Sheriffs are forming "2nd Amendment sanctuaries" refusing to enforce gun control
285 replies, posted
Until someone else stops you? What if what you're doing is bothersome, but not harmful? Don't they have a right to whatever the hell they want man?
It's sad that you think you can keep passing value judgements on shit you don't know literally anything about.
You're not even responding to what I said with anything meaningful, this seems like an entire aside about something I don't think you understand where I was going with this.
We live in the "most connected" age ever, and on average, the average human being has fewer strong social bonds now, than ever before. We live in a time of mass media, where messages spread faster than anything else. Anti-vax sentiments would be my go to example of how powerful social media campaigns can be to override our individual voices.
No, I fully get what you're "Tapping into". It's just something that was debunked for me personally as early as 18 when I argued the same shit you're arguing now, and was unable to justify how something is naturally a right. Maybe you're way smarter than me and can do so, but you have yet to demonstrate that.
So the naturally existing right was removed because nothing was there to protect it.
So, again, is it even a right if nothing enforces it?
Nah, of course not, but that’s the way nature can go. Survival of the fittest and all that. You still have every right to fight back though. Most of the world don’t need a gun for self-defense.
And nah, gun ownership is a privilege - backed by literally every dictionary.
holy shit it's like you have no concept of the real fucking world.
Animals eat each other my dude.
That's not what the word RIGHT means though
Last time you read a dictionary, you thought it applied to natural rights, when it specified legal rights.
I don't trust your description of a "Definition".
So here is your tacit admission that innocent people getting murdered by criminals is just "the way it is" and "survival of the fittest" and preferable to guns being accessible to civilians.
So, does a gazelle have a right to life? or does the lion have the right to life? The lion has to eat the gazelle to live, and the gazelle has to not be eaten to live, so which ones "right" wins?
At this point the bandage boys coming back to down would provide less derailment to this thread and more fruitful discussion than any further dialog with this probable solopsist.
Yeah dude, and we eat animals too. It all comes around.
I didn’t say survival of the fittest is what qualifies you to live, I just said it tends to happen. Are you saying Darwin isn’t right?
This is the most ridiculous argument I've seen to date on this forum and at risk of getting banned I'm going to say what everyone's thinking and call you an idiot. Go outside and get some perspective.
Heh, this is a first. Someone using Locke style Naturalism to say Darwinism is right. You realize this is usually argued in the opposite, right? Darwin was totally right. Locke was totally wrong.
If a right, is something that you just "naturally" have, but it doens't protect you from dying, why are you calling it a right?
Neither have a right to life, they each have a role to play in nature, but that doesn't mean they have fucking rights.
How do you have "Overlapping" rights?
That's not what a right is dude lmao
It's honestly fucking surreal how dedicated you are to this point.
I would like to help you see how contradictory you're being, but you've refused thus far.
Fucking surreal.
That is debatable, even the definition you posted debunked the completely literal definition you are bizarrely trying to put forward. The only way anyone could define a right as you are is if you were being as abstract as humanly possible. At that point the word right is completely meaningless.
Rights are literally an invention of humanity to create fairness.
Fairness, is a concept humanity created too, by the way!
Are you ok?
What an engaging debate. I guess pro-gun posters are more interested in arguing stupid semantics for pages on end by focusing on one dumb anti-gun statement rather than responding to other, more constructive, arguments. Is this fun to you? I personally don't find this interesting in the slightest. But it does help strengthen your belief that all anti-gun rhetoric is baseless and ideological, so that's probably the flames you want to fan if you want your side to appear clever and rational in comparison, rather than to enable a constructive and instructive debating environment for both sides. After all, focusing on and giving exposure to the craziest elements of a group, while ignoring and dismissing those who are willing to actually discuss is a tried-and-true method to both paint the opposition as the worst of its parts and discourage the reasonable parts from taking part in the discussion, because why bother putting in the necessary time into that when 90% of your points will be ignored and the rest will be nitpicked or misrepresented in a haughty manner?
Keep playing the victim, pretending to be the only rational ones, that no anti-gun poster ever made a compelling argument in favor of their side. But don't act surprised once that made-up context of yours becomes reality, and every member of the opposition interested in sane discussions drop out out of frustration. This will be a situation of your own making, and you'll only have yourself to blame once you grow tired of having nonsensical debates with the few remaining, bad faith anti-gun posters.
Fuck this shit.
