• After Las Vegas massacre, Democrats urge gun laws; Republicans silent
    853 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52742275]Obnoxiously long and condescending paragraph[/QUOTE] I find a pretty big fault in your logic restricting assault rifles but being cool with shotguns. Are you telling me that a dude firing a shotgun down upon a crowd isn't going to injure a ton of people? Getting an assault rifle is already difficult and expensive. You talk about them like every gun owner has several in their collection. I think the systems in place are pretty reasonable and I'm not even a gun owner.
[QUOTE=AaronM202;52742454]I feel thats a false equivalency. Thats an act, not an object used to commit that act. Its like banning all Toyotas because of a drunk driver. Or banning all alcohol to stop drunk driving (that turned out well last time). Come on man.[/QUOTE] It's an object [I]specifically created[/I] for carrying out that act. If some wizard created a Murder Box, where pressing a button causes whoever you are thinking about to die, we would crack down on Murder Boxes. The act of pressing the button would obviously be illegal, but the danger of having that item exist in the public sphere would simply be too dangerous to allow. There's one extra step with guns, of course. You have to [I]point[/I] at the person you want dead before "pressing the button." The false equivalency here is arguing that cars, a necessary tool for mobility and transportation that nearly everybody in the country [B]relies[/B] on for nearly every facet of their lives, are basically the same thing as high capacity atuomatic weapons, a tool created for the sole purpose of dispensing death and destruction, and which some hobbyists happen to enjoy owning.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52742452]There's no overnight solution, and that's not what I'm advocating. Right now, such weapons are being actively created and introduced into the market. Stop it now, and over decades we can slowly reduce the existing population of such weapons through simple attrition. We don't need to conduct mass raids and seizures, charging into peoples' homes to rip them from their hands. Just kill production, pick up illegal weapons during the course of regular every day policing, and wait.[/QUOTE] So once again, strip away rights and freedoms built into the bill of rights, fuck over millions of people, and make the problem worse in the short term, all in the hopes that it [i]maybe[/i] gets a little bit better [i]someday?[/i] This sounds a lot like the Patriot act to me: heavy handed overreaction to a problem that requires nuanced solutions, costs us dearly in rights and freedoms, and dubious benefit. Perhaps I'm just a head-in-the-clouds idealist, but I think that our efforts can be better spent on creating a society where lone wolf killers are recognized and given proper care instead of being left to fester in solitude, completely under the radar, before finally exploding in violent rampages. Instead of freaking out over guns.
[QUOTE=catbarf;52742518]At a densely-packed concert, absolutely. The [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramstein_air_show_disaster]Ramstein air show disaster[/url], a small-aircraft accident that didn't involve a pilot deliberately plowing into the crowd, killed 67 and injured another 500. I find it implausible to suggest that a deliberate terrorist attack couldn't achieve the same.[/QUOTE] Do 55,000,000 people in the US own small aircraft?
[QUOTE=catbarf;52742518]At a densely-packed concert, absolutely. The [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramstein_air_show_disaster]Ramstein air show disaster[/url], a small-aircraft accident that didn't involve a pilot deliberately plowing into the crowd, killed 67 and injured another 500. I find it implausible to suggest that a deliberate terrorist attack couldn't achieve the same.[/QUOTE] These were two jet planes that collided, not a single small aircraft plowing into the ground. Still a stretch
It's a shame that cigarettes alcohol and junk food are so prevalent but I don't think how we handle firearms legislation has any bearing over those things. I don't see why suggesting gun control always turns into "other things are deadly too!"
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52742526]Do 55,000,000 people in the US own small aircraft?[/QUOTE] This guy did, cause he was rich, apparently.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52742522]-words-[/QUOTE]Bows and arrows were created specifically for killing people, but also used for hunting. Guns also were adapted for hunting. You wanna ban bows and arrows too? Why not go the extra mile? Why only guns? There's no "full-auto" bow and arrow but I'm more or less showing how flawed your "they were designed to kill" argument is.
