer numbers? And they last so long, they are so well made.
When I was fourteen I stole a handgun from a mafia member. This was 1951, and the gun was a Colt semi-automatic in .380 caliber, dating from about 1915 or so. Its lands and grooves were pretty much gone from considerable firing, but it was definitely still usable. I gave it to my father a few years later and it disappeared sometime before 1968. It's still out there somewhere, untraceable and lethal.
Personally, I would like to see assault weapons banned, and that might be enforceable to some extent due to records being kept. But the political will is lacking.
“Just asked a question.” Yes, the question every NRA member, bought politician, and gun not happen to raise every time gun control is brought up. If that’s “conspicuously absent,” you’re living in complete ignorance.
“Tirades.”
So should universal background checks and gun training be required before buying an AR-15 or not? Let’s make it concrete.
Cool, like the right to life- via not getting shot.
Quoting NOS4A2
Absolutely. So good, I’m glad we’re both in favor of petitioning the state to protect an individual’s right to life, in this case via control control measures.
That story could have turned out very differently! It makes me wonder about what happened leading up to the story that brought together a fourteen year old, a mafioso, and a frequently fired stolen gun.
Exactly. What about THAT special interest group?
Well, it’s because he’s in that group, so it’s cool.
That’s a good question. Again, it’s good to look to other countries. There are buyback programs. I think Australia used something like this.
I think the sheer number is important — because with numbers that high, there’s bound to be more leakage— assuming we had rational gun regulations.
But since we don’t even have that, I think it takes priority before even thinking about lowering the number.
But to that end: Making guns more expensive, taxing them, etc. Like cigarettes. Not outlawed, but greatly discouraged (and I don’t necessarily agree in that specific case). That’s another idea.
Obviously I see it differently. I own property because I purchased it or made it. But then again, I only own the title. The government doesn’t claim to own my land, but it can except use tremendous control over it. I’m not even allowed to collect rain water. The government takes taxes on that property, and should I not give it to them, they take my property. Where I live they take my property, the fruits of my labor, in the form of taxes, at nearly every point of purchase. Sales tax, income tax, property tax, capital gains tax, are all instances of the government taking my property. Rather than protecting my right they outright violate it. Whatever is left over for me is akin to a fief.
Besides, governments have eminent domain. They can take my land at their whim and fancy so long as it suits their interests.
That’s how feudalism works. I get to live on a plot of the lord’s land, pay them a certain percentage of what I myself make and create through my own industry, so that I might find solace in the chance that my government will protect me should war come knocking. No thanks.
Restricting my rights to own a gun does not protect the rights of anyone else, for I have not violated anyone’s rights. Because of this, restricting my rights, and violating the rights of all across the board, is unjust and contrary to individual rights.
Yet the government reserves for itself the right to own weapons that can destroy the whole planet. Where is the gun control then? If this isn’t antithetical to the interests of the individual I don’t know what is.
What this all boils down to is that some people, those who get to don the dress of officialdom and power, get all the rights, while the rest of us get…what, exactly?
Is that how you protect someone’s right to life, by begging the government to restrict our rights?
Or in other cases, abortion control, the right to life via not being chopped up in a womb and sucked out with a vacuum. All this talk of protecting life suddenly falls on deaf ears when this subject comes up. I don’t believe any of it.
What kind of weapon would you use to protect your children, should the need ever arise? Ballots and petitions? Beg a politician?
Your ownership of the property is protected by the rule of law and from someone coming in and taking it from you by force.
I won't go into your anti-tax rant again. It rings hollow. You receive from the government far more than you [correction: give].
Quoting NOS4A2
The lord's land? You live in a fantasy. Did you or the lord build the infrastructure on that land?
Quoting NOS4A2
If it comes it will not knock. But the likelihood of it even coming is greatly reduced because our borders are guarded. But there is no need for you to be concerned. You have a gun.
Quoting NOS4A2
Once again, you need to look at the issue from a perspective that is not limited to you. You are not the only person with a gun. In addition, the example cited has nothing to do with guns.
Quoting NOS4A2
I agree that the arms race is a problem, but national security is not antithetical to the interests of the individual.
Quoting NOS4A2
It is not what it boils down to but rather what the narrowness of your understanding allows you to see.
Not begging, demanding. Demanding the government protect the individual right to life by restricting the ability of every nut who wants a gun. Like every other country without the mass shootings we have. Morally on par with restricting the freedom to drive a car without training/license. That's a just use of lawmaking, yes.
Or we can pretend the government can do no right and so resign ourselves to the inevitable fact that we're gonna have mass killings regularly. Nah.
Quoting NOS4A2
So you're in favor of abortion on principle and in favor of schooling shootings on principle. At least it's consistent. I'd prefer not having dead kids if possible.
Quoting NOS4A2
In the dystopian world you live in, where I guess this is a very real threat at any moment, I suppose I'd want whatever works best.
So I guess in your world a criminal entering my home negates the act of petitioning government. Once again, the logic is astounding.
Quoting NOS4A2
For god's sake, the world doesn't revolve around you.
I would spend part of the summer with my grandparents on the Gulf coast, very loosely supervised. I went crabbing and sold my take to Angelos Restaurant, where some mafia guys would eat. I noticed one of them would drive his Cadillac convertible into the parking lot behind the restaurant and leave it open. I hid in some bushes one evening with my bicycle and when he went in I opened his unlocked glove compartment and took the gun, getting on my bike and peddling furiously.
I also broke into a couple of antebellum mansions lying boarded up on the coast, their spacious lawns complete with ancient oaks, Spanish moss hanging from branches. Inside, the decor was post Civil War with deep somewhat tattered red velvet drapes and a sword or two hanging from the walls. I stole two old guns from those break-ins. One, a pistol, disappeared yeas ago and probably is still out there, functional from the 1890s.
Angelos and many of those impressive homes were destroyed by hurricane Camille in 1969.
These stories show how tapestries of gun ownership evolve.
I quit being a crime lord in the Fall of 1951.
According to nos there's no such thing as a community. Forget governments -- they're always gonna muck things up. Etc.
It really betrays a kind of ignorance of local governments. They do a fine job -- I like a lot of them. They run the water and keep the garbage collected and things like that.
Isn't it funny how a concrete issue like gun control measures has to get diverted to aspirations about mental health and "libertarian" rantings about "natural rights"?
In the real world, in the US, right now, we have a government that can enact gun laws that prevent children from being killed. We know this. Other countries have done it -- we've had some of the laws in place before as well. We see it on the state and local level as well. Whether "statist" or "anti-statist," this is the reality. So do we want to enact these laws so that less kids get shot, or not?
