Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Willfor]

If you're going to reduce the statement to that then let's bring up how one of them has definitely killed more Americans than the other. One of them has never been involved in a mass slaughter by a lone figure. In fact, even before the restrictions it took a team of coordinated people to turn it into a threat.

Maybe bring them to the same level of security? I mean, I just went through airport security in America not long ago, and I'd feel much better about the state of guns in America if even that level of restriction could be in place.

[smjjames]

I'd weigh in on guns, but it'd probably not help.   :/

Spoiler: but if you care (click to show/hide)

mental health improvement would probably rid us of Sad Obama

IN more important news, apparently emailgate has taken a turn for the 'Clinton could actually end up in jail' or something? I'm much too tired to parse google for this.

I haven't heard anything about it suddenly taking a turn for the worse and having Clinton face a real possibility of jail time. Given her influence, I doubt she'll actually spend time behind bars, but being forced to give up her candidacy could happen. Her being forced to quit the race would be a shakeup the equivalent of a magnitude 10.0 quake on the Richter scale.

[smjjames]

If you're going to reduce the statement to that then let's bring up how one of them has definitely killed more Americans than the other. One of them has never been involved in a mass slaughter by a lone figure. In fact, even before the restrictions it took a team of coordinated people to turn it into a threat.

Maybe bring them to the same level of security? I mean, I just went through airport security in America not long ago, and I'd feel much better about the state of guns in America if even that level of restriction could be in place.

*ahem* The germanwings flight that flew into a mountain earlier this year? Still, that case is a really rare event, but not impossible.

Also, trying to compare planes and guns is like comparing cherries to pumpkins.

Yes I just resized the old 'comparing apples and oranges' thing.

[Willfor]

The forest is being missed for the trees on that particular point though. The point is maybe some restrictions might not be a bad idea. It's like everybody and their mother wants that to be false so bad. I'm seeing otherwise reasonable people in this thread going out of their way to say that maybe a little bit of red tape will destroy America. If microscopic amounts of red tape could destroy America then America might be a little too fragile, and needs to grow a thicker skin.

[Strife26]

Calling the TSA as a good role model for pretty much anything other than "how not to do security" is a pretty bad idea

http://www.loweringthebar.net/2015/06/tsa-successfully-passes-three-security-tests.html
(tl;dr it was out of seventy attempts)

Heck, there's a whole tag for it if you want more
http://www.loweringthebar.net/homeland_insecurity/

Government bureaucracy doesn't tend to make things safer, and when it does it certainly comes with significant costs in straight money, productivity, and freedoms.

[Reelya]

That assumes most guns are purchased for either crime or self defense. Most legally purchased guns in the united states are purchased as hobbyist things because guns are really cool and fun to have for a large segment of the population. You don't seriously buy an AR15 for self defense, you buy it because they're a blast to shoot and because you can.

And before someone says that therefore people don't need them so restrictions are cool, American society (traditionally and ideally) puts a premium on preserving rights, not taking them away.

Well you could back that up with a citation. My citation is here. 48% of gun owners cite self-defense as the top reason for getting the gun, which outnumbers the second highest reason of hunting by a fair margin.
http://www.people-press.org/2013/03/12/why-own-a-gun-protection-is-now-top-reason/

Rights are all well and good, but the right to fuck with other people isn't a "right". In these cases one person asserting their rights diminishes other peoples rights. Any assertation of rights which only works on the assumption that other people don't exist is going to be instantly suspect as a philosophy.

Should you have the right to punch random people? Driving on the footpath could also be called a right. Screw road rules, right? It's my right to drive on the footpath if I feel like it. If pedestrians are too slow to get out of the way, that's their problem. Let them assert their right to dive out of the way and not interfere with my "drive wherever I like" right. Giving guns to people at random might be a "right' but it's also guaranteed to create third-party victims who didn't get a say in being shot at. Saying "well you can arm up too, so it's all fair" isn't a solution. The bystander has still been drawn into gunfights that they didn't want to get involved in. That obviates their right to be left alone.