[QUOTE=catbarf;52742518]At a densely-packed concert, absolutely. The [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramstein_air_show_disaster]Ramstein air show disaster[/url], a small-aircraft accident that didn't involve a pilot deliberately plowing into the crowd, killed 67 and injured another 500. I find it implausible to suggest that a deliberate terrorist attack couldn't achieve the same.[/QUOTE] To be fair those are fighter jets, I'd imagine what the man owned would be more inline with a Cessna or some other light weight propeller plane, although a 2 ton plane crashing into a crowded area would still have a high body count but I don't think it would have the same body count as the Ramstein air show disaster.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52742522]The false equivalency here is arguing that cars, a necessary tool for mobility and transportation that nearly everybody in the country [B]relies[/B] on for nearly every facet of their lives, are basically the same thing as high capacity atuomatic weapons, a tool created for the sole purpose of dispensing death and destruction, and which some hobbyists happen to enjoy owning.[/QUOTE] High capacity automatic weapons? You mean the ones heavily regulated under the NFA already, and which have been used to commit crimes a total of twice since 1934? Or are you just conflating multiple categories of firearms to pretend that the sporting rifles you called for banning are actually nothing but mass-murder weapons, while simultaneously trying to argue nuance regarding cars without any self-awareness?
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52742435]Cheeseburgers "kill" the person eating them, not the dozens of people around him. Drunk driving absolutely SHOULD be, and IS highly illegal, so...? [editline]3rd October 2017[/editline] Could a senior citizen have killed 58 people and injured over five hundred more with a knife from the 32nd floor of a building? Kind of an absurd argument. Go out and try to chase down and stab six hundred people. Let me know how that goes.[/QUOTE] Cheeseburgers still kill people far more than guns have or will in America. Want to quote me the statistics on heary disease? An elderly gentleman certainly could have driven a box truck into that crowd and killed far more. The elderly do that shit on accident frequently enough as it is.
[QUOTE=MissingNoGuy;52742543]Bows and arrows were created specifically for killing people, but also used for hunting. Guns also were adapted for hunting. You wanna ban bows and arrows too? Why not go the extra mile? Why only guns? There's no "full-auto" bow and arrow but I'm more or less showing how flawed your "they were designed to kill" argument is.[/QUOTE] Because bows are extremely ineffective in comparison. It's the purpose of guns combined with their extreme effectiveness that is the key here, so no, there's no need to ban bows despite sharing the same purpose
How many shootings this year will it take to realize there's a problem that needs to be fixed? Asap. It's like your government isn't even trying.
[QUOTE=catbarf;52742438]And mass shootings are illegal, so, problem solved, right? Or do we need to unilaterally ban alcohol to ensure that it cannot be misused, because your right to own an item shouldn't take precedence over lives?[/QUOTE] We are doing something about drunk driving (and other transportation issues) though. By 2022 the vast majority of new cars will have automatic emergency braking, and probably lane departure warnings. That should massively reduce how many major accidents we have.
I just don't see any practical path forward for gun control. The solutions people put forward seem at best ineffectual, and at worst completely detached from the situation. There just isn't enough political unity in this country to implement the measures democrats want implemented. Regardless of whether or not you think the proposed measures [I]should[/I] be implemented, choosing this as a hill to die on when there are far more important existential threats to this country that need to be tackled is just plain fuckin retarded. This transparently hypocritical "lives are not worth your ability to own something" rhetoric does nothing but froth up the democratic base while further driving away anyone not firmly on the left. It's fucking obvious that everyone does a little bit of moral algebra when deciding whether or not the harm caused by people having access to something is worth them being able to have it or not. Anyone with a brain can see the reason democrats are fine with something like alcohol is that it's something they use. The reason they can so confidently talk down to people who perform the same calculation for guns is that they don't use guns, they have no attachment to guns, and they feel no need to use guns for self defense. It's purely a matter of "well I don't like it or feel the need for it, so your want or need is invalid". At least fucking try to understand other peoples' positions. Fucking hell.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52742526]Do 55,000,000 people in the US own small aircraft?[/QUOTE] Completely irrelevant to why it was brought up in the first place, which is the idea that stricter gun regulation could have prevented this. You are the one who asked whether an elderly person could kill the same number with knives, when a knife wouldn't be a go-to alternative, it would have been one of the many other means of terrorist attacks, several of which we have already seen in Europe in recent years.