The answer for those (very sincerely and impartially) concerned about mental health, or about "individual rights," etc., at the end of the day: No.
We don't want these laws. We want to do nothing, or put MORE guns out there, with the ultimate goal that we're all armed 24/7 in the 1/10,000,000 chance that there's a school shooting.
The finding supports the idea that one cause–maybe THE cause–of mass murders is the failure of society to provide adequate mental health treatment -- treatment that should be readily available, effective, and covered by insurance or at public expense. Of course we provide no such thing. Mental health services are difficult to access, treatment beds are in short supply, there are not enough treatment staff to go around, and without insurance it is too expensive to afford, for most families.
Other studies have shown that the mental health of adolescents is not good (never mind the rest of the population).
So, maybe it isn't such a mystery why people go on shooting rampages.
BTW, @NOS isn't the only person to think that there is no such thing as society. He has Margaret Thatcher for company.
You're unhinged.
By what mechanism do men confer rights? And how do you reconcile this with your earlier statement:
I believe rights are naturally founded, derived from human nature, and not the edicts of those in power.
Some students who struggle with math might think teaching math is the bigger crime.
Thanks for the vivid telling of this true crime story.
It might well be 'mostly' disingenuous. It's not about the dismissal (God knows I can't preach about being summarily dismissive of stupid positions!), it's about the position that is being dismissed. If the NRA want to talk about the Second Amendment, or individual rights, or the threat from Government, then there's a solid counter to those arguments. They can indeed be summarily dismissed, but look what's happened here, on this thread.... Dozens of posts shooting down @NOS4A2's absurd John Wayne impression (like shooting fish in a barrel), but all there is on the 'Deaths of despair' as you call them, is a phobic caricaturing in the hope that the issue will go away.
Reasonable concerns have to be addressed reasonably, no matter what their source (or even motivation) because anything less robs the whole issue of it's ground in human compassion and makes it look more like a spat among football fans as to whose team has the best goalkeeper.
How many of these shooters would not take a high capacity semiautomatic rifle to school if they did not have one?
Although suicide is a mental health issue not everyone who becomes suicidal suffers from mentally ill.
The majority of suicides by gun are not mass murders. The majority of deaths by gun are not mass murder.
The only common factor in all these cases is guns. We should do more to adequately address mental health but it is not on its own the answer.
:yawn:
Quoting Isaac
In that case: yes, I think mental health is very important indeed and would be happy to discuss the causes and what can be done about it. On this thread, however, it’s avoiding the issue of gun control.
I don't see how. I see it like this...
1. There's a need for gun control so we campaign for it saying things like "the only difference between the US and other countries is gun law - hence that's what needs to change"
2. The NRA come up with "Ah! It's also to do with mental health, if we address that we don't need to give up our rights"
The question, on the issue of gun control, is what we do next.
You say "tell 'em they're just NRA shills trying to derail the debate". Well how's that working out? Gun ownership doubled last year.
So our response, is exactly on the issue of gun control, it's not avoiding it, it's the main issue because its our opponent's main argument and they're currently winning.
A majority want gun control. In some instances a vast majority, including republicans. So they’re really not winning— not with their arguments anyway. They win by buying off politicians and through gerrymandering and through stocking the courts, etc.
But yes we should talk about healthcare when it’s appropriate. In the meantime: gun measures to prevent the mentally ill from obtaining a gun has huge public support.
Yes, it is the case that a mentally healthy person may wish to commit suicide (to relieve unbearable physical pain, for instance), but it is a safe generalization to claim suicides are the result of mental illness.
300 million guns are of course central to this whole issue, but if you--or anyone else--can come up with a way of retrieving even a few million of the guns in private hands LET'S HEAR IT. Guns in the United States are like perfluorocarbons--ubiquitous. (Still, 1/3 of Americans don't own guns). With respect to guns there are two legislative steps that could help (future condition tense) IF they were passed at the federal level: 1) lift the liability shield for gun manufacturers 2) ban further manufacture of most kinds of guns. Lifting the liability shield might accomplish #2.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes. The vast majority of suicides by gun are private affairs. School shootings in particular are public and highly reactive events for obvious reasons.
We still need many more mental health resources available, not just for kiddie killers but because there are a lot of people out there whose mental health is in poor shape (10%? that's what it was 50 years ago. 15%? 20%?) Suicide isn't the only mental health issue, obviously.
Right's only have any meaningful use in the context of a government and legal system with enforcement methods. What you argue for, ironically, is only made possible by the thing you're against. Property rights have no meaning without a government to recognize it. Sure you can claim it's yours but unless you plan to defend it 24/7 there is nothing stopping someone from saying it's theirs and booting you off.
I do think there has to be stronger controls for gun ownership though. Having held and fired a gun before (at a range) I find it incomprehensible that folks wouldn't treat these things with more gravity than we currently do.
The more accesible guns are to the general public, the more their ownership will be abused/misused. The more shootings of innocent parties will arise. This is a natural outcome of arms availability.
My question would then be, why is the government and military so untrustworthy that civilians feel that gun ownership is a requirement to feel safe/protected?
Either one feels that those with guns are their protectors in which case guns can be limited to those protective forces, or one feels the armed forces could turn on civilians at any moment in which case there is concensus to universally possess arms for self defence.
The desire to have lethal force at hand, is a direct reflection of the expectation that it may ever be needed.
Sadly, frequently the police can only come in and pick up the pieces. And I doubt that large numbers of Americans fear their own military. Quite a few of us served.
The idea that some men must work for governments in order for rights to be meaningful and useful is nonsense. I can confer a right to you and defend it just as any king or official can.
But protecting them from being shot is a good thing, right?
Of course.
So as long as we don't gnash our teeth over not being allowed to cut up children with scissors, you're with us then?
I don’t think restricting someone’s rights protects anyone. Protecting a child from being shot involves putting life and limb on the line, or neutralizing a threat. Advocating for policy is advocating for policy.
Restricting the right to drive to people who can actually drive doesn't protect anyone?
Yes. Do you believe you’re protecting some potential human, in some potential situation, at some time and place in the future? What does he look like?
I see. In order to protect people, you must know what they look like. This is why e.g. the military are required to look at a photo of every person in their country before they go on a tour of duty. Always wondered about that. Thx.
No. In order to protect someone they must first exist outside of the imagination.
