Except the airlines and airplane manufactures who are out hundreds of millions of dollars.
Do you consider a hundred million dollars not being lost to be a benefit? If not, can I check your couch cushions?
A double negative isn’t necessarily a positive. Someone can say “I don’t want the border wall built” while not wanting illegal immigration.
Granted, the practical consequences may be the same. But claiming that someone wants X because they don’t want Y is often inaccurate.
Would you at least admit that they hold possessing the means to kill in far greater regard than other people’s right to life? Can we further agree that that is psychopathic?
Surely, and thanks for the reply. I was sort of asking this of UltraVires, though, since he made a rather silly remark about how evidently you have to believe in magic to think that fewer guns means more safety…or something.
No, they don’t enjoy these massacres, but they accept the massacres as the price to be paid for their right to own certain guns.
They also do not want to accept responsibility for the price being paid.
They know the price we (all) have to pay, they accept the price, they demand that we have a country where the price will be paid, but don’t want to be held responsible for it.
Fewer guns in the hands of those willing to use them criminally, most assuredly.
But fewer guns alone? Nah
The key to safety is in the restricting of whom should have them, as I stated earlier in this thread only to be told that it was impossible 
The bottom line is that gun control legislation has to be sold to voters effectively. We can debate the measures themselves endlessly but what really matters is how they are marketed to America as being something that people should want. Politics is now 100% marketing. It’s always been mostly marketing but now at this point it really is completely marketing. We have to be thinking like Don Draper here. The only way to get gun control measures enacted is for them to be sold effectively - both to the legislators and by the legislators.
So we gain McConnell’s soul just by *outbidding *the NRA?
Hmm, maybe you got a point there.
It relates to your post in the election thread - gun control is inextricably linked to the issue of electoral politics at large.
It’s certainly quite a few degrees down the gratuitously-offensive scale from suggesting that the many millions of your fellow citizens who count themselves among the supporters of the right of the people to keep and bear arms “simply want murder, terrorism, and every other thing they can get away with.” As XT mentioned, you “should probably just retract that ridiculous assertion and move on.”
If you don’t want murder and terror, then what are you doing about it? Pwning the libs on a messageboard when they try to have a discussion isn’t really helping. When you find delight and amusement in the frustration of someone trying to prevent death and violence is pretty gratuitously offensive too.
Actions speak louder than words, and given that it has been expressed in this very thread that a gun ban involves bloodshed, then implying that the only reason that we want to try to reduce deaths is to take away their guns is the same as claiming that we want to kill them.
There are some people here and there who advocate for a full ban, and those are used as an excuse to claim that we are lying about our intentions. There really are gun nuts out there that really do use their guns to kill and maim people, how generous should I be in determining the motives of those who demand we do nothing?
It isn’t impossible to restrict ownership to specific people, it’s impossible to distinguish a lawful user from someone who is “willing” to use them criminally. It’s impossible to determine that a lawful owner has turned into a person who is willing to use guns criminally and take their guns away from them. It’s impossible to have hundreds of millions of guns legally owned and expect it to be difficult for criminals to get their hands on them.
It’s *easy *to tell the Good Guys from the Bad Guys - just look at the colors of their hats.
Or skin.
I’ll tell you what we want: an end to the gratuitous slaughter.
If there’s a way for everyone to keep their guns, but have them be magically nonfunctional when pointed at a person who is not a violent assailant, I’d be totally good with that.
But what I see from the pro-gun side is: a whole bunch of other people getting killed is an acceptable price to pay for our rights.
When I see pro-gun folks using their superior knowledge of the subject matter that they always flaunt in these debates, to try to find that sweet spot that reduces the carnage by a great deal at minimal reduction to their access to weapons of mass slaughter, I’ll change my mind. But I’ve never seen such an attempt. It’s always your rights trumping other people’s lives.
I call that: evil.
And I suggest you guys get busy and come up with such a plan. You can do it knowledgeably now, or the time will come when we have the political power to do it, and we’ll do it with a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel. The first generation that’s grown up with active-shooter drills in school has in fact grown up, and more are following them. You will find that having terrorized generations of children won’t work in your favor.
I see this as two different things. People choosing to not own guns is a personal choice and I don’t feel it will have any significant effect on the amount of gun crimes for the reason I mentioned above. People calling for a repeal of the Second Amendment is different; they’re asking for a change that will apply to everyone. That, in my opinion, is what’s needed to significantly reduce gun crimes. We need to be able to take guns away from the small minority of people who will use them to harm others - because those people will not willingly give up their guns.
Teaching my family that those things are wrong, carrying a weapon so that I’ll have at least a chance to defend myself and them if I’m ever caught up in an attack, urging others to avoid ridiculous hyperbole like your post, etc.
Who here do you think is “try[ing] to have a discussion”? You? It certainly doesn’t come across that way when you say the other side “simply want murder, terrorism, and every other thing they can get away with.”
You can be as ‘ungenerous’ as you like, you just won’t be taken seriously while doing so. Your ‘ungenerous’ post came across as “ridiculous” & “ludicrous” in the eyes of others. I suppose you’re free to make ridiculous posts or stomp your feet as well, but it doesn’t come across as a sincere attempt to ‘have a discussion’ with the other side.
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I’m surprised Alabamians haven’t thought of this already;
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I’m not saying it’s my preferred method of dealing with the situation, and I wouldn’t propose a tax on ammo for the sake of taxing it. Rather, we could tax firearms and ammo the way we tax cigarettes and use it to fund health programs (in theory).
Nobody thinks they will stop doing this; but some of us believe that taking certain steps will reduce the likelihood of them happening, and give more people a chance to survive when someone snaps in public. Gun rights activists keep decrying an increasingly broad and diverse set of proposals; they keep covering their eyes and ears, and they’re completely fucking oblivious to the fact that it’s their refusal to budge an inch that is leading more and more voters - many of whom wouldn’t have even fathomed supporting firearms restrictions 10-15 years ago - to reconsider their positions.
Gun owners’ rights? Fuck, what about our rights to live in a peaceful and violence-free society?
It isn’t the Second itself that’s the problem so much as the now-persistent misinterpretations of it that were invented just a few decades ago by the gun lobby. But, given that there’s no question that we need a standing military and professional police forces, formerly the roles of militias, we no longer have any need for the Second. It would be a great help at this point to repeal it, put an end to this “militias resist tyranny” nonsense (directly contradicted elsewhere in the Constitution, and actually meaning “killing cops”), and take away all of their other favorite excuses about falsely-claimed “rights” that cannot be found anywhere else, in any recognized system of morality.
If we were able to accurately identify that “small minority of people”, and effectively prevent them from accessing firearms, do you think their desire to “harm others” would cease, or do you think they’d seek out other means to “harm others” such as arson, explosives, vehicular attacks, melee weapons, etc.?
Buying a gun across state lines is already illegal, and in fact they cant sell to you unless you have ID which shows you reside in that state. So how are more gun laws going to help?
Well, those guns are already illegal.
Are you Ok with baseball bats killing people? Lets outlaw them.