[QUOTE=Nukedrabbit95;52742524]So once again, strip away rights and freedoms built into the bill of rights, fuck over millions of people, and make the problem worse in the short term, all in the hopes that it [i]maybe[/i] gets a little bit better [i]someday?[/i] This sounds a lot like the Patriot act to me: heavy handed overreaction to a problem that requires nuanced solutions, costs us dearly in rights and freedoms, and dubious benefit. [B]Perhaps I'm just a head-in-the-clouds idealist[/B], but I think that our efforts can be better spent on creating a society where lone wolf killers are recognized and given proper care instead of being left to fester in solitude, completely under the radar, before finally exploding in violent rampages. Instead of freaking out over guns.[/QUOTE] There's a whole spirited argument to be had on the intention of the second amendment, but I'll simply say that its creators could not have even [I]conceived[/I] of the weapons of today when drafting it. I'm not arguing that all guns should be banned, only that we stop civilian production of the ones capable of the most absurd acts of mass violence (namely, high capacity semi-automatic weapons), halt the sale of existing weapons, and let time wear down the availability of the remaining stock. You may view that as "stripping away rights and freedoms," I view that as a necessary step to amend a constitutional measure that fully failed to foresee what the future of weapons technology would actually look like. It's hardly without precedent, either -- we've already amended the constitution 17 times. Frankly, if you believe that one of the key facets of reducing gun violence doesn't involve reducing gun availability, then yes, I would agree that you are a head-in-the-clouds idealist. Furthermore, this is not and [I]either/or[/I] situation. A comprehensive long-term solution to reducing the availability of deadly weapons in the United States doesn't have to come at the [B]cost[/B] of pursuing better mental healthcare services. We [I]can[/I] do both, and [I]need[/I] to do both.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52742522]It's an object [I]specifically created[/I] for carrying out that act. If some wizard created a Murder Box, where pressing a button causes whoever you are thinking about to die, we would crack down on Murder Boxes. The act of pressing the button would obviously be illegal, but the danger of having that item exist in the public sphere would simply be too dangerous to allow. There's one extra step with guns, of course. You have to [I]point[/I] at the person you want dead before "pressing the button." The false equivalency here is arguing that cars, a necessary tool for mobility and transportation that nearly everybody in the country [B]relies[/B] on for nearly every facet of their lives, are basically the same thing as high capacity atuomatic weapons, a tool created for the sole purpose of dispensing death and destruction, and which some hobbyists happen to enjoy owning.[/QUOTE] Yet cars still kill more people than guns, and some easy regulations on them could prevent thosw deaths, but we still focus on the less effective killer...
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52742275]-Large Post-[/QUOTE] This post has the exact same problem of talking down to and treating gun owners like they're retards that's made this issue so divisive and hard to talk about in the first place. I tried to talk to a family member about why I thought the suppressor comment on twitter was stupid and dangerous and their response eventually came down to "who cares about that dumb gun nerd shit?" There's no respect for gun owners because there's this public perception that they think guns are neat so they're dangerous manchildren that fetishize violence, and it's ridiculous. People like that exist, but they don't speak for everyone. Hell, I don't even own a gun. I think we should have stricter gun control, but I also like guns, a lot of other people like guns, and while I do think all life is precious and we need to protect it where we can- where does it end? You could just answer 'at guns' but I have a pretty big feeling that within the century there's going to be a push for self-driving cars to become mandatory to put a stop to the thousands of annual vehicular deaths; which are currently higher than gun deaths in the US, by my recollection. I have a feeling that people are going to be less okay with that than gun control, but I feel as though it's just as important. Alcohol kills more people in the US than guns or cars, but we seem to be just letting that one slide for now. It's the age old argument of freedom vs security. I'm not trying to argue "well, you could take it to an absurd extreme so why even bother" because I [I]do [/I]think more regulation is necessary right now but I think it's an interesting question. People are only perfectly safe when they're perfectly secure, when do you stop and say "these deaths are negligible enough, we can avoid restricting this"? [QUOTE=Cyke Lon bee;52742572]Yet cars still kill more people than guns, and some easy regulations on them could prevent thosw deaths, but we still focus on the less effective killer...[/QUOTE] The thing with that is that cars are currently absolutely necessary to functioning human society right now and far more people own cars and [I]like[/I] cars than guns in the US. It'd be a problem likely even more difficult to tackle than restricting guns.
