Mass murder is certainly not a part of American gun culture. I am sure you did not phrase that correctly.
Ah, I can see it now.
The year is 2035. You are walking through a seedy part of downtown. You pass by a dark alley, and hear a cry for help. You consider just moving on, but feel obligated to assist if you can. You cautiously creep into the alley, and are horrified to find a man stabbing another to death behind an iDumpster. The murderer turns around in surprise at the sound of your approach, and realizes that you have caught a clear glimpse of his face. He advances on you with the knife. You frantically pull out your pocket laser pistol and try to fire a shot at him while stumbling backwards. You miss. You try to fire again. Miss again. He is now just a few feet away from you. You have stopped moving, but only because your back is to the wall. You gather all your focus and try to make one last shot before he has reached you with the knife. You squeeze the trigger.
Nothing happens. After a split second, a small speaker on the gun crackles to life. You hear the voice of President Andrew Cuomo. “For the good of all humanity, according to paragraph 3 subsection (b) of the Laser Weapon Control Act of 2032, this gun is only allowed to fire 2 shots within any given 30-second period. This is for your own safety.”
Total ban? Most? If this is the case, then I really, really haven’t been reading carefully…
The thing is that cops are not protecting just themselves. They are protecting everybody. And that is easier if they are the only ones that have ‘over kill’ guns.
Yes, sorry, bad wording. But I think You know what I mean. People go crazy everywhere, but those often mentioned Chinese rampages have been done with knives.
And European rampages? Uh… fists?
If there wouldn’t be so much guns around and that every-man-for-himself attitude, I think shooting rampages in The USA would be much more rare.
So You see how important it is to have proper training with You gun? Instead of just picking one up from some garage sale and then blindly spraying bullets everywhere, hurting some innocent people who might be a mile away.
BobLibDem is opposed to semi-automatic weapons and revolvers, as far as I can tell. Banning those would be pretty close to a total ban, it would essentially just leave hunting rifles and shotguns. Which are plenty deadly, by the way…
Hardly. There are plenty of places in the US where the police cannot protect you, they can simply show up to the crime scene 30 minutes later and mop up the mess.
That guy in Norway managed to kill like 80 people. I don’t think he used fists. Is Norway not in Europe?
I don’t disagree.
What does that have to do with anything I said? Even trained police officers miss most of the time in real-life situations.
In any case, I am not opposed to mandatory gun training / licensing, as long as this system is not abused in order to arbitrarily limit gun ownership by requiring that people satisfy some bureaucrat by defending their “need” for a gun, etc.
Yes, it is in Europe.
And last summer a rampaging guy shot and killed two in Finland. And then there was… well, two more cases in Finland 2008 and 2007 ( who copied Columbine, I think ). And before that one in, uh.. 1988?
Anyways it seems to be a weekly thing in The USA.
It is not a weekly thing. Last year there were 16 mass shootings in the US (http://www.thenation.com/blog/171774/fifteen-us-mass-shootings-happened-2012-84-dead). So, approximately 1 every month.
If you wish to compare it to Finland, you must adjust for the relative sizes of the two countries. The US is a vastly larger country than Finland, with a population of approximately 300,000,000 people. The population of Finland is approximately 5,000,000, according to Wikipedia - 60 times smaller than the US.
So, if we have one mass shooting in the US per month, you might expect to have one every 5 years in Finland, all else being equal. That does not seem inconsistent with your description. These numbers show that the US is not dramatically different from Finland, as these things go - we just have 60x the number of people you do.
I try to be practical, and don’t spend a lot of time thinking about scenario’s of revolution against the government. But a scenario were civil order breaks down in a local area for some period of time is quite realistic. Even in the UKtopia this happened in London for a bit a few years ago. The cops just threw in the towel trying to control rioting mobs, and it was ‘you’re on your own mates’ to the law abiding population, pretty much prohibited from owning guns. I say a polite no thanks to that scenario. I think the authorities where I live are more professional than the London cops proved in that case, but still circumstances can overwhelm them. For example the recent hurricane in the US northeast hit heavily where I live. People were neighborly and helped one another, it was actually rather uplifting rather than reinforcing paranoia. But how about if aid had been a lot slower to come, esp considering all the people in the poorer parts of my town totally unprepared. They were in bad shape by the time the National Guard showed up after a day and a half or so. If in some future case it’s a lot longer, I’d much have rather have a gun to insure a polite conservation about me having to share my provisions with them, if I so chose. And that’s not hurting anyone, so leave me alone. That’s how I’ll vote, and I think it’s still by far the dominant basic opinion in the US.
