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[Sonlirain]

...  think the point SL was making was about that whole "unclaimed" thing.

Not if the way he worded it is anything to go by.

So you think that murdering people in order to take their land from them was a "necessary good?"

Did you ignore the entire rest of the sentence because you meant "necessary product" instead of "necessary moral good?"
It works either way. Yes, in your sense too - guns were a necessary product for murdering people and taking their lands. Yes, I have a problem with murdering people and taking their lands. I also have a problem with not murdering people but still taking their lands. This shouldn't be difficult to understand. It shouldn't be controversial either, and yet for some reason it is???

Look. they were in the way and they literally had no leadership. Native lands were terra nullius by colonist standards so it was fair game back then ("BACK THEN").
Was it horrible for the natives?
Of fucking course.
Did the colonists moving west need guns to survive in the wilderness (we are literally talking about miles upon miles of clear land with no infrastructure other than sparse native villages that may or may not be hostile)?
They did unless they had a deathwish. Not for native genocide but to sustain themselves off the land (because no one was really sure how far it was to the west coast so it's not like they could just take enough food with them)
Do loads of people still need guns for living off the land?
No. (unless you live in complete boonies since american infrastructure still sucks compared to europe due to europe being far more compact)

I never said that colonizing the frontier was such a great positive event in history but you just decided to make a pitchfork out of a pastry fork.
Wait a minute...

If you've never had a thread disappeared because someone thought you were saying something that you weren't saying and took that as an attack when it wasn't, then let me tell you that no, they aren't.

You are trying to start unrelated shit aren't you? Good luck then.

[TheBiggerFish]

Okay, everyone, please calm down.

[Frumple]

Eehh, should be pretty chill, I think. Worst of it looks to be sonli having trouble realizing how what he initially wrote came across.

... for future reference, using the word "necessary" when talking about invasion and murder, and phrasing reference to human groups in the same way you do wildlife is... perhaps not the best idea. Also maybe never pair the words necessary and good together in such a situation. Tool or somethin' would work better and have significantly less of a connotative burden. Maybe don't use necessary either, really. "As vital for survival", or something along those lines, would be less likely to come off as supportive of varying degrees of genocide.

[Erkki]

--
Do loads of people still need guns for living off the land?
--

"I don't think people need guns thus nobody needs one and should be able to get one"

Yeah I know thats not what you think, but it seems to be an argument used quite often.

I suggest we stop talking about needs and focus on availability and whether or not there should be restrictions depending on age, crime records, profession and so forth for each firearm type.

I'll start: handguns(some definition here that cant be played too easily) and semi-auto rifles(another definition here, could include caliber or maximum factory projectile mass range) that do not have an internal magazine(such as the Garand) should need a license for both buying and possession. License should include but be not limited to clear criminal records, psych test and interview.

[Sonlirain]

Eehh, should be pretty chill, I think. Worst of it looks to be sonli having trouble realizing how what he initially wrote came across.

... for future reference, using the word "necessary" when talking about invasion and murder, and phrasing reference to human groups in the same way you do wildlife is... perhaps not the best idea. Also maybe never pair the words necessary and good together in such a situation. Tool or somethin' would work better and have significantly less of a connotative burden. Maybe don't use necessary either, really. "As vital for survival", or something along those lines, would be less likely to come off as supportive of varying degrees of genocide.

Fair enough.

I'll start: handguns(some definition here that cant be played too easily) and semi-auto rifles(another definition here, could include caliber or maximum factory projectile mass range) that do not have an internal magazine(such as the Garand) should need a license for both buying and possession. License should include but be not limited to clear criminal records, psych test and interview.

How about making semi auto rifles exclusive to people with some military training?
As in at least being part time in the national guard or undergoing basic military training in the past.

[Shadowlord]

Eehh, should be pretty chill, I think.

Yes. I don't want to burn anyone at the stake for their opinion, or anything like that.

Look. they were in the way and they literally had no leadership.

In what way did they have no leadership?

Wait a minute...

If you've never had a thread disappeared because someone thought you were saying something that you weren't saying and took that as an attack when it wasn't, then let me tell you that no, they aren't.

You are trying to start unrelated shit aren't you? Good luck then.

Not really, no. That was in direct reply to someone saying "I think the rules are pretty clear." It has nothing to do with anything being discussed.

[Sonlirain]

In what way did they have no leadership?

