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[EnigmaticHat]

At the end of the day the US government is predictable.  Far moreso than elections.  Conspiracy theorists tend to operate on the principle that they can just decide something and it might be plausible; its a method that only works if you don't know what you're talking about.  Because the truth of the matter is that everything about the US government is observed and recorded.  Even the secret shit is written down somewhere.  In the real world conspiracies are things like the Panama Papers or the NSA Snowden leak; we didn't know it was happening but, like, we knew something to that effect was happening.  Short of the oldstyle "kill everyone who built the secret passage" strategy, its almost impossible to truly keep a secret.  In this day and age more than ever.

[JoshuaFH]

The gun being present, is not what drives people to go out and shoot people.

It's a no-brainer that having one in your house increases the odds of accidental shootings;  If you do not own one, your chances of your child picking up a gun from your non-existing-gun-case is exactly 0, while when you do in fact have a gun case, that probability is very much non-zero.

I will not, and never will argue against that. 

What I will argue against, is that the idea that all homes must be gun-free.  This is absurd, so long as there is not sufficient social infrastructure and timely response in our nation, which is very large geographically, and it is that geographical largeness that makes the problem real. (If you live in rural bumfuckistan USA, and you have a problem with predators-- those predators are going to kill all your livestock and put you into the poor house before the fish and game warden decides that yes, your call really is important, and that yes, he really does need to get dressed, and drive for an hour to arrive at your house-- and thus-- arrive there about an hour and a half too late to actually help you. Similar story with county sheriffs officers and actual life-threatening emergencies involving dangerous humans.)

The fundemental problem is that people are all too willing to use guns on each other.  I just gave a very important explanation for why that is.  Take that reasoning out, and a GREAT deal of human on human violence, of all stripes, will diminish.

You've got the point Wierd. I'm not advocating that all guns be blotted from existence; but the regulation on their purchase, ownership, and usage, should be laser specific and enforced brutally. You're a farmer that needs a gun to shoot those dang coyotes that keep raidin' the chicken coop? Sure, here's the paperwork, you'll be screened, you'll be required to train to know how to use it, the gun will be delivered to you by a professional, you'll have a license for that specific gun, it needs to be renewed every year, if you don't renew it, it's taken away and you're fined, and if it's found that you "lost" it somehow,  you're arrested for possibly selling it. Add in some addendums for the owner being responsible for everything the gun is used for, including if it's stolen and used for a crime, and you get the idea.

[wierd]

I would say that is a bit too stringent.  Despite the notion that "Farmers are rich!" many city people have, this is just plain not true.  Also, many people who live out in the county are not farmers, but still have issues with dangerous animals, and with liquored up/belligerent idiots causing trouble all the same.

Poor people are less able to meet purposefully obtuse regulatory hurdles. 

Also, the urge to "MAke it even MOAR harder, since making it hard was so effective, making it EVEN HARDER will surely make us all safer!!!" will be ever present, and the people who need the guns are a minority.

In the same vein that you need to avoid imposing regressive taxes, because they overwhelmingly harm the poor, one needs to avoid imposing regressive ownership rules, and for the same reasons.


I can see, and very much would support "Oh, you say you need this here high power rifle? What for? Oh? Big things like bears? Where exactly do you live?  .... Downtown.... I see. No, application denied."

What I do not support is "OMG! HIGH POWER RIFLE!! It makes me SCARED! Nobody has any reason to EVER own one! They are only for killing people! PEOPLE!!" and other hysterionics. 

I am totally down with "You live in the country, and need this for specific, enumerated reasons--- Sure. Give me proof of address, and bring the gun in for a free yearly inspection. Failure to do so will result in a fine, and a declaration of a missing firearm. If it is ever found, it will be investigated how it left your possession, and it will be destroyed. Every few years you need to re certify for gun safety and proficiency with your weapon, or your license will be revoked and the weapon impounded. Between certifications you are required to log a certain number of hours with controlled practice with your weapon. Free shooting ranges are accepted, as long as an official can document your practice session."

[Max™]

Obligatory The Oatmeal, vis a vis "The backfire effect"

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

Just saying.  Ignoring or downplaying unpleasant information is endemic to humans in general, not just Trumpists.

This is why I understand when people seem bothered at the idea I don't believe things, you don't need a reason to hold a belief, so why do it? They're comfortable in many cases, easier than the alternative in others, and generally seem to feel good. Unfortunately they're rooted in an insane part of your brain that likes to shout nonsense, ignore it like your old racist grandpa or that green leaky spot on the ceiling or the dozens of spiders in your house... ok, don't ignore the moldy harbinger of household doom, but fuck worrying about the rest.

I thought that the bigger a black hole is, the smaller it is?

Anyway, I don't know what to say to that link except *facepalm*.

