#GenerationLockdown: Two Australians shake up America with viral anti-gun ad
103 replies, posted
The vast majority of Pro-Gun folks are not in favor of restrictions on the quality of the firearm (how fast it shoots, how small it is, what sort of attachments it has, etc.), the vast majority of folks opposed to guns are. This is the cultural divide I was referencing. If we keep the stasis of the debate on the technical-mumbo-jumbo of the gun itself and its relationship to the law, we are inevitably going to be disappointed because all of these laws on gun type are inevitably going to be circumvented or we will find guns that don't fit the definition.
It is likely the case that the spirit of these laws are violated by the ATF also which is sad, but that doesn't discount what im saying, as I said above its just another side to the same issue, idk what context u think im ignoring. and if i repeat myself its because im trying to explain what im saying because it seems like something is being lost in translation / in my explanation
Because arbitrating around these metrics doens't change the overall lethality of the situation, or what's causing the crisis in the first place. It's literally BANDAID policies.
It's not even about that. It should be about saving lives. I don't see these legislations really "saving" lives because all they aim to do is get into technical jargon about the guns, and they have no interest in fixing the core issues.
Dianne Feinstein isn't knowledgable about guns, she's isn't knowledgable about people who own guns, and she's one of the leaders of the anti gun movement. For people like her, it isn't facts or reality on display here, it's politics and that's it.
We both speak english as our native languages, no? Then how are you not understanding that you basically ignored all of Illuminati's points to repeat yourself? This is basically what you did.
The reason that legislation targets assault rifles, I believe, is because the only time gun control happens in this country is after a mass tragedy, and in those mass tragedies shooters are often trying to maximize the number of people they kill so they turn to guns that shoot more/faster to do so. Its just a sad reality that the American public has become almost numb to the staggering daily handgun murders.
I agree with you that our focus on assault rifles is misguided and it would be preferable to focus on hand guns, but there is significantly less political will to restrict hand guns than assault rifles. Last poll I saw said 70% of Americans are opposed to restrictions on handguns, could be outdated and I can go look for it if you want me to, but I doubt that number has changed. Every little bit of gun control helps not only in terms of preventing deaths (even if they are among the margins) but also in terms of moving toward addressing the cultural divide.
To me I see restrictions on assault rifles as a stepping stone to broader restrictions in terms of a cultural shift. I think organizations like the NRA recognize this also which is why they fight tooth and nail to prevent it.
Or these rifles are being used as a political tool to build political good will with a group looking to be seen as "Doing something".
So they do "Something". They just don't create laws that actually save anyones life, and just makes it harder for a law abiding citzen to get a gun. It doesn't, and hasn't, stopped much of anything. or else this conversation wouldn't be needed.
People aren't "Numb" to handgun violence. They're ignorant to it. They're only aware of major shootings. They're not aware of the litany of small shootings that happen daily, because there's no media presence making it seem bigger than it is. This is you, reacting to the media blowing up an issue. We already KNOW that the major publication of these stories, the close following of the killer, is responsible for creating copy cat killers across the generations. This isn't debatable, but rather than tackle the social causes, you're just going to take away guns from people, again. The shootings will continue.
And why is that? Is it, maybe, because of poltical grandstanding on an issue people have a vested interest in exaggerating?
"Every little bit of gun control helps" - CLEARLY NOT. This is the problem. People are sick of reading these platitudes that are so full of shit it physically hurts. A lot of gun control DOESN'T help. It DOESN'T make it safer. But you hear that people oppose bad legislation, and you look at them like they're bad actors, not people just sick of bad legislation.
I don't, and most gun owners, don't give a rat fuck about the NRA. They can go die in a hole. We don't care. We're against stupid gun legislation that doesn't make sense because it's being enacted poorly, and stupidly. You think that stupid legislation is fine because "EVERY LITTLE BIT HELPS". No, it doesn't.
It makes this battle needlessly adversarial and it makes people like myself feel exhausted that there can't actually be honest discussion about this subject between people of differing views. You're entitled to your view, but I believe that no facts support the idea that "Any legislation is better than none".
Are you sure that every little bit of gun control is worth those lives even when, for example magazine capacity bans, is has been shown that they do not have an effect at all?
And for other measures are you really willing to go down the path of "even if it saves one life" when the most significant effects by far are solely felt by the law abiding?
And how exactly does gun control "address" a cultural divide?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCSySuemiHU
You can go on and on and on about how "gun owners this" or "gun owners that" but this is just proof that the legislation you support isn't based in reality.
@HumanAbyss I live in Chicago. I can't speak to the nation broadly, but here I can tell you that people are not ignorant of gun crime in Chicago. Even so, there is widespread apathy about a solution. In place of a solution that wins broad political support, gun control has been steadily chipped away at for the better part of the past decade. Maybe yall see that as a good thing! I'm not so optimistic.
All the things you are talking about are solutions that we should be pursuing (e.g. the root cause stuff... address poverty... mental health... etc). But its not a forced choice! We make it harder to get weapons like handguns or assault rifles, or in some situations outright ban them, and also address poverty and mental health.
You are right that people want to do something, and maybe you are even right about how the urge to "do something" makes them support needless policies, but I don't see these reforms as silverbullets, I see them as part of building broader momentum and support for other ones down the line. This is what I mean by cultural divide @Zombinie
It's also true, however, that we often make the perfect the enemy of the good. Poverty has been part of the American experiment since its inception, and the war against it has been slow and unsteady. I don't think its unreasonable to think that theres probably some interim stuff we can do to make it harder to possess/use firearms that are involved in massive and systemic death while we address poverty. I don't think our hands are tied in preventing gun fatalities until we address poverty or other structural issues. Yes, addressing those things are good, but we can walk and chew gum and we should!