If only as much passion and energy when into making sure people have access to healthcare instead of making sure you have access to a gun.
[QUOTE=Morgen;52742565]We are doing something about drunk driving (and other transportation issues) though. By 2022 the vast majority of new cars will have automatic emergency braking, and probably lane departure warnings. That should massively reduce how many major accidents.[/QUOTE] this is an ethical discussion about how people weigh the values of certain freedoms against the cost of those freedoms whether or not drunk driving will always be an issue is outside the scope of whether or not people are currently willing to tolerate it in return for the freedom to drink alcohol
[QUOTE=Simplemac3;52742575]This post has the exact same problem of talking down to and treating gun owners like they're retards that's made this issue so divisive and hard to talk about in the first place. I tried to talk to a family member about why I thought the suppressor comment on twitter was stupid and dangerous and their response eventually came down to "who cares that dumb gun nerd shit?" There's no respect for gun owners because there's this public perception that they think guns are neat so they're a dangerous manchild that fetishizes violence, and it's ridiculous. People like that exist, but they don't speak for everyone. Hell, I don't even own a gun. I think we should have stricter gun control, but I also like guns, a lot of other people like guns, and while I do think all life is precious and we need to protect it where we can- where does it end? You could just answer 'at guns' but I have a pretty big feeling that within the century there's going to be a push for self-driving cars to become mandatory to put a stop to the thousands of annual vehicular deaths, which is currently higher than gun deaths in the US, by my recollection. I have a feeling that people are going to be less okay with that than gun control, but I feel as though it's just as important. Alcohol kills more people in the US than guns or cars, but we seem to be just letting that one slide for now. It's the age old argument of freedom vs security. I'm not trying to argue "well, you could take it to an absurd extreme so why even bother" but I think it's an interesting question. People are only perfectly safe when they're perfectly secure, when do you stop and say "these deaths are negligible enough, we can avoid restricting this?" The thing with that is that cars are currently absolutely necessary to functioning human society right now and far more people own cars and [I]like[/I] cars than guns in the US. It'd be a problem likely even more difficult to tackle than restricting guns.[/QUOTE] Theres actually more guns in the US than cars. They amount to more but are responsible for less death.
