• America doesn’t have more crime than other rich countries. It just has more guns.
    167 replies, posted
[QUOTE=coldroll5;48582904]Should've been permabanned. [editline]31st August 2015[/editline] Most Americans think they need to own an assault rifle because of the second amendment saying they have the right to bear arms there's no logic to it. Alot of Americans are also conspiracy theorists that think another civil war is coming and that they can take the government on.[/QUOTE] I think you need to visit the US before spouting stupid shit that fits with your ignorant fantasies about Americans.
[QUOTE=evilweazel;48582778]Sort of an anti-gun myth. Well regulated militia in regards to the wording of the 2nd was written in means well equipped and well trained.[/QUOTE] Not really, there were loads of regulations about things like powder storage and owning concealable weaponry (the latter was often illegal). Remember that an interpretation of the amendment (that it's seen as a collective right rather than individual) has been around for just as long as the other interpretation seeing gun ownership as an individual right.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;48583399]Not really, there were loads of regulations about things like powder storage and owning concealable weaponry (the latter was often illegal). Remember that an interpretation of the amendment (that it's seen as a collective right rather than individual) has been around for just as long as the other interpretation seeing gun ownership as an individual right.[/QUOTE] According to the Supreme Court in [I]McDonald vs. Chicago[/I] the 2nd amendment does protect the individual's right to own firearms. In their own words: "Two years later, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. ___, ___, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3050 (2010), the Supreme Court held that the second amendment right recognized in Heller is fully applicable to the states through the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. In so holding, the Court reiterated that “the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense” (id. at ___, 130 S. Ct. at 3026); that [B]“individual self-defense is ‘the central component’ of the Second Amendment right”[/B] (emphasis in original) (id. at ___, 130 S. Ct. at 3036 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 599)); and that “[s]elf-defense is a basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present day” (id. at ___, 130 S. Ct. at 3036)." (From Wikipedia on the case ([URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald_v._City_of_Chicago#Central_Second_Amendment_findings[/URL]), but taken from the actual court documents found here: [URL]http://www.illinoiscourts.gov/Opinions/SupremeCourt/2013/112116.pdf[/URL])
[QUOTE=sgman91;48583622]According to the Supreme Court in [I]McDonald vs. Chicago[/I] the 2nd amendment does protect the individual's right to own firearms. In their own words: "Two years later, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. ___, ___, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3050 (2010), the Supreme Court held that the second amendment right recognized in Heller is fully applicable to the states through the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. In so holding, the Court reiterated that “the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense” (id. at ___, 130 S. Ct. at 3026); that [B]“individual self-defense is ‘the central component’ of the Second Amendment right”[/B] (emphasis in original) (id. at ___, 130 S. Ct. at 3036 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 599)); and that “[s]elf-defense is a basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present day” (id. at ___, 130 S. Ct. at 3036)." (From Wikipedia on the case ([URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald_v._City_of_Chicago#Central_Second_Amendment_findings[/URL]), but taken from the actual court documents found here: [URL]http://www.illinoiscourts.gov/Opinions/SupremeCourt/2013/112116.pdf[/URL])[/QUOTE] That's very true, but remember that this happened only very recently (the early 21st century being considerably different to the late 18th century). The actual decisions which have been made very recently on the matter were made after a whole multitude of social trends and movements have necessitated the reinterpretation of the amendment. Even then, while it does now protect an individual right to firearms, there isn't really anything saying that something like a gun registry or licensing system is unconstitutional.
