angelofdeath Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 If there is any collective guilt that should be going around, in my opinion it should be amongst those in the government. I will be the one to say that, to me, this is blow-back towards our government for their corruption and disregard for the laws of our nation. Just like September 11th has been described as blow-back for our mistreatment and interference with other nations around the globe, this kid blew away a congresswoman because he was a) fucking crazy and sick and b) because our government gives people every reason to be violently upset with them to the point that we would pick up guns and start shooting. Thankfully, I don't personally feel violence is the answer and I know many people would agree with me and say that peace is necessary to bring about a restoration of our constitutional laws and remove corruption in our government. Unfortunately, there are sick individuals out there who don't have as strong of a mindset, and who wouldn't hesitate to blast away as many people as they can because in their own mind they are some sort of martyr. its great you brought this up. an even better example is OKC. while i condemn the bombing, the government must understand that the more people they push into a corner, the more people are going to go nuts. about 10 years ago there was a story of a guy who was harassed by zoning regulators for a number of years. from false accusations to him trying to comply then the laws changing, countless court battles, etc all because the guy wanted to use his property, (a fairly rural one at that) as he wanted to and not the way the government wanted him to. needless to say after a number of years, he was driven to insanity by the countless meetings, visits, haranguing, intimidation, etc and he went nuts and started a gun fight with these people. its just a by product of government policy. just like pissing off the arabs over seas. same deal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelofdeath Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 On that note, and not intending to broach the issue of gun restriction (as I support farmers, sporting shooters, etc. having access, blah blah blah) in itself, I certainly hope the procedures of legally acquiring a weapon in Arizona are coming under scrutiny (he did get it legally, right? I haven't been keeping up). I mean how did a lot of this not stand out when he either applied for his license or after he got it? Kind of like letting the visually impaired get a heavy vehicles license. Disclaimer/ I don't know what goes in to the testing of applicants and all that. Just a little surprising that some one who in hindsight seems pretty screwed was able to legally obtain a weapon. buying a firearm in arizona is essentially controlled by a monopoly by the federal government. you fill out a form 4473, (10 questions like are you a citizen, are you a drunk or drug user, felon, etc) they do a criminal back ground call in check with the FBI, they run your info, if you pass the check you get the firearm. from what i understand, he bought the firearm at a walmart. the first walmart wouldnt sell it to him. he went to another one and bought it. i havent heard a solid reason why the first walmart denied the sale, but it didnt have anything to do with the legality and qualification of the background check process. however, this sort of flies in the face of the liberals belief that everyone has a right to someone elses goods or services merely if they are offered for sale. if the guy passes a background check, one would think with the anti discrimination laws on the books, it would be illegal to not sell the firearm. but i digress.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelofdeath Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 so do you think they should relax gun restrictions? anyone? I was thinking if they removed the licenses and everyone could wander around with a gun on them at all times things would be safer? this is one of my main problems with the gun control debate. people seem to think in absolutes. one side says...'if we have more guns, we WILL have less crime.' the other side says...'if we have more gun control, we'll have less crime.' this isnt the CENTRAL issue. its not guaranteed that if you have easier access to guns you will have less crime... but it is guaranteed that if you have easier access to guns more people will be able to have a fighting chance to defend themselves. it doesnt mean the 'good guy' will always come out on top or that an innocent will never be killed. guns cannot prevent EVERY shooting spree. it is an error to think so. but it is 100% logical to say that guns can help or could possible reduce many if not most shooting sprees. it is logical to say that if a law abiding citizen is armed he will have atleast the tools to attempt to defend himself if his life is in jeopardy. it just happens that in all these discussions that phenomenons like ' if you have an armed society, it tends to be much more safe and more friendly than a disarmed society ' get turned into...'if you have an armed society it is 100% guaranteed to take away all risk in life!' or the inverse, 'if you just pass another gun law, no more crime!' but what i'd like to talk about is exactly what restrictions people think will work. i'll start with the most common one i have heard... "we need to ban high capacity 'clips.' " i think this is just emotional hysteria. people are scared of the fact that a firearm can shoot more than 10 rounds with out a reload. but that is all it is... hysteria about nothing. i can teach any person to do a under pressure fast reload in 15 minutes and have them have another magazine in a glock in about 1.5 seconds. there is nothing to it. hit the button, slam in the new mag, hit the release and you are back in the fight. if there was some way to eliminate the presence of high capacity mags on earth, it would just mean that someone will have to reload and take 1 second out of their shooting spree. that is it. arizona has a pretty good carry policy now. in fact it is one of the best 3 states in the US. but this shooting is telling. it happened very fast. it shows that the police really dropped the ball in providing security. it shows that citizens handled this situation very well all things considered. an armed man who said he was ready to 'end that guy' was the main tackler of this nut and took him down in fact without even having to use a firearm. he said he felt that being armed gave him confidence to enter into the situation and do the right thing. so one could draw the conclusion that the police really screwed up security and private citizens ended the situation about as fast as it could of been done. considering how drawn out the police have been taking out shooters who go on spree's, this one was ended fairly quick. but we are all human. we are denied perfection this side of the garden of eden. but i think its safe to say that an armed society tends to be more safe than a disarmed society and the examples abound all over the US. arizona has the least restrictive carry laws in the country and some of the lowest crime, but people tend to forget that and go back to absolutes and say..'but see, easy gun laws dont work because this incident happened!' nothing in life is absolute. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
viperface Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 ^^^Hoplophobia (fear of guns) is as paralyzing to a conversation as the opposite attitude (hoplomania?), and as in all fields of argument strong emotions tend to polarize discussions into boring, discouraging bullshit. AOD's post is pretty good acknowledgement of that kind of phenomenon and actually made this thread worthy of contributing some other viewpoints. I'm not a gun owner. I realize that I might qualify better than others, but I definitely know why I shouldn't. And why most people shouldn't. Some wish not to own a gun at all, not neccessarily because they hate or fear firearms, but because of the responsibility and risks that are involved: 1. I can not absolutely trust that I would be able to keep the weapon in my own possession at all times. It could be stolen or taken away from me. I could take all precautions to minimize this and still it might happen. In the world of total gun ownership it would eventually happen to someone if not me. (I mean it does happen already wtf) 2. I wouldn't know if I would be able to efficiently use my firearm under threat. I'm personally aware of weapons training and muscle memory in order to be able to use a weapon "instinctively". I've been to military and managed to fire automatic weapons without much hassle in somewhat confusing situations. But it's still generally acknowledged that some people just won't be able to shoot to kill, no matter of their rank or training. No matter of your RTT CQB man war face, you never know before you're in that situation: In these specific kill spree cases the nutjobs spent months or years deciding what they are going to do and how. they most likely dwelled and mesmerized the situations over and over again, decided the time and place etc. All their "manifests" and youtube shit tells the same story of sick determination and escalating madness. People targetted would have only seconds or minutes to make up their mind or even realize wtf is happening, then get to the fighting spirit and then act. And I just don't want to live my life being ready to draw a weapon and shoot a person just like that. Even writing this makes me a bit irritated, trying to imagine a situation against one of these loonies. And the most fucked up part is you never know. How many bullied, live-roleplaying kids have planned their revenge and backed out or maybe wisened up? Once in a while you hear about failed attempts etc. Was it because of armed citizens? unarmed citizens? Something else? Like with islamic terrorists, these nutjobs have the advantage of surprize. They choose their time and location. You could keep all students in all schools sitting in class with .45s and not have an attack because of that. How do you prove it? Maybe it's because not one kid in any of the schools choose to extend their suicide. 