Preserving stupidity is more like it. The gun you own is the most likely gun to kill you.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/01/good_guy_with_a_gun_myth_guns_increase_the_risk_of_homicide_accidents_suicide.html
Gun homicide, accidents and suicide are all positively correlated with owning a gun. Sure, you could say that it's the gun owners responsibility to be aware of the increased risk they face by owning a gun. But they also put innocent people around them at risk. That's impacting the rights of those around them. It's like saying you do rock climbing without a harness. That's cool for you, you know the risks that you could fall to your death. Nobody else's problem. But then adding "and I carry my toddler with me when I rock climb". Which is not fucking cool at all, since the toddler didn't get a choice and didn't sign up for the known risks. Owning a gun is more like that. Or like driving without a seatbelt (nobody at risk but yourself), but demanding your whole family doesn't wear seatbelts either (which is not cool at all).

Also, by pushing "guns are safe" myths, the gun lobby robs prospective gun owners of impartial information, which means they're not making an informed choice about the risks that come with gun ownership. Lying to people is not respecting their "rights".

[Frumple]

Government bureaucracy doesn't tend to make things safer, and when it does it certainly comes with significant costs in straight money, productivity, and freedoms.

... y'really have to work hard to come to that conclusion, considering that the stuff's ubiquitous, managing our roads, waterworks, a great deal of our medical needs, and all sorts of other stuff, and overall vastly increasing safety, productivity, sometimes even straight money, and enabling all sorts of freedoms (particularly that whole "not die a horrible death" one inherent to a lot of infrastructure management and industry regulation) in the process.

It's like saying that government regulation is likely to make things less safe and free, except for all those mountains of examples where it doesn't. Clearly that means we shouldn't look to those examples and pattern our future works on previous functioning ones. Instead, better to shove our thumbs up our bums and do nothing. After all, they took away all our cars after instituting that viciously restrictive drivers license malarkey, right?

[Reelya]

I agree on driver's licenses. And road rules. It's up to parents to prepare tomorrow's drivers, not some beareaucratic system. And who decides what constitutes a road anyway? If there's a shortcut through a park, or across a plaza, it would be a wasteful distortion of driving routes, to try and enforce driving on "roads" in "lanes" of "traffic". There shouldn't be age restrictions either. Who's to tell me my 13 year old son isn't old enough to drive? Or that his blood alcohol level is too high. Don't forget about those wasteful roadworthiness rules! Who are they to tell you when to replace your tires or that you should fix your indicator lights. I mean, it's my car so who's better qualified to make such decisions except myself?

Let the market decide everything. Unlicensed, underaged drunk drivers in faulty vehicles will naturally weed themselves out of the pool of drivers, eventually.

[Strife26]

The rifle next to my bed diminishes anyone else's rights how, exactly? Then it should stay right the hell where it is, and Strife born another decade too late should have no (or possibly little) more trouble getting it than I did. 



I'm basing my argument that most guns aren't purchased for self defense on the fact that most gun owning families own multiple weapons. If you wanted something for self defense, you'd buy a shotgun and maybe a pistol for carry. It's tough to find decent statistics on the average number of weapons for a weapon owning household, but as a general rule it's considerably higher than 1 or 2.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/05/america-has-more-guns-in-fewer-hands-than-ever-before%E2%80%8B/

Not paid enough to resize large image.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Considering the large size of the arms industry in America and the relatively low rate that guns are removed from circulation (finding a nice line graph for estimated total number of guns in America was surprisingly difficult) we can see a strong tendency for the average gun owner to buy multiple guns. Anecdotally and as a gun owner myself, this is very much the case. The normal reason on a survey is either hunting or self defense, but both of these applications take one or two different weapons, not a arsenal.

I'd very strongly argue that people buy guns as a hobby. Because tactical barbies are fun, quite frankly. Same as fast cars, big TV's, and loud music are fun.


However, this is largely irrelevant. It doesn't matter why people are buying guns, the number of legal gun owners (who in many cases are incompetent to use them, note) are not going to do anything illegal with them. Restricting their rights, is wrong.

The American standard is that fundamental rights may only be restricted in narrow, very well-defined areas where the government has a overriding interest in preventing the conduct. For example, the ridiculously often misused doctrine of "fighting words," a restriction of 1st amendment rights to freedom of speech, is narrow and very well defined (by higher courts if not the general public or local authorities) unless it's directly to someone and it's calculated to immediately make them commit an act of violence against you, it's not fighting words, and therefore not something that the government can reasonably restrict under that doctrine.

Modern American Gun Control is not remotely similar. It's a hodgepodge of loopholes, nonsensicallity, and banning of weapons/ furniture that "looks scary." The gun control lobby that supports continued restrictions on weapon classes is terribly shortsighted, fails the general tests for restricting rights, and remains politically unpalatable.