This is one big off topic i don't even want to talk about because:
a - I was never taught american history.
b - I never cared about american history.
My ramblings are in the spoiler and if you want to continue talking about it... could we do it via PM?
I really don't think talking about european colonists fucking over native americans is within the scope of this thread.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Considering the native cultures were a series of small villages with generally poor communication between one another, no written laws (the colonists could recognize at least) and no noticeable central leadership to keep them united in colonist eyes (unlike European monarchies with their robust pecking orders).
Many of those cultures were nomadic so no one really knew what areas they considered "theirs" (and no one really cared because of reasons mentioned earlier)
Plus... keep in mind that no one really had a clue what was beyond the frontier because relevant maps in 1600 looked like this or worse.

And in the end no one cared and explorers followed by settlers pushed deeper into the unknown territory claiming land as they went.
And if the land was considered by some tribe as theirs? Well too bad because we didn't see your name on it... or recognize your sovereignty anyway.
There were cases where people traded for the land but in the end ignoring the locals was cheaper.

[Vilanat]

If the United States could keep to its signed deals, then everything west of the Mississippi would have been native americans nations. it's not just the "colonists" that fucked over the native americans it's Americans as well and to perhaps even a larger extent.

[Reelya]

"I don't think people need guns thus nobody needs one and should be able to get one"

But it is a legitimate argument. There are plenty of things we don't need, but we don't argue that there should be laws restricting them. But guns cause death. People owning guns isn't like owning some otherwise harmless widgets. A need for something can balance out the negatives.

A "want" isn't as convincing as a "need", if having that thing is going to cause predictable serious harm or death to some of the users. e.g. if there was a fun toy, but it choked 10% of children to death then "but it's fun for the other 90% so you can't take it away" isn't a good argument for not banning that toy. The toy is deadly, and there are other fun things you can do that aren't going to kill a predictable proportion of kids who try and play with it. From a utilitarian point of view, the positive is how much more fun the 90% are having playing with that toy vs any other toy they could be playing with, minus how not fun it is choking to death for 10% of users, vs not choking to death at all. So for a toy that deadly, it would have to be the most fucking fun thing in the universe by a landslide margin, to make it worth allowing it to be sold.

Two of the "world-examples" Switzerland and Israel about gun laws fall apart on closer examination, however. Switzerland in 2007 was reported as having one of the highest per-capita gun death rates. They centralized all the militia ammo into secure armories however, and now gun deaths aren't sky-high anymore. Israel abolished the system of military recruits taking guns home on weekends, and suicide rates nationally fell by a total of 40%. People shooting themselves on weekends with IDF-issue weapons accounted for almost half the national suicides. They took away the guns and it fell by 40% without any rise in suicides during weekdays or by other causes. Having a quick way to kill yourself did in fact contribute to the long-term suicide rate.

Those "gun success stories" touted by the NRA are actually gun-control success stories. Yeah, I've mentioned these before but I'm going to periodically harp on them anyway, since people persist in bringing up especially Switzerland as some pro-gun utopia. It isn't anything like that, in fact it's the poster-child for having a well-trained militia, but not handing out the ammo until it's absolutely necessary.

[Erkki]

"I don't think people need guns thus nobody needs one and should be able to get one"

But it is a legitimate argument. There are plenty of things we don't need, but we don't argue that there should be laws restricting them. But guns cause death. People owning guns isn't like owning some otherwise harmless widgets. A need for something can balance out the negatives.

Two of the "world-examples" Switzerland and Israel about gun laws fall apart on closer examination, however. Switzerland in 2007 was reported as having one of the highest per-capita gun death rates. They centralized all the militia ammo into secure armories however, and now gun deaths aren't sky-high anymore. Israel abolished the system of military recruits taking guns home on weekends, and suicide rates nationally fell by a total of 40%. Those "gun success stories" touted by the NRA are actually gun-control success stories. Yeah, I've mentioned these before but I'm going to periodically harp on them anyway, since people persist in bringing up especially Switzerland as some pro-gun utopia. It isn't anything like that, in fact it's the poster-child for having a well-trained militia, but not handing out the ammo until it's absolutely necessary.

I've never brought up Israel or Switzerland. But yes if you want to lower gun suicides(but dont care about suicides overall) then sure banning ammo lowers gun suicides... edit: you bring these same things up for the 3rd time I believe without a source.

No I dont think that "I dont have need for it, so nobody else should either" is a valid argument. Firearms cause death, they're designed to do it, doh. They claim human lives in murders but so do explosives and many chemicals, among a plethora of things, in wrong hands.

Please lets not talk about the need or not needing of a weapon or how that idea fits or doesn't into what one or another perceives as the modern society.

