• Toronto Votes For A Total Ban On Handgun Sales After Mass Shooting
    140 replies, posted
I wanted to apologize for the kneejerk reaction I had earlier. I understand it's not guns being legal that cause gun deaths, and safety at the cost of liberty isnt worth it. Im just tired of seeing shooting tragedies in the news. Im a fan of guns and hobby shooting myself. Im going on a trip tomorrow where Im sure Ill be doing it a lot. It just seems like nothing is being done to address the underlying issues. I dont know what the fuck to do. At this point any action taken at all looks better than nothing. It stresses me the fuck out that a lot more people are going to die before poverty, mental health, and all the more affecting issues are dealt with, or even paid as much attention as gun control.
To reiterate, I don't believe that gun control as it is presented in the media will solve the issues that the USA faces and I think that it's a distraction. I think I disagree with others here from what it distracts from though. I DO believe we should do what we can the reduce the number of people dying from guns though. This includes helping reduce income inequality though that's something we should be doing anyway. I also think it means looking at whether changing the US's attitude to guns will have an effect. I believe that it will on the basis that countries with more guns, or more poverty, or just as much mental illness don't see the issues that the US sees. I'm talking about other developed nations as opposed to developing countries. This challenging of the US's attitude to guns includes challenging the idea that the right to own a gun is that important; that it is sacrosanct.
Sorry man, not really. Read "How to Change Your Mind" By Michael Pollen, goes into good depth on the history of modern drug culture(excluding opiates) and has a section on PCP's history that you would likely find interesting. PCP is a drug that the media has defined in numerous ways. The number of cases of incidents like that are statistical anomalies. It was studied decently before it was banned due to said media scaremongering.
Clearly the line you want to draw is at one. Tens of thousands a year are killed in car accidents, should cars be banned sans public transit? Theres so many more things you can do that would save more lives than to ban guns. As i stated in my previous post, guns used in murder compared to guns owned in general amount to far less than 1% of the overall amount of guns. If you were trying to ban coffee because less than 1% of users died, you would be laughed out of the room. But for some reason here you think your emotional appeals make you an authority on the issue.
I think we're all in relative agreement about the end goal here. No one wants more dead people. No one wants more violence. The problem many people like myself have is that we see support for gun control legislation that has been tried before, is based on nothing but emotional impact, and harms the liberty of law abiding citizens more than it saves lives as feeding into that distraction. That distraction is a very real danger. How many lives could be saved by focusing on violence created by poverty for the last 20 or so years by focusing on effective legislation. As it is, this is only hitting the symptoms of the issue at best, and rarely at that.
I've really only read about PCP in passing so I'm sure I've mostly sponged up misinformation about it. I'd like to know more though. If we were having a deeper discussion about whether or not certain types of drugs should be banned I definitely wouldn't speak before doing more research on them. My general take on drugs is that drugs that are no more dangerous (in a general sense) than alcohol should be legal, if they can be dangerous they should be controlled (prescription only), if they truly have no real recreational or medical value that a safer drug doesn't offer they should be illegal or highly highly controlled.
If you ever have the time to read that book or listen to it on audio book I'd recommend it.
My very point is on the arbitrariness of the examples that people bring up. Why is the possibility that a person becomes violent on a banned substance and kills someone worse or better than the possibility that someone ends up shooting someone during the heat of the moment when there is a gun in arms reach? The only objective reason would be the amount of people harmed. But would more people would die from drug fuelled violence if certain substances weren't banned compared to even accidental deaths from guns firing? And are people using that as a basis for why one thing is banned and the other not? I seriously doubt it. Once again, I don't advocate for gun control in the current US because I don't think it'll be very useful. But I think if attitudes towards guns change so that they aren't revered as much then I think we will see less people dying by them.
The main issue here is that every example of gun violence you've brought up is a consequence of other issues. Maybe the gang banger would be in a gang if he weren't brought up in a poverty stricken environment, or if his mother and father had aborted him since they had no intent to raise him properly. Maybe the person using a gun to kill themselves wouldnt if there were better suicide prevention measures in place. Maybe the wife killing her husband in the heat of the moment wouldn't if mental health issues, like poor anger control, were more normalized and she could better receive help. I can go all day dood. The bottom line is that gun violence, and violence in general, is always a consequence of another issue. Banning guns is treating the symptom instead of the cause. Even if your misguided ideals did rid America of its guns, people would still be getting hurt and killed for the exact same reasons, and to me thats not a victory.