The singularity itself doesn't really have a physically meaningful size, but the Schwarzschild radius (the radius of the event horizon, and for all intents and purposes the size of the black hole as it concerns external observers) scales linearly with mass, as you might expect from a gravity well.

EDIT: Some pedant is going to chime in unhelpfully about the Kerr metric and how rotating black holes' event horizons don't correspond to their Schwarzschild radii, I just know it.

Not quite, but I will point out that if yo momma spun around her ass would correspond to a rotating Kerr metric solution of the Einstein Field Equations!

There'd be several thousand fewer dead people per year if we reigned in gun proliferation in the US, just from the effects it would have on suicide. Never mind the rest of it. We've had solid statistics for years now that a firearm in a household makes everyone in it more likely to be injured or die. They're deadly in ways basically nothing else commonly encountered by civilians in the US is, to zero meaningful surprise considering they're literally made to kill people.

It's not the only problem by a long shot, but it's an actual problem in and of itself and one with real fucking clear effects when corrected.

I mean... opioids and underqualified distracted and/or intoxicated drivers aren't rare by any measure, guns are bad because they're easy, the other two might be worse because they're quietly ignored or accepted.

[Rolan7]

There'd be several thousand fewer dead people per year if we reigned in gun proliferation in the US, just from the effects it would have on suicide. Never mind the rest of it. We've had solid statistics for years now that a firearm in a household makes everyone in it more likely to be injured or die. They're deadly in ways basically nothing else commonly encountered by civilians in the US is, to zero meaningful surprise considering they're literally made to kill people.

It's not the only problem by a long shot, but it's an actual problem in and of itself and one with real fucking clear effects when corrected.

Okay, but solving for least deaths is a bit simplistic.  It ignores the question of liberty/ability to threaten the government, which I think is an important thing to consider.  I'm not completely sold either way, but I suspect there's a middle ground where people don't have the right to lug automatic large-magazine weapons down the street.  In other words I *feel* okay with current gun law, once we get better legislation for background checks and gun show loopholes.

But the suicide argument bothers me.  Removing guns to prevent suicides sounds like the Chinese factories putting fences around their roofs to stop employees from jumping.

I guess the existence of other, less expedient methods negates my concern.  I'm just viscerally scared of the idea of forcing people to live.

[JoshuaFH]

It ignores the question of liberty/ability to threaten the government, which I think is an important thing to consider.

What I was saying earlier, is that I question how realistic that is. When the government was 13 states and 1/10 the size it is today, it was plausible, but now? What is the critical mass of angry gunmen where they stop being crazed murderers and terrorists and become a legitimate rebellion to overthrow the government and *SUPPOSEDLY* replace the tyranny with another functioning government? Though that kind of action itself doesn't have a good track record of creating stable and functioning governments, just setting the stage for more violence and tyranny. Does a bunch of angry civilians with guns stand a chance against a military that would supposedly be forced to fight against them to maintain the peace? Would any hypothetical tyrant ever make  his citizenry so desperate and angry that that becomes their only option, when it's easier than ever to placate and keep the masses mollified enough so that critical mass of malcontents can never aggregate meaningfully?

[Rolan7]

Yeah, I think we're past the point where a populist movement can perform a coup - with guns, anyway 

But an armed populace does change the calculus for unpopular decisions.  Riots are inherently more dangerous, more expensive and more likely to escalate if not handled carefully.  Sure the national guard could gun down a riot of armed citizens...  But that still has impact, particularly compared to a crowd getting "dispersed" and disappeared into the court system.

Edit:  Like those farmers who seized the post office last year (or year before?).  If they hadn't been armed, they wouldn't have taken up the news for a day, much less 2-3 weeks.

[Trekkin]

-snip-

If people were rational about their need for guns, that might work. Unfortunately, one of the biggest fundamental drivers of rabid pro-gun stances -- the people that knock on doors and man phones and donate according to the NRA's ratings and turn themselves into single-issue voters and define themselves by rabid opposition to any gun control whatsoever -- is completely irrational, and it needs a bit of explaining:

Guns and direct causation combine to let powerless people fantasize about being acknowledged.

The link between direct causation and conservatism has been discussed here before, but this also underlies both the religious aspects of gun ownership and the persistent references to "reissuing your man card" and other nonsense in gun ads. There's also a weird commonality, at least in the gun owners I talk to and the Youtube channels I go look at, that seems to match up with two trends noted in Angela Stroud's "Good Guys with Guns" (ISBN-13: 978-1469627892). I think it's best encapsulated in this quote from a Gun Gripes video: "When you have a gun, they have to negotiate with you." (Said of their ability to carry guns into a bank, no less.) Similar sentiment is behind gun owners describing their apocalypse plans; it's a given in their minds that, since they have a gun, everyone else is very interested in their opinions of how useful other people might be to their survival and how they almost without fail describe defensive gun use as "taking control of the situation."