You've made compelling arguments. Just not compelling enough for me to support a gun ban.
Ironically you're fixating on my post and pretending that it represents all of the pro-gun posters.
HmmMMMMM
The bulk of your post seem to be taking umbrage with the way that the pro-gun side of the argument conducts themselves as well as saying that they are drawing the wrong conclusions from the data they present.
I read the summary of the suicide study you posted, and the conclusion led me to believe that what the study found was that restricting the availability of firearms led to a reduction in firearm related suicides. After the reform law was passed suicide rates via methods other than firearms stayed at similar levels.
This seems like a foreign conclusion to me. Of course a reduction is access to firearms would lead to a decrease of firearm related suicides.
Maybe this is just me being selfish (judge me as you will), but I do not agree with the idea that my access to a right afforded to us by our laws should be restricted because others decide to commit suicide via a firearm.
Please let me know if I am drawing the wrong conclusions from that. I say this as someone who does not even own a gun. I just got drawn in here by the absolute shit show that was Coyote’s argument.
How is it possible that you actually read that entire shitshow and thought "hm yes the pro-gun side is being unreasonable"?
I kinda feel like I helped Coyote devolve in this thread.
I'm sorry
Now wait just a goddamn minute there. First of all, you said:
But somehow that doesn’t apply to your side of the argument? Secondly, which “proper statistics and facts”? The vast majority of things I see on here are flyby shitposts by well adjusted individuals such as this:
Moving on...
You’re very clearly projecting here. Grenadiac and a bunch of others including myself, have been suggesting multiple times what measures could be taken to reduce gun violence without scheming about different ways to take people’s guns away. Yet every other thread, everyone else just reverts back to the default state of “I DON’T LIKE THING. BAN THING!” while people like yourself continue to miss the forest for the trees.
Also don’t try to pretend that most arguments on here in favor of gun control aren’t doing exactly what you described here. The biggest example being Exdee’s improper usage of a study (which by the way relies on a simulated model instead of analyzing currently existing statistics) to make the assertion that allowing people to concealed carry somehow leads to an increase in rape. He then comes to the conclusion that if states got rid of their “shall issue” policies on concealed carry permits, that somehow it would reverse the effects. It’s as if he’s treating concealed carry laws as the sole variable responsible for increased instances of rape. HMMM...
Also in the contrary, people are pointing out examples and statistics to show YOUR side that gun violence isn’t a simple issue which can be solved by just making guns illegal. As far as this forum goes, only the anti-gun side of the argument is making sweeping generalizations based on emotional appeals such as:
Nobody really NEEDS to own a gun.
Why are you so obsessed about keeping your murder toys?!
Less gun laws = more violence. No exceptions.
The second amendment only applies to the government or militias. (Despite a Supreme Court ruling which explicitly states it is a right of the individual)
Anyone who owns a gun for self defense is a wannabe Rambo who fantasizes about violence.
No one should have an assault rifle/machine gun.
Ban assault weapons.
Why won’t you compromise?! (After said “compromise” was just going after some guns instead of all of them and once again was just another attempt to screw us over without any actual compromise)
And speaking of Ecksdee...
Oh please, you were there to muddy the waters in that thread from the very beginning by comparing gun owners to slavery. Everyone rightfully saw right through the horse shit you were trying to push in that thread as well, so give it a rest.
Anyone who wants to see how that all went can just read pages 2 and 3 and form their own opinions.
And that's fine, I don't have any issue with people disagreeing with me on gun control or gun bans. I understand that this is a complex issue and that related data is sparse. It makes sense that people with different ideologies would come up with different conclusions, since you need something to fill the gaps even if you take all the available data into account.
What I take issue with is people like Geel grossly misrepresenting their opposition to try and pretend that they're the only rational side, that there never have been any kind of valid argumentation on our part, that our position strictly stems from feelings and ideology. This is unbecoming for a balanced and fair debate, not to mention highly hypocritical coming from someone who claims to be sensible.
I'm fixating on you, on Grenadiac, who completely misrepresented my point and thought that pointing out a couple of bad arguments on the anti-gun side was sufficient to invalidate all the good ones, and on all the posters who disagreed with my response to your post, didn't bother to make rebuttals, yet thought it preferable to debate about Coyote's nonsense instead.
That's not all pro-gun posters, of course. But according to you, there's no problem with using the behaviour of the few to tar the whole, is there? Hmmm.
Nice zinger though.
