What I believe is that it should be possible to talk this out and compromise, if the pro gun control crowd accepts that there actually is some wisdom in the purpose behind the second amendment, and the pro-RKBA crowd accepts that we need to do more to prevent nutjobs from shooting up schools, concerts, and other random places. It should be completely possible to craft regulation in a manner that is consistent with the second amendment as a bulwark against tyranny. Switzerland already does it. The whole problem here is that each side isn’t willing to accept the most important premise of the other, even though literally millions of people are aligned on either side with those premises. Each side is trying to annihilate the other instead of finding a win-win.
I can tell that people here are mostly in the liberal bubble, so I don’t need to explain how the RKBA crowd has their heels dug in. But perhaps a thought experiment would be useful to illustrate that the gun control crowd are just as bad, if not worse because they’re lying on this issue. Imagine we were able to come up with an ultimate compromise of a form where all of the “common sense” regulations they wanted were enacted, while in exchange we PERMANENTLY recognized the right of sane, responsible adult individuals to keep and bear arms under those regulations. As part of this compromise, we’d never be able to enact further restrictions or try to ban firearms, forever. Assuming such an agreement could actually be enforced from both sides, do you think the big bad NRA would agree to it? You’re living in a fantasy world if you don’t understand that they would jump at the chance to make such a deal. Their entire concern is the “death by a million cuts” strategy being carried out by the other side, and this would eliminate that as a concern forever. But would the Brady campaign and organizations like them accept it? I’m not so sure. If they wouldn’t, then you can see their duplicity and you can see that the NRA’s concerns are valid. The current hysteria is actually part of that duplicity, because on average from 2000-2017, only 17 kids per year are getting killed in school shootings (source Wikipedia). To give you an idea of how rare that is in a country of 323 million, NOAA reports that on average 51 people per year die in the U.S. getting struck by lightning, so three times as many. Yes, it’s tragic, but it’s not like we can’t afford to take a breath and figure this out.
Anyway, the world of politics doesn’t really work like that, but IMO it’s instructive as a thought experiment. If you can’t diagnose the pathology, you can’t really get anywhere.
Bottom line, I don’t have a specific prescription, except to stop voting for either mainstream party because neither of them are willing to compromise, on this issue and on many, many others. They’ve had their chance, and they’ve blown it. Never vote for either mainstream party ever again. It’s the only way we’re going to see real improvement.
One side wants no regulations or restrictions. None. The other side wants better background checks and restricting semi automatic weapons in some fashion. Please suggest a workable compropromise between these actual positions.
See the new user gets the point real quick
But I think the problem is having posted the thread in here, the rant is MAINLY targeted at the hardcore anti/pro-gun control who don’t BOTHET looking for such common ground.
But anyways, Imma a do quick comparison with Canada real quick will provide citations for claims, I promise.
And please stop calling me a troll for such things. Again, this is a topic I still need to do more research on, is nothing new to me. I had a lesson on the 2nd amendment back in 4th and 8th grade. Maybe next year in my junior year of high school I could see the 2nd amendment being brought up again in my US History class. And sorry if I am just going all over places, I am posting whatever I can to contribute to the discussion
Anyways, onto the comparison
Some facts:
Canada has about 10 million guns (2010) while USA has close to 310
Canada had 977 firearm homicides between 2009 and 2013, while the number for USA is 56,000.
Canada’s poverty rate is 8.8% (2013) while for USA it’s 13.5% (2015)
Canada’s rate of violent crime per 100,000 people is 749 while for USA it’s 373
If number of guns determines the rate of gun violence, then between 2009 and 2013 there should have been (56,000 / 310 million) * 10 million ~ 1800 firearm homicides in Canada. Somehow Canadians with guns only kill half the people compared to their U.S. counterparts. Is it possible that more Americans with guns kill because there are more of them in poverty?
Despite having less guns, violent crime rate in Canada is actually twice that of USA. Could it be because violent people will be violent, regardless to whether or not they have guns? Is it possible that Americans are more reluctant to be violent than Canadians, because the likelihood of firearm response is much greater in USA?
This question begets more questions. The only certainty is that number of guns per capita alone is not the answer.
Now I’m leaning toward “pseudo-Russian troll” rather than “actual Russian troll”. You have to assume that an actual Russian troll wouldn’t keep on using the same obviously non-native-speaker errors that had already been pointed out to him, while explicitly pretending to be an American high-schooler.
Jesus, I get it I made a big mistake posting this thread in the Pit.
But listen closely, if you all want to call me a troll then so be it. At least I am actually providing detail and info, meanwhile you are all calling me a troll as if the internet ain’t home to enough trolls already.
Another classic “tell” is the sudden switching of linguistic registers by randomly throwing in extreme colloquialisms like “wanna” and “gonna” and “ain’t”, even where the rest of the diction is comparatively formal (“listen closely”, “you are all calling me a troll”).
It would be interesting for some linguist to do an in-depth analysis of speech patterns in “foreign troll English”; so far there doesn’t seem to be anything about it on the All Things Linguistic blog.
That might be a plausible explanation, if your errors were at all typical of dysgraphia in native English speakers instead of being typical of a non-native English speaker trying to imitate colloquial English. But they aren’t.
So yeah, “troll” remains by far the best explanation of all aspects of your posts.
Do you understand that what you post is gibberish? What does that mean? And, to be clear, I am calling you a troll (and now a trock) because that fits the observable facts.
Look at the user name. Look at the sign off line in “every post”. Go on. Keep looking. Got it yet?
Fine
What I said in that last paragraph is that you guys are acting like if is very uncommon for a troll to generate out of nowhere[according to y’all apperantly].
Is not gibberish, is just a poorly constructed sentence.
(I mean when my Illuminati Overlord told me to do it I thought it was some super secret coded message . . . it’s just my initials (and a note to folks that didn’t want to type out my full username), I’m sooo disappointed!)