Who said there was no risk? The democrat party passed the AWB the last time they tried. With the Newton shooting it seemed like there was plenty risk it could happen again. All my gun friends were like “oh shit, this one is bad…”
Are you just pretending not to understand for the sake of argument? Oh wait, this feels familiar. You are Revenant Threshold I remember you, and that’s what you do:
Yeah, I can understand why the realities in this thread would leave you lefties wanting to vent. Let me ask you elucidator, do you think “worlds greatest gun salesman” will be part of Obama’s legacy?
Reality would seem to indicate there was no risk, given that you’re pointing to gun control advocates having caused gun purchases to rise. I mean, we’re actually past that situation, we can look back and see what happened, and the risk failed to materialise. It decreased, if anything. Factually, there was no risk.
Now, if you’re pointing to reasons why at the time there would be a *perception *of risk, we’re now talking about to what extent we can be judged for our ability to assess risk in the future. Hindsight not being 20/20 and all that, it’s reasonable to say that just because something didn’t happen doesn’t mean that it couldn’t. In fact, if I make a bet that a tossed coin won’t come up 10 heads in a row, and it does, that doesn’t mean that my judgement is faulty, even if I wager £10 on it; it was reasonable for me to believe at the time that the risk of me losing my wager was minimal even though with the benefit of hindsight I wouldn’t make that same choice. However, if the end result was so different from my expectation, or my confidence in my ability to judge as expressed by my bet so high as to be inappropriate, it’s worth looking back and seeing to what extent my ability to judge a situation was actually faulty. If not only 10 heads came up in a row but 100 heads, or instead of betting £10 I bet my entire life savings, clearly, there’s some aspect of the situation which I have failed to grasp.
So when it comes to gun control advocates, your, and your friends, interpretation of what the situation would be and what they would successfully do was “They have a good chance of lowering gun ownership. My ability to purchase guns that I might want in the future may easily be hindered; i’m convinced enough of the possibility of this that i’m going to put down money now to buy what i’d like to buy because my confidence in what this is going to turn out like is high enough to justify it.” But the end result was not only no loss in gun purchase numbers, but an* increase*. That seems like a sufficiently different and unexpected a result to question the judgement at play.
You know, purely for the purpose of debate, wouldn’t it make more sense to quote an example of me being a liar rather than asserting I am one and then linking to a quote of yourself asserting I am one again? I mean, i’m assuming here that you’re linking for the purpose of showing me to be arguing dishonestly to others. If you’re linking for your own sake i’m sure it has whatever effect on you you’d like it to.
This is off topic and Marly23 made it clear that I’m not allowed to say more on why I think you write the way you do unless I do so in the BBQ pit. That past discussions with you taught me that you are not going to get anything I say, or anyone else says regardless of how I or they say it.
I just keep increasing in my non-understanding ways! So far i’ve just not understood, been a liar, and autistic, so I suppose being unable to understand anything anyone else says no matter how they put it is probably the peak of that particular mountain.
Anyway, my point there simply was that it seems like it would be a better idea to cite an example of me being wrong/false/neurologically disordered/a vegetable/whichever it is tomorrow than to cite a post that just has you repeating that claim. If nothing else it’s fairly redundant.
May I respectfully ask you why this makes you happy? I understand and respect that you enjoy firing guns and that you do so without malice toward anyone. It is not a pastime that I enjoy, but that doesn’t mean that I want to ban things that others enjoy.
I must say that I am amused by your insistence that Obama is all things to all people. I find this a common conservative trope. In this thread, you argue that Obama’s (virtually non-existent) efforts at gun control are weak and ineffectual. However, you also claim that his (again, virtually non-existent) efforts cause a panicked surge in the affected gun sales. So, he is terribly weak but strikes fear in the hearts of gun owners. Weird.
Let’s suppose that you’re right and that Obama, in his heart of hearts, wants to ban all guns for all Americans in all times and places. So what? It won’t happen, so what is the big deal? I mean, there are lots of grand things that I want, but won’t actually happen. Such is life. I (and you) don’t always get what I want. Big sigh.
