I find this extremely offensive and in very bad taste. I would absolutely report this to a moderator if you weren’t one yourself. (I still might)
I’m sure if someone else said this, especially a pro gun advocate, they would be soundly chastised.
Eh, it’s MPSIMS, not GD or GQ. The comment was offensive, but RickJay is an otherwise pretty grounded dude. I think the issue here is that he’s Canadian.
hears groans of understanding from fellow posters
I would be curious to know why.
Are you serious?
Yes, I am. Why do you find it offensive?
Not only that, but he has a young daughter, so he is biased against the slaughter of little kids when it comes to weighing the lives of children against the right to run about with guns.
But yes, there’s quite a difference between how the two countries try to protect their children. In Canada the overall risk of being shot is reduced due to effective gun control, whereas in the USA the overall risk of being shot is greatly increased by not having similar gun control, but just as lack of effective gun control has led to a nation awash in guns, it also has increased the ability of any given person to shoot the shooter. Which approach is more effecitve? One only has to compare gun death rates to easily see which prevents more killings.
I see children being slaughtered. I see a gun death rate that Canada and western Europe does not begin to approach. I see people rushing to purchase a gun that needs to be controlled. I see people opposing effective gun control. IMHO, people who oppose effective gun control are hiding behind the slaughtered children. And yes, the AR-15 Gradeschooler has earned its name, whether you like it or not, and whether you are offended by it or not.
Of course I’m a Canadian too, so you’re welcome to discredit my opinion based on my nationality rather than on the comparative gun death rates between our nations.
Because, as stated, I have considered buying an AR-15, and I am offended by the implication that I would consider buying something that is designed, intended, or marketed for the purposes of killing children, or worse, that I was considering buying one because it had been used for that purpose. That’s just sick.
And it makes no difference that he was not referring to me specifically.
The rule seems to be that owning a firearm and putting everyone around you in danger is fine; but speaking with anything other than unqualified approval of your decision to do so is deeply offensive and proves how awful a person you are. Or if you aren’t American, how awful your entire nation is.
Hey, you know what? The average temperature in Canada is lower than the US. I guess Canadian gun control measures must also somehow result in lower temperatures.
Or, could it be that the US and Canada are different countries, and that the rate of gun violence in either country is not solely a function of the gun control laws?
For fuck’s sake. If some nutjob ran over a bunch of children waiting at their bus stop with a Toyota 4Runner, would you start calling it the Toyota Toddler-Squisher?
No. For some reason it’s only guns that you choose to personify with the characteristics of people who commit horrible crimes with them.
So it was your personal dignity, not the fact that it trivialized the killing of 26 little kids? That’s what I figured, but I just wanted you to confirm it before I jumped to conclusions.
Because you’re projecting your own issues on people who own or want to own one. The AR pattern rifle has been around for nearly fifty fucking years. Yet intellectually lazy types like you and RickJay need a pithy little soundbite to make sure people know you believe anyone with an AR pattern rifle is a budding Adam Lanza.
Look, I would not offended if you said I was putting everyone around me in danger. I’d be annoyed, because you’d be wrong, but I would not be offended.
What’s offensive is claiming that putting everyone around me in danger, or shooting up children, etc. is my goal, or that I am somehow inspired when other people do this.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, I made that quite clear in my post. I don’t get offended by imagining that other people have not met my arbitrary standard of “respect” for tragedies.
There’s no “implication.” The fact is that the AR-15’s surge in popularity is the result of its use to murder a classroom full of little children, I stand by my point that it is very curious that while the proposed assalt weapons ban would be on a wide range of weapons, the surge in sales is heavily weighted towards AR-15 variants, even, apparently, if one accounts for its previous popularity. A perfectly logical hypothesis for that phenomenon is its increased profile due to the publicity given to the weapon around the Sandy Hook massacre.
Whether that’s because of the proposed assault weapons ban or not, the weapon is now famous and cmmercially popular in large part for its use in shooting children, even though your personal motive for buying one isn’t to go shoot children. If you don’t like that, well, that’s life.
It was a joke in an attempt to defuse a discourse that was unraveling. RickJay’s comment was completely unnecessary and everyone knows it. An AR-15 has not “earned” ANYTHING. It’s stupid psychopaths that earn our derision.
Your strident attitude and condescension is what derails these types of discussions with people that happen to own guns that are perfectly reasonable, like oh, I don’t know, everyone in this thread.
But you do get offended when people associate you with child killers because of the gun you bought. Like I figured, it is your pride.
You cannot be serious. There is no “surge in popularity” of AR-15 sales due to Sandyhook. There IS a surge in sales of this popular rifle, which has been popular for a very long time, because many people feel that they should have the right to own one and that the US government is about to attempt to ban them. The Sandyhook massacre was just the catalyst for the government to feel like it “has to do SOMETHING”. Do you really, honestly believe that people are buying it because they think it’d make a great weapon to murder kids with? Are you out of your freaking mind?
Don’t let the rarity of massacres, school shootings and the fact that this (and any other rifle) are used in such a ridiculously small percentage of shootings get in your way. And no, the AR-15 in a close-range shooting like Sandyhook is NOT more effective than a well-supplied guy with a couple semi-auto pistols would be.
The AR-15 is getting a bad rap here and it’s plainly obvious.
This is incorrect. Nobody is buying AR-15s because of their connection with Sandy Hook. People are buying them because they are good rifles and they may be banned. AR-15s are popular because of their modular design, which makes them easily customisable. Take a look at the options, and you’ll see that many popular modifications are geared toward competition shooting; something you don’t see in the AK-series.
Yeah, so? What is your point? Am I only allowed to be offended if I am getting offended selflessly?
Wait…what? Of course he’d be offended being associated with psychopathic assholes as an owner or potential buyer of “the same” (and there are many, many variants, so they aren’t exactly equal, but hoo boy they sure do look scary!) weapon that was used by a mass shooter.
This is the most ridiculous line of reasoning I have ever seen. Nobody wants school shootings other than a small handful of crazies. Reasonable people do NOT conclude that a weapon, which is a tool, is not only NOT responsible for shooting itself, but reasonable people also do not avoid buying an extremely popular version of a rifle just because it was used to kill innocents!
Its popularity has surged because many people feel that they have a right to own a perfectly reasonable rifle that’s been available and popular for decades, and now it appears the government wants to take it away…not because they want to emulate some deranged jackass.
Jeez…the obtuse in this thread is insurmountable.