I see. So banning guns from America would protect imaginary children but not real ones who would continue to be killed by the imaginary guns that no longer exist. And as only imaginary guns kill real children and real guns only kill imaginary children, gun control cannot protect children in reality but only in the imagination. Wow, thx.
Let anyone fly a plane — you think restricting their rights will protect anyone? That’s in the future. Who are you to play God? They never crashed a plane before and don’t intend to. So you’re in no position to restrict their rights, you statist.
Anyway, yeah most Americans don’t want the mentally ill to have guns and want background checks. Close to 90%. Turns out they care more about the right for children not to get shot than some libertarian nutjob’s Minority Report view of crime.
My only point is that restricting someone’s rights is not the same as protecting children. You’re welcome.
It can clearly amount to the same thing. We restrict the rights of sex offenders to be alone with children, for example, to PROTECT those children.
I also think it's funny. But then, I'm a raging nihilist.
So, you think it's better to protect individual pedophiles and libertarian nutjobs because they are "individuals" and not the "populace". The populace is made up of individuals too, you know.
No you can't.
But you don’t restrict the rights of everyone to be alone with children so as to protect children. Isn’t that so?
Why not?
It’s a fallacy for a reason.
What's a fallacy and which fallacy is it? And please, for the love of God, reply with something that makes sense.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
We do restrict the rights of every employer to employ children or discriminate based on sex, race, etc. in order to protect children and other marginalized groups. Is that ok?
You restrict the rights of children to work. What if they want to? Instead they have to sell chiclets on the streets.
I didn't say anywhere that gun control must be good only because the majority are in favour of it.
You didn’t answer my question.
As a business owner, shouldn’t I have the right to hire whomever I want, for whatever reason? I should also have the right to pay whatever wage I want, but the government restricts these rights. My question is whether or not you think this restriction is justified.
Selling chiclets on the street is a form of work. Children are free to start their own business, and many do. But it’s ridiculous to think that employers should be forced to hire a child simply because the child wants to work.
I do not think so.
It’s true. I wasn’t directing it at you.
So, the world would be a better place if businesses were able to exploit child labor?
No it wouldn’t.
Lol, then why would you prefer that to be the case? If not allowing businesses to hire children is unjustified, then that implies businesses should be able to hire children.
I don't think Xtrix made that type of argument either. It's relevant to wonder in the context of a debate over government policy in a supposed democracy at the disparity between such policy and the wishes of the vast majority of its citizens. That doesn't fall foul of the fallacy you've mentioned but points to the corrupt influence of special interests.
What will a child do if they are forced to work because the rest of their family is unable to, but they are not allowed to work because some white night fears a Dickensian nightmare? Selling Chiclets to tourists or far worse.
Yes. Gun rights aren’t sensible because a huge majority believe they are; in this case, it’s so sensible that a huge majority (even in a deeply divided nation and among gun owners) are in favor of it. Basically common sense.
Quoting Pinprick
Oh the good ol’ days before child labor laws! You know, when children’s “rights” (wink wink) to work weren’t violated by a meddling bureaucracy and employers could exploit workers with impunity.
Looking for a true libertarianism paradise? Look no further.
Which is why we shouldn’t have a society where kids (or anyone) are “forced to work.” We know you want to keep it this way by abandoning all social programs, but try not projecting your fantasies on others.
“What if the government helps them out so they don’t have to do either? We’re a very wealthy country, after all.”
“Collectivist/statist!”
Good god, imagine holding this ideology?
I’m sure you’ve helped plenty of children get off the streets. Let me guess: restricting everyone’s rights helps the children—unless it’s Hollywood. They can hire whomever they want.
So sarcasm and a red herring from the Trump guy always talking about “fallacies.”
No surprise — I wouldn’t want to explain why I support school shootings and child labor exploitation either.
What about the people in houses that I could potentially crash into? Well, that’s in the future— and imaginary. Who are these people I’m “protecting”, after all? Can you name them? What’s the color of their eyes? Their rights aren’t as important as restricting my right to fly.
Likewise, anyone should be allowed to buy a gun. It’s also a totally natural right. Been posting about shooting up schools for months? Well, who knows what the future brings— here’s your AR-15. Your right to “defend yourself” is more important than schoolchildren’s rights to life.
If the government were to fall tomorrow, would you deny someone the right to life, or steal their property?
You can't get around it.
And therefor you wouldn’t confer someone the right to life or to own property, let alone advocate or protect such rights. Is that correct?
I just told you property has no meaning without a legal system and the recognition it brings. In fact that’s literally how it came about.
I think you’re just willfully stupid at this point, pretty much everyone is saying something similar to what I am.
There are no such rights because you refuse to give them. You will not afford anyone the right to life or the right to own anything. And of course you will not defend them. Only government can do that.
From Pew...
Quoting https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/09/13/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/
... I don't call that 'not winning'. And this is just 'stricter laws'. With most gun deaths being handguns, we need a lot more than 'stricter laws'.
Quoting Mikie
Indeed. So what chance do you think the "we need stricter laws" campaign has? The consistent refusal to widen out the debate just leads every campaign to butt its head up against this brick wall. You're arguing here to keep a debate on-focus to a solution that you've just admitted will never work because no matter how much support it has, the government are corrupt and won't pass it.
So what's the focus for?
Maybe they have, but you missed something. There are organizations helping, some of which are kept going by taxes. Specialists, because an individual can't be a specialist in all. Roads, infrastructures, hospitals, schools, organized health care, electricity, clean water, sewage systems, whatever, elected officials taking the job of organizing things (employees of everyone in a society), ... And shrinks helping survivors of school shootings, that would have been better off with fewer guns available to whoever.
Florida bill to allow gun owners to carry without permit heads to Gov. DeSantis' desk
[sup]— James Call · USA TODAY · Mar 31, 2023[/sup]
In a way, I'd rather see something like a new Moon race (perhaps even a Mars race, but not an arms race), better forward goals, and that can't be achieved by a couple of anti-cooperators. If you're one of those, then you have no chance of taking on, say, North Korea, or just Cosa Nostra's Chicago chapter.
Quoting NOS4A2
I never said that. I only mentioned why it has so far been enacted. There was a (albeit weak) gun bill passed last year, which surprised some people. It’s not impossible for the majority to win out— it’s just a matter of effort and time.
Can you get back to this question? https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/794202
It’s the nature of their capitalism to sell and and such make profits whether that be guns or bullet a or happy meal
Even a sane person with no priors can go mental and shoot people.
You just have to hope you’re not there
Yes NOS, if only everyone would behave and not take anything from anyone else and if someone did take something from someone else we should defend the person who was wronged.