See the commonality? They're not talking about using guns; for all the bluster about how "you should never use a gun to threaten people" the critical thing in their minds is to have a gun and the concomitant capacity to use it. Nor is there all that much discussion, at least without prompting, of de-escalating the situation once the gun is out; control itself is what matters to them.

Now, to people who think systemically, one guy with a gun is totally irrelevant to the broader shifts in government control -- but under direct causation, that same guy can hold off the people coming to repossess his car or eminent domain his house away, and those people are the problem rather than the apparatus behind them. Guns can't add to your bank account, but they can make the bank personnel talk to you. They can't reduce crime, but they can frighten a criminal.

Most importantly, guns can't change the fact that the coastal elites don't give a shit about flyover country. They can't make coal useful again or cure opioid addiction or bring us back to a time when a high school diploma would let you pay for a house and 2.3 kids and LGBT people officially didn't exist and nobody needed to think about anything and toxic masculinity was sexy rather than sad.

But, if they're holding a gun and the rich smart educated liberal who's stolen their future and mocked their culture and corrupted their children with silicon and hair dye is looking down the barrel, in that moment they aren't a joke anymore, and that fantasy is going to keep them clinging to their guns forever.

[Hanslanda]

Huh. I'm rational in that I only own a gun cuz of two reasons. One, I think they're fun. Petty but true. Two, the Boy Scouts instilled "Always be prepared" deep into my soul. I just like having the tools to confront the widest variety of possible situations at any given time. Hence me also carrying a knife, small amount of paracord, a watch, a phone, a lighter, a bunch of assorted stuff in my wallet like matches and paper clips, and a fair amount of useful knowledge and facts.

[Trekkin]

Oh, I'm not saying there are no good reasons to own a gun; my point was exclusively about people for whom gun culture is central to their political lives.

In making gun policy, it must be borne in mind that the statement "guns don't kill people; people kill people" is statistically true; even if every single one of the 38,658 gun deaths in 2017 used a different gun, literally 99.99% of guns still wouldn't have killed anyone. I'm just pointing out that if only 0.01% of guns are the problem, the solution probably doesn't need to be anywhere close to "ban guns", and there's broader support for gun control than you'd think from the NRA ads and the people who go relentlessly to bat for them. Unfortunately, our politicians tend to be under the same impression, and it's not inaccurate to say that supporting gun control is a net loss of votes in that you lose all the single-issue pro-gun folks but don't gain all the gun control folks.

[PTTG??]

Why buy a gun for protection? A bulletproof vest is much more effective at stopping bullets. After all, if someone wants to kill you with a gun, they will get the drop on you. Might as well stop the bullet rather than pretend you'll outshoot anyone gunning for you 24 hours a day.

[Dunamisdeos]

Turns out guns can shoot multiple times before reloading, allowing a gunman to shoot you somewhere other than the chest.

Instead, according to this expert, you should perhaps file a patent for an original invention. Becuase...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Hanslanda]

Why buy a gun for protection? A bulletproof vest is much more effective at stopping bullets. After all, if someone wants to kill you with a gun, they will get the drop on you. Might as well stop the bullet rather than pretend you'll outshoot anyone gunning for you 24 hours a day.

My handgun (Ruger .380 Compact Carry) cost 250 USD, is reusable, and is fucking invisible on my hip or in my pocket. A level Five armor vest rated to 'maybe' stop an AR-15 round is 75 to 110, non-reusable once hit, and is exceptionally noticeable. Like seriously, put on a breastplate under your shirt and see how people react. Then put a box 1/2 inch wide and three inches long/tall on your belt above your pocket.

Also the best defense is running, and maybe having a good offense if running isn't an option.

Turns out guns can shoot multiple times before reloading, allowing a gunman to shoot you somewhere other than the chest.

This although shooting heads is hard because they're small and move a lot.

[Kagus]

This although shooting heads is hard because they're small and move a lot.

Legs are slightly less finicky though, and have the added bonus of making the shooting of other bodyparts easier once everything's on the ground. Lots of vests also don't protect the neck/top of the ribcage very well, and the ones that do are a nightmare to wear for any length of time...

Becuase...

I just realized how terrible of a neck snap that is.

"LOOK OVER THERE! Ha ha ha, now you are dead..."

[Hanslanda]

Shit, I meant level IV. My bad on that.

Also I rarely see armor vests on anyone but cops and soldiers. You're probably fine to just center-mass their ass. Vests also rapidly lose their bullet-stoppy-ness when you shoot the ever-loving fuck out of them and it apparently can still severely wound you even if there's no bodily penetration.