Putting it out there, legally owned Assault rifles cost tens of thousands of dollars, they are not easy to get, they are registered, and only two times since 1934 have legally owned Assault rifles ever been used in crimes, one of those times being committed by a cop. AR-15's a civilian rifles, very popular for hunting smaller game as the round isn't exactly the best for killing deer. I think the media is making it seem like Americans can grab a machine gun and hunt with it. They make semi automatic firearms seem like automatic firearms, they spread tons of misinformation, and throw in emotional appeals in absence of real information. To put it simple. A normal American civilian can walk into a gun store, and with a background check, can buy a firearm based off a military model, but lacking a lot of the same functionality of the military counterpart. These types of firearms are rarely ever used in crimes, and according to FBI crime stats which have been shared numerous times, baseball bats were used more times to kill people than AR-15's. Buying firearms without a background check is legal in a lot of states, but some of the studies done showing how many do it have been shown to be overblown. The Gun show loophole is almost a myth, as many gun shows openly do background checks, in fact even a lot of private sellers do background checks without needing a law made. Background check laws like the one recently made in Washington were written so poorly you could not by law hand your co-worker a ramset nail gun without first undergoing a background check, you could also not buy a flare gun without undergoing one. Are those going to be enforced? Doubtful, but the fact is, most feel good gun control laws in the US are made by people who have no knowledge on firearms, yet gain support by getting the media to educate the uneducated masses in improper gun knowledge to make them support it. Gun sales do occur without background checks as well, but even if you made a law requiring it, they would never stop. The law could not be enforced without a registration, and in order to that you would have to register over 300 million guns currently in the US, and the agency who would do that only have 2 thousand employees. In order for that to even work you would have to suspend gun sales in the US, something that would never happen, until all guns were registered, plus thousands would have to be hired just so this could even be achieved. Most people never do that math on it. Gun registration in the US is nothing short or a feel good pipe dream, so is background check laws. The recent tragedy on live TV was used as an excuse to pass common sense gun laws, and laws on background checks. Everyone ignored the fact he passed a background check and even went through a waiting period. He waited YEARS for this. No law we could even pass without sparking some form of uprising would have stopped this. The Non-Americans don't seem to understand how the US works, even though they think they do. Your gun laws will not ever work in the United States, they are almost impossible to enforce large scale in a country like ours. Stick to your own countries issues, and stop trying to get people to support European styled reforms which would do nothing in the United States.
[QUOTE=coldroll5;48582904] Most Americans think they need to own an assault rifle because of the second amendment saying they have the right to bear arms there's no logic to it. Alot of Americans are also conspiracy theorists that think another civil war is coming and that they can take the government on.[/QUOTE] Have been ever been to the states? Ever talked in person with someone from the states? I think this is the new bar for an uneducated opinion of the states on this forum.
[QUOTE=Code3Response;48584473]Have been ever been to the states? Ever talked in person with someone from the states? I think this is the new bar for an uneducated opinion of the states on this forum.[/QUOTE] What's worse (and incredibly alarming) is that this is pretty much what anti-gunners in California and other powerhouse liberal states think.
I thought michael moore established all those years ago that gun-related violence in the US was heavily influenced by media fear-mongering, rather than the amount of guns. He drew the parallel to Canada, which had guns that are more or less as easily accessible, yet the amount of violent crimes were way less.
[QUOTE=G-Strogg;48584921]I thought michael moore established all those years ago that gun-related violence in the US was heavily influenced by media fear-mongering, rather than the amount of guns. He drew the parallel to Canada, which had guns that are more or less as easily accessible, yet the amount of violent crimes were way less.[/QUOTE] That's impossible, I've never heard of Michael Moore giving such a cool-headed analysis
[QUOTE=G-Strogg;48584921]I thought michael moore established all those years ago that gun-related violence in the US was heavily influenced by media fear-mongering, rather than the amount of guns. He drew the parallel to Canada, which had guns that are more or less as easily accessible, yet the amount of violent crimes were way less.[/QUOTE] It's because we've got big problems, and guns aren't one of them. They're just an easy thing for the media to attack, and something most europeans have absolutely no familiarity with and just assume everyone in Burgerland aka Murica aka The Obomacracy have fully automatic assault rifles with 120 round drum magazines that they bought at the dollar store. That's how it feels like we are generalized when its the farthest thing from the truth. Our biggest problems are education and poverty. No one wants to talk about those. Just guns and racial violence constantly in the media. Not trivializing either, but those are problems that stem from the bigger ones. It's like painting a scratch on your boat while there's two big leaks in the bottom.