If only ...
Do you really need to be told that this is not the way the world works?
There is this myth held by Americans that they are more free and have more liberties than others, thanks to their constitution, and the "free ownership" of guns guaranteed to them is a sign of this for many. Secondly, guns are seen as defense of their home, not something you have for hunting or for a shooting hobby. It is as if you would be naive and totally dependent on the government without a gun, but with a gun you can independently defend your home and family. And then you have a gun culture that harks back the frontier era.
And one has to say that owning a firearm is quite popular: nearly every third American owns one and nearly half of the American households have a firearm. That means that arms manufacturers hope for some politician coming into power to attempt to "ban firearms" in the US. The demand spike would be great for them.
We use our reason, speech, and bodies to derive, confer, and protect rights, like any right that has ever been uttered.
We observe human nature in order to find what is universal about human beings. For instance, humans need to speak, to communicate, to be creative. So we grant them the freedom to speak, refuse to intervene when they are doing so, and defend that right if necessary.
Who are we? Vigilantes?
Quoting NOS4A2
Again, who are we?
There are plenty of people, from individuals to school board members to the governor of Florida, who attempt to do away with that freedom. In many cases they succeed.
We are human beings.
It’s the nature of state education to have its curriculum determined by the state. If you want to tell kids about sex I would advise doing it at home.
Something something human nature, something something natural rights, blah blah blah collectivism blah blah blah I hate paying taxes and read too much Ayn Rand yada yada yada. :yawn:
“Child labor is wrong.”
“But what if a kid wants to work?”
“What if a kid wants to learn about sex in school?”
“Too bad.”
Your optimism is admirable. I'm afraid I don't share it.
I’m not that optimistic, but it’s possible. Look at civil rights, women’s rights, gay marriage, even attitudes towards marijuana. Look at the IRA and gun bill last year. They’re both way too weak and I’m not an apologist for either, but I don’t think either of us would have predicted that even they would pass.
Regardless, this is on the federal level. On the state and city level, which I’ve increasingly focused on politically, things are much less gridlocked. Not to mention more energy in the labor movement. All gives me more hope than others perhaps.
How are we human beings to protect ourselves from ourselves? Do you think that everyone who is not part of the government cares about your interests and will rush to defend you and your rights? Can your guns protect you if you are outnumbered or overpowered?
Quoting NOS4A2
Don't change the subject. You claimed:
Quoting NOS4A2
There are individuals, human beings, who are not part of a state educational system who are actively working to limit freedom of speech. As human beings they too are included in "we". So, "we" human beings also deny others freedom of speech. "We" also intervene when "they", (who are also "we"), want to uphold freedom of speech. "We" also deny that right if necessary.
At this point it’s just willful ignorance
I see nothing wrong with the Parental Rights in Education bill because it restricts the power of the state and expands the power of parents. State employees ought not have the power to instruct children in gender ideology. Those teachers can teach their own kids about sexuality as much as they wish, but they ought not have that same power over other children.
I see nothing right with your attempt to evade the issue. But since you wont address those issues I'll address the one you raise in their place.
A bill that passes becomes part of the power of the state. This bill does not expand the power of parents. Despite the name of the bill it represents the very thing you claim to be opposed to, the power of the state.
The state of Florida, not the county, not the town, or the city, or the school district, or the school itself has any right to teach as it deems appropriate. All state employees must comply with the ideology of the state, an ideology that hides from students ugly parts of American history.
But it is not just elementary and secondary education. With the hostile takeover of New College, and his battle with the college board over African American studies, DeSantis's reach extends to college education as well.
Quoting NOS4A2
It would be surprising to hear you argue for limits to free speech given your argument against limiting free speech, but we have come to expect inconsistency and lack of coherence from you.
I don’t know the details of the bill but I still don’t think race and gender ideology ought to be taught in public schools. Tax-payer dollars ought not to be spent on such schooling. But if this bill extends to private institutions, businesses, and universities, then that is wrong and I oppose it.
In the general case, it's not quite that simple.
Better communication could help prevent deaths like Alex Radita's, inquiry hears
[sup]— Jason Herring · Calgary Herald · Sep 22, 2022[/sup]
Alex Radita (1998-2013) could have avoided much suffering and death, and instead experienced life. In my personal opinion (of little importance), the sentences of the parents were harsh, yet the case shows a problem.
You continue to ignore the problem. You are against the power of the state, except when you are in favor of what it does.
Who gets to decide how tax-payer dollars ought to be spent? It can't be the tax-payers if there are tax-payers on both sided of the issue. This is the same problem you refuse to face with "we". For you it really means "you".
As you know I’m against taxation. You are for it. I don’t want the state to dictate anything. You do. So what’s the problem with the state doing just what you want it to?
People who call taxation theft are IMO idiots who don't understand how societies function.
The stupidest thing anyone has ever believed is that only taxes can pay for roads and infrastructure. Private companies build the vast majority of roads and infrastructure, and they don’t collect taxes.
Those are toll roads. They do collect funds, they just don't call it taxes.
I meant construction companies do not collect taxes.
It's not their job to collect taxes. They do receive public funds for public works, though.
They receive contracts from governments and private people. The point is, governments do not build roads.
They could if they wanted to.
Way to legislate your own feelings. So you’re fine with restricting the rights of others if it suits your fascist agenda. Got it.
There's absolutely nothing fascist about his agenda.
Once again you avoid answering the question. It is not a matter of whether or not you are against taxes. Taxes are paid.
Quoting Fooloso4
Eh, at this point it’s like whack-a-mole. Almost random snippets, but no consistency and no logic. Perhaps leave the man and his fascist agenda to his dreamworld and let him be happy with that.
They same people who you want to decide how your money is spent get to decide how your money is spent. How is this so difficult?
Yeah, sure we do make progress. What matter, I think, is how. Did those campaigns succeed just by continually banging the drum, or was it something else? Or... did some succeed just by attrition where others needed something more. Let's not forget, the authorities were, at one point, terrified of the civil rights movement. It was not sufficient for them to merely point out the law needed changing. and yet with gay marriage (not that I'd want to undermine the excellent campaigning done toward that end, but...) it was pretty easily won, by comparison. All that was required really was to keep pointing out how unfair it was and eventually there was enough political will to act.
If you look at the trajectory of progressive success over the last 100 years, I don't think it's random. we've seen an unrelenting concentration of power and wealth in the hands of an increasingly small number of people, but alongside that an increasing amount of freedom regarding the expression of individual identity. Lifestyle choices, sexuality, family etc all seem very much on the cards for progressive change. Economics very much a battle fought tooth and nail for every millimetre of ground.