[QUOTE=catbarf;52742570]Completely irrelevant to why it was brought up in the first place, which is the idea that stricter gun regulation could have prevented this. You are the one who asked whether an elderly person could kill the same number with knives.[/QUOTE] It's hardly irrelevant, because all your "[I]What If[/I] scenarios have inherent barriers to entry and/or success. A man with a knife is physically incapable of stabbing 600 people. A man who wants to commit an act of terror with a plane requires $10,000+ dollars, dozens of hours of flight training just to learn [I]how[/I], and access to private plane and airfield. A person wanting to use bombs faces risks in every step of the process, including ordering the necessary components, learning how to actually assemble them, doing so without killing himself, building them well enough to actually work appropriately, figure out how to trigger a detonation at the appropriate moment, and dozens of other variables. Even simply getting in a vehicle and running people over, while extremely difficult to prevent and capable of horrifying violence, is severely limited by the fact that a vehicle is not designed to survive repeated high speed collisions with human bodies, and will simply stop functioning in relatively short order (hence why every vehicle attack has ultimately ended with the suspects quickly abandoning the broken vehicle and trying to carry out the rest of their attack on foot). Simply put, there is nothing else in existence that makes acts of mass violence as [I]simple[/I], [I]accessible[/I] and as [I]deadly[/I] as guns. You are only limited in the amount of ammunition that you have, the physical capabilities of the weapon, and the amount of time you have before you are inevitably captured or kill by police. [editline]3rd October 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Cyke Lon bee;52742572]Yet cars still kill more people than guns, and some easy regulations on them could prevent thosw deaths, but we still focus on the less effective killer...[/QUOTE] Why do you think it's impossible to create legislation on more than one subject? We can and do create legislation to help make cars and driving safer. We enforce safety standards in automobiles, standards of operation and driving, standards on basic physical requirements of the vehicles, etc. Do we have to stop doing that if we also draft legislation on firearms? Beyond that, cars are [I]necessary[/I]. Guns simply aren't. Under the basic terms I outlined in my first post, we could still have guns for hunting, sport, and self defense, we would simply be limited in the [I]type[/I] of guns (restricting those whose only purpose is mass violence).
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52742571](namely, high capacity semi-automatic weapons)[/QUOTE] IE 'heavy handed overreaction to a problem that requires nuanced solutions, (...) and dubious benefit'. Do you understand at all why I am telling you that these kinds of boilerplate bans don't work? Have you read the Department of Justice report on the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban which concluded that it had negligible effect? Do you understand that a double-action revolver is [I]functionally identical[/I] to a semi-automatic handgun in rate of fire? Are you aware that the gun community has a long history of getting around legislation on specific features? Do you know what a bullet button is? Bump-fire stock? Binary trigger? Shoestring machine gun? NY-legal AR? At least if you were actually proposing a total ban on guns I could accept that it might have some long-term effect, but instead you're trying to propose a balanced, nuanced take without the requisite knowledge to actually do such a thing, and the result is pointless, arbitrary, and delivered with enough unnecessary moral invective to be downright insulting. [QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52742602]A man who wants to commit an act of terror with a plane requires $10,000+ dollars, dozens of hours of flight training just to learn [I]how[/I], and access to private plane and airfield. [/QUOTE] Which he had. That's all there is to it. The 'this wouldn't have happened with better gun regulation' line is bogus.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb ;52742571] more useless words[/QUOTE] Please stop murdering my brain cells with your ignorance and stupidity. [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Shitpost" - Sgt Doom))[/highlight]
[QUOTE=RainbowStalin;52742581]If only as much passion and energy when into making sure people have access to healthcare instead of making sure you have access to a gun.[/QUOTE] democrats further losing ground politically by making gun control policy more central to their platform and then having healthcare gutted and sabotaged by republicans as a result is a far more threatening prospect for the american people than continued gun crime I don't think we can only focus on one issue at a time, but when popularity determines influence and one of the issues you're focusing on makes you very unpopular and the people vying with you for power are fucking lunatics then you kinda need to narrow your focus for practicality's sake
[QUOTE=duckmaster;52742548]To be fair those are fighter jets, I'd imagine what the man owned would be more inline with a Cessna or some other light weight propeller plane, although a 2 ton plane crashing into a crowded area would still have a high body count but I don't think it would have the same body count as the Ramstein air show disaster.[/QUOTE] Unless it was say packed with explosives, something the shooter did have in his possession.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52742571]There's a whole spirited argument to be had on the intention of the second amendment, but I'll simply say that its creators could not have even [I]conceived[/I] of the weapons of today when drafting it. I'm not arguing that all guns should be banned, only that we stop civilian production of the ones capable of the most absurd acts of mass violence (namely, high capacity semi-automatic weapons), halt the sale of existing weapons, and let time wear down the availability of the remaining stock. You may view that as "stripping away rights and freedoms," I view that as a necessary step to amend a constitutional measure that fully failed to foresee what the future of weapons technology would actually look like. It's hardly without precedent, either -- we've already amended the constitution 17 times. Frankly, if you believe that one of the key facets of reducing gun violence doesn't involve reducing gun availability, then yes, I would agree that you are a head-in-the-clouds idealist. Furthermore, this is not and [I]either/or[/I] situation. A comprehensive long-term solution to reducing the availability of deadly weapons in the United States doesn't have to come at the [B]cost[/B] of pursuing better mental healthcare services. We [I]can[/I] do both, and [I]need[/I] to do both.[/QUOTE] I don't believe we can't do more than one thing at once, but one thing is a legitimate attempt at bettering our society, and the other is a laughable sledgehammer-to-a-nail non-solution that causes more problems than it solves. You seem to believe that any reaction is justified, no matter how ridiculous, so long as it prevents even a small amount of deaths. I believe that we can lessen the problem [i]and[/i] create a better society without declaring that the second amendment of the bill of rights was a failure and that a long-standing aspect of American culture needs to die.