How is it possible that you read my entire post and somehow concluded that I support Coyote or even give a shit about the stupid debate you had with him in the first place?
You keep misreading my points, I'm not sure whether you're doing it intentionally or are just not trying hard enough.
Maybe it's a bit of both, I'm not expecting you to be consistent at this point. After all, you claim my original post is not even worthy of a response because it's not good enough (despite not even understanding it), yet you find no issue with taking the time to debate Coyote for pages on end about nonsense, despite the fact you basically called him an idiot and evidently don't exactly hold his argumentation in high esteem.
So the takeaway seems to be that the most idiotic posts deserve to be discussed more in your eyes than more sensible ones. Not exactly what I'd expect from someone who seeks enlightening debate. Seems more in line with the behaviour of someone who seeks low-hanging fruit to appear bright in comparison.
I'm only putting myself on the same level of scrutiny that you impose on your side's arguments. If you want to consider more nuanced interpretations of the available data, like I suggested, you're welcome to do so, and I will do the same. But in that case, you won't be able to claim that anyone on your side made any more "highly compelling arguments" than your opposition.
If you don't, then I don't see why I should hold my side and myself to higher standards.
Huh, the vast majority? Based on which metric? Amount of posts (grossly inflated by people who focus on low-hanging fruit, as demonstrated in this thread)? Amount of posters? What are your sources?
If you're a partisan of cold, hard facts, then prove it: Do a proper statistical study, with detailed methodology, that clearly exposes just how much of the anti-gun side is filled with low-effort posters, rather than rely on feelings and ideology to wing it like you're doing here.
That is, if you even find an use to its conclusion. Even if 90% of anti-gun posters made no effort in thinking their post through, how would that invalidate the remaining 10% that make relevant points?
Also, you'll find proper stats and facts given by anti-gun posters if you bother reading this thread. Moving on...
Pretty much, yeah. The amount of suicide by firearms decreased, and all other methods stayed stable. This led to a decrease in suicides overall.
That's not all this study shows, though. It shows a decrease in firearm related suicides and no change in other methods. This means that those who didn't end up committing suicide because they didn't have direct access to a weapon did not simply kill themselves in a different way, as you would expect if the ownership of a firearm was a mean and not a decisive factor on whether a person commits suicide.
This shows that reducing firearm ownership for people who are prone to suicide will lead to an overall decrease in suicides.
This is your stance and you're free to hold it. However, I know that some pro-gun advocates do think that the priority of gun control should be reducing suicides rather than mass shootings and, to some extent, gun crime. It makes sense, since the majority of gun-related deaths are suicides.
So while that may not change your mind on gun control, I believe that some people could be interested in that information, and may adjust their opinion accordingly.
Guns and Liberalism aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. I think the gun debate has become a topic with partisan leanings so everyone is more likely to align with their camp. IMO I'd say gun violence in America is more caused by an easy availability of illegal un-registered guns, as well as social issues present among people of lower class. IMO violence becomes more common in poverty-stricken environment in which people are left to simmer in an environment of desperation, where mental illness or violent tendancies develop.
If something is done about class and race divisions in the United States, I think the gun debate will be of less significant, as the homicide rate will go down and mass shootings will become less prevalent.
This is your problem. Your posts aren't the more sensible ones. You think you have the hard questions that none of us gun nuts can answer and that's why you're being ignored, but you're actually being ignored because your posts don't contain any meat. There's nothing to engage with. Your arguments consist of thinly veiled emotional platitudes, misinterpreted statistics, generalized mischaracterizations of gun owners, and attempts at zingers. Coyote's posts were God-awful but they contained shit worth replying to.
How can I reply to this?
This is total hot air. I don't know if you actually believe this or if you just think the majority of people reading it will fall for it, but at this point I don't really care. There's not even a way to begin structuring an actual debate against this because it's literally completely false from top to bottom.
Nobody on the pro-gun side here "assumed gun control does nothing." Being a multinational community, we're intimately familiar with the effects of many, many different approaches and we know what works and what doesn't. I have personally, in talking to you specifically, offered multiple paragraphs of gun control measures that, from my experience combined with the experiences of other gun owners all around the world that are part of the FP gun community, would actually be effective. I recall proposing five fairly sweeping measures - including an aggressive approach to universal background checks, safe storage laws, making it illegal to store weapons in your vehicle - written from my perspective as a gun owner, outlining how they would affect law abiding gun owners and how they would affect criminals. I backed those propositions with statistics and research.