Hence my pessimism. It's not that I don't see progress, it's that I see that progress being very specific. I think a movement to restrict gun ownership to those with a licence (if easily obtained) might work, and would certainly help - because it's not an economic change, it doesn't really change the fundamental sociao0economic structure of the country. But it also won't help (not much anyway). The country is so suffuse with gun that a psycho is going to have little trouble getting hold of one, licence or no.
What's needed to have an impact, is a change in culture (so that there's actually fewer guns around), and that removes a huge economic tranche from the system (not to mention changing a culture which makes good compliant little consumers out of the now terrified population). That's an economic change, and if history is anything to go by, those in power are going to have to be terrified of those pushing for change before anything will happen... At the moment, they're not even missing a step over it. they have a totally compliant population who treat the word of authority as if it were gospel, why on earth would they change?
There's nothing random about his posts. They're very consistent and logical. If you familiarize yourself with fascism, you'll see that his view is exactly the opposite of it.
It's not the foundation that's inconsistent and illogical, it's the manifestation. One can reasonably hold an ideological position that we ought maximise individual freedom, that we ought not impose on others, that we ought let people say what they want and manage the consequences... These are perhaps not positions I agree with, but they are valid foundational principles and (as you say) not fascist.
But the issue is how to get there from here. It's in that issue that the inconsistency is manifest, as is the fascism. Taking what we currently have, for example, and just ditching government regulation is fascism (it would be a fascism of corporate rule).
It is inconsistent to argue, for example, for current wage and property practices (predicated entirely on the assumption of taxation) and then argue also for the removal of those taxes.
Positions which hold individual freedom as paramount are not, in themselves, the problem. It's position which want to take all the benefits accrued from not have done so for millennia and then keep the wealth whilst ditching the responsibility. That's the inconsistency.
Fascism is specifically about nationalism and an aggressive military. The ills of corporate rule are not correctly called "fascism ". It's just the dark side of liberalism.
It would have helped in this case. And at least it’s a sensible start. Gotta start with the low hanging fruit.
But I don’t disagree: for significant changes to happen, you need to tackle issues like power — wealth inequality, etc., and that is certainly harder and will receive more pushback.
As long as pessimism isn’t a preventative for action, I’ve no problem with it.
According to what you have said:
People = human beings = we
I don’t get it.
Yes. That is the point. You are unable to think through what you say. Go back, starting with your rejection of the general or common good and go step by step to your acceptance of "we the people" to the tangled mess you are in now.
Oh dear. My rejecting of the “common good” and “we the people” does not prohibit me from using first-person plurals. What an odd little angle you’ve taken.
Like you said, you don't get it.
It is talking to you that leads nowhere.
I can’t blame someone for getting on the tax-payer gravy chain, vying for state contracts, and becoming ultra-wealthy thereby. But it is stolen money. Anyone can do any of the above without stealing someone’s money and without forced cooperation.
Or gravy train. It's excellent gravy.
Hah. Thanks.
Yet being a citizen and being a consumer aren't synonyms.
Fascism is a pretty general term these days, but it's exact meaning isn't the point.
Quoting Mikie
Indeed. Rest assured I'm pissing more people off in the real word than suffer from my "militancy" here.
It shouldn't be. It had a specific meaning that we do well to keep in mind because it was associated with a disaster we don't want to repeat. Using it as an all purpose insult is a dishonor to all the victims of real fascism.
I think that is a good point. What’s missing from both is the morality. It would be nice if we didn’t need both, either state-enforced cooperation or private interest, to tackle social ills such as poverty and redistribution.
All I know is morality cannot be developed through immoral means such as coercion and involuntary association. We’ve tried all that and the results are nothing to be proud of. Freedom has always been the only condition under which any kind of moral fiber can be developed. Unfortunately I fear those conditions will never be realized.
Nice! :clap:
You can argue that both are forced upon the individual, but I think a lot of it isn't forced upon us.
Citizenship of a country and the idea of nation-state does create social cohesion were there wouldn't otherwise be much if any. It can unite the rich and the poor and with it we overcome our ethnic and racial differences. It's not something that was invented in the 19th Century, the idea of being "Roman" being something else than just having been born in one city is the obvious historical example of this. In fact, before the 19th Century when various people in the Balkans got their independence, a lot of them had still referred themselves as being Romans, even if having lived under the Ottoman Empire and East-Rome having died a long time ago. The idea of a nation, and citizens making the nation, is quite a successful one. Yes, some young people are surprised when they understand the fact that it's all a made up thing, but often they then don't understand just how important as a "made up thing" this is. A lot of things similarly "made up" by people are essential. The World of "post"-everything hasn't arrived yet and actually will never arrive.
Collectivism of the national sort does compel one to conform, and conformity does work well towards “social cohesion”. Many embrace it as it can give one a sense of belonging in an otherwise alienating world.
But wherever a group is represented in people’s minds through its more salient features, whether it be shared government, religion, race, and so on, those features will invariably be used against that group in a fashion that blinds one to the unique and original characteristics of any individual person.
One need not adopt another collective myth to find affinity with other others, especially one that is exclusive to a vast majority of human beings. Nationalism is often used as an excuse to persecute outsiders, to engage in war, and to increase state prestige and power at the expense of individual human rights, and no amount of social conformity is worth it.
hmmm... I think we need to go a step deeper. What is your definition of a "right"? Describe a basic situation in a theoretical base state (so no social institutions yet) where "rights" are derived, conferred. Who does the protecting and why?
This contradicts with the following:
Quoting NOS4A2
There's nothing universal about people. In my view trying that approach is begging for committing a naturalistic fallcy anyway. There's always some psychopath out there who doesn't think the right to life exists. Or has quaint ideas of when it's ok to dispense with the right to protect what they think is a higher norm.
Rights are a kind of normative principle. We entitle people to act within a sphere of acceptable activity. These entitlements are afforded to others in order to let them know we will not intervene in these activities, and defend them if necessary.
I observe that humans tend to speak. I conclude that it is in their nature to speak, that speaking is required to live. So I confer the right to speak. Since I confer the right I do not intervene when they speak and defend them as they do. No institution required.
—
The quoted statements do not contradict each other because one is concerned with human nature and the other with sub-group characteristics and dynamics. One can observe what is universal about human beings while at the same time remembering what is unique and original about each of them.