[QUOTE=download;48574586]"Gun related deaths" which means you've included suicides which of course is going to be higher when people have the option of choosing between hanging themselves from the ceiling or eating their gun. That graph looks far less impressive if you make it a comparison of guns per xxx people to number of [I]total[/I] murders.[/QUOTE] That's the point of the article
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;48580102]The bolded aren't even related to guns. And I like to think we can solve our problems without banning guns because a very small number of people can't be trusted with them.[/QUOTE] Yes they are, by means of the NRA. The NRA has way too much political power in this country's government dude. [url=http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/atf-gun-laws-nra]Again, their lobbying power is the reason why the ATF can't do their job effectively to enforce what gun control laws currently exist in this country (they deliberately engineer this shit so they can turn around and use it for their agenda and say, "See? The government's incompetence proves they're incapable of enforcing gun control, therefore gun control is bad!").[/url] It's an organization centered as much around having absurd personal boners for firearms as it is centered around being a corrupt entity trying to undermine the federal government where it can, trying to commercialize firearms and encouraging Americans to buy into the gun culture for the sake of this commercialization (there's shitloads of money in it), and generally just being an overly-powerful entity that isn't actually using its power in a socially-responsible way to advance either public safety nor public health. They're just out of control and need to be disposed of, if not for these reasons then because of how detrimentally antiquated their ideas are in the 21st century. And you're missing my point: banning guns, as I've said before here on this forum, just isn't a feasible goal for us at this point in time. It certainly can't be achieved quickly however; as someone else said, which I quietly agreed with, it will take generations for the gun culture to die down from what it is (it's already in the process; ownership's been declining for a while now for young people in urban environments, and for what owners there are, there are less among their group who choose to carry while out in public). What we need to do is encourage it to die down, and the question of how we should do that is where it gets tricky. The goal I want for us to aim towards, although it will take many years, is for us to become less retarded and fetishistic about them and instead become more European; "we can have them if we want, but there's going to be heavy restrictions on their personal use and sale, they're not going to be treated like they're fun toys to play with (they're weapons, and weapons are tools), and they're not going to become objects of radical obsession culturally for us ever again." Our country has got a lot of problems, gun culture being just one of many. The worst part about gun culture though is how very basic a problem it is; it's something which should have either been resolved years ago or which we should be in the process of solving right now, but we're not. This procrastination isn't exactly shocking for us (the United States usually pisses itself at first but then finally plods towards the right direction), it's just disappointing is all. It's disappointing because people don't seem to think it's a problem when it actually is (in terms of how it's affecting our government, our society as a whole and as well our local communities), nothing's being done yet to change the situation, and we're lagging pitifully behind the rest of the civilized world-- which is, again, pathetic considering we're the world's reigning superpower and [i]this[/i] is how dysfunctional we still are at solving our problems concerning everything from guns in this case as well as health care, educational costs and quality, national infrastructure, etc.
[QUOTE=Kigen;48582028]Antdawg, there is so much wrong with what you propose. Not only can the government not do that because of multiple violations of the Constitution that would be. Its just plain wrong to punish a dealer for the actions of a customer. It'd be like suing car dealers for drunk driving deaths.[/QUOTE] This is the exact kind of response I was getting in the other thread, lacking critical thinking. Simply looking at the fine aspect and going 'durr that's bad' - and assuming arms dealers wouldn't do anything to mitigate their risk. What exactly does it violate in the constitution? It doesn't impede any freedoms, it isn't governments restricting the right to own arms, it isn't violating due process. And how is it any worse of a punishment on arms dealers by governments forcing compliance costs onto them by forcing them to do this or that? Because this is not governments forcing them to do anything. Arms dealers instead mitigate their risk as efficiently as possible at their level of aversion to risk. And as I said, arms dealers would find income derived from arms sales to be tax exempt, especially useful as compensation for those who would choose to take out insurance to manage their risk. It's [i]not designed to punish arms dealers[/i]. How hard is that to understand? It's designed to make them practice discretion with untrustworthy customers. If the arms dealer is effective at doing that, they get no fines and in turn guns stay out of the hands of bad people. Win-win. Did you know that laws are designed to discourage certain behaviours, rather than to simply throw people in jail and raise revenue? And honestly what would you rather? This, an efficient market-based solution, or the status quo where innocent people die so often, or a full-blown authoritarian gun control scheme? It's almost exactly the same as proposals for education institutions to be charged if their students default on their debts, yet no one seems to have any problems with that.