Making it tougher to buy a gun is also questionable, as we can see with the No Fly List, it's about a thousand times easier to get put on it, than to be taken off  (http://www.loweringthebar.net/2013/12/govt-witness-tampering-no-fly-trial.html provides a pretty humorous and useful primer, as well as continuing count of ltb cites) . A national No Gun List would fall into the same problems, but restricting something considerably more fundamental than the ability to fly.

Background checks have additional problems because many gun owners are extremely wary about having their names go on government databases. This includes
Ending up on watch-lists where illegal surveillance then gets rolled up into legal surveillance (long story short, if the government feels like arresting you, you've almost certainly committed at least one felony in the last month, almost certainly a misdemeanor. Not a great site, but if someone really wants me to, I can pull up some case studies of this style loop. http://blog.acton.org/archives/82102-how-many-felonies-did-you-commit-today.html False Statements to a Federal officer is a particularly popular one)
Having cop knocking on your door over something small becoming a swat team kicking down your door, actively shooting your dog, then accidentally shooting you (there's a common theme of government mistrust here, a general core of American Political Culture)
Or even being specifically targeted when the day of the Jackboot comes and the gun grab starts (which could be anywhere to imminent, to never going to happen, to my personal prediction of probability fifty in the next two decades)


One again, I'd like to note that the American Political system does not restricts rights for being misused. Going on Yelp and trashing a business is not a crime, contrary to what some lawyers say. It has to be done in such a way as to be Libel, which meets our narrow and serving an overriding government interest. Similarly, the American system does not (or should not, at least) be restricting my gun ownership because I just feel like shooting a paycheck in an afternoon, then hanging my Barrett over my mantelpiece until such day as I need to (foolishly) try to take out a tank.

In world where people are sensible, or as the hypothetical Strife for President with the extra hypothetical President Strife with infinite political capital, we probably see an addition or two to the traditional narrow limitations on gun purchasing, combined with a greatly expanded mental healthcare net (as well as serious modifications to the healthcare market in general). Restricting ownership of guns from people caught in this net would obviously be a very dangerous thing to do from a liberty perspective, once again because getting off that No Gun List has to be reasonable to do for the average citizen, without undue cost, litigation, or political connections.


Editresponse
Alright, bureaucracy was probably a bad word, there. Bureaucracies, specifically, that don't deal with trying to correct a breakdown in markets (namely our domestic security apparatus, neither the TSA nor the War on Drugs has made citizens any safer, and the amount of money spent on the two of them could probably double or triple NASA's budget for some time, much less lost productivity from the two)

[Strife26]

Pretty much. Also for general knowledge, here's the required standards that you're looking at meeting for your hypothetical solution, even disregarding political considerations that makes anything suggested not going to happen.

U.S. courts apply the strict scrutiny standard in two contexts: when a fundamental constitutional right is infringed,[1] particularly those found in the Bill of Rights and those the court has deemed a fundamental right protected by the Due Process Clause or "liberty clause" of the 14th Amendment, or when a government action applies to a "suspect classification," such as race or national origin.
To pass strict scrutiny, the law or policy must satisfy three tests:
It must be justified by a compelling governmental interest. While the Courts have never brightly defined how to determine if an interest is compelling, the concept generally refers to something necessary or crucial, as opposed to something merely preferred. Examples include national security, preserving the lives of multiple individuals, and not violating explicit constitutional protections.
The law or policy must be narrowly tailored to achieve that goal or interest. If the government action encompasses too much (overbroad) or fails to address essential aspects of the compelling interest, then the rule is not considered narrowly tailored.
The law or policy must be the least restrictive means for achieving that interest. That is, there cannot be a less restrictive way to effectively achieve the compelling government interest. The test will be met even if there is another method that is equally the least restrictive. Some legal scholars consider this "least restrictive means" requirement part of being narrowly tailored, though the Court generally evaluates it separately.
. . .
The compelling state interest test is distinguishable from the rational basis test, which involves claims that do not involve a suspect class and involve a liberty interest rather than a fundamental right. It is also important to note that, unlike the rational basis test, the burden of proof falls on the state in cases requiring either strict scrutiny or intermediate scrutiny.

Pulled from the Wikipedia page on strict scrutiny, with bolded added for the super important bits and a tangent about how often strict scrutiny kills laws removed.

