Fuck this bullshit! We’re always being told to wait to have the discussion. Which bodies need to be cool? The ones from CT? OR? CO? Yeah, let’s keep waiting.
Right now, there’s a kid getting off a schoolbus in the US who will be dead next month in order to pay the cost or CrafterMans fetish. Let’s keep waiting for all the bodies to be cold.
How is life in Omelas?
Yeah, and when a 90 year old woman dies in her bed in her sleep, her family are all “She was old; It was her time; She had a good life” but if someone murders her in her bed her family are all “She was our world; How could you take her from us; How do we live without her”. What’s up with that?
How smarmily disingenuous of you. Opening or delaying a debate at any point favors one side or another. And for debates which necessarily involve black swans stemming from a particular culture, delaying the debate favors the side that wants to do nothing or enhance said culture.
According to the NRA, 1000 kids.
There’ve been over a dozen surveys which average somewhere over the 1 million mark. There was indeed one that came up with only 108k, but it was fairly flawed, as per the description there. But fine, let’s go with 108k. Ignoring the 108k positive defensive gun uses is ignoring a huge part of the equation.
There’s a petition at WhiteHouse.gov (since ***now ***is not the time to talk about gun control) to set a date and time to talk about gun control.
No, but I haven’t had my question answered as to why people have guns, either.
Look, I know I sound naive, and I’m doing it on purpose. I’m deliberately trying to give you a UK viewpoint, not impose it.
My Facebook newsfeed tonight is awash with bafflement at US gun laws.
Thank you. I am actually sincerely heartened to read this: I know that you are more favorably disposed to gun rights and ownership than I am. I don’t think you have made a 180 in that stance, but I am gratified to see that you perceived a very important point implicit in my remarks that I overlooked making explicitly. That you were willing and able to do so suggests the possibility of both sides working together to effectuate a compromise that might reduce the frequency and lethality of these tragedies.
In advocating for a repeal, I do not hope to confiscate all guns. I even have some sympathy to the view that guns, like any dangerous implement, should not be wholesale banned merely because of their dangerousness. Instead, smart regulations that balance the legitimate uses of guns (which can even include a measure of simple firearms enthusiasm) against the perils of non-regulation should be sought.
The view obstacle to striking this balance is the Second Amendment. By its repeal, gun regulation would become just another regulated item, like cars or mortgages. Cars and mortgages aren’t banned, nor or they impossible to get. So nobody should argue that 2A repeal would lead to such an outcome.
Instead, it would allow us to make policy of responsible gun distribution and ownership according to modern facts.
Policy decisions should never be constitutionalized, as we are poor forecasters of what the state of the world will be generations hence. We should acknowledge that the Framers never imagined anything like the U.S. of A. of the 21st century. Their motive for the 2A, to preserve the possibility of armed resistance to the government, is these days risible. But will can still preserve the value that responsible gun distribution and ownership is not inconsistent with regulations directed to minimizing the possibilities of gun massacres.
(I welcome the pro-2A side to weigh on that, but, if they just want to say “no regulations ever” and walk away … Well, then I’d be done with their opponents writing the regs without their input. The choice is yours pro-2A side.)
Anyways, I am genuinely hopeful to see a pro-2A party note the outrageousness of these crimes and acknowledge that there are things that can be done (and that taking part in the debate generally gets your side taken more seriously–and makes your input more politically effective–than stonewalling and pretending 20 dead kids ain’t no thang)
Oh, I avoid gun control threads like the plague because they’re pointless. I have no illusions that what I’ve proposed will ever come to pass – the pro-gun faction of this country has been and will likely continue to be very effective at blocking any real reform.
So a shotgun with a limited magazine capacity (e.g. four shells) would be exactly as deadly in shooting sprees as a semi-automatic pistol or rifle? Banning all those other rapid-fire weapons would make no difference at all?
Sorry, I don’t believe you.
What push? I answered what I think would make an actual difference in reducing these kinds of mass killings. I’m well aware that the NRA and its supporters make it impossible to enact meaningful gun control reform, leading only to the sort of cosmetic restrictions that you decry.
Thank you for snipping my post out of context. Read the second link I provided and stop being a douche.