[QUOTE=UncleJimmema;52742638]Unless it was say packed with explosives, something the shooter did have in his possession.[/QUOTE] Thats true, and considering what I've learned with some quick googling you could carry like 700 lbs of explosives in the plane with you, which would have had horrifying results.
[QUOTE=catbarf;52742618]IE 'heavy handed overreaction to a problem that requires nuanced solutions, (...) and dubious benefit'. Do you understand at all why I am telling you that these kinds of boilerplate bans don't work? Have you read the Department of Justice report on the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban which concluded that it had negligible effect?[/quote] It didn't go far enough, nor was it viewed in the scope of a long enough period of time. [quote]Do you understand that a double-action revolver is [I]functionally identical[/I] to a semi-automatic handgun in rate of fire?[/quote] Not in capacity or reload speed, which are just as important when looking at the viability of a weapon for mass violence. [quote]Are you aware that the gun community has a long history of getting around legislation on specific features? Do you know what a bullet button is? Bump-fire stock? Binary trigger? Shoestring machine gun? NY-legal AR?[/quote] Yes, I'm painfully aware of the aftermarket accessories used to make weapons [I]even more deadly[/I]. They need to be cracked down on. We need to be active in [I]stopping[/I] this kind of subversion. As for custom creating weapons of mass destruction, that present one more major barrier to entry for would-be mass shooters. Not everybody has access to a machinery shop or the knowledge on how to construct a weapon. We also must consider the limited capabilities of homemade weapons and reliability of homemade weapons, and that the availability of production of homemade weapons is [B]nothing[/B] compared to the economies of scale of the weapons factories dumping new assault weapons into public rotation every day. [quote]At least if you were actually proposing a total ban on guns I could accept that it might have some long-term effect, but instead you're trying to propose a balanced, nuanced take without the requisite knowledge to actually do such a thing, and the result is pointless, arbitrary, and delivered with enough unnecessary moral invective to be downright insulting.[quote] I'd happily consider a ban on guns in their entirety if you prefer, but the biggest danger of mass violence comes from those [I]capable[/I] of mass violence. The limited capabilities of bolt action rifles, shotguns, and revolvers impose hard physical limits on just how much havoc they can wreak, the range of the havoc that they can wreak, and the time it takes to wreak it. Basically, I have no problem with hunting, sport, or self defense. I have a problem with the availability of weapons that have no real purpose in any of those. [quote]Which he had. That's all there is to it. The 'this wouldn't have happened with better gun regulation' line is bogus.[/QUOTE] Which he [I]didn't use[/I], because he knew it was much less reliable and capable than simply bringing his gun collection to a hotel room and shooting out the window. People would have been killed and injured on success, but not nearly to the same scale. The attack as it happened would have been impossible without his collection of weapons. His alternatives would have been less effective. And, frankly, even if he [I]had[/I] come in with a goddamn plane, the simple fact of the matter is that [I]most would-be mass killers don't have planes. They [B]do[/B] have access to guns.[/I]
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