I’m not really big on large capacity semi auto’s. I kind of prefer older gun technology, just cause I like it more (the most advanced I have is 1890’s design lever action rifle, also cap and ball revolver carbine and single shot percussion muzzle loader). OTOH I see no prospect of practical changes to laws regarding semi-auto’s having any noticeable effect on rampage shootings, less so still as far as gun violence in general (IIRC around 3-400 murders were committed in the US last year with any kind of rifle, general gun violence is virtually all by handguns). And to the extent foreigners say we need to go to laws which really would have an effect (repeal the 2nd amendment and have gun laws like the UK etc) that’s just a lot of noise. Shouldn’t happen, won’t happen. But the domestic gun grabbers do want to take all guns, a lot of them do at least, and/or make gun owners some outcast class of socially shunned people. So I won’t cooperate with them unless there’s a very clear societal benefit, f- them. And I don’t see the clear benefit.
So I hope, and have a reasonable expectation, the Republicans can maneuver ‘red state’ Democrats into wrong footing themselves over this gun control push, and pick up Senate and House seats, as they did in the 1990’s. Some good will come of it if so.
No, that is stupid. I don’t know how an internal combustion engine works, nor would I ever be asked to designed one, but I can vote and have a say in what regulations we should have on them.
We might not be gun experts, but what we do understand to a pretty equal degree is the consequences of gun violence. It means nothing to me the difference between an automatic or assault weapon. I know I don’t want any civilian to have the ability to rapidly fire off rounds, nor the ability to reload quickly so that rapid fire wouldn’t be an issue. If anything, someone explaining the difference once is enough. I can still determine what laws need to be in place to regulate them. The only danger is my lack of knowledge may lead to unforeseen loopholes.
How many idiots think they know enough about evolution to ban it from schools, or enough about Islam to restrict its practice? Conservatives do it ALL the damn time, they take something, especially about science, misunderstand it, or is purposefully ignorant of it, and decide to make laws about it.
Guns are simple. No, I don’t mean making one. But its causes and effects are simple to understand. You shoot a piece of metal really far and really fast that can do serious harm to whatever you’re shooting. I don’t need to know about the differences. An assault weapon, to me, is something that can be rapidly fired, either from one pull of the trigger, or quick pulls that almost mimic the speed of an assault weapon. That’s really all we need to know about them. They are dangerous, they are useless for self-defense, they are used in mass killings, and they should not be available to civilians.
Besides, all your complaints can be easily rectified. It takes little read about the definitions of an assault weapon. If necessary, we’ll read a wikipedia entry or two before we come in to talk about assault weapons, but no, its not complicated. This isn’t rocket science, its a gun, a pretty blunt and direct instrument that should be restricted
The whole issue is that they are not “dangerous”, they are not useless in self-defense, and mass killings occur ridiculously infrequently. It is not the fact that you don’t know how they work that bothers me - it’s the fact that you have an absurdly distorted view of their danger, and absolutely zero acknowledgement of their utility.
Your suggestion would pretty much ban every gun in existence today except bolt-action hunting rifles, certain shotguns, and muzzle-loading muskets. And then in a few years, someone will go kill a bunch of kids with a hunting rifle or shotgun, and you’ll be calling to ban those too, because fundamentally, this is not about guns or gun crime - it’s about your desire to exploit tragedy to score a political victory against a bunch of evil Republican-voting gun-owning bastards.
Yes, I get it, you don’t like guns, you don’t like gun owners, and so any policy that lets you stamp your boot on the faces of gun owners is okay with you. That sounds like a good way to run a country! :rolleyes:
The danger is that your willful ignorance will lead you propose drastic measures that will dramatically and unnecessarily reduce the freedom and safety of tens of millions of law-abiding gun-owning Americans while having a negligible effect on whatever problem it is you think you’re solving.
An informed person who is genuinely concerned about the rights of others might be able to propose more targeted, more efficient, more intelligent measures that might actually make a difference to the problems of gun crime and gun violence, without edging up on discarding 1/10th of the Bill of Rights to do it.
I can solve lots of problems by just banning shit. Drunk driving? Ban alcohol. That’s not even in the Bill of Rights. Lung cancer and other smoking-related healthcare costs? Ban smoking. Obesity? Ban junk food. Food’s not in the Bill of Rights either, the Constitution doesn’t say you can eat whatever the fuck you want, I can regulate it if I want! Kids too stupid to compete in a global economy? Ban TV and video games.
Do all of those sound like absolutely bone-headed, overzealous policies rooted in ignorance? Well, so is yours. I have no idea why the topic of guns leads normally intelligent people to become proud of their total ignorance.