—
The biology is universal. From it comes a variety of needs and tendencies. We need to eat, drink, and breathe, for example. We tend to move. We tend to speak. We tend to find shelter. We tend to associate with others. What is wrong with founding a set of principles upon these most basic needs and tendencies?
I still don't know what you think a right is based on this. I'd think it's not such a complicated question for you to dance around the answer like this. I'm assuming you're not thinking of legal rights at this point yet. For instance, I could define a moral right as an entitlement to have, receive or do something that has an underlying justification. Anything to add, remove or change in your view? (And yes, I do intend to go into what the underlying justification would be at some point).
Quoting NOS4A2
Even without law, custom and social norms constrain what is acceptable to say. For instance, I don't think people should lie or be mean to others - eg. I believe there are also moral obligations towards others, which means there's no right to lie or be mean. As a result, your example doesn't make sense to me for such reasons; it's simply not absolute nor can it be reduced to platitudes. But let's move on. What happens when you confer a right? What changes in the world because you do that? In other words, why should anybody care what you have to say about what rights exist, you conferring a right and being prepared to defend it? How do you imagine moving from these opinions to law?
Quoting NOS4A2
They are contradictory in practice because you mistakenly assume people are going to agree on what is universal. Religious people will insist on other universal characteristics, real or perceived, than atheists, for instance. So the attempts at classification of human nature automatically leads to sub-groups and therefore glosses over what makes people unique and original.
Quoting NOS4A2
I think you're once again flirting with an appeal to nature fallacy and an is-ought gap to boot. Violence/aggression is also universally present. Everybody has a right to be violent? I'd hope not. Not everything found in nature, even if universally present, equates to moral behaviour. Anyway, from your list, everybody has a right to eat, drink and breathe. So if you have enough food for two, another starving person has a right to half of it?
I’ll try to make it more clear. As I said, rights are a kind of normative principle. A principle is a basic idea or rule. A normative principle is a basic idea or rule that informs conduct and behavior. This would include legal rights.
—
Your moral obligations do not make sense to me because they are unjust and born of feelings. They do not consider whether someone is deserving of being lied to, or whether the situation demands that someone lies. Sometimes lying and insult are key to various art forms, like satire, irony, and fiction. It is because of justice, not feelings, that the freedom to speak includes the right to lie and be mean.
Nothing happens once you confer a right. A right is declared, and that’s about it, I’m afraid. Nothing is exchanged. No one has to care. The one who declares the right must reify it, must promote and defend it, or do nothing, and it will end up a meaningless gesture.
—
No, not everyone has a right to be violent because it would violate another’s rights. But if someone transgresses your rights and becomes violent toward you, you absolutely do have the right to be violent. So some people have the right to be violent. It is also why we ought to have the right to own weapons.
No one is saying that because it is natural it must be good, or one ought to do something because it is natural. It’s just that human nature is a far better indicator of what rights are necessary to live and enjoy living. It is far better than the circularity of observing law, in my opinion. How do you know whether a legal right is morally right or wrong? How would law make illegal a legal right to own slaves? Were the Nazis innocent because they were just following the law?
So according to you there are no situations where lying is unjustified and immoral? You mention exceptions to a proposed exception. Reasoning a contrario there is still an exception. Here's an egregious example where I think lying is not justified:
A father rapes his daughter. I know about it but when asked whether he rapes his daughter I say "no".
How do you deal with the above situation according to your ideas?
You refer to justice as a source of rights but I'm not aware of what you consider the nature of justice. I've seen you making appeals to nature, which is a fallacy. You backtrack a bit but then repeat that "human nature is a far better indicator of what righs are necessary to live and enjoy living". So we're back to a fallacy. How do you know when nature isn't a good indicator? It appears to me, what you have is a theory where you arbitrarily decide "ooh, natural" and then when it doesn't give you the result that you want "well, there's still justice" without having any clue what justice is. Basically, you're just making things up as you go along to meet whatever moral intuitions you have.
And then you attribute "feelings" to my position. It's a bit funny really.
Also, Quoting Benkei
How do you deal with this?
In the natural state, there's also no property. Which I'm pretty sure you think is rather important.
Not according to me because I never said anything close to that.
I never said something is good or bad because it is natural or unnatural, which is a fallacy. I said nature is a good indicator of what is necessary for survival and to enjoy living. That means simply that nature provides us with evidence.
What is your evidence? What do you observe in order to inform your position? Law? Empathy?
Everyone has a right to eat, drink, and breathe. It just means that one should not prohibit another from eating, drinking, and breathing. This is basic stuff.
Sure there is. Men have always occupied land and had their things.
Maybe you missed my questions:
How do you know whether a legal right is morally right or wrong? How would law make illegal a legal right to own slaves? Were the Nazis innocent because they were just following the law?
That sense of belonging and social cohesion is important in an otherwise alienating world, especially when we inherently have different ideas of how things should be and we actually might not share much in common with others.
Quoting NOS4A2
Invariably?
One could argue that invariably every idea considered moral or just can be abused. Yet that doesn't give us much.
Quoting NOS4A2
And what would be that kumbayah-thing? I don't think "my-myself-and-I" would be that.
Washington state has now banned selling assault weapons
[sup]— KING 5 Seattle · Apr 25, 2023[/sup]
Small steps...?
Good news! Yet... I am wondering if the Supreme Court would declare that law as "unconstitutional", when the judges will experience the pressure by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE),
[quote=CNN;https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/19/europe/serbia-mass-shootings-gun-violence-protests-intl/index.html] Two weeks after mass shootings shook their country, Serbians have surrendered more than 15,000 weapons, more than 2,500 explosive devices, and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, as part of a month-long amnesty announced by the government.[/quote]
Something similar happened in Australia in 1996 after the Port Arthur Massacre.
Other countries respond to mass shootings in a way that the USA never does - because of the dogma about the right of gun ownership being equated with freedom.
Ideas have consequences.
Not only that.
Also because Americans think they have to have a gun to protect their home from criminals. Not for hunting (although there are people still living in the countryside) and for a shooting hobby. Hence there can be a lot of Americans that own a firearm, but never use it and aren't actually so familiar in it's use.
Is that so?
Sure. The relationship between gun ownership and assaults/homicides extremely weak nationally. There is also a negative relationship between gun ownership and homicide rates internationally, with the highest homicide states in the world, mostly in Latin America, having quite low rates of firearms ownership.
But this is sort of a chicken and egg problem. Many Americans cities with the strictest gun control laws have some of the highest homicide rates. However, historically, they often only have strict gun control laws because of their high homicide rates, and gun control still seems to reduce homicide rates to some degree.