I mean, if you don't believe me when I say what I believe then I don't really know what more can do. I used to think gun control could be useful but changed my mind long before this thread when I looked at the statistics and realised that there's be no point if most people weren't going to willingly give up their guns like in many other countries. Nonetheless, there is no reason why the US can't lower the number of people dying by guns, even if income inequality if only improved marginally. I think changing attitudes to guns in the US will help but as a consequence it'll mean what people's threshold of what it'll take for the right to own a gun to be question will have to be challenged. It seems many people believed I was advocating for stricter gun regulation because I didn't believe in the right to bear arms but it is possible to hold both opinions.
The issue here is everything you've presented thus far is completely based in your emotions rather than reality. You've presented nothing plausible until you started to backpeddle your way out of here. Everyone here has listed the things that would alleviate gun violence, and violence in general, in an effective manner, but getting rid of guns or gun culture is not one of them. Youre still proliferating the lie the gun culture boogieman which is just offensive at this point. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the 2A supporters views on firearms and hobbies associated with it. There is nothing wrong with the right to bear arms and its incredibly foolish of you not to believe in it. If you actually believed the statistics youve proported to have read, then you would know that the right to bear arms is not a negative thing and should be supported.
Just because we aren't addressing the other reasons or that it is not the core reason doesn't mean there is no value in a potential solution. Treating the symptoms is not a bad thing if it means less people suffer. You keep suggesting that I have nothing but emotional appeals in my posts. My appeals are for less people to die unnecessarily. I'm sorry if I come across as overly emotional about this to you.
Actually, it means exactly that there is no value in that solution. Why treat the symptoms instead of the cause? Thats just retarded. The sacrifice of liberties in exchange for nothing is just dumb dood. It makes literally no sense. I'm not suggesting that your posts are chock full of emotional nonsense, I'm outright telling you they are. Even this post is an emotional appeal. "I want ineffectual measures because I want to save lives!" Thats an emotional appeal, which you just did. I dont care if you argue with emotion or not, it honestly makes my job easier because you tend to invalidate your own points.
My argument as to why gun culture has an impact is by looking at every other developed nation and noticing that they don't have this problem. They may have similar rates of mental illness, similar amounts of poverty, similar amounts of inequality, just as many guns and even the right of bear arms but none comes close to gun violence. Perhaps it's the US's mixture of all of these that leads to their problems and gun culture has nothing to do with it. But can we at least entertain the idea that maybe the US's gun culture contributes at least partially?
Your basis for analysis is hilariously flawed. Youre comparing apples to oranges and wondering why only apples are red. Comparing country to country on gun violence rates is retarded, theres thousands of differing factors that make comparisons pointless. What country are you comparing the US to that is the exact same, even down to firearm ownership rates, but has differing violence rates? Why is it you attribute gun violence to gun culture? Since most non-suicides are caused by inner city gang violence, why wouldn't you attribute it to gang culture? Gun culture is based on using and owning firearms in a safe and law abiding manner. Why would you attribute such a culture to being the cause of violence? Your efforts here are so disgustingly misguided its not even funny.
Looks like Montreal is getting in on this too: Montreal expected to push Ottawa to ban handguns countrywide | C.. Personally I think going after the guns and not going after the reason why people are using them to commit violent crimes is god damn stupid and won't solve anything at all.
Handguns in Canada require not just a gun license, but also a "Restricted" gun license which is a whole different certification. After completing the program you are not only well known to the system, but have been vetted as much as a person can reasonably be vetted. Hand gun sales in Canada are already highly secure and the few people that violate their training do not a large problem make. If anything, the punishment for improper storage and handling should be raised, but short of that I see nothing that could make a difference. If parents were held accountable for their guns, regardless of whether it was solely the child's doing, I would imagine they would put extra care into locking them up in safes and hiding the key.
I actually would argue that the media inadvetedly (or, I hope at least...) a cycle of violence by making spree-killers the flavor of the month whenever they happen. If we were to look at the ur-school killers for instance, Dylan Klobald and Eric Harris, the two boys were absolute nobodies who made Doom levels before taking a few lives in their school. But yeah no, I'm sure stopping gun deaths will be just as easy as banning guns.
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