Another School Shooting [Stoneman Douglas] (2/14/2018)

The BBQ Pit
461

Instead of sensible measures like the list in the previous message, we get idiotic security theater:

That’ll certainly stop any evildoers, except for the rare criminal genius capable of formulating the diabolically clever plan “innocuous stuff on the outside; weapons and other contraband on the inside”. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Apparently, some of the students made their opinions known by putting signs inside the backpacks (demonstrating the “easily defeated security theater nonsense” issue I mentioned above) and attaching “$1.05” price tags (referencing the ratio of Marco Rubio’s NRA contributions to the number of students in Florida).

462

Bump stocks and silencers bans are meaningless. Really, they will do nothing. Niether will background checks or gun registers. How many of the previous mass shooters had backgrounds that would have precluded them from buying or owning or living with people who have guns? None. Gun registeration is a big fat joke. Can you explain to me how that prevents shootings?

I like guns.

But if you want to prevent these mass shootings here’s what you have to do. Two choices.

  1. Ban all semi-automatic weapons

OR

  1. Change gun culture. Dramatically. Guns have to be locked up at all times when not in use. Police can come and inspect that your guns are locked up. If your guns are not locked up that is a criminal offence and you lose your right to own firearms.
463

Step 1:

Real background checks: A national federal database of all convicted felons and “mental cases” who should NEVER be able to get a gun … include those convicted of domestic abuse/violence. Require that all military branches and local law enforcement agencies input the required information. Require ALL sellers to use it before making any kind of sale, commercial OR private.

Consistency: Enact a set of federal laws, to replace the crazy quilt of state “laws” so they are all consistent. Some states will then be stricter, and some will be more lax.
Raise the legal buying age to 21.

Enact a federal ban on silencers and bump stocks.

Step 2:

Bump stocks and silencers bans are meaningless. Really, they will do nothing. Niether will background checks or gun registers. How many of the previous mass shooters had backgrounds that would have precluded them from buying or owning or living with people who have guns? None. Gun registeration is a big fat joke. Can you explain to me how that prevents shootings?

Step 3:

Change gun culture. Dramatically. Guns have to be locked up at all times when not in use. Police can come and inspect that your guns are locked up. If your guns are not locked up that is a criminal offence and you lose your right to own firearms.

Step 4: Outlaw private ownership and possession of guns entirely.

And here we have in a nutshell the likely progression of leftist activism on guns and the end game.

And it’s why so much of the country is unwilling to give an inch when it comes to gun control, because it knows that the journey of a mile starts with one step.

464

Leaving aside that it is totally impossible to do this, from a political standpoint, at the present moment in America - even if you did this, you would then just have people blasting away with #3 buckshot from a common pump-action hunting shotgun. I’m no expert but I’m going to guess that you could probably kill about as many people with that, even considering that you’d have to reload periodically, as with a semi-automatic rifle. The rifle would have larger magazine capacity, but the shotgun would spread out at a wider range, require less skill to hit people, and if you’re firing into a crowded room of kids…ugh, forget it. Jesus, the carnage would be horrible.

A ban of semi-automatic weapons is not politically achievable, at this time, but even if it was - there would be still mass shootings, is my point, just with shotguns. Probably the same amount of people would be killed.

465

Opposing any reasonable firearms regulations, like supporting Donald Trump, is one of those terrible decisions that many conservatives seem fine with making as long as they can cravenly shift the responsibility for their choices onto liberals.

If you really cannot manage to figure out any middle way between destructive amoral irresponsibility on the one hand and subjection to some imagined strawman liberal dystopia on the other, that’s not liberals’ fault.

Intelligent principled conservatives would be able to think of options beyond merely being “unwilling to give an inch when it comes to gun control”, just as intelligent principled conservatives would have been able to nominate a Presidential candidate better than Donald Trump. Clinging to the worst possible choice while whining that the mean old liberals made you do it is a clear indication of possessing neither intelligence nor principle.

466

Some of the Stoneman Douglas students added their “$1.05” tags to their new clear backpacks. The $1.05 is a reference to the amount of money Marco Rubio receives from the NRA divided by the number of students in Florida.

467

I love how, in these discussions, every type of firearm is equally effective at hitting as many targets with as deadly force as every other type of firearm. Or knives, for that matter.

One wonders why variations were ever made, or how they can market an AR-15 when it will do just the same thing for me as a shotgun.

468

In other words, to be an intelligent principled conservative one would have to vote the way liberals would have them vote. Got it. :wink:

There have been far too many instances where the country’s liberal contingent points to gun-free countries as the example we should follow, stating again and again that if they can do it, so can the unexceptional U.S. So it’s blatantly obvious what the end game is.

We’ve seen over and over that when it comes to political issues, liberals are never satisfied with part-way measures. And if one generation should ever become satisfied with they’ve accomplished, the next generation damn sure won’t, because by then the half-way measures will be regarded as part of the establishment…and we all know what anathema to liberals that is.

469

I’m really not sure how much more “effective” a shotgun would be…there are lots of studies to compare statistics with when it comes to rifles like the AR-15 because it’s been used in so many incidents and I don’t think the same is true of shotguns. All I’m trying to say is that if all guns but shotguns were banned, there would still be horrific school shootings, just with shotguns. The guy who posted before me claimed that banning all semi-automatic weapons would “prevent mass shootings.” But it wouldn’t. It would just mean that lots of guys would kill lots of people with shotguns, a non-semi-automatic weapon that would still be readily available.