Re your video: what do you want me to take away from this video? I'm under no illusion that restrictions on magazine size or type of firearm is going to solve all gun deaths overnight. But surely we can acknowledge that the point of magazine size is to increase lethality. It seems like its bad faith in this video's conclusion to simultaneously state that these restrictions dont hamper active shooters but somehow do make it harder for civilians to defend themselves.
I was born in '94 and remember doing lockdown drills since maybe 2nd or 3rd grade, right around 2002 or so. For the longest time I thought it was a very standard thing like a fire drill and never put the pieces together until very recently that it was a response to the Columbine shootings in 1999. Actually looking at it from an outside perspective is really spooky.
For what it's worth, I'm in rural America and we've never had a shooter drill either. I was out before the mass shooting media frenzy picked up though.
Those things have nothing to do with crime though. The things you want to regulate - the quality of the gun (??), the size, rate of fire, etc. - have no bearing on crime. We are not interested in complying with laws about those things because said laws only serve to annoy and hassle us. I shouldn't be at risk of becoming a felon because a 104 year old gun I own has a stock on it.
The homicide rate is at the lowest it's been since like 1910, since long before all the fancy guns people want to ban nowadays were invented. The issue simply doesn't lie with gadgets and fearsome looks.
You'll mostly find two different groups of people in regards to guns. People who support them, and people who don't. The rest of the population, whether affected or not, largely resides in apathy. This is how it goes with almost any and all societal changes or causes.
The people who are against gun control as it is being enacted, are against it not because it's "GUN CONTROL", but largely because it's ineffective, and aims at the wrong problem, and affects law abiding citizens more than it stops crimes. For this reason, those people who have a historically informed reason to distrust you, do.
Sure we can address guns. No one said you or anyone else can't. I believe some form of gun control is required going forward. I bet you'll find Grendiac agrees in some fashion. What people are against though, are gun registries, gun bans(as this is 100% ineffective and leaves only criminals with guns) and other useless and "feel good" measures. Why you want to enact things that don't actually fix the problem is beyond me, it's also part of why this issue has persisted for so long.
Gun rights groups wouldn't have such an easy time of getting support if gun legislators didn't base their legislation off of straight up fear mongering, or ignorance. It's very easy to say "They're coming to take your guns" when they literally are. People aren't going to let go of them. It's too late for that option.
But you'll never bridge that cultural divide if you do so based on BAD FAITH. Which so much of the "Anti gun" lobby is based on. So much of what people are trying to bring up to you isn't based on good faith arguments to reach a better solution. They're based on "X is what I want, how do we get there?" And that leads to people seeing anti gun legislators as little more than misled do gooders. Doing good is great, but can we not do so in bad faith?
I don't think you'll tackle those issues by banning guns. Making it harder to get guns is certainly an option to look at.
People aren't saying there's nothing to be done.
They're saying how the anti gun side has been doing them up til now, has not been working.
and it hasn't.
It demonstrates how little practical effect such a law has. Does it save lives? Make things safer? What's it do? What's the purpose of a magazine size restriction ban when it's practical use to the user wouldn't be saving lives?
No it’s really not. There’s a huge difference between being in a gun fight and shooting at defenseless people who can’t fight back. You have to look at it from a tactical perspective.
A. People who use guns in self defense situations don’t get to choose when they are attacked, and have the possibility of facing multiple armed attackers at extremely close distances. They don’t have time to reload in many situations, and some assailants don’t stop even after taking several gunshots wounds especially if they’re on drugs.
B. People who commit mass shootings know in advance to prepare for an attack and can take their sweet ass time picking off people who can’t fight back; often being able to reload many times over until either the cops finally show up, an armed civilian starts shooting back, or until they run out of ammo.
Restricting person A to 10 rounds or less puts them at a huge disadvantage against armed attackers in many situations (and has resulted in serious injuries or death to victims in some instances) despite self defense with guns happening in at least 100,000 times per year. Restricting person B to 10 rounds or less has a negligible effect at best against mass shooters mowing down innocents, despite occurring less than 5 times in most years. And even if standard capacity magazines are banned, there’s nothing really stopping people from just obtaining them legally or using weapons which do comply with asinine gun laws; BOTH of which were clearly demonstrated in the columbine massacre during the effective period of the federal assault weapons ban.
So no “restricting lethality” is not a solution worth pursuing as it disproportionately affects innocent people for no tangible benefit.
This whole anti-gun scare I see on social media is literally the most braindead shit I've ever seen and the claims that young people all around America are worried about dying in a school shooting are pretty unbelievable. I never had one of these shooting drills at any school in my city, and I live in the state with literally the least gun laws in legislation. Literally, you can make your own gun here or not register a firearm you acquire and you'd be breaking zero laws. Also, zero people I ever talked to in school were ever actually worried about some shooting happening. I literally just graduated from high school like two weeks ago as well, so I'm well covered under the definition "American student" who supposedly is awake at night thinking about dying at school. I'd be interested to see statistics on how many people my age actually thought that way though
Not really? Whether the firearm protected the person depends on whether they would have been harmed if they were not armed. Not on whether the person decided to use their weapon.
Far from every instance of DGU would've otherwise resulted in a death or even in bodily harm. As .Ducky pointed put, only a small minority of burglaries that occured when the owner was present resulted in serious harm. So only a small part of DGUs that occurred in that situation actually prevented harm.
So until we have more information on what the distribution of DGUs is in terms of type of crimes that were sought to prevent, there's no reason to believe that widespread gun ownership prevented more deaths than it caused.
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