Why arming all your citizens is a stupid idea.

Great Debates
201

Out of the total number of guns and gun owners in the US today, a tiny percentage are involved in homicides. Even less in mass homicides that a smaller magazine would have changed anything.

The part that I am confused about is all of the rules being proposed would limit most people, but are designed to stop a very few. So, is there a larger belief that any gun owner is likely to come unhinged and just start shooting people? I have seen it mentioned that if we were to arm the teachers, what if one of them had a bad day and just decided to shoot someone. Do you really think that normal, healthy people react like that? It has also been stated that since the teachers are not generally trained killers, that expecting them to take a human life is not reasonable, but then expecting them to flip out and shoot people is reasonable?

My wife is a HS teacher. She has been to the gun range with me and she generally likes to shoot. I am pretty sure she would not want to carry a gun in school. I have a friend that carries most everywhere she goes. She carries in church. If someone decided to come into the church and start shooting, I am sure she would take action. But I have never worried about her just flipping out over the pastor’s message and shooting anyone. Or getting mad at someone cutting her off in traffic and pulling her gun.

I truly wish we could figure out who the bad guys are and keep the guns out of their hands. And some of the laws do that. But there will be some that fall between the cracks. I get that some want more restrictions on guns to keep them out of the hands of these people, but limiting regular people so that all have less guns is not going to go very far.

In hindsight, it is real easy to see that all these warning signs were pointing to the guy shooting up the school in FL. Maybe had the FBI followed up, maybe had there been some other laws, he might have gotten locked up and not been in a position to hurt anyone. But just like we do not want to lock up an innocent person, we do not want to lock someone away in a mental facility just because we think he might be dangerous.

Question: If you could know for certainty that you had correctly identified any bad person and kept the guns out of their hands, would you still want to restrict the guns of those that would never use them in appropriately?

202

A combination of “Why talk about this instead of that?” combined with “We can have a decent conversation about this once you admit you’all are ignorant liars”. :rolleyes:

203

(italics mine)And where in the hell can you get a list of those people?

204

Way to answer his hypothetical question, dood.

205

This thread is a good example of why the debate is so often pointless. The pro side answers questions. The anti side ignores or evades questions or responds with a question.

206

Quote:
Originally Posted by StrTrkr777 View Post
Question: If you could know for certainty that you had correctly identified any bad person and kept the guns out of their hands, would you still want to restrict the guns of those that would never use them in appropriately?

I guess I should have stated hypothetically, if this were to be the case.

Clearly we all know that we cannot identify these people.

My question was just to determine if the desire is to reduce the number of guns for all people including those that would never use them to harm another, or just to try to keep them away from the bad people.

207

Why do you keep insisting that it is just a feel good measure? I mean, it is, if being alive is feeling good, but other than that, you try to be dismissive of any and all efforts to combat people being killed in order to keep it content that people can get ahold of their favorite toys.

‘My side’, the side that doesn’t want to see another school shooting, isn’t just throwing around that phrase, we are trying to get something done that actually makes it achievable. Since your post is all about sides, “your side” just throws out thoughts and prayers to schoolchildren being mowed down int their classrooms, rather than take any action that would prevent a repeat.

Remind me again what “side” is going for the “feelies”?

No, that’s not the goal, not at all. But if you are going to insisting on something as stupid as “This limit may never be discussed or changed in any way”, then yeah, I’ll start the negotiations at a pretty low number.

How about your side come up with a maximum number of rounds in a clip, and you may never have a discussion about having a larger number of rounds?

Remind me, in a hostage situation, which side is it that has the guns pointed at the civilians?

208

You have any suggestions?

The pro-gun side has been asked on many occasions what they think we should do to lower the gun violence, and you (collective)have come up with dick. You have said that anything that would save lives would inconvenience gun owners, and we can’t have the gun owners inconvenienced.

The goal is not to punish gun owners, and that you insist on that means that there is no way that you can be part of a productive conversation. The goal is to reduce gun violence, and your goal is to increase the availability of guns.

That is only because you are so focused on gunst aht you don’t pay attention to anything else at all, if you make that sort of statement. Name one thing that kills a large number of people that does not have far more regulations than guns do, regulations that were created for the purpose of increasing public safety, not to punish the responsible owners.