[Reelya]

I posted sources each of the other times I mentioned Israel in this context. The only time I didn't include the link you accuse me of never citing sources.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21034205
http://gsoa.feinheit.ch/media/medialibrary/2010/12/Lubin_10.pdf
Here's a direct quote from the research paper:

The use of firearms is a common means of suicide. We examined the effect of a policy change in the Israeli Defense Forces reducing adolescents’ access to firearms on rates of suicide. Following the policy change, suicide rates decreased significantly by 40%. Most of this decrease was due to decrease in suicide using firearms over the weekend. There were no significant changes in rates of suicide during weekdays. Decreasing access to firearms significantly decreases rates of suicide among adolescents. The results of this study illustrate the ability of a relatively simple change in policy to have a major impact on suicide rates.

The period over which the change was noted was within 2 years of the restrictions coming into place. The most significant part is that suicide on weekends, when people had access to guns fell, while suicide on weekdays when people did not have access to guns didn't drop at all. So if the decline was a mere coincidence that it occurred at the same time as this law changed, then you'd need to explain why the "real cause" only affected weekend suicides.

Also, for high gun deaths in Switzerland I cited the 2007 german article, which states that Switzerland had a notably high rate of gun deaths, and were thinking of passing new laws to ban the storage of militia ammo in homes. Army weapons were noted as causing 300 deaths per year prior to 2007. Swiss population was 7.5 million as of 2007, meaning just army weapons caused about 4.0 deaths per 100,000 in Switzerland up until 2007, but that includes suicides. in 2007 0.77 per 100,000 was the rate for gun homicide. By 2010, it had fallen to 0.50 per 100,000, which was still the highest in Europe, barring Norway (purely because of the Brevik mass-shooting). By 2013 Swiss gun homicides were down to 0.23 per 100,000 (wikipedia), and total homicides were 0.50 per 100,000. With a three-fold drop in the gun homicide rate in 6 years, I'd say the 2007 ammo ban looks like it might have been effective.

[Insanegame27]

...  think the point SL was making was about that whole "unclaimed" thing.

Not if the way he worded it is anything to go by.

So you think that murdering people in order to take their land from them was a "necessary good?"

Did you ignore the entire rest of the sentence because you meant "necessary product" instead of "necessary moral good?"
It works either way. Yes, in your sense too - guns were a necessary product for murdering people and taking their lands. Yes, I have a problem with murdering people and taking their lands. I also have a problem with not murdering people but still taking their lands. This shouldn't be difficult to understand. It shouldn't be controversial either, and yet for some reason it is???

And here I am, sitting here, people spitting on me because I don't like the idea of people easily murdering people. Sonllrain was trying to say that with the mindset of that age, it was necessary for people to have guns. However, the US isn't exactly unexplored and filled with unknown dangers which will kill you. Guns used to be common sense, now they're just dangerous. It's not that we think people don't need guns - we know they don't need them.

[Frumple]

Also, for high gun deaths in Switzerland I cited [snip]

For what it's worth, it looks like their governmental statistics website-whatsit is here. Or rather, that's a link to their current fatality data because I can't be arsed to figure out the appropriate link for the english portal and that's the page I was currently on when I noticed one existed, heh. Raw data looks like it's primarily available in german or french, though, and it does appear a fair amount of the site's resources just aren't normally available in english.

[Strife26]

...  think the point SL was making was about that whole "unclaimed" thing.

Not if the way he worded it is anything to go by.

So you think that murdering people in order to take their land from them was a "necessary good?"

Did you ignore the entire rest of the sentence because you meant "necessary product" instead of "necessary moral good?"
It works either way. Yes, in your sense too - guns were a necessary product for murdering people and taking their lands. Yes, I have a problem with murdering people and taking their lands. I also have a problem with not murdering people but still taking their lands. This shouldn't be difficult to understand. It shouldn't be controversial either, and yet for some reason it is???

And here I am, sitting here, people spitting on me because I don't like the idea of people easily murdering people. Sonllrain was trying to say that with the mindset of that age, it was necessary for people to have guns. However, the US isn't exactly unexplored and filled with unknown dangers which will kill you. Guns used to be common sense, now they're just dangerous. It's not that we think people don't need guns - we know they don't need them.

And here I am getting spat on because I own a version of the most popular firearm in America.

Welcome to the gun control debate, pro, con, uninterested, or ambivalent it's a certainty that you're going to get spat on and the only reason anyone will care is if you use your hurt feels as a cheap argument. That segment will be made up of the opposition spitting more, your side feeling warm and fuzzy at their superiority, and people caring about good argumentation crying in a corner.

[Loud Whispers]

Weather Forecast: Rain (of spit)