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[Strife26]

the
Clearly it's too easy for insane people to get guns. Since controlling guns is not a practical option

http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-prevent-says-only-nation-where-regularly-ha-51444

It's pretty simple.  People with mental health problems have easy access to guns.  Like with suicide, easy access to guns greatly increases the chance of mass shootings.  Eventually the US will realize what every other nation has realized and take the guns away.  Once this is done, everyone will forget that we let a lot of people die because we didn't want voters to have their feelings hurt.

Yes. A fundamental right is a matter of mah feeeeeeeels.


When a freedom intersects with another consideration, the freedom is more important nine times out of ten.

[Willfor]

I wish you would get this emotional about the right to vote, Strife. Because currently that right is facing numerous restrictions, many more than are applied to guns. Currently in Alabama they've instituted strict ID laws, and then stopped issuing drivers licenses in predominantly black communities. The imagined fears of "they're taking away our guns" are one thing, but right now, in your country, they're restricting the right to vote.

[RedKing]

the
Clearly it's too easy for insane people to get guns. Since controlling guns is not a practical option

http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-prevent-says-only-nation-where-regularly-ha-51444

It's pretty simple.  People with mental health problems have easy access to guns.  Like with suicide, easy access to guns greatly increases the chance of mass shootings.  Eventually the US will realize what every other nation has realized and take the guns away.  Once this is done, everyone will forget that we let a lot of people die because we didn't want voters to have their feelings hurt.

Yes. A fundamental right is a matter of mah feeeeeeeels.


When a freedom intersects with another consideration, the freedom is more important nine times out of ten.

I'm sure the families up in Oregon will enjoy knowing that the lives of their loved ones' is "a consideration".

[Playergamer]

Your fallacy is: appeal to emotion.

My fallacy is: the fallacy fallacy.

All human lives are a consideration, yes. It's wrong to say "possibly saving ten people is worth stripping 350 million of a right." A human life is not worth that much more than another human's happiness, or freedom.

[PTTG??]

Your fallacy is: appeal to emotion.

My fallacy is: the fallacy fallacy.

All human lives are a consideration, yes. It's wrong to say "possibly saving ten people is worth stripping 350 million of a right." A human life is not worth that much more than another human's happiness, or freedom.

Are you going to save yourself from Obama's communist drones with your .22?

[MaximumZero]

Sure as fuck not going to do it against armored infantry or tanks. So much for preventing tyranny with it.

[Playergamer]

we've been in a brushfire war for 14 years.

and yet you still refuse to believe poorly trained insurgents (large number of convoy attackers in iraq a few years in were tribals or average joes) could stand up against a modern army.

also, pttg. nice strawman, clapclap.

[mainiac]

Yes. A fundamental right is a matter of mah feeeeeeeels.

Calling it "yah feeeeeeels" would be the generous interpretation.  I mean this "fundamental" right of yours is noticeably absent from most successful societies and was only contentiously established in American society a few decades back.  And if we look back at history, or even the world of the present day it's amazing how many "rights" turned out to be better forgotten.

and yet you still refuse to believe poorly trained insurgents (large number of convoy attackers in iraq a few years in were tribals or average joes) could stand up against a modern army.

Well mostly because poorly trained insurgents didn't stand up to a modern army...

[RedKing]

we've been in a brushfire war for 14 years.

and yet you still refuse to believe poorly trained insurgents (large number of convoy attackers in iraq a few years in were tribals or average joes) could stand up against a modern army.

also, pttg. nice strawman, clapclap.

And you still seem to think Red Dawn was a documentary rather than a hokey action movie.

[SalmonGod]

Actually, if you look at youth homicide rates in the USA back in 1960's they seem to be double what they are now.

Total American gun deaths right now are lower than any time in the last half-century. And possibly before that, but I don't have any figures to back that up. And the teens now are the least-murderous teens that perhaps America has ever had in it's history, at least, they're less murderous than any generation of the last century. Maybe it's a fact that modern social media means it's easier to be aware of all the regional killings than it used to be. Pre-internet, you would have only heard about the bigger ones. But there's no overall data to back up the idea that there's a murder epidemic that's specific to this time period.

So, while comparing the USA to other countries is of course the right thing to do, there is also counter-evidence to the "it's getting so much worse" argument. A simple bodycount dispells the myth.

I also like to note whenever I'm on this subject with people that probably the most successful serial killer in U.S. history was H.H. Holmes in the mid-19th century, but most people seem to believe that the phenomenon of serial killers is almost completely a feature of the last 30 years or so.