To make your claim be consistent, you would have to also claim that we have done nothing at all to deal with the injuries and fatalities involved with cars. You would have to claim that drunk driving laws have the goal of punishing car owners.

I’d have vastly more respect for gun advocates if they didn’t claim to be mind readers.

209

And the fallacy in your hypothetical is that you can divide people into groups like “Bad” and “Good” when it comes to guns.
Any of us can mistake a family member for an intruder when waking up in the middle of the night.
Any of us can fire defensively and hit the wrong person.
Any of us can leave a weapon in a place where it can be found/stolen.
Any of us can develop a mental illness over time that might make make suicide and/or homicide a “reasonable”.

This isn’t a case of taking guns away from “bad guys” and leaving the “good guys” alone-In their own minds, everyone is a “good guy”.

210

Forgive me it has been a while since I last bought a gun.

But IIRC, I had to fill out a form. I had to provide my driver’s license. The gun seller called a number and read off the information, or faxed the form, or put it into the computer (I do not really recall what he did with the form), but after some time (less than an hour) he got the information that I was not a felon and had no legal reasons to not be allowed to purchase the gun.

I also bought some ammo and went to the gun range.

Conversely, if I want to drink alcohol, I just go to a licensed place and show my ID and can purchase. If at a bar, I might not get served if I already appear drunk. But if I walk into a liquor store, I can purchase as many bottles as I desire.

Maybe if I get stopped for a DUI enough times, I end up having to blow in a straw to start my car, but other than that, nothing unless I end up in jail.

Yes, the DUI laws are meant to keep people from driving under the influence, but again, it is a law that we are hoping people obey.

Considering the CDC says that 88,000 people a year die from alcohol and only 10k die in car wrecks caused by alcohol, we must infer that 78,000 die for other reasons that are not covered by the DUI laws.

We could surely ban all alcohol. Or maybe put limits on its purchase. Maybe we need a background check before people purchase alcohol. I am not much of an alcohol drinker, so I am completely fine with banning it completely, but you know I am a reasonable person, limiting how much people can buy should be a reasonable compromise.

211

I think that’s an unfair characterization – there are “good faith” and “bad faith” arguers on both sides.

I’ll follow up with a question of my own – if it were demonstrated to your satisfaction that the amount of guns in the US, plus the legal ease of acquiring them in the US, significantly increases (based on your own definition of “significantly”) the risk of homicides, including mass shootings, would you support any measures meant to reduce/mitigate both or either the amount of guns in the US and the legal ease in acquiring them? Or is, in your opinion, the freedom to acquire guns easily more important than preventing a certain amount of homicides?

Feel free to lob any questions my way and I’ll do my best to answer them. I think I’m reasonably familiar with gun technology, terminology, and usage, based on my military experience, and I’m generally in favor of some increased regulations on firearms (particularly expanding background checks to cover all purchases and sales, limiting magazine sizes, computerizing firearm records, and banning ownership for domestic assaulters and certain other classes of felons).

212

To be fair, back in the 80s/90s there were proposals from the pro-gun side to address gun violence: “pass more severe penalties against criminal use of guns”. Which was largely done.

Now what?

213

Yes, if it were demonstrated to my satisfaction, I would. There are people who have weapons right now who should not. There are people who do not have weapons right now that we should all be happy have none. Of course, I would not support anything based on weapons cosmetics nor anything that does not have a clear, explicable purpose. I have no problem with any of the things you listed, except for limiting magazine size. The rest of those things you could legislate right this second, and you’d hear nary a peep out of me. Too bad for gun control proponents that instead of going for something like that, they piss away what little political capital they have on non-starters like reinstating the AWB.

214

So, the suggestion from the pro-gun side didn’t help any. Did they have any other suggestions that won’t help?

That’s like saying that you can solve bank robberies by increasing the penalties for robbing a bank.

If they are all out of ideas, then it may be time for those who value lives of people over the convenience of hobby collectors to have some input on the matter.

215

You have had input all through the process. Unfortunately, you confuse feeling outraged and morally superior with actually doing something. Here’s why the pro-gun side furthers its agenda: We’re organized at a grass roots level. Not only are we organized, we vote for candidates who support our agenda. Your side? You do a lot of screaming on the internet for a few days following a high profile gun crime and that’s about it. You’re not organized. You aren’t a voting bloc that matters. If it weren’t for a few anti-gun millionaires bankrolling things, your side wouldn’t exist at all.