What do conservatives have to do with it? What difference does it make what policies conservatives hold on issues totally unrelated to guns?
Oh, I know. This is simply evidence that your anti-gun agenda is really just a thinly veiled anti-conservative agenda. You have seen an opportunity to score a victory over the fucking conservatives and you are pouncing on it. It’s not about gun victims or gun crimes, it’s that the fucking conservatives do all kinds of bullshit that you don’t like and you want to get back at them for all their idiotic policies, and this psychopath who shot up 20 children in Connecticut has given you the perfect opportunity, because a bunch of dead children is the political gold mine you have been waiting for. Nice.
Unless you’re so utterly ignorant of internal combustion engines that the regulations you would have a say in are completely nonsensical. Like maybe for instance banning “racecar” engines and then since you don’t have an objective definition of the term, having to simply list every example that you think qualifies.
Allow me to remedy your lack of knowledge about one “loophole”: they make things called speedloaders that make reloading a revolver a one-step operation. So congratulations, you now have to ban revolvers- the most basic handgun possible- to make “rapid fire” impossible.
Then you ought to understand how frustrating it is to deal with people who base their advocacy of a position on ideology instead of knowledge. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
See above. You’re chasing a phantom- the Kill-omatic-5000™ “Terminator” super-slaughter gun, which simply doesn’t exist in real life. Unless you want to ban six-shot revolvers, you’re making no difference at all.
There is no definition of an assault weapon, unless you mean “guns that cosmetically resemble military full-auto assault rifles”. The first AWB simply drew up a list of eevil-looking guns and defined the list as “assault weapons”. The very term “assault weapon” was deliberately coined by gun-ban advocates to be misleading.
I really don’t think you do. Your odds of ever being the victim of a mass-shooting are vanishingly small. Shooting sprees kill a statistically-insignificant number of people in this country (like on par with bee stings and lightning strikes). If your goal is to address large-scale gun violence, then you shouldn’t be talking about rifles at all, because they are used in crimes so rarely. Your focus ought to be on handguns. And you shouldn’t allow young black men to own them.
The sort of “rapid fire” guns you want to ban are exactly the kind that citizens want to have in their hand when they’re investigating some bump in the night.
That’s not the only danger. You’re very likely to trample a freedom cherished by millions of your countrymen with your lack of knowledge.
So much fail in this quote. The law already makes a very clear distinction between full-auto firearms and semi-autos. And there are a good number of your fellow citizens with first-hand experience that can tell you that semi-autos are great for self-defense.
We are obviously talking about different things here.
I am not talking about just mass shootings, I am talking about ‘rampages’. That is the cases where somebody shoots several people or randomly to the crowd.
As I said earlier in this thread, in The USA there have been at least two or three of those during this thread. And those are just the ones that have been reported here in Finland.
Also, people here are going crazy too. Last five-ten years there have been at least two cases when a lunatic stabbed a random victim, also there have been two cases with an axe. All those were single victim rampages - with American gun culture that would have been much worse.
You do realize that those ‘poor people’ are also armed? There’s no polite conversation, they’ll ambush You 'cause they don’t want to face an armed guy. They will rob Your house over Your dead body and then kill Your family 'cause they are murder witnesses.
I’d rather have a punch in My face and My family unharmed and live to tell the cops what happened.
Nope, just ban the speedloaders…
I think the first goal here is supposed to be stopping random shootings at the innocent crowd. Criminals killing just other criminals isn’t very urgent compared. I personally don’t even care about that.
I’m sure they are, if the attacker has a semi-auto too.
Funny how the fight in your imagination always goes to the lawless when you’re trying to convince someone that it’s a bad idea for them to have a gun. In a time of social unrest, looters avoid armed targets. In reality, criminals don’t become brazen villains, plotting ambushes or daring gun battles, just because their would-be victim is armed. Instead they go elsewhere, where the pickings are easier. They have more sense than many gun control advocates, it seems.
But in the unlikely event of a natural disaster that temporarily overturns the social order, I’ll have my family and friends posted on the rooftops with AR-15s until the local and/or federal government restores order; you’re welcome to go unarmed if that suits you. We can compare notes afterward.
You’ve never heard of a moon clip, have you? Think of it as a detachable magazine for a revolver, only it’s so easy to manufacture you could never hope to control its production if it offered any advantage to criminals.