3. Goethe said: "There is no crime of which I cannot conceive myself guilty." In other words I have no idea why some people actually go nuts for real, and others don't. I don't believe prisons are full of murderers who, from day one knew they would eventually kill and end up in prison. There must be people with "normal" upbringing who just made enough wrong moves and managed to fuck up one split second in their lives. I've seen perfectly sane people go apeshit in seconds whether intoxicated or sober. So in my view there's always that wild card of fate, you don't know where you'll find yourself next etc. Crime itself is a good reason not to hand everyone a gun. not all criminals come from criminal families. 4. Let's say cops are dispatched to a scene where a shooting spree is taking place. They get different descriptions of male in his mid 20's shooting people. They need to act quick and are expected to use deadly force at will. I woudn't want to be aiming at corners when the swat team arrives. 5. I don't think gun crime exists because there are just these "bad people" wanting to "violate rights". Everyone has a personal history and most criminals might perversely justify their ways even if they initially admit that they are breaking the law, or "made sin". People with short temper, opportunistic nature without real train of thought. People who realize that you can acquire the same certain quality of life today with a firearm much faster than with a career over 20 years. Or those who tried the career and got jaded or fucked over. Or kids who got their shit confused from the get go. Everyone seems to act in desperation because of some imaginary struggle that becomes real in their minds. Im not saying a shooter needs to be "understood" at all. There just could be an origin or a spark that initiates the struggle or desperation in these people. But yeah I don't think the issue is solely about guns. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decyferon Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 You make some good valid points, I know (even though AOD thinks I am) not scared of guns, I have fired them, been around them and I don't care about them, but then I don't really have to worry about it because they are so uncommon here. I think if I lived in America I would be a gun owner, an go to the range and practise, and have a weapon purely for defense, all I try and say is there is a problem with guns in America, mainly gun crime being out of control, I personally think it is a lot to do with the false confidence a gun gives a lot of people, it makes them feel safer taking the next step when it comes to their crime. But I am rambling, I don't really think there needs to be a discussion about guns but seriously selling them in walmarts and places like that is pretty fucked up, at least have proper licensed gun shops selling them rather than some spotty saturday worker in a supermarket. I think the issue is why it is becoming more commonplace or maybe just more widely reported about people using mass death/shootings/bombings to make their point, whether it is domestic or international it just seems so much more common place to hear about. I swear it didn't happen as much when I was younger and I have always kept pretty upto date on news etc. Is it the increased alienation of our society through the internet etc or is the fame game so hungry now that people are doing anything to get a name for themself? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelofdeath Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 But I am rambling, I don't really think there needs to be a discussion about guns but seriously selling them in walmarts and places like that is pretty fucked up, at least have proper licensed gun shops selling them rather than some spotty saturday worker in a supermarket. a walmart that has a sporting goods section that holds a federal firearms license acts the exact same as any properly licensed gun shop because it is in fact a properly licensed gun shop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decyferon Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Yea but just because they have bought the license doesn't determine the knowledge of the staff. I wouldnt buy s forklift from a butcher why would I buy a gun from a supermarket shelf stacker? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelofdeath Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 your point is 100% dead on from a consumer perspective. if you dont know anything about firearms, going to walmart is probably the worst place to buy a firearm. the staff just isnt knowledgeable. however, if you know what you want, you will get a good price on a firearm. in fact a few years back walmart was liquidating their remington 700 inventory in a lot of their stores. they were selling complete rem 700 rifles for less than you can buy an ACTION for. precision rifle dudes were going nuts rounding up as many of these $300 rifles (actions cost 400$) just for donor actions. however your previous post made it sound as though because walmart is selling guns that some how they are in non-compliance with gun laws, non federally licensed, doing shady stuff, or were selling guns to 4 year olds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
christo-f Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 It's not the traditional 'crims' like gang bangers and armed robbers that I worry about when I think of US gun culture, it's the people who snap and shoot up shopping centers, Amish Churches, universities, schools, snipe from the trunk of a car, take out their family on father's day, shoot up the school board when their wife gets fired, etc. That's the real manifestation of gun 'out of control' and I DON'T think many of these people would use fire arms if they weren't there for the taking. Sure, the might use knives or a baseball bat but as some one that has experience in firearms and other sorts of weapons I argue that it is simply ludicrous to think that a person with a knife can do the same damage as a person with an AK and three full mags (and if you disagree that makes you look pretty stupid for paying hundreds for a rifle when you could have just bought a $10 knife!!!). For the sake of the argument, last year there was a spate of people in China that entered kindergartens with knifes and stated attacking kids. Most of the time it was only about 3-6 kids that dies with a bunch of others wounded. Likewise, Japan, another country with super-strict gun laws, has had a history of knife crimes, as a result quite few people actually died (there was one two weeks ago on a school bus, no one died). Now I can show you any number of very similar scenarios where attackers used fire arms where many people died as opposed to these knife attacks. Now, before some one comes out and suggests the Rwandan massacres, do your home work. That was a planned, coordinated military-esque assault on an ethnicity in a deadshit African country (damn, talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel to support an argument). The ONLY thing relative to every day criminal acts in the developed world is that some one was killed with a weapon. If you want to use the attempted genocide in Rwanda as an example of non-ballistic weapons V firearms, then we should compare like to like. So, how many jews died in Rwanda as compared to Nazi Germany and Poland? What about the Chinese Civil War? Maybe the Lebanese civil war? That's a much fairer comparison if you want to bring up Rwanda. I think you'll find that if you look at the question honestly you will find that person A equipped with with an AK and 3 mags will be more efficient at killing than if that same person had a knife, machete, chainsaw, hammer, whatever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelofdeath Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 i think you place WAY to much emphasis on the 'efficiency' of the act of a killing. the end result is the same. no matter which way you crack it. CAN an AK with 3 mags in the hands of a well trained person kill more people than a 2 year old with knife? sure. can a very well trained expert in martial arts kill more people with his hands quicker than an untrained gang banger holding glock side ways? sure. in fact, the only way to eliminate gun crime is to institute a 100% nazi police state with everyone in prison. after all, we can say crime rates were very low in nazi germany! and comparatively, crime rates are fairly low in your average prison, HOWEVER we all know that since guns are extremely hard to get, shanks, tooth brushes and bashing someones head on concrete a couple dozen times will kill someone just as easily as any firearm. so, do we all want to be in a total police state or prison in order to lower the crime rate and then still have people killing people? while a lot of your logic is sound, it is based on something that could never exist. you cannot zap all guns away from the planet. the rwandan genocide by machete simply proves that massive amounts of disarmed people can by killed with a common every day tool. and in fact it is the best argument, as well as all the other genocides in the 20th century and before that citizens should be just as or more armed than the governments that do the killings. i dont bring up rwanda to prove that machetes are WORSE than guns, i simply bring it up to show that a machete can hold their own to guns when they are unavailable. if further shows that a machete can kill someone just as dead as any gun. it goes to show that if some how one could zap all firearms off the earth, that someone who is intent on killing someone, such as these tucson shooting, all they have to do is pick up a machete and go to town. do you really believe a guy with a machete could NOT kill a bunch of people in a large crowd rather easily? to me what is of concern is innocent death, not what implement is used or how the person is killed. if you are to take seriously your push for elimination of guns in the hands of ordinary civilians because the bad use outweighs the good, you must also then to be logically coherent, push for eliminating the guns from the hands of the military and police since governments have killed FAR more people than a handful of people in shopping centers or sniping at people out of the trunk of a car. governments kill far more civilians, police shoot far more innocent people than any psycho killer. in fact governments get to do it, and not be held accountable at all, and when police accidentally shoot the unarmed 70 year old man in a drug raid, they just get a vacation and no prosecution. now, you could also say that guns in the hands of people who know how to use them, do good things like defend innocents and other legitimate defensive purposes. and i'd argue the same, but i include armed citizens. i know you are a huge fan of empirical 'evidence,' and the stats are very convincing in this area because they show roughly 10K people dead by murder by a firearm per year. need i remind you, car accidents are above 40K per year. YET, the estimates range from conservatively 100K up to 1 million lives are saved by defensive gun use. while im not a fan of empirical 'evidence' (it should, more properly be called an 'illustration' of what can or what tends to happen) logic and even some empirical evidence shows that the good that comes from guns far outweighs the bad. its interesting you bring up knife deaths vs gun deaths, as a radio show host was just touting a few weeks back that knife attacks result in a 85% death rate and gun attacks result in only a 60% death rate, in the US. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