[Frumple]

... we do actually have that armchair general thread if y'all want to talk about whether a 20+:1 (at the absolute low end of estimates) mixed militant and civilian vs US military casualty rate qualifies as standing up to or not, and all the other silliness being brought up in trying to equivocate the american civilian firearm situation with anything even remotely resembling the middle eastern/north african/south american/etc., etc., etc. one.

Re: The gun thing and the escalation of rhetoric going on here, there's a hell of a lot we could do to cut back on problems there without actually stripping the right to gun ownership. Quite a few countries have actually managed that via (usually fairly simple) limitations sans full on removal. Our more or less reckless firearm proliferation over the years would make the initial bits of that difficult, certainly, but calling it impossible is just kinda' silly. And even if we didn't go as far as many other still-functioning countries go, there's still a lot of room for general improvement.

Neat proposition I've heard lately on that front -- not exactly wide spread or serious, but it's an interesting one -- is to institute a (fairly small) tax on firearm and ammo sale that goes into a sort of worker's comp for victims of gun violence. No questions, no need to sue, basically no nothing -- if you end up hurt by firearms, the funds get paid out, and in the process you largely waive the right to bring civil suit against any relevant part of the firearm industry. Basically an attempt to offset some of the externalities the gun industry inflicts on the country as part of it doing business, and maybe bring proliferation down a bit in the process of doing so (by, y'know, actually making sure the producers and sellers are getting market signals more, if not entirely, in line with what they should be -- right now, manufacturers and sellers are mostly sticking society for the entire cost of the people they help injure and kill).

Kinda' liked the thought myself -- as is, most people that get shot in the states not only get fuck-all to offset it, if they survive they just get probably-massive medical bills, possible legal costs, all sorts of other problems (work loss, crippling injuries, etc.) on top of getting shot and getting nothing. If they don't, family members or the state has to suck up funerary costs with, again, no recompense from the folks for whom their suffering is part of doing business. Seems a little off to me, y'know? Several of our other deadly industries have to shell out (either via tax/regulation or civil cases) in part to offset the societal price of doing business, but so far as I'm aware the firearm industry gets off more or less untouched despite having significantly less societal benefit than, say, chemical processing. It'd be nice if they were reigned in a bit, help victims out in the process, and maybe starting us down the path of getting our firearm circulation under control.

[darkrider2]

Frumple, the issue is that most of the gun-bearing right don't trust the government to make any actual "restrictions" that won't end up being full-on removal.

And any proposal that isn't full-on removal gets 'slippery-sloped' so hard that it becomes practically equivalent in their eyes.

[Frumple]

Frumple, the issue is that most of the gun-bearing right don't trust the government to make any actual "restrictions" that won't end up being full-on removal.

And any proposal that isn't full-on removal gets 'slippery-sloped' so hard that it becomes practically equivalent in their eyes.

M'well aware of those two bits. It's a borderline neurosis that completely flies in the face of... well, basically everything, including our own recent history and the stated goals of most gun control advocates I'm aware of, but yeah, it's a thing. Was just an interesting proposition I ran into... somewhere or another. Have actually already forgotten *shrugs*

[Strife26]

Giving a government more power is handling fire in the most dangerous way possible. Slippery slope is a completely reasonable fear of modern gun control. I mean, the supreme court made a shitty decision back during world war 1, and you'll still hear "fire in a crowded theater" as a justification for restricting speech ridiculously often.


Not to say that there aren't reasonable limitations on ownership of guns or that the NRA aren't very extreme, but I'd strongly argue that the anti-gun lobby is just as extreme on the opposite side, pushing for a gun-free nanny state, which would be a terrifying perversion of the American experiment.


At the end of the day, yes, 10 lives are a consideration. Heartless, but people die every damn day. Ideals are worth blood.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'm afraid I have to take the pro-2nd Amendment stance on this one, in no small part because it's been around for all of the USA's existence and yet the mass shooting phenomenon is modern. Something else is the root cause here, and I think the ban guns bandwagon is the result of us collectively not being smart enough about our problems.

The other thing is that, armchair generals about asymmetrical warfare and military defections aside, I will not allow me and mine to be helpless if a political tide sweeps up the right in this country and they decide the time has come for their theocratic dreams to be reality, or there's some other gone to shitness in the future. Live or die, I will not sit around politely and wait to be shot like a fucking dog like people on the internet so like to advocate.