Well, for once a gun owner gets to call a gun control advocate heartless for ignoring the cost of gun violence. Is it really that easy to ignore the plight of the racially, socially, and economically marginalized? Maybe you don’t care that black youths living in cities are many, many times more likely to be shot dead than those of us with a more privileged existence. And yes, gang involvement is the cause of a great many of those shootings. But what do you think drove those kids to join gangs in the first place? I don’t think the glaring inequalities in our social order should be glossed over. There are many ways it might be possible to address the real gun violence problem in America, some socioeconomic and some regulatory: even as a gun owner, I’m willing to talk about maybe making handguns harder to get if that kind of regulation would ease the bleeding.
But if you want to do something about those particular gun crimes where a young white male goes crazy and decides to shoot a bunch of other white people, then first know two things: 1) they are extremely rare, and if you’re actually worried about becoming the victim of one you’re even more irrationally scared than that strawman image of the insecure needs-a-gun-to-feel-safe gun owner, and 2) if you want a real answer to them, it lies in finding why more (relatively, of course) young white males seem interested in mass murder lately. It’s not like semiautomatic rifles are new; the AR-15 was invented fifty years ago.
Fair enough, ignorance fought. It’s still just eight rounds and few seconds between a new clip. Those few seconds mean a lot, especially as the shooter has to watch his hands all that time and digging up a new clip from a pocket could be an insurmountable task in that situation.
What in the world made You think I’m talking about racially, socially and economically marginalized people?
I said criminals.
A solution to a problem concerning racially, socially and economically marginalized people is certainly not distributing weaponry to others.
Yes, those are the particular crimes I’m talking about.
- like I said, there have been at least two of them while this thread have been going on. One in Lone Star College, Texas, other in Albuquerque ( that was a family killing, but the shooter planned killing random people too ). You may not count either, but I do.
And no, I am not afraid a bit, as I don’t live in America. - copycats. A simple suicide is not enough anymore, and they get TV time and own Wiki-page… ( yes, that’s simplified, but still ). Solution isn’t spreading guns everywhere ( ask Nancy Lanza - oh, wait, You can’t… )
Anyways, I don’t see how guns could be more good than bad in these situations. If I could, I would be all for guns, 'cause I don’t oppose guns itself. I oppose gun violence, especially towards innocent people. I’m sure You agree with that last.
This just made me realize something: part of the debate with the gun control crowd is that they see no freedom being trampled. If asked, they might say something like “what, the ‘freedom’ to kill people?”. They’re so confident that all problems are to be solved by the state that they literally don’t see what freedom you’re talking about. :eek:
If New Orleans/Katrina was any example, they’ll try to restore order by first ordering all the people to turn in their arms. :rolleyes:
And the disconnect from the lawful gun owner side is that they compartmentalize people into two categories: lawful gun owners and criminals. The problem is a great many criminals start out as lawful gun owners. So when we hear, “well, my gun will never be used for a crime,” we don’t trust that that won’t happen … by way of it happening again and again and again in this country.
Maybe other people do, but I’ve seen and acknowledged that such weapons are used very little in killings. The reason why that doesn’t bother me enough to change my mind about restricting them is that they are also not used for self-defense. If you want to defend yourself, your home, or family, you can get a handgun or a shotgun. You don’t need an assault weapon with unrestricted magazine capacity to shoot 100 rounds per minute. What are you defending yourself from, a hoard of vikings? Even if such weapons are used only less than 1% of killings, that is 1% of deaths we shouldn’t have to endure. What other utility are you talking about that I should consider?
This is where it starts getting to the paranoia that always derails things. I’m not really going to respond to whether or not a future me would do at a future time after a non-existent future event. But as far as your speculation goes, reducing the rate of fire and capacity pretty much makes it very improbable that such an event you describe would happen.