470

Some shotguns are semi-automatic. They would be gone. Pump action shotguns, hoklding …what 7 or 8 cartridges would be around but I don’t think they would be a great mass killing weapon. Killing range is low, they are long and bulky and hard to hide.

471

I mean, it’s not like I’m the first person to think of this, but a shotgun becomes a lot easier to hide if you saw off the stock and part of the barrel.

The rifle would hold more rounds in a magazine. But the shotgun is, essentially, firing multiple rounds with each shot, so I think it basically evens out if you’re talking about firing into a bunch of unarmed people crowded together in close quarters.

If somehow I was, right now, forced to flee from someone with a gun who was out to get me, and I had the choice of them being armed with either an AR-15 or a shotgun, I’m honestly not sure which I would choose. I think I would fear both equally. He would probably have a better chance at hitting me with the shotgun than with the rifle, if I were to run. I mean, there’s a reason why people hunt fast-moving game with shotguns and not rifles.

472

So gun owners should be completely fine with my proposal. They would be just as equally able to defend themselves. According to you.

473

No, just because a conservative politician happens to be a better choice than Trump doesn’t mean that liberals actually want conservatives to vote for that politician.

Once again, though, your answer illustrates the great dread so many of today’s conservatives feel at the possibility of doing anything that liberals might be even remotely, relatively, grudgingly supportive towards. You folks have dumbed your movement down to the extent that anything like honest principles and aims have been replaced by the single childish troll goal of Pissing Off the Liberals. The more unethical, counterproductive and stupid an idea is, the more you can depend on its Pissing Off the Liberals and so the more you embrace it. That’s how you gave us Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee, for example.

What do you mean, or imagine in your foggy fervid mind that you mean, by “gun-free countries”? The lowest per capita gun-ownership rates in the world occur in countries such as Tunisia and Ghana and Ethiopia. Many developed nations like Australia, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Canada actually have quite high gun-ownership rates (Norway, France and Canada rank #8-9-10, for example, each with over 30 privately owned guns per capita per 100 residents as compared to the US’s 101).

So either you mean by the term “gun-free” something that’s quite different from the actual meaning of “gun-free”, or else your use of the term “gun-free” is simply, like so much of your posting, inaccurate misleading hyperbole you’re pulling out of your ass.

Nonsense. There are many political issues on which liberals have supported change up to a certain desired point and been satisfied when that point was reached.

For example, liberals supported allowing civil marriage for interracial couples and for same-sex couples (both of which ideas were anathema to conservatives in the eras when liberals took up those causes). Are liberals now insisting that everybody ought to marry a same-sex or different-race spouse? No. Nor are liberals in general saying that religious organizations should be forced to give religious blessing to such marriages if they disapprove of them. Nor are liberals arguing that same-sex or interracial couples should be taxed at lower rates, or any other extremist overreach measure.

So the claim that liberals “are never satisfied” with having a definite political goal and achieving it is just more inaccurate misleading hyperbole from the same place you get the rest of your inaccurate misleading hyperbole.

474

“Privately owned guns per 100 residents”, I mean, not “privately owned guns per capita per 100 residents”.

475

Well…I think most gun owners who are concerned with self-defense, would like to be able to have a gun with them just in case they need it. A shotgun is not the ideal choice for this. You can’t conceal it, you can really only smuggle it temporarily. That arrangement is fine for someone who just wants to massacre a bunch of people. Someone wanting personal defense when they’re out and about would use a handgun.

I’m really not trying to argue for or against any particular position on guns, I’m just stating a factual rebuttal to the idea that banning semi-automatic weapons would “prevent mass shootings,” full stop.

476

Well there is no factual rebuttal because, if you are resistant to using the example of other countries, everything is just a hypothesis as to what would happen in America.

I gave my opinion. You can’t give a factual rebuttal to my opinion as to what I think would happen.

If I am technically wrong about anything, I welcome your correction.

477

Canada has a lot of shotguns and you never seem to hear about these incidents happening there…my instinct is to think that it has more to do with problems in American culture than the availability of guns. I think Michael Moore raised a similar point in “Bowling For Columbine”, which I remember as being a pretty interesting movie.

[Aside - whatever happened to him, anyway? He used to be a REALLY vocal voice on the left. He made the news regularly and he seemed to have a new movie every year or two. I remember seeing his very first movie, Roger & Me - though it wasn’t the first time I’d seen one of his movies - and being blown away by the fucked up, dystopian picture of Flint that he presents. Did people on the left think he was too controversial or something?]

478

:confused: Moore’s still making movies and appearing live; you haven’t heard of Where To Invade Next, for example? Sicko? Michael Moore in TrumpLand? I am kind of baffled how anybody could ask “whatever happened to” Michael Moore when he’s pretty much where he always was. Maybe you just lost sight of him in the larger wave of protest comedy?

479

Yes. It could be a culteral problem or at least that culture may play a part. But it’s also availability. I mean, who are we kidding? We’re adults, we can see the picture.

Mooreis still out there somewhere. He predicted the Trump election when no one else saw it coming.

480

The gun culture and gun laws are not separate things. Talking about changing the gun culture makes no sense because the law (the Second Amendment and how it is now interpreted) is why that gun culture exists.

Canada has a much lower population density than the US, and population density is a big factor in the gun violence problem. What is okay out in the country, where the police may be a half hour away, doesn’t necessarily make sense in the cities.