You do, however, have wealthy, highly educated counties with extremely low, European levels of homicides and fairly high firearm ownership (e.g. Vermont as a whole).
That said, there is a positive relationship between all "gun deaths," and gun ownership. This includes accidents (rare) and suicides (suprisingly common in the US). But generally, what people are most concerned about, is the crime.
People from low crime, high trust areas where fire arm ownership is more common than not seem to have a hard time understanding how their hobby can have such disastrous consequences elsewhere, because weapons are easily moved from place to place. It gets reduced to, "why punish the person who is doing everything right?" And from there, it's easy to turn this dissonance towards "government plots," to roll back freedoms.
But in the USA, it's well-known that there's a clear correlation between high rates of gun ownership, generally, and high rates of gun deaths including homicide. I checked with ChatGPT who came back with some sources.
Q: Do you have any figures on relatonships between rates of gun ownership and homicide in the USA?
ChatGPT: Research indicates a significant positive association between gun ownership and firearm homicide rates in the United States. This connection is critical for informing public health policy:
1. A study cited on SpringerLink noted that the U.S. has high rates of firearm homicides and high gun prevalence, with a significant positive association historically observed between the two. The study used more elaborate estimates of gun ownership across the 50 states to analyze this relationship??.
2. According to Phys.org, an econometric study conducted by economist Karim Chalak and his colleagues focused on the U.S. gun ownership rate and its correlation with homicide rates, underscoring the importance of this relationship??.
3. Research summarized by the British Medical Journal's Injury Prevention publication showed that state-level gun ownership is positively associated with firearm homicide rates. This research incorporated a newly developed proxy measure that includes the hunting license rate and the proportion of firearms??.
4. A Rutgers study reported by ScienceDaily found that concealed guns significantly impact homicide rates and public safety, with an observed increase in homicides correlating with the number of concealed carry weapons??.
5. The Harvard Injury Control Research Center summarized scientific literature on the relationship between gun prevalence (levels of household gun ownership) and various forms of violence. The literature concludes that higher levels of gun ownership correlate with more gun suicides, total suicides, gun homicides, and total homicides??.
https://rockinst.org/blog/more-guns-more-death-the-fundamental-fact-that-supports-a-comprehensive-approach-to-reducing-gun-violence-in-america/
The data @Count Timothy von Icarus gave doesn’t seem to jive with others. No reference is provided, so I haven’t checked yet, but my guess is that the parameters are skewed. 2001-2004 is also an odd sample.
I think the most convincing evidence is looking internationally. Comparing the total numbers of guns to gun deaths/mass shootings, and it’s very obvious there’s a correlation. And a strong one. The United States has by far more guns than any other country (but not per capita)— over 400 million. It’s also an outlier for deaths.
So the more guns, the more deaths from guns.
Mass shootings is harder, because it’s harder to define. But going with 4 or more people killed (not including gunman), the rates have risen steadily in the past decade.
They’re still very rare, but far more than other countries that don’t have so many guns, or so lenient gun regulations.
There’s plenty of sensible things we can do for this problem, but unfortunately nut-job “libertarians” and other right-wing fascists, armed with their Nickelodeon notions of freedom and governance, interpret the second amendment as the Supreme Court did in Heller (2008), and view it as holy writ.
We got here for one reason, though: Gun manufacturers, their propaganda and their lobbyists, particularly the NRA.
Once it became wrapped up with identity— the old west, rugged individualism, masculinity, small government, freedom, etc — it was over. I don’t blame the indoctrinated masses who keep voting in the NRA shills. It was the gun manufacturers all along. Follow the money, and it usually reveals the answer.
Absolutely, that's why I called it out. Blind Freddie can see what is happening with US Gun Crimes.
(Wikipedia)
The comment was that there were areas of high gun ownership with very low crime, which is true. The entire state of Vermont is an example. The correlation is weak for countries too, but this has more to do with homicides being more common in low income countries and firearms being expensive.
Nor does 2014 look much different from 2004.
My point isn't by any means that gun control doesn't work. Evidence is that it does. My point was that some people fail to understand this because they live in relatively wealthy counties with quite low violent crime despite many people owning fire arms. And they can look to cities and states with much strict gun control and see far higher crime there, including crime using firearms.
The correlation does exist if you use enough controls (or cherry pick your sample), but then hacking becomes a concern. The correlation is also strong if you consider all gun deaths, but then suicide is normally not what the debate is about (when you see a strong correlation between "gun deaths" and gun ownership, this is including suicides.)
Spree killings common enough to be relevant for the gun control debate, but not common enough to meaningfully effect overall US homicide rates.
For example, if you consider the OECD as a sample:
It's not that there isn't a relationship, it's that it isn't straightforward or simple.
This is only tangentially related to what I said though. I was talking about low crime areas within the United States, of which there are many.
Not to mention, how do you pick you "developed countries," for the sample. If you excluded the US, Switzerland would be an outlier and your relationship is destroyed.
I got that, but in general, the correlation between extremely high rates of gun ownership and high rates of gun-related deaths is indisputable. I'm quite aware that there are areas of the US where not much gun violence is seen but on the other hand, mass shootings can seem to occur practically anywhere in America, with no precedent or any real provocation.
True, that number is zero, whereas the numbers of deaths that could have been prevented from occurring through the use of a firearm is greater than zero.
Now I'm gonna have to shoot you.
It isn’t.
The US has more mass shooters than any other country, and far more guns.
America has six times as many firearm homicides as Canada, and nearly 16 times as many as Germany
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/
We have more guns than people.
States with more guns have more gun deaths:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/pro-gun-myths-fact-check/
Worth checking this out too:
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GxOJC1HKqTRUzV87l6JODphQCDQ=/0x0:1916x1721/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1916x1721):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/12543393/GUN_SCATTER2.jpg
It’s really not that complicated. The issue is guns and gun regulations.
Well, they're just not TRYING hard enough.
What about studies that exclude suicide but do include accidental deaths?
Oh, I'm for reasonable gun control as are most gun owners in the US. But outright gun bans including of law enforcement and the military is practiced... Uummm... nowhere on planet Earth.
Yes it is. "The US has more mass shootings," can be true, and "fire arms ownership is not correlated with homicide rates across the world's countries," can both be true. The one does not refute the other. Nor does the weak correlation denote that gun control wouldn't reduce homicides in the US. As I pointed out, the relationship is weak because guns are expensive and homicides tend to be higher in poorer countries for a host of reasons not directly related to firearms. Second, very violent countries are more likely to have banned fire arms, but they will still be violent due to the initial conditions that spurred the gun control, which makes the relationship look weaker.