As to your first statement, this is where you, as a gun owner that knows more about the technical details about guns, can step in and give your advice for helping to reduce further tragedy like Newtown. There is a path moving forward where we can have guns that aren’t assault weapons, but still can protect us. Somebody suggested 6-shooters in another thread. Slow loading, 6 bullets, with a kick that makes it difficult for rapid fire. I don’t think we need to replace all handguns with that, but there’s no reason why manufacturers can’t make their triggers a little less sensitive. You can use your technical know-how to suggest a safer gun. I don’t know why the NRA is against mandatory gun safety locks (well ok, I do know, its because they’re crazy), but that seems like something that can and should be done on all new guns. But you people refuse to help, instead preferring to scream slippery slope from every peak and valley. That’s why I have no use for such debates
Unfortunately, gun owners who are sensible are drowned out by people like you who won’t take the lead and use their expertise to suggest solutions, instead they let people like Wayne LaPierre say video games and movies are to blame, and call for cops in every school. If you don’t think our measures will work, then propose something that’s not “more guns!”. God, it reminds me of this Onion article
So propose some, I’m all ears. But if you’re going to stamp your feet and say more guns are the answers, then I’m sorry, you’re not contributing to the debate, you’re poisoning it
The worst thing about dealing with gun advocates is stuff like this. There are a lot of things that are harmful. But those things have other functions. Guns have pretty much one function that overwhelms any other secondary function you try to use it as. For this reason, NONE of your suggestions as radical reactions are realistic. I hate to break it to you, but banning certain types of guns is not a radical reaction, it is proper based on the singular function of guns
Ignore that, semi-tangential ranting 
Just pointing out that the usual breakdown of these debates are fuel for other things
Careful, that’s your paranoia again 
Oh Lumpy, I missed this. I think 4 years ago, you were in that other gun debate I mentioned too. How time flies
Your argument is baseless and your assertions are myopic. It takes but a single article on wikipedia to know what racecar engines are. And if that doesn’t exist or isn’t comprehensive, it takes but one person who knows what it is to explain it. Then I can ban it
Just kidding! 
Or, I dunno, we could just ban speedloaders? Or we can acknowledge that such a thing doesn’t speed up reloading enough for a novice to make that much of a difference. You see, this is what I like about these debates, I learn about something new each time that I can ban!
No sorry, that was mean, I didn’t mean it like that. But you using your expertise could have brought this up sooner, instead of the gun advocates’ usual piss and vinegar, and we could have a serious debate about it too. How much less effort would you have expended if you came into a gun debate and said “Lets talk about speedloaders, should these things be restricted because it makes it easier to reload faster?” But instead you come in shouting and screaming about how people are gonna take your guns away and that we can never have any laws or else blah blah blah, tyranny. Maybe I should do an experiment next time and only respond to the part of your posts where it looks like you’re not aping the worst parts of a gun debate
I know what does exist though: an assault weapon that can fire rounds rapidly and has a high capacity magazine clip. Those are not phantoms, one of those was used in Newtown, and those should be banned or severely restricted. You like to attack people for their ignorance but almost never offer up any useful information. Why is that? Could it be that you have no interest in doing anything to stop future Newtowns?
So, if you’re not pissed enough to ignore this by now, let’s rectify that. Use your knowledge of guns and tell me, compared to what a lay person’s idea of an “assault weapon” is, and knowing of the types of weapons we lay people think we want to ban, what would you define as an assault weapon? Don’t just scream and throw a tantrum, do your god damn part to try to minimize future massacres or get the hell out of gun debates. I’ve already mentioned many times what I think that term means: rapid rate of fire and high bullet capacity. Add to that knowledge instead of trying to suppress it
Well no, I disagree. I know that its a tiny fraction, as its been mentioned many times, of crimes that are committed with an assault weapon. Less than 1%, someone said. But again, seeing as how there is no reasonable purpose for such a rapid firing, high capacity gun to be in the hands of civilians, I think that is 1% that shouldn’t have to happen. Using your example, if a paltry action could be taken to reduce bee and lightning deaths (or bees shooting lightning), and that action affects us in a very small way, then shouldn’t we do it? If everyone switches hands while masturbating 1 day a year and it would reduce the number of car accident deaths (don’t ask me how) by 1 per decade, then maybe we should do it.
I would love to address large scale gun violence but unfortunately, the mean gun people won’t let me None of them are willing to address it in any way except to buy more gorillas.
And we can’t restrict based on race. Like many activities, the exercise of one right may bump up against another. Therefore, we must take a look at which one matters most. Racial equality, I think, matters more than gun violence.
That is too bad. For unless they are being invaded by a swarm of Zerg, then rapid fire is really unnecessary for the kind of home and self defense people claim to want guns for
A freedom they have claimed, falsely, deserves no regulations or restrictions. I know its a right, but I also believe it is the government’s right to control these things. I reject the insinuation that such a move is an improper intrusion, nor the idea that the government doesn’t have that right to intrude in the first place. If gun advocates acted less crazy, then maybe we’d get some stuff done. But from what I’ve read, they won the war and don’t want to give up anything at all, no matter how many people it would save
That’s irrelevant that its great for self defense. The point is necessity vs. practicality. I’m sure a fully automatic gatling gun with a thousand round bandolier attachment is great of fending off anything from burglars to a rampaging hoard of zombies. That doesn’t mean its necessary for everyday home defense. They should be able to settle with something that’s single-shot and not any kind of automatic
So maybe we should try an “assault weapon” ban like Connecticut has. I hear it’s been a raging success. I think Columbine, CO probably feels the same way.