christo-f Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 i think you place WAY to much emphasis on the 'efficiency' of the act of a killing. the end result is the same. no matter which way you crack it. CAN an AK with 3 mags in the hands of a well trained person kill more people than a 2 year old with knife? sure. can a very well trained expert in martial arts kill more people with his hands quicker than an untrained gang banger holding glock side ways? sure. Ah, no. Person A is a more capable killer with a gun than with a knife. No one said anything about babies and Bruce Lee. Let's stick with like to like comparisons. in fact, the only way to eliminate gun crime is to institute a 100% nazi police state with everyone in prison. No one said eliminate. after all, we can say crime rates were very low in nazi germany! and comparatively, crime rates are fairly low in your average prison, HOWEVER we all know that since guns are extremely hard to get, shanks, tooth brushes and bashing someones head on concrete a couple dozen times will kill someone just as easily as any firearm. Ah, no. Banging some one's head on the ground means coming within their striking distance and over powering them. Firing a gun means moving a finger 3 millimeters at a safe distance. Having trouble understanding how you see both options as equal in ease. so, do we all want to be in a total police state or prison in order to lower the crime rate and then still have people killing people? Hmmm, Japan is a total police state, is it? while a lot of your logic is sound, it is based on something that could never exist. you cannot zap all guns away from the planet. Ah, I love this line, great little straw man that gets trotted out when the going gets tough. No one in any argument that I have seen on this board has ever suggested getting rid of all the guns on this planet. Most people are simply suggesting that tighter gun laws are better and that shit like AKs, ARs, assault weapons should not be freely available. We also say that the US is a victim of its liberal gun laws and it's too late to ban them in many parts of the US, however you seem to ignore this and talk about zapping guns or some fairy tale shit that no one has ever said. the rwandan genocide by machete simply proves that massive amounts of disarmed people can by killed with a common every day tool. Sure, probably a good argument to say that if there were a lot of guns in Rwanda at the time the genocide may well have been successful because it's easier to kill with a gun than with a machete!! and in fact it is the best argument, as well as all the other genocides in the 20th century and before that citizens should be just as or more armed than the governments that do the killings. If that was the case you'd have no governments, you'd have mob rule. That means rule by force and no contract law, defence force, judiciary, etc. etc. If everyone was armed (more so than the government) then it would no longer be who was armed but who was armed more and organised better. IT's called the security dilemma and is based in a very long history of evidence. To think that people would say "Oh shit, everyone has a gun, I better watch myself" is naive at best. I argue people would be thinking "So other people are armed, are they? Well, what arms do they have, how well can they use them, how many friends do they have. I might call up Joe, Dave, and Theobald, get ourselves organised and overrun the family guy at the end of the street and maybe that old couple across the road. The cops aren't going to come because we outgun them. After we do that, I'll tell Mick, Brad and Sebastian how successful our day was and they should think of joining us....., before the same thing happens to them". If you really think anything else other than that would happen I'd suggest you don't understand the world. i dont bring up rwanda to prove that machetes are WORSE than guns, i simply bring it up to show that a machete can hold their own to guns when they are unavailable. Another straw man. No one said they were worse than guns. We are saying that guns are much more efficient at killing because that is what they are designed to do. you come back and say "but a hammer and a biro can kill", we display how that is no comparison to a firearm, you make silly comparisons like babies and Bruce Lee and then rearrange the argument like you have here. I'll say again; Person A can kill more people faster and at a greater distance with a firearm than with a machete (hammer, eggshell, whatever) do you really believe a guy with a machete could NOT kill a bunch of people in a large crowd rather easily? to me what is of concern is innocent death, not what implement is used or how the person is killed. Because that suits your argument. To say that a person is just as efficient at killing with a machete as with a 30 round Glock is kind of hard to argue against because it's just silly. You can defend that all you want but I've done my time and it's just stupid to even try and argue that because it is so obviously nto true. PErson A armed with a firearms will be more efficient at killing than if they were armed with a knife (baseball bat, pogo stick, whatever). No one is trying to say all guns should be banned and no one is trying to say that all deaths would then stop. We are not naive. We are just saying that access to the most efficient killing machines should be tightly controlled as we as a society are not responsible enough to manage them without shooting shit up. YEs, people will still die from machete's drinking straws and death stares but less so than with firearms because it is harder to kill en masse with weapons that bring you within arms reach of victims and that require superior strength. Myself and 8 of my friends were set upon by around 20 Chinese guys with chair legs and pipes. None of use died, few ended in hospital. If even one of the attackers had a fire arm at least two of us would be dead. If they all had firearms, we'd all be dead. if you are to take seriously your push for elimination of guns in the hands of ordinary civilians because the bad use outweighs the good, Yay for the strawman!!! you must also then to be logically coherent, push for eliminating the guns from the hands of the military and police since governments have killed FAR more people than a handful of people in shopping centers or sniping at people out of the trunk of a car. governments kill far more civilians, police shoot far more innocent people than any psycho killer. in fact governments get to do it, and not be held accountable at all, and when police accidentally shoot the unarmed 70 year old man in a drug raid, they just get a vacation and no prosecution. That problem happens very rarely in most developed countries. I say it happens more in the US BECAUSE of the amount of guns you have there. I know a few ex-US cops (without trying to sound cool, they really are dicks too, real tough guy syndrome. Nothing like the majority of cops I've come across in other countries) and they will say straight up that they will shoot first because they have to assume that the opponent is armed with a weapon because firearms are so prevalent on the street. So, you notice what happened in Tunisia last week? The people overthrew a governemnt, they didn't use guns. You see what happened to Milosovic? He got overthrown without a shot being fired....., etc. etc. Now I know there are just as many stories of oppression as not. I just want to show that things are not as simple as you play them out to be. now, you could also say that guns in the hands of people who know how to use them, do good things like defend innocents and other legitimate defensive purposes. and i'd argue the same, but i include armed citizens. i know you are a huge fan of empirical 'evidence,' and the stats are very convincing in this area because they show roughly 10K people dead by murder by a firearm per year. need i remind you, car accidents are above 40K per year. YET, the estimates range from conservatively 100K up to 1 million lives are saved by defensive gun use. while im not a fan of empirical 'evidence' (it should, more properly be called an 'illustration' of what can or what tends to happen) logic and even some empirical evidence shows that the good that comes from guns far outweighs the bad. Yeah, I'd like to see stats NOT from the US. From a country that has tight gun control. its interesting you bring up knife deaths vs gun deaths, as a radio show host was just touting a few weeks back that knife attacks result in a 85% death rate and gun attacks result in only a 60% death rate, in the US. If you're going to use stats, you need to use them properly. First rule with that is, anonymous radio hosts are not to be believed straight out of the blue...... I'm going to guess that it was Alex Jones and you didn't name him because you knew that his name alone would discredit the argument!