[Quote=ExTank]
Here’s an idea: peel back or otherwise modify HIPPA and other patient privacy acts so that physicians and social workers can identify and report people they think may be potential threats for these kinds of things; encourage people to come forward to identify friends or family members who might, a) be having the kinds of problems, and expressing the kinds of sentiments, that typically lead up to these kinds of shootings, and, b) have access to firearms, or express interest in aquiring them.
[/QUOTE]
In the DSM 5, callous and deficient affective experience are being added as indicators of a psychiatric disorder. I see several highly callous motherfuckers right in this thread. Can we take their guns away?
Anxiety is also already an indicator of several psychiatric disorders. Gun owners are very scared little people. Can we take their guns away?
This kind of crap always get quoted and its utter bullshit. You’re saying surveys, people who already own guns being asked how many times they’ve used it to defend themselves, is a non-biased source?
Hey, I’m not a gun owner, I’d like to report how many times I’ve been threatened by a gun that may have involved death if not for my handsomely genius quick thinking. I’ll go with 109k
So you’re advocating a more restrictive regime than in most of Europe (save the UK), basically taking the U.S. from being the most permissive gun country in the Western world to the second or third most restrictive. What number of votes do you imagine such a piece of legislation getting in the House, and the Senate?
In the current congress (not the one being sworn in in January) you’d immediately lose 240 votes in the House as I do not believe a single Republican would vote for such legislation. After that I see you losing a ton of House Democrats as well: John Tester MT, Mike Ross AR, Heath Shuler NC, Dan Boren OK, Ron Kind WI, Ben Nelson NE, Mike Thompson CA, would all never vote for such legislation, and they are just the “most” pro-gun Democrats. There are many more that would never vote for your proposal. Even Democrats like Bennie Thompson that oppose all concealed carry for example voted against background checks at gun shows and etc, that guy has an F rating from the NRA and would not vote for your legislation.
So it’s dead in the House already. But even in the Senate, I can’t see you getting even 40 votes for such legislation, let alone a majority.
No one is pretending it isn’t anything. They’re just pretending it’s consistent with the background noise. Statistically, 27 people died from gunshot wounds in the US yesterday, and the day before, and the day before. I’m just saying that if you’re going to propose changes to gun laws, it should be because of that, not because one day’s 27 was so easy to package into a story and appeal to your emotions. The fact that we think spree shooting is such a big deal despite it being only a very small number of the total gun deaths means that we’re reacting emotionally, not logically. And large changes to societal policy should not come from knee jerk reactions.
You said a gun control advocate came up with an estimate of 250K. Cite your bullshit claim.
The Democratic party doesn’t want to talk about gun control at all. And I don’t blame them. Personally, I would be tickled pink if Obama announced that he was going to automatically veto any legislation that pertained to tightening standards on guns.
If this board is any indication, American gunowners are so butthurt and hysterical over their exploding dildos that they will willingly engage in any kind of brinksmanship if they are not continually soothed and ego-stroked over their penis replacements. And considering that we have much more salient policy points to address (like, oh, Climate Change) I consider the dozens of dead children a year a fucking bargain. You work with the citizenry you have, not the citizenry you wish you have. Even if they are putrid, histrionic, single-issue morons.
Incidentally, this is precisely why I am enthusiastic about drone strikes despite being a bleeding heart liberal.
Then you’re a hopelessly amoral asshole who is beyond redemption and humanity. Perhaps if one of your own children or other loved one dies at the hands of someone like this, you’ll have a change of heart, but I’m thinking probably not. What a fucking tool.
Can we jump ahead to your conclusion that no such number exists from a source that isn’t pro gun, because all of these defensive gun uses are fictitious and only pro-gun sources come up with them? It would save me some time, because the 250k is rough from memory, and I have to dig around for the actual study. But since we’re going to go to the next point anyway, why not just go ahead and do that now?
I’m not advocating anything, I know it’s pointless. But you asked what gun control advocates would like to see happen and what they expected the outcome to be, and I answered. I’d think you’d be happy that at least one person answered your questions without references to guns as penis substitutes.
Want to answer the question I asked in return?