You claim that the Democrat(ic) Party’s efforts to ban guns have been counter-effective. You also say that background checks block a whopping 1% of attempted gun purchases. So, again, what is the big deal? You still get to be enthused about your freedom. A formerly responsible gun owner went and killed a bunch of little kids and, still, no meaningful changes in gun restrictions. Do you realize you (and other “freedom enthusiasts”) are being played?
(Thank you for “freedom enthusiast”. I think I will use that every day now.)
You neglected to mention that, unlike golf clubs, guns have one thing they’re *all *good for, however big or small they are, which is, you know, kinda the reason for this whole debate in the first place. The golf club analogy doesn’t quite fit.
You keep saying that, but who was asking for an AWB (specifically, did Obama, since he’s the subject of your thread)? An AWB wasn’t in the Manchin-Toomey proposal, so where do you get the idea that it was a real threat?
Your OP stretched incredulity to the breaking point, and this post utterly demolished it. You owe the board now.
Yes, ‘this one is bad’ - BECAUSE 20 KIDS GOT FUCKING SHOT YOU LITTLE SHIT.
But no, that did seem to be a common reaction - “oh shit, this is bad; I mean, I don’t care about those 20 little boys and girls shot to death, but OMG SOMEONE MIGHT MAKE IT MARGINALLY HARDER TO BUY MORE GUNS OMG”.
I suppose it’s possible for you to show yourself to be a soul-less little creep, but I’m struggling to see how.
I like “assault weapons” since they are now among the most popular guns in America, they are going to be very hard to outlaw.
I remember saying Obama was weak. His call for increased gun control did cause mass buying, which should make future attempts at gun control a lot harder.
It was a big deal to us freedom enthusiasts when the last AWB was passed. We don’t want that to happen again. We don’t want our freedoms chipped away piece by piece.
DragonAsh I think I can understand your rage. If I had a phobia about dogs and I wanted them outlawed, and my efforts backfired and only caused millions more people to keep dogs as pets, I’d be upset too.
Not that it hasn’t been fun and educational, but now can we all stop pretending this isn’t a weak Pit thread wearing the world’s least convincing fake moustache?
It fits for the issue I was addressing, which is why people chose to own multiple firearms, and not something like “guns should be regulated only to the extent golf clubs are”. Generally, it’s the same reason people own multiple golf clubs (that different ones are useful for different things) or classic cars (as a collection for its own sake).
That said, all golf clubs are capable of moving the ball forward, some further than others, just as all firearms are capable of inflicting wounds, some more severe than others.
If you instead choose to believe that people instead own multiple firearms for some psychic benefit of feeling powerful and secure, I can’t stop you. I’m also confident that for some people, that’s true. It’s absolutely not universally true, or, in my experience, even close.
I whole-hearrtedly agree that gun enthisiasts’ behavior is driven by their over-estimation of risks and the effects that this has on their emotions. This has the effect of rendering them vulnerable to manipulation by those with an interest in increasing gun sales.
Oh, Hentor, Vinny, really, there is no further point to our subterfuge. He’s on to us, he knows that we awake every morning in alignment with The One, Himself, and spend our every moment plotting how to wrest liberty guns and freedom bullets from the patriotic grip of the Real Americans.
By the way, did you know that NPR has a new promotion? Pledge a sustaining membership and ten percent will be forwarded to a fund to install solar panels on the Black Helicopters?
Again, I submit that Kable is overstating the effect of fear of future bans. For one, as already shown, handgun sales dominate over rifle sales, and handguns are in no danger of being banned (and weren’t, even under the AWB), as DC v. Heller specifically protected them.
For two, here are the 2012 and 2011 top-ten best sellers lists for Bud’s Gun Shop, a popular retailer. There are semi-automatic rifles sprinkled in, but both lists heavily feature compact handguns suitable for concealed carry.
Here is the top-5 sellers for Cheaper Than Dirt, another retailer, for 2011. 3 of the 5, and the top 2, are compact handguns for concealed carry, with magazine capacities of less than 10 rounds.