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Mamerro Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 FWIW: Americans Can't Agree on Guns? Wrong. Michael R. Bloomberg 108th Mayor of the City of New York Posted: January 18, 2011 10:52 AM The shooting in Tucson, Arizona has affected our entire country. In the days since, as we have prayed for the victims and survivors, we have also reflected on the lessons we might learn. Yesterday, again, many of us contemplated the tragedy of gun violence as we came together to mark the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a champion of peace who was taken from us by a gun assassin. Mass shootings and assassinations are shocking, and the sad truth is that America's history of gun murders is as repetitive as it is tragic. And what's more, much of its enormous toll never makes it into the national headlines: 34 Americans are murdered with guns each and every day. As we remember those we have lost, we know that honoring their memory requires renewing our effort to overcome the threat of guns in the wrong hands. The aftermath of this tragedy is our nation's chance to challenge old assumptions about the politics of guns in this country. One of the major old assumptions in the media and in Washington is that the gun issue is one that hopelessly divides Americans: Red versus Blue, urban versus rural, gun-owners versus those who don't own guns. But a new poll shows a remarkable consensus among Americans on gun issues. The poll, conducted jointly by a Democratic and Republican polling firm, was released today by the bi-partisan coalition of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Among its key findings: Americans overwhelmingly believe the Second Amendment protects the rights of law-abding individuals to buy guns: 79% of Americans believe that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns and only 17% would support a proposal to ban all handgun sales. Americans overwhelmingly believe that felons, drug abusers, and the mentally ill should not have access to guns and that more needs to be done to ensure that their records are in the federal background check system: 90% of Americans and 90% of gun owners support fixing gaps in government databases that are meant to prevent the mentally ill, drug abusers and others from buying guns. Likewise, 89% of Americans and 89% of gun owners support full funding of the law a unanimous Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed after the Virginia Tech massacre to put more records in the background check database. Americans overwhelmingly believe that its time to close the loopholes that make it possible for people to buy guns without background checks: 86% of Americans and 81% of gun owners support requiring all gun buyers to pass a background check, no matter where they buy the gun and no matter who they buy it from. See the full results for yourself. It turns out there is a broad consensus on guns in America. Just consider that in less than five years, Mayors Against Illegal Guns has grown to include more than 550 mayors from across the country. We have come together around a simple idea: it's possible to respects the rights of responsible, law-abiding Americans and do more to keep guns from criminals, the mentally ill, and other dangerous people. It is the job of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns to alert Washington that the conventional wisdom about guns is just not true. Washington: are you listening? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-bloomberg/americans-cant-agree-on-g_b_810282.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
christo-f Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 34 each day DIE?!, Surely that should be shot, rather than killed. Surely it's not that high. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Mamerro Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 Maybe, maybe not. And stop calling me Shirley. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheoHuxtable.. Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 the logic is 100% solid. you are saying that just because a group of people got together many years ago, called their 'club' a government, and started bullying people around and making them pay for various things, stealing people's money and regulating every aspect of citizens lives, that they are justified in imposing their will on other people. its not right, plain and simple. not any more right than a crime family imposing their will on others. how is a government different than a criminal gang? they do the same thing. 'give me money or else!' or 'you are going to this thing our way or else.' that is the essence of government. it is a monopoly on force. to believe that government is voluntary, try not paying your income tax, try running off road diesel in your truck, and just tell jose padilla that bush's rule and the unlawful detention was just 'voluntary.' if you cannot even distinguish between something that is voluntary and something that is involuntary, than there is no hope for you. atleast most statists DO admit that taxation and regulation is NOT voluntary and that is exactly the point of it all. but to sit here and conjure up reasons how government is voluntary is just insane. The government provides services that you use. Last I checked gangs don't. I'm really curious as to what you've done about all this. You do a lot of complaining but have you manned up and said "fuck the government, I ain't paying taxes", and then did you put sandbags around your house and put gun ports in your windows to snipe government officials? I'm just wondering. the logic of theo that says 'government is voluntary and taxes are voluntary and avoidable' is the same logic that says 'all the kulaks in russia had to do was just grow their own food and not earn any income and they would be able to avoid the total taxation and nationalization of the economy. you only consider the immediate effects of your ideology. you do not even look at the broad picture of saying something as basically as silly as 'government is voluntary and dont get mad at me about it. It is. You don't HAVE to own property if you don't want to. Just like you don't HAVE to own an investment or stock in a private firm. When you own property, be it commercial or residential, it earns you an income unless you are living in that residence, then it simply appreciates in value and exists as an asset. Property taxes are quite low compared to how you benefit from the ownership monetarily. i have repeatedly heard you argue for tax increases. why dont you set an example and just stroke off a check for double what you currently pay in taxes, because after all taxes are a necessity and you are a proper american for 'paying your fair share!' but dont feel bad, all you lefties do the same thing. the clintons argued for higher taxes for years, all the while enjoying lush tax breaks and subsidies. its another case of 'do as i say not as a do.' people push for laws that dont affect them. how would you feel if the law makers decided to tax guys named theo on 12oz 6 times the current tax rate? pay your fair share! yet this is what you do when you call to raise other peoples taxes. you want other people to pay more while you take every loop hole you can and as you admitted in clear english in a previous post you dont report income you earn under the table or that is 'untraceable' which is illegal. but i guess under your view, hypocrisy is consistency. and 'government is voluntary.' I've argued for tax increases only on the top 2%. No one else. I don't know one person that has reported to the government EVERY source of income they've gotten. That being said, that doesn't negate the fact that I don't complain about paying my income taxes or the existence of the tax code. It's a necessity. you must be a deranged nut job right winger conservative, young turk told me so. No, I just use my mind and independent thought when supporting a position. You act like this is supposed to be a football game where you support one side at all costs and go against the other. Politics isn't a black & white issue - yes, I agree. Also, TYT also agrees with Paul on that issue. There is a TYT/Ron Paul interview that you may want to check out (YouTube). However, TYT typically doesn't agree with him on that gold standard nonsense - one of the chief causes of the Great Depression. We began doing away with the gold standard during the Great Depression for a reason. The greatest growth of the US economy occurred between the 1930's to the 1960's. This also was during a gradual shift away from the gold standard to fiat currency, which was finalized in the early 70's by Nixon. 100% free as in 100% laissez faire. 100% laissez faire would be good, athough i'd settle for as free as the food system. for a couple days at least, then i'd be arguing for a total free market in medicine. you know, 'free' has other meanings besides 'it doesnt cost anything' If that's the case, Health Insurance companies would get away with murder even moreso. No one to keep the clowns in check. One thing I think should be allowed is that Health Insurance companies should be able to operate across state lines. Such an increase in competition should bring down the costs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelofdeath Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 Ah, no. Person A is a more capable killer with a gun than with a knife. No one said anything about babies and Bruce Lee. Let's stick with like to like comparisons. the point of me bringing up the comparison is to show that you refuse take take variables into consideration. the statists and pro gun control crowd simply say...'if anyone has a gun they are capable of inflicting genocide on any group of people!' this doesnt take into account whether the person is trained or not, how good of a shot he is, how good he is under pressure, and the list goes on forever. you simply everything just by saying that if anyone can get ahold of an AK then it doesnt matter if they dont even know how to insert the mag and rack the action, that they are automatically AQT certified and they trained with larry vickers and clint smith every weekend for 2 years and they can hit a moving jacket rabbit at full run , under pressure, with one hand tied behind their back with the sun