216

There are over three million full time teachers in the United States. If you think they’re all normal and healthy, you need to take a statistics course.

It is quite evident that the presence of more firearms results in deadlier confrontations. Few disputes get violent, but some do, and when they do, a person with a gun is way likelier to kill someone than someone without. Guns are better at killing people than pretty much any other handheld device; that’s why we arm soldiers with them.

I am sure your wife and your friend and such aren’t going to flip out and shoot anyone if you say so. Most people don’t shoot other people, we all know that. Rampant gun availability requires, like an economist, that you think along the margins; what about people who might shoot someone? To those people gun availability absolutely can make the difference between a murder taking place and a murder not taking place.

217

Ready to talk about opening the machine gun registry yet?

218

No, that is not the reason. “My side” has many considerations. There’s the economy, there’s civil rights, there’s international relations, and so on.

Your side has one and only one consideration, guns. You don’t care what the politician stands for on the economy, civil rights, international relations, or anything else. The only thing you care about is that they will not put any single bit of inconvenience between you and your addiction. As long as they promise that, you allow them to get away with anything else. They can loot the treasury for their rich friends, they can pass xenophobic bills, they can peal back civil rights, anything and everything, so long as they keep up their good grade with the NRA.

That’s organized, like a cult.

My point is is that you are creating a population that is growing up, being told that there are going to be people coming into the school building to kill them, and that they need to just accept that. They are not going to. They are not going to let their kids go through what we forced them to go through. They are going to be single issue voters. They aren’t going to care about the economy or civil rights or international relations, they will allow politicians to loot the treasury, pass xenophobic bills, peal bak civil rights, as long as they get those weapons off the streets.

That’s not really healthy either, but it is a result of policies that you are pushing, not me.

It seems as though if we could come to some sort of compromise that has meaningful effect on the gun violence, then we don’t need to worry about creating a population of single issue voters as dedicated to their cause as the single issue voters dedicated to increasing the availability of guns are now.

219

Why do you think you should be engaged when you are so obviously partisan and biased on this subject and feel you are so morally superior that you don’t even need to discuss?

I’m being dismissive because the size of the magazine wrt some arbitrary number of rounds isn’t going to make the gun less lethal or really do anything wrt saving lives. Unless you limit it to some ridiculously low number, a magazine change is something even a tyro can do in a second or two. So, let me ask you something…how does it save lives if, instead of 1 magazine with 14 rounds the person has two with 7 each and they can swap them out in less than a second?

And yet, you aren’t proposing anything that will have any real effect on school shootings…instead, it will make you feel good and feel like you’ve done something. Plus, get nosebleeds from being on that high horse you are on of course. That’s got to suck.

Well, ironically my side isn’t what you think it is. What is my side going to do? Nothing…because the extremes on the two sides of this debate aren’t going to allow it. Folks like you in fact.

I’m not insisting on that…but that is what the pro-gun side would want. Want to know why? It’s because they would suspect this as being a slippery slope, with a concession on their part to lower magazine size only to be hit again with another effort to lower it further…rinse and repeat until the request is, why can’t we get rid of all magazines and guns that use them?

Well, as I said, I don’t have a dog in this fight, so ‘my’ side doesn’t really have a number. But any number agreed on is going to necessitate some concession on YOUR side…and I haven’t heard any. I gave some thoughts on what might be acceptable and you ripped into me and got all high and mighty, so I’m not holding my breath for a reasoned response at this point.

The government has the biggest gun, and if it’s pointed at you to give up your gun, well…looks a bit different. But by all means, keep on with this. It’s so effective.

220

But lots of those things have been proposed, even alone with no other issues attached, and they’re consistently demonized, as gun-grabbing or part of the slippery slope to gun-grabbing, by the NRA and NRA advocates. Sure, there have been bad-faith negotiators on the gun control side, but also on the anti-gun-control side.

If you’re in favor of those things, would you actually campaign for them? Would you call your Congressperson and ask them to support those that you agree with? If not, why not? If you’re just neutral towards them, what would it take to get you to support them?