I'm all for gun control, but advocates do themselves a disservice by wanting to argue that there is any simple, direct relationship between the prevalence of firearms and homicides. Even time series data is fraught, because the US gun craze intensified greatly across the 90s-2010s even as our violent crime rate plunged nationally.
I am in favor of stricter gun control. I think mass shootings are a large enough issue to warrant gun control. But this has nothing to do with the point I was making, which is simply that you can have extremely high rates of firearms ownership without much by way of violent crime. The counter point to that is not "yes, but the US has more mass shootings." It would be "no, northern New England doesn't have a lot of firearms and low crime," which isn't true.
Spree shootings aren't common enough to shift the numbers on US homicide rates generally, which is why the numbers you're looking at do nothing to belie the fact that there is a weak, often negative correlation between firearms ownership and homicides at the state/county level.
IDK, I haven't seen those numbers. I would imagine that if they were strong, gun control advocates would use them more often, instead of blending suicide deaths in, which opens them up to attacks since there is a strong substitution of methods in suicide cases, and banning guns doesn't seem to be a particularly effective way to reduce suicides (unlike gun violence). But there are shooting accidents, so I'm sure it does move the numbers.
No, it isn’t. As is well documented. I provided several links worth following.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It’s not a disservice, it’s true. Adding “simple and direct” doesn’t change things, in my view.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3828709/#:~:text=Gun%20ownership%20was%20a%20significant,Conclusions.
And I’m not just talking about ownership, I’m talking about number of guns and ease of which they can be obtained in the US.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I’m sure it’s possible. So what?
I've already posted the correlations between homicide rates and gun ownership, for the OECD, all nations, and all states. Your links are about different things (mass shootings, all gun deaths - including suicides, etc.). Your other chart on "gun related deaths," is the same thing. They don't show anything different from what I've already said re: "gun deaths vs homicides." But gun control is generally seen first and foremost as an issue related to assaults and homicides, and that is where the relationship is not straightforward.
There are more than twice as many suicides as homicides in the US, so the inclusion of them isn't ancillary. The suicides make up like 70% of the data points. Hence why the two images below look so different (homicides vs gun ownership vs gun deaths vs gun ownership.)
I wonder if the "Guns vs. Homicide by state" graph is counting rifles that are used for hunting. That might help explain why increased gun ownership isn't cashing out as a increase in homicides.
It's possible; I've never seen it looked at that way before. Although, I imagine if the relationship was significantly stronger it would be a more common statistic invoked by activist. Generally, the analysis looks at the percentage of households with at least one firearm versus homicides. There is a pretty strong overlap between households that own at least one firearm and those that own handguns, although it isn't absolute by any means.
Basing it on the total number of firearms doesn't make a lot of sense, since a relatively small group of consumers account for a large number of total firearms. Plus, the relationship doesn't seem strong. US violent crime has plunged since the 1990s, remaining low despite a bump during the Pandemic, even as the quantity of firearms has surged.
It'd be interesting to see what that data looks like though. Rifles tend to not be used in very many homicides. I believe less than unarmed murders or those using weapons other than firearms. But obviously they are justifiably a focus in the mass shooting debate.
The trite point that more guns is correlative to more gun deaths is a fine enough premise, but that this premise should lead to the conclusion that those in power should have the control of such weapons doesn't quite follow. To make such a leap, and to deny a person (or population) his right to own a gun, requires first the fear of other human beings, and second the desire to control them. The justification for this seems to be to make of a gun owner both a potential murderer and murder victim in some potential future. This line of argument could be carried to absurdities. If his lust for the denial of rights was absolute, he could justify putting everyone in a padded room in order to save them from falling off a cliff.
As vivid as that prophetic future and possible murder may be in the utilitarian's skull, the insinuation is unjust because it convicts not only those who would commit such crimes (and their victims), but those who would not, punishing them alike. The punishment in this case is to deny people their right [I]just in case[/I], preferring instead to reserve the right for those in power.
The unjust fear of others and the immoral desire to control them is disguised as saving lives, indeed caring for others, yet the utilitarian would be unable to point to a single life he has saved. On the other hand, the rights advocate can point to every victim of the utilitarian's fears and desires, for it encompasses every one of the utilitarian's fellow citizens.
No they’re not about different things. I’ll quote once again:
I can’t make you read anything, of course, but it would be helpful if you did. Less tedious.
I mentioned other aspects as well, like mass shootings. I’m aware that’s a (somewhat) different issue.
We have more gun deaths and more mass shootings because we have a grotesque number of guns, and pathetic regulations — which is cheered on by our fellow libertarian fascists, who are perfectly happy to sacrifice the lives of kids to maintain their paranoid views of governments.
The rest is smoke and mirrors.
First:
This is not saying: "If more people have guns, they are more likely to commit homicide." It is saying the "if more people have guns, there will be more homicides involving guns." In general, the policy question people care about it: "will more people be murdered?" Not "will more people be murdered with guns (pulling out variations in the homicide rate)?" The model they are using uses the homicide rate and violent crime rate as control variables.
The fact that, if people have more access to firearms, more murders that are committed will be committed with firearms seems trivial. No one commits murder with a weapon they don't have. That has nothing to do with my point, which is that the straightforward relationship between gun ownership rates and the general homicide rate does not show a robust correlation.
Second, you're quoting a paper on using 22 control variables in a negative binomial regression, modeled using GEE because the distribution is non-normal. So, regardless of the merits of such a complex model, it doesn't change the fact that it's not going to track with public perceptions.
People think: "well, Idaho, New Hampshire, Vermont, Utah, Iowa, etc., they have lots of guns and violent crime is on par with Europe."
Not: "well, if I control for race, ethnicity, age, income, the crime rate, inequality, non-firearm murders, suicides, hunting licenses, alcohol use, unemployment, etc..."
Not my area of expertise, but pulling out all the variance associated with violent and non-violent crime rates, and non-firearm homicide rates seems questionable to me, but that's sort of beside the point. I mean, is "holding violence equal, if people have more guns they will do more of their violence with guns" really a point of contention?
Like asking whether the prevalence of guns increases the likelihood of being strangled or stabbed.
Who cares?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No the question is why we have so many mass shootings — roughly one every day so far this year — and what we can do about it. Other countries don’t have this level of gun violence, but we do.
But you want to ask about “general homicide rates”. Which have declined since 1981. But this thread is about the gun control debate. So the question seems at best a red herring.
The problem is guns and gun regulations.