in their eyes with a 3" barreled glock. for instance, if i was in a gun fight with an AR-15 and a full load out, i would NOT want to face clint smith with a single shot .22. you are doing a dis-service to your argument by ignoring a myriad of other factors in these sorts of situations. Ah, no. Banging some one's head on the ground means coming within their striking distance and over powering them. Firing a gun means moving a finger 3 millimeters at a safe distance. Having trouble understanding how you see both options as equal in ease. i dont see both options as equal, but i do see the outcome as equal and i see that if you could successfully outlaw or ban guns or certain kinds of guns people will simply use other means to commit murderous acts. one would assume from listening to the brady bunch and their slivering ilk that places with no guns have no violence. i mean we can just look at federal prisons. no guns, no violence! no one is ever killed, beaten up or mistreated in there! No one in any argument that I have seen on this board has ever suggested getting rid of all the guns on this planet. Most people are simply suggesting that tighter gun laws are better and that shit like AKs, ARs, assault weapons should not be freely available. this is the discussion i am actually trying to have. and i've asked this question atleast 3 times in this thread and not one gun controller has responded. i want to know exactly what gun measures can be instituted that will significantly reduce gun crime in the US. please, lay out your plan. every hoplophobe wants to keep speaking in abstracts and think that just if a law is passed the outcome will always be favorable. there are over 20K gun laws in america, i want to know how and what gun laws need to be passed and how it will actually work. need i remind you, assault weapons have been banned, hi capacity mags have been banned, all this stuff has been banned at one time or another in the US and none of these actions had the effect gun controllers want it to, which is why they never shut the fuck up. they keep squawking about more and more 'sensible' gun laws (just like yourself) yet the only logical conclusion, (since all the previous 'reasonable restrictions' have been either tried and had no effect or have been tried, sunsetted, had no affect and now they want to pass them again into law) is to ban guns and have door to door searches. seriously, what other way are you going to get the guns you dont like out of the hands of americans? i want a REAL answer and not any speaking in abstracts. i want a bulleted list of what gun laws should be passed and i want to know exactly what effect this will have on this issue. need i remind you that the government outlawed DRUGS, declared WAR on them, and now they are readily available in high schools to children and available to convicts in max security prison. the war on drugs has resulted in the death and/or incarceration of untold numbers of americans, what exactly do you think is going to happen when the gun control crowd declares war on guns in the US? in a country that was born out of a violent war by private civilians to kick their ruling power out of their country? it is also troubling for your case to keep talking about assault weapons when in fact the use of 'assault weapons' in crime is relatively insignificant. We also say that the US is a victim of its liberal gun laws and it's too late to ban them in many parts of the US, however you seem to ignore this and talk about zapping guns or some fairy tale shit that no one has ever said. if you really believe this, and you really look at the facts that the disarmed population centers have more crime, and you really believe that its to late to ban guns, then why in the heck do you continue to think that passing a law saying someone cant have a high cap mag or a semi automatic rifle is going to have any effect on the situation? i guess it just makes you feel good If that was the case you'd have no governments, you'd have mob rule. That means rule by force and no contract law, defence force, judiciary, etc. etc. hmmmm. seems to me the US citizens were more armed than the government when they wrote the constitution. in fact the standing army was unconstitutional. huh. whodathunkit, an armed populace that had judiciary and contract law. I'll say again; Person A can kill more people faster and at a greater distance with a firearm than with a machete (hammer, eggshell, whatever) but isnt the entire issue the deaths in the first place? or is the issue that you are more scared of someone dying from a gun related killing than an automobile related killing? arent you trying to eliminate killings? i realize that guns can kill people fast and at great distances, but do you realize that someone can go to any farm in my county, get 1000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, mix it with diesel fuel, put it in a population center and blow up a few city blocks? do you realize that anyone can hop into a tractor trailer w/ an 80K pound load on the back and drive it into a city block or a huge crowd of people and kill a couple hundred? do you realize that a couple arabs with box cutters can hijack a 747 and fly it into a couple buildings and kill 3000 people? 'why there oughta be a law!' oh wait.... the gun control crowd places some huge emphasis on the fact that guns can kill efficiently and from a distance. yet anyone can use any of the perfectly legal mundane everyday objects and kill thousands. by not supporting the banning or severe curtailing of 'driving' freedom for instance, you are taking a hypocritical stand, OR you simply are a hoplophobe who doesnt really care about the deaths, you just care about what instrument the killer used. Because that suits your argument. To say that a person is just as efficient at killing with a machete as with a 30 round Glock is kind of hard to argue against because it's just silly. You can defend that all you want but I've done my time and it's just stupid to even try and argue that because it is so obviously nto true. PErson A armed with a firearms will be more efficient at killing than if they were armed with a knife (baseball bat, pogo stick, whatever). i touched on this before, and used more extreme examples to support my case originally because the idea is easier illustrated at the poles. un trained woman who has never fired a gun cannot inflict as much death on a crowd of people as a ninja with a sword. you want to simply assume that anyone that picks up a gun is in fact well trained with it and is indeed capable of using said object with 100% efficiency. a perfect example is the famous scene in a movie where a marine hands a loaded full auto ak 47 to a vietnamese guy and tells him to shoot at a target. he unloads the mag and doesnt even hit it. marine takes one shot from his handgun and hits bullseye. what is so hard to grasp about this concept? We are just saying that access to the most efficient killing machines should be tightly controlled as we as a society are not responsible enough to manage them without shooting shit up. as i said before, your entire concept operates on the assumption that some sort of prohibition will WORK. that because there is a law, it is 100% enforceable and everyone will 100% follow it. this is not the case. all one has to do is look at drug prohibition in this country. the economics are clear. when you prohibit something, and you have demand, a supply will meet the demand. its pretty clean and cut. that is why 14 year olds are stoned in class. the drug war and the gun control war are failures and by their own inner contraditions cannot ever work or succeed. Myself and 8 of my friends were set upon by around 20 Chinese guys with chair legs and pipes. None of use died, few ended in hospital. If even one of the attackers had a fire arm at least two of us would be dead. If they all had firearms, we'd all be dead. lets change the variables a tad shall we? you have 20 chinese guys attacking 3 grandma's with 10K in their purses. what will the outcome be? should grandma's just die or should grandma's pull out their glocks with high cap mags and waste those mf'ers? by supporting gun control laws you have just disarmed grandma and either had her property stolen at best of if the attackers had murderous intent, the grandmas are dead. If you're going to use stats, you need to use them properly. First rule with that is, anonymous radio hosts are not to be believed straight out of the blue...... I'm going to guess that it was Alex Jones and you didn't name him because you knew that his name alone would discredit the argument!! you are quite free to listen to the radio host if you wish, adam kokesh. and he did name the study and all that good stuff. i didnt think it would be of interest to you, however, if you feel the need to use ad hominem attacks to try to discredit me or the stats, that is fine. but it does nothing for your failed case for gun control Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelofdeath Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 The government provides services that you use. Last I checked gangs don't. businesses all provide services people use. by your logic then, if a group provides a services that 'people use' than any amount of coercion and force is legitimate? what would you do if walmart hired a police force and started arresting people for not shopping in their stores? It is. You don't HAVE to own property if you don't want to. Just like you don't HAVE to own an investment or stock in a private firm. When you own property, be it commercial or residential, it earns you an income unless you are living in that residence, then it simply appreciates in value and exists as an asset. Property taxes are quite low compared to how you benefit from the ownership monetarily. its not an issue if taxes are 'low' or not, its the fact that one is forced by their mere existence to deal with governments. housings prices dont always rise... housing collapse much? so, if i got together with my friends, called myself the government, we vote on some things, some people vote us into office, then we get together vote that you are making to much money and we want 50% of it and, you need to pay us 1 million a year in property taxes, your answer is just to say..'well, you know, i just wouldnt have to pay this if i dont own property or dont have any income. after all, no one forced me to actually live my life and live within my property rights!!' I've argued for tax increases only on the top 2%. No one else. I don't know one person that has reported to the government EVERY source of income they've gotten. That being said, that doesn't negate the fact that I don't complain about paying my income taxes or the existence of the tax code. It's a necessity. at least you admit it, that you want taxes and policies instituted on others that you dont want instituted on yourself. how would you feel if the 'rich' got together and said they wanted to raise your taxes? do you find it funny that many of the top 2% have very little 'income' in the form of 'wages?' the CEO of whole foods stopped taking a pay check from them. do you think he lives in a card board box behind one of this stores? capital gains, etc are taxed different than wages, so its sort of funny to me that the main focus is on the rich and their wages, when most of them earn very little in 'wages.' but to each their own. i support liberty for ALL, not just for myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UPS! Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 34 each day DIE?!, Surely that should be shot, rather than killed. Surely it's not that high. Sounds sad, but honestly im suprised its that low. Theres been a murder about every other day, maby every third day in my city and to my knowledge theyve all been shootings. You think a population of 300 million + with the possibilty of anyone over the age of 21 being able to obtain a handgun, and anyone 18 and older the ability to own a shotgun and or rifle, this really dosent suprise me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelofdeath Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 statistically 115 people die a day in car related deaths. ive asked this a handful of times in this thread: "i want to know exactly what gun measures can be instituted that will significantly reduce gun crime in the US. please, lay out your plan." the response every time? silence. crickets. everytime. just shows that the whole discussion to the anti gunners is just hysteria. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Mamerro Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 statistically 115 people die a day in car related deaths. I wonder how much higher that number would be if we didn't need licenses to drive... Nobody's answering your question because it has already been said by several that we are far too down the path to really do something about significantly reducing gun crime. I do think however we can keep it under control and prevent it from increasing dramatically by maintaining and constantly improving the current background check system. It may be flawed and the unfit can sometimes get through, but I am completely sure it's already keeping a significant amount of guns out of the hands of crazies everywhere. I believe without it we'd be in a worse situation than we are right now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelofdeath Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 I wonder how much higher that number would be if we didn't need licenses to drive... driving licenses are essentially a joke. its a feel good regulatory hoop you have to jump through. do you know of anyone who who wanted to get a drivers license that wasnt blind or in a wheel chair that COULDNT get one? who is actually restricted from driving? when you made that comment you make it sound as though the drivers license system some how filters out all sorts of nut balls and that because they have a license they no longer engage in bad driving practices like talking on cell phones, driving drunk or high, surfing the internet, text messaging, posting facebook updates, watching dvd's while driving or eating taco bell while talking on the phone while merging then crossing double yellow lines for the next 5 miles. yet probably 75% of the drivers on the road today do at least one of those things on my list everyday. 12 year olds can pass these driving tests. drivers licenses are not about driving safety. i think that is pretty much settled fact. drivers licenses are more about identification and tracking of you by the state than driving safety. but drivers licensing and gun purchasing arent really apples and apples. for instance, if i drive a car only on my property or on other private property, i do not need a license. i do not need a license to purchase a car. (yet you are what, 5 times more likely to be killed in a car wreck than by a gun??)i only need a license if i want to drive on a public road. essentially the government is saying that you have a right to drive, as with all rights, on your own property or where you have permission, BUT roads are owned by the govt and we set these standards before you can come on them. but the licensing argument for guns, essentially violates rights on its face because the suggestion is you need a license to own a gun or purchase a gun, even if it never leaves your property. at least the government can have some what of a case of setting some sort of arbitrary standard when carrying the firearm on 'public' property. however, you are then in the area of one faction arguing with another faction to decide who can do what on the 'public' property. but i digress.... Nobody's answering your question because it has already been said by several that we are far too down the path to really do something about significantly reducing gun crime. I do think however we can keep it under control and prevent it from increasing dramatically by maintaining and constantly improving the current background check system. It may be flawed and the unfit can sometimes get through, but I am completely sure it's already keeping a significant amount of guns out of the hands of crazies everywhere. I believe without it we'd be in a worse situation than we are right now. maybe so. maybe people arent answering because they feel the US is 'to far down the path to really do something about it.' but it doesnt stop them from saying 'people shouldnt be allowed to have guns! or people dont need assault weapons! or people dont need hi capacity 'clips!' ' and engaging in 6 pages of debate about how we need to pass more restrictions to lower crime rates. what exactly do you mean by 'crazies?' and what exactly do you think the federal background checks should entail? how much more background information could they govt check than they already do? they do complete criminal background checks and have access to mental health records as of the latest mccarthy gun control bill passed a few years back. no amount of back ground checks account for someone who decides one day, after never committing a crime in their life, to pick up a gun and rob someone. what should we do, start profiling when selling guns? since statistically most gun crime is done by a 5'8" black or latino male, that is 22 years old, should we just automatically deny all these purchases? i fail to see exactly what stricter controls or changes need to be done to the background check system and how exactly stricter checks by people who buy guns legally will affect anyone from buying a firearm out of the trunk of a car just like a high school kid buys pot in the school parking lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
christo-f Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 statistically 115 people die a day in car related deaths. ive asked this a handful of times in this thread: "i want to know exactly what gun measures can be instituted that will significantly reduce gun crime in the US. please, lay out your plan." the response every time? silence. crickets. everytime. just shows that the whole discussion to the anti gunners is just hysteria. From page two as a direct response to your comment on cars: Cars, a different issue, I will give you that. However, motor transport supports the national economy and the positives that they give to society vastly outweigh the negatives. How do firearms help the national economy and daily life like motor vehicles do? And to add to that, guns are made solely to kill, using a car to kill is a perversion of the original usage. Whether or not you agree there was no silence or crickets. I increasingly think you ignore what people say when it doesn't suit your purpose. Just like how MANY of us have said MANY times that we are not only talking about the US and its gun laws, shit a lot of us here don't even come from the US......, yes, other countries and other gun laws exist. We are talking about gun laws in general, in theory, etc. etc. However you keep on coming back to the argument that you want to have because it suits your purpose and stops you from having to make admissions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelofdeath Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 i was specifically talking about what specific policies, gun restrictions and laws that need to be passed by the anti gunners to reduce crime. all i hear is 'there are to many guns, its nuts and we need to keep guns out of the hands of nut cases, citizens dont need 'assault weapons, etc...' but i never hear about exactly what gun laws and restrictions need to be passed in order to satisfy the anti gun lobby. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Mamerro Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 driving licenses are essentially a joke. its a feel good regulatory hoop you have to jump through... yada yada Everybody I know that has a license has taken the time necessary to prepare for both the written test and the practical test. And at least in my experience in PR, driving tests were pretty strict and I saw a LOT of perfectly decent drivers fail. I barely passed with a 70 with what I thought was a close to perfect performance. In any case, the presence of these tests make people learn and prepare themselves to properly handle the machinery at hand. I like that. what exactly do you mean by 'crazies?' People with mental disabilities that would cast significant doubt on their ability to responsibly manage a deadly weapon. and what exactly do you think the federal background checks should entail? Am I supposed to present you some kind of psychological evaluation test that I have to pull out of a hat? There are people far more capable than you and I are (that you will by definition not trust) with the knowledge of human behavior and the capacity to establish a ground set of rules to define who is and is not capable of handling an device that is made for killing people. how much more background information could they govt check than they already do? Beats the fuck out of me. Probably none. This is just another frequently encountered case of you conveniently manipulating and distorting our arguments to fit a position you're comfortable arguing against. I said "improve our systems", which could mean installing new methodologies, algorithms, and various other means to increase the efficiency and precision of the system, increasing their ability to pinpoint red flags among the data already being asked for. I'm not asking for them to get more background info, I'm fairly happy with the fact that they already ask what they do. A few bad cases slip by, that's too bad but I can deal with it. That scenario you described? No, we'll probably never be able to catch those guys. And there will be really quite few of those cause that's what tends to happen, crime-free dudes don't just usually pick up robbery. Sometimes they do though. Point is, with no background checks, you bet your ass a LOT more bad cases are gonna get through and shit WILL get worse. buying a firearm out of the trunk of a car just like a high school kid buys pot in the school parking lot. This is another one you always keep coming to... dude, I don't know about you, but buying shit from a legit source is in many ways easier, more encouraging, and more convenient than getting into some shady shit. A guy with bad intentions and a noodled head can still have the common sense to go through the most legit path rather than adding more layers of sketchiness to what he wants to go through. How I feel: If you wanna decrease gun crime significantly in America, the obstacles you have to overcome are cultural, not legal. I think it is perfectly natural and OK to be afraid of a product that is designed to end lives. But in America, that fear has for decades been exaggerate, distorted, and glorified in the public mind and guns are now this really scary thing that people are also perversely attracted to. I am of the belief that if you were to allow each and every person in America easy and convenient access to guns, a feedback loop would occur that would cause the vast majority of the population to own a gun. And I believe the prevailing feeling among people will be fear of each other, not respect. And I don't know man, a society where everyone is afraid of each other sounds like it would suck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelofdeath Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 Everybody I know that has a license has taken the time necessary to prepare for both the written test and the practical test. And at least in my experience in PR, driving tests were pretty strict and I saw a LOT of perfectly decent drivers fail. I barely passed with a 70 with what I thought was a close to perfect performance. In any case, the presence of these tests make people learn and prepare themselves to properly handle the machinery at hand. I like that. the written drivers tests pretty much only deal with driving laws and not the actual act of driving. the driving test its self, is well, passable by anyone. if someone cant parallel park or do a three point turn, then, i dont know what to say. while some people may fail once or even twice, do you know of anyone who wants to drive that cant get a drivers license simply because they COULD NOT pass a drivers test? Am I supposed to present you some kind of psychological evaluation test that I have to pull out of a hat? There are people far more capable than you and I are (that you will by definition not trust) with the knowledge of human behavior and the capacity to establish a ground set of rules to define who is and is not capable of handling an device that is made for killing people. since the feds already have access to mental health records and since many states also do this in addition to federal background checks... i want to know what your proposal is here in this area. do you want a government psychologist to screen every gun purchaser? this would be a wonderful tactic of the anti gun crowd. all the government has to do to institute a national gun restriction on everyone is install a pro state psychologist or board to set the rules so that basically anyone that wants to own a gun or thinks the second amendment was written to defend the citizens from a tyrannical government is, as you put, 'by definition' absolutely nuts and incapable of owning a firearm. while i think this idea of the government determining if someone is 'mentally capable' enough to own a firearm sounds reasonable to most people, it is actually a policy that has tremendous unintended consequences. GOA estimated that atleast 150K returning veterans who saw a psychiatrist just once for PTSD after returning home were denied their right to buy a gun. do you think it is silly for the government to have these guys killing arabs and are supposedly the best trained gun handlers out, yet they cant buy a gun when they come home? my main problem with 'mandatory mental health screening' is not only is it a violation and an infringement on peoples rights (i know these arguments mean nothing to the gun control crowd or statists in general) but if someone is REALLY that dangerous to where he is an actual living breathing threat to society because of a mental illness, that person should be in prison. period. there should be no arguing about whether that person can own a firearm because they should already be locked up. and this goes for violent felons as well. currently, if you have a felony drug possession charge, but never committed a violent act in your life, you cant buy a firearm. and if you are a violent convicted felon and you are that much of a threat to society, you should be in jail or dead. period. in fact a family friend is in this situation. the guy is a big hunter, hunted his whole life, can shoot REALLY well, yet because he had to much of an illegal plant substance on him in his mid 20's and is a convicted felon, he hasnt been able to purchase a gun for 25 years. Beats the fuck out of me. Probably none. This is just another frequently encountered case of you conveniently manipulating and distorting our arguments to fit a position you're comfortable arguing against. I said "improve our systems", which could mean installing new methodologies, algorithms, and various other means to increase the efficiency and precision of the system, increasing their ability to pinpoint red flags among the data already being asked for. I'm not asking for them to get more background info, I'm fairly happy with the fact that they already ask what they do. A few bad cases slip by, that's too bad but I can deal with it. That scenario you described? No, we'll probably never be able to catch those guys. And there will be really quite few of those cause that's what tends to happen, crime-free dudes don't just usually pick up robbery. Sometimes they do though. Point is, with no background checks, you bet your ass a LOT more bad cases are gonna get through and shit WILL get worse. ok, well atleast you admit you are operating on hysterics about background checks and offer no solution. so you are satisfied with the current back ground check system, overall, but fully acknowledge that the vast majority of gun crime in america is committed in states and cities that have severely restrictive gun laws if not outright bans and this drives the convicted felons, gang bangers, etc underground. take DC for instance. handguns were banned in DC and for all practical purposes they still are. since handguns were banned there were no gun stores. so DC residents cannot to another state to buy a handgun because handguns must be shipped to their local FFL in order to take possession, but since DC has no FFL's, for all practical purposes hand guns are banned. there essentially are no legal channels to get a firearm there, so all purchases are underground. yet DC has consistently been one of the murder capitals of the country since they banned guns. john lott points out that the rates of crime, and murder dramatically increased when the ban took place. no amount of background checks will eliminate this phenomenon where career criminals get most guns on the black market anyway. you also state a common theory, that without background checks things would get worse. this implies that we have always had background checks. lets think about what brought about background checks. the kennedy assassinations. before 1968 there were no back ground checks. you paid cash and you got a firearm. yet for some reason, crime rates are double, triple or quadruple what they were back then. back when kids could take their .22's to shooting competitions on new yorks subways, crime rates were lower. back when you could have full automatic un registered machine guns, crime rates were lower. so i dont think for a second that restrictive background checks and availability of firearms necessarily correlates with increased crime. one of the biggest government failures to date was 9/11. supposedly a handful of arabs took control of a 747 with box cutters. it is my contention that if at bare minimum pilots were armed, this would of never happened. but people also think that guns were always banned on planes. until the 1970's passengers could carry on firearms. hunters going across the country or to africa could stow their weapons in the overhead bin. until approximately the 1950's most air lines required pilots to be armed. it wasnt until the late 70's that passengers and then pilots were not allowed to carry on planes. yet the common reply is...'but if there are guns on planes, everyone will get shot!' yet the evidence show that there werent any hijackings or murders when guns were on board. (to my knowledge) This is another one you always keep coming to... dude, I don't know about you, but buying shit from a legit source is in many ways easier, more encouraging, and more convenient than getting into