[Reelya]

Well the first clause includes "preserving the lives of multiple individuals" as a state interest, so gun laws clearly pass on that issue. And you have the inalienable rights listed as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in that order, which it's the government's job to protect. "Life" comes first btw because there's no liberty or happiness for the dead. Armed nutjobs in the street is clearly a failure of the government to preserve all three of these basic things, equally, for all citizens.

The third clause is a giveaway too, since it calls for the "least restrictive" means for achieving that interest. The existence of less restrictive means, in general, that do not achieve the stated interest (i.e. "free guns for everyone" or just "let's pretend it isn't happening") does not mean a proposed law fails this test. So this clause is only invoked when it can be shown that there are less restrictive alternatives that can also be shown to reduce the killing, which was outright stated as a legitimate state interest, in the first clause.

So the only area of contention would be clause #2, where you need to show that the law doesn't have too many other negative effects (we can assume unintended positive effects wouldn't rule out a law). Background checks would have prevented some mass-murders. And for guys like the Colorado Joker shooter, maybe it would make sense that you have to buy one gun first, and after you've had that for a while without shooting anyone, then you could buy more, instead of how he was able to legally purchase a small arsenal right on the spot. Making it harder to plan these things would mean more opportunities for this guy to come to the attention of mental health and the police. None of that would prevent people owning a gun for recreational purposes but it would make it hard to plan for a mass shooting. You don't need to buy an AR-15 and a bunch of Glocks right on the spot for almost any legitimate purpose.

[Reelya]

It's in the declaration of independence actually.

EDIT: a very similar phrase is in the Bill of Rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

nor be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law

If you want to play semantics, this prevents the government killing you, but doesn't say they have to give a shit if someone else kills you, I guess. But given other statements of the founders (Jefferson and Madison) that seems like taking it literally and ignoring the spirit of the document. It's also a stretch to think that "deprived of liberty" means specifically, never ever being told not to do something.

Back to the "rifle by my bed never killed anyone". Sure, that's true, but also, most drunk drivers never kill anyone either. Should we throw our arms up and throw out drunk driving laws as unconstitutional because most drunk drivers are ok? It's basically the same deal. Some people like getting tanked up before driving and most of them never run over any kids.

[Reelya]

well, it morphed into "nor be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law" in the bill of rights. Since it's hard to legislate people to be happy.

The bill of rights is definitely in place to prevent the government killing you outright. But does it mean the government should protect your "life, liberty or property" from non-government actors who want to murder you, enslave you or steal your stuff? I'd argue that it says the people should not be "deprived" of these things, i.e. these things should be protected, rather than just punishing people after the fact. if you only punish people after they commit a crime, you've failed to prevent the deprivation of life, liberty and property - which is what it says right in the constitution about what these laws are intended to do.

There are laws against murder. Surely, preventing murder is the government's business just as much, if not more so, than punishing people for it after the fact. If you have a government who only gives a shit after you're already dead, what use are they?

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Well let's just go with this text as a basis for the gun laws. It starts with a "a well regulated militia" not "every joe blow owning an M16". The "well regulated" part seems to be heavily stressed too, so i can't see how you can get "no gun regulation" out of this. Actually you can get out of this that each state should restrict gun ownership to authorized militia members and have weapons inspections and the like, similar to Switzerland.

[Sheb]

IIRC, that's a case of the meaning of words changing over time, "well regulated" in this case meaning "well equipped". In the context of the American independence, where militamen with rifles were use with great effect against the British and their muskets, this interpretation make a lot more sense.

Still, Strife, don't you think it's a bit silly to consider owning some cool stuff a "fundamental right"? I'm not really a pro-gun control person (I think the world would definitely be a better place with less gun around, but I'm wary of that tendency to want to ban anything remotely dangerous, from guns to walking to school), but a protection on owning gun feel as much out of place in a constitution as the guarantee of "an equal distribution of organs" in the Swiss constitution.

And as for the "gun shouldn't be used for sef-defense because they just make you more likely to get killed, I'm always reminded of this comic.



Again, not exactly sure what my position on the issue is, but it's not a clear-cut issue for me.

[Reelya]

The number of general arguments that escalate to shooting outnumbers self-defense by about 10:1 (Data source: FBI). And that's before factoring in accidents, suicide and premeditated murder. The fallacy of the comic is making it sound like a 50/50 choice. And all the evidence is that having a gun in the house makes women on the whole much more at risk:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/having-a-gun-in-the-house-doesnt-make-a-woman-safer/284022/