You rated the post dumb.
I'm not the only one who's taken that step. Catbarf, Zombinie, and a host of others have joined me in proposing reasonable gun control solutions that are designed with the experience of firearms owners in mind. We know what's already on the books; we know what works, we know what doesn't, and we too have a vested interest in solving this problem. You can continue to pretend all you fucking like that we're just plugging our ears and railing against all forms of gun control if you like; I don't really give a shit, you aren't fooling anyone.
I already engaged this point and you dumbed the post and moved on, probably because this is bullshit and you know it. I'll reiterate: the argument is inherently asymmetrical. Switzerland is not proof that MORE GUNS is the SOLUTION TO CRIME. You think, or want others to think, that we pose Switzerland as some kind of proof that MORE GUNS equals LESS CRIME. What Switzerland is, is proof that the amount of guns does not have any direct link to the amount of crime, neither a positive link nor a negative link, because there are hundreds of other factors at work. Switzerland is a counter example to the argument that "US has guns and has lots of gun crime UK doesn't have gun crime because we banned guns ." That's the Swiss argument. That's all it's for.
Yeah, both sides, huh? This weak attempt at appearing centrist and neutral isn't fooling anyone.
In just about every gun debate I've ever been in, the thread ends with a post from me, Zombinie, or catbarf - with a question mark.
Axel, dude, you're not dumb. I don't think you're an idiot, and I don't think you're inherently dishonest. But you're being dishonest. Drop this bullshit.
Why would you use the behavior of someone you think is wrong to justify your own behavior? You think it's wrong, so stop.
Actually, our most recent discussion (in the thread about the universal background checks bill) ended with Axel providing a fairly reasonable argument. While I believed there was a flaw in his logic, it wasn't something that I could find hard evidence rather than personal anecdotes for (he believed elimination of private sale could meaningfully reduce suicide, but I believe non-gun-owners are overwhelmingly likely to seek a gun from a store rather than private sale venues), so I dropped it.
I think Axel is being pretty unreasonable in this thread, but I'll own up to letting the last one die.
I'm merely pointing out how absurd your point is. It's a rhetorical analogy, I don't actually believe pro-gun posters can be painted with the same brush in such a way.
Right, so you're just done arguing for pages with someone you came as close to insulting as possible without being banned for flaming, but you think my points are so beneath you that they don't deserve your reply.
Nevermind the fact HumanAbyss said he finds some of my arguments compelling, even if not enough to change his mind.
Nevermind the fact I've had a reasonable discussion with catbarf on the matter a few days ago, as I previously did with other pro-gun posters.
Nevermind the fact I actually agree with a lot of you guys' stances, despite fundamental differences in our points of view.
But no, apparently my calling out Geel for spouting bullshit and grossly caricaturing his opposition means that "my posts don't contain any meat", that they consist of "misrepresented statistics" (where?), "attempts at zingers" and "emotional platitudes".
And you say I'm being dishonest? Please try calling yourself into question.
I don't have any motivation to address the rest of your post. After all, why should I bother when apparently anything I say will be regarded as not worth replying to? This is also why I rated some of your posts without replying to them. Why should I be the only one to bother backing up every opinion of mine? It's not worth the time.
I'll just address this part because of how blatant it is:
You've participated in both of those threads. This looks like selective memory in action.
There's also this one, but you haven't posted in it so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you haven't seen it.
Those are all within the last two weeks, and it's only threads where I made the last post. It doesn't account for threads where other anti-gun posters did the same, and I don't see why the three recent examples I posted would be the only ones.
See, this is why I denounce rhetoric like Geel displayed. You're so confident in your argumentative supremacy on this matter that you mentally shut out instances where the outcome was much more nuanced than you'd assume, to the point where you make cocky statements like this one which no reasonable person would make unless they were certain to have read every gun debate thread to its conclusion.
That's what makes debating against your side so frustrating. Simple, argumentative and backed up discussions with you would be enriching on its own. But it too often comes with this background of disdain, of selective memory that reinforce a hostile narrative, and a lack of self-criticism. That's why I feel less and less compelled to actually try to empathize and understand your point of view. It's not a favourable ground for that.
I participated in both threads - in one, in tacit support of gun control measures, and in the other, flatly condemning anti-American rhetoric from other gun owners?
I reviewed both threads and didn't find any loose ends that I left behind. What were you waiting on me to reply to?
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