[QUOTE=Antdawg;48586042]This is the exact kind of response I was getting in the other thread, lacking critical thinking. Simply looking at the fine aspect and going 'durr that's bad' - and assuming arms dealers wouldn't do anything to mitigate their risk. What exactly does it violate in the constitution? It doesn't impede any freedoms, it isn't governments restricting the right to own arms, it isn't violating due process. And how is it any worse of a punishment on arms dealers by governments forcing compliance costs onto them by forcing them to do this or that? Because this is not governments forcing them to do anything. Arms dealers instead mitigate their risk as efficiently as possible at their level of aversion to risk. And as I said, arms dealers would find income derived from arms sales to be tax exempt, especially useful as compensation for those who would choose to take out insurance to manage their risk. It's [i]not designed to punish arms dealers[/i]. How hard is that to understand? It's designed to make them practice discretion with untrustworthy customers. If the arms dealer is effective at doing that, they get no fines and in turn guns stay out of the hands of bad people. Win-win. Did you know that laws are designed to discourage certain behaviours, rather than to simply throw people in jail and raise revenue? And honestly what would you rather? This, an efficient market-based solution, or the status quo where innocent people die so often, or a full-blown authoritarian gun control scheme? It's almost exactly the same as proposals for education institutions to be charged if their students default on their debts, yet no one seems to have any problems with that.[/QUOTE] No, it is exactly designed to punish arms dealers and the average gun owner because it causes them to be liable for something that's completely beyond their control. If I sell a gun to someone and 10 years down the road his kid offs themselves with it, then you're saying I should be arrested too. You can't even deny that, because it's exactly what you stated, that [i]the previous owner should be charged due to the actions of the current one.[/i] If the current owner was negligent in storage and gets charged with manslaughter, then why in the fuck is it my fault that he's an idiot? How am I supposed to control what he does with my gun for the rest of his goddamn life? Such a law makes someone liable for the actions of someone else, which is frankly illegal in any country unless you talk about that person's dependents (meaning their children who are too young to know better). I can't control what someone does with their property, and making me liable for their actions just because it's property I used to own is absolutely ridiculous. If I'm not breaking any law in selling it to them, then I'm fine, and that's the way it is around the world and the way it's going to stay since such a law would fail a court challenge in any country. To illustrate it with an example not involving guns, since people love comparing them to cars, what you propose is like having you charged with drunk driving if you sell your car to someone and they drive it drunk 5 years after you sold it. It's ludicrous no matter what way you look at it, because there's literally nothing you can do to control what they do with the property you sold them.
[QUOTE=DaCommie1;48586188]No, it is exactly designed to punish arms dealers and the average gun owner because it causes them to be liable for something that's completely beyond their control. If I sell a gun to someone and 10 years down the road his kid offs themselves with it, then you're saying I should be arrested too. You can't even deny that, because it's exactly what you stated, that [i]the previous owner should be charged due to the actions of the current one.[/i] If the current owner was negligent in storage and gets charged with manslaughter, then why in the fuck is it my fault that he's an idiot? How am I supposed to control what he does with my gun for the rest of his goddamn life? Such a law makes someone liable for the actions of someone else, which is frankly illegal in any country unless you talk about that person's dependents (meaning their children who are too young to know better). I can't control what someone does with their property, and making me liable for their actions just because it's property I used to own is absolutely ridiculous. If I'm not breaking any law in selling it to them, then I'm fine, and that's the way it is around the world and the way it's going to stay since such a law would fail a court challenge in any country.[/QUOTE] I was obviously implying their would have to be a significant nexus (correlation) between acquiring the gun for the purpose of using it for a crime, it's sad that I have to explicitly mention that.
[QUOTE=Antdawg;48586214]I was obviously implying their would have to be a significant nexus (correlation) between acquiring the gun for the purpose of using it for a crime, it's sad that I have to explicitly mention that.[/QUOTE] To be honest, it's pretty hard to tell if someone will use it for a crime. Anyone can look like a good guy in front of you and be a complete POS outside the store. I understand your feel good reason, but saying for fact, it's a horrible idea. I shouldn't be liable for others actions when in reality no matter what I do, i can not be in charge of those actions. How am I supposed to know? I mean, that entire law is a very bad one.
[QUOTE=Antdawg;48586214]I was obviously implying their would have to be a significant nexus (correlation) between acquiring the gun for the purpose of using it for a crime, it's sad that I have to explicitly mention that.[/QUOTE] You weren't "obviously implying" anything, you were simply stating that people should be punished for things completely beyond their control. And if I'm not mistaken, it's already illegal to sell someone something if you explicitly know it's going to be used in the commission of a crime, the thing is if you sell someone a gun legally, and they've passed all the appropriate background checks or had all the appropriate licenses, how are you supposed to know they're going to use it for crime? In practise, making someone liable for the actions of someone else, even in the slightest like that, is going to lead to massive racial discrimination in the US for firearm sales, with people refusing to sell to anyone who is black or Arab, which would put those demographics at a disadvantage when it comes to protecting themselves, since they'd never be able to get a gun for CCW. And you could try and say that discrimination laws would prevent that, but you'd find them nigh unenforceable, since as you say they could refuse them for "whatever reason they choose" they could just say they didn't like them or they seemed suspicious, when the reality is the seller is just making a racial generalization that all blacks are in a gang and all Arabs are terrorists, and thus refusing to sell the gun for them because they don't want to be charged as a murderer or a terrorist. But how do you prove that? You can't, just like it's also nigh impossible to prove that you deliberately sold the gun to someone who passed all the checks so that they could go out and kill themselves/someone else. If they pass all the checks, then you have no reason to believe they're going to commit a crime unless they say so. There would be no way a court could possibly convict the person selling the gun because what was done with it was beyond their control, and they did their due diligence in ensuring they sold it legally.
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