some shady shit. A guy with bad intentions and a noodled head can still have the common sense to go through the most legit path rather than adding more layers of sketchiness to what he wants to go through. good point. but the overall implication of your argument is that some sort of better background check system would of stopped jared lee in tucson. this also leaves out that in most areas of the country, you do not need to do some 'shady shit' to get a gun from a private seller. each state has its own laws on private sales. some require registration of firearms and the transfer to be done through FFL's, coincidentally these states have the most crime. other states require record keeping of who the sale was to and federal law restricts all private sales of firearms to residents of the state where the transaction takes place. believe it or not, some states have classifieds in the paper for guns. its no more shady than buying a used refrigerator off of craigslist. coincidentally, the states with the most lax private transfer laws are the least crime ridden. so there is no real correlation between availability of guns and excessive gun crime. in fact where i live, the classified section always has atleast 20 guns for sale in there. private sales cannot be done to out of state residents and record of the sale must be kept. i see people open carry once a week and full gun racks all time. probably 85% of houses have more than 1 gun, yet i think 4 or 5 people are killed each year. last year 2 of the deaths were stabbings. your point also doesnt touch on the perfectly legal, mentally stable guy who passes all the el mam's background checks and tests and THEN decides to use it against an innocent person. How I feel: If you wanna decrease gun crime significantly in America, the obstacles you have to overcome are cultural, not legal. I think it is perfectly natural and OK to be afraid of a product that is designed to end lives. But in America, that fear has for decades been exaggerate, distorted, and glorified in the public mind and guns are now this really scary thing that people are also perversely attracted to. I am of the belief that if you were to allow each and every person in America easy and convenient access to guns, a feedback loop would occur that would cause the vast majority of the population to own a gun. And I believe the prevailing feeling among people will be fear of each other, not respect. And I don't know man, a society where everyone is afraid of each other sounds like it would suck. sure, the issue is more of a cultural issue and not a gun issue. this is a great point. but i disagree that 'easy and convenient' access to guns always = boat loads of crime. the swiss are armed to the teeth (required by law if you are in the militia) with full auto weapons, yet the crime rates are very low. even with this tucson shooting, overall arizona's crime rates are very very low. but, shit happens. i am of the opinion that 'shit happens' and no amount of controls will stop 'shit from happening.' i think society already is afraid of each other, mainly in urban areas. ask the average rich yuppie to walk through even a borderline shady ghetto neighborhood and see how they feel. if a couple gang bangers with ms13 walk into a whole foods how are the yuppies going to feel? having open carried on a few occasions, one thing is for sure, when you open carry, you get the best customer service. i feel that if america was so hoplophobic due to hysteria by anti gunners, years of TV shows like law and order that make everyone believe the entire country has gun laws like NYC and that results in hvac technicians going on service calls in peoples houses calling the cops on the residents because they have a shotgun on the wall. i also think because people arent used to seeing open carried guns, that they are more scared when they see it. this is largely due to the government restricting it and the conditioning of people to be scared of guns. whenever i see a guy open carrying, it always a clean cut stand up looking person. not to mention, people dont see guns as much these days since concealed carry was implemented in many states. people never know who is armed and who isnt. its not uncommon to see gun printing where i live and im not scared at all. in fact i feel much safer standing in a walmart line knowing that if a nut job decided to start lashing out his anti capitalist rhetoric in the form of bullets, there is probably at least 10 people in a walmart around here that could attempt to subdue the guy. the even sad part is guns are used defensively over 2 million times a year. from brandishing to actual shots to defend their own lives. and you NEVER hear, except in small town local news about people using firearms to defend themselves. you only hear about the guys who shoot judges and congressmen and the result is national hysteria. so to the point: you have outlined that you want a mandatory mental health screening, probably by a government appointed doctor for each gun purchase. (they already have access to mental health records) and you want to just tweak the NICS check system. so if these goals are accomplished, will you then cease to support more restrictive gun laws? this is the point im getting at, i want to know exactly where your line is. most anti gunners, except the sarah bradys wont come out and say they want all guns banned, but speak in abstracts about 'to many guns, easy access, etc.' i want to know the end game of all the anti gunners on the board. at what point, after such and such policy is instituted, (and gun crime likely will rise due to the restrictions on people who want to use guns defensively and defend their lives and liberty) will you then cease to advocate for more gun control? i'd prefer if a list was formulated like this: ban semi autos ban high cap 'clips' mental health exams etc etc i want to know where the line is, how many more laws will be passed, etc and when we will stop hearing the hysteria about guns. 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El Mamerro Posted January 29, 2011 Share Posted January 29, 2011 Dude just looking at the size of your responses is exhausting. Every single time, it's like oh man, do I wanna keep going back and forth on this? And then eventually say fuck it. One more time though: do you know of anyone who wants to drive that cant get a drivers license simply because they COULD NOT pass a drivers test? I know several people who were terrible drivers and had to take the test multiple times until they got it right. And yes, if there are people out there stupid enough to fail a driver's test multiple times and had their license denied, then there are certainly people out there too stupid to handle a gun appropriately and should be denied accordingly. since the feds already have access to mental health records and since many states also do this in addition to federal background checks... i want to know what your proposal is here in this area. I'll only address this part since what follows is the standard speculative paranoid scenario that picks one possibility out of dozens: Sounds good to me the way it is. do you think it is silly for the government to have these guys killing arabs and are supposedly the best trained gun handlers out, yet they cant buy a gun when they come home? Maybe not so silly. PTSD is not well understood and hopefully as we progress better methodologies will emerge that will make it easy to establish "degrees" of PTSD, of which the more benign would probably be able to carry weapons. In the meantime, if you like guns and want to keep that right, I suggest you don't enlist in the military. my main problem with 'mandatory mental health screening' is not only is it a violation and an infringement on peoples rights (i know these arguments mean nothing to the gun control crowd or statists in general) but if someone is REALLY that dangerous to where he is an actual living breathing threat to society because of a mental illness, that person should be in prison. A person that kills someone else with a kitchen knife or a baseball bat is, in general, gonna be a lot crazier than a person who murders someone with a gun. With a gun, you only need to toe the line a little bit with irrationality, because the process of killing with one is so easy, detached, and clean; plenty of relatively sane people who do not deserve to be in prison are capable of committing murder with a gun. ok, well atleast you admit you are operating on hysterics about background checks and offer no solution. I admit I have no solutions but not that I am operating in hysterics. It's this whole "You just admitted", "This is what you believe" thing you always do that makes it so annoying to argue, cause I have to spend time and effort defending against something I never said but that you wish to ascribe to me to have a straw man to shoot (ha!) against. so you are satisfied with the current back ground check system, overall, but fully acknowledge that the vast majority of gun crime in america is committed in states and cities that have severely restrictive gun laws if not outright bans and this drives the convicted felons, gang bangers, etc underground. I'm sure issues between causation and correlation are at play here. you also state a common theory, that without background checks things would get worse. this implies that we have always had background checks. lets think about what brought about background checks. the kennedy assassinations. before 1968 there were no back ground checks. you paid cash and you got a firearm. yet for some reason, crime rates are double, triple or quadruple what they were back then. This is a very interesting fact, but again, I stand by the belief that this has more to do with cultural development of society and perception of weaponry, which admittedly may have been exacerbated by said restriction of weaponry, elevating its status as a forbidden object of desire. But we are not able to jump back to the cultural mindset we had pre-60's, so shifting things back to where they were will almost certainly not have the results you expect. one of the biggest government failures to date was 9/11. supposedly a handful of arabs took control of a 747 with box cutters. it is my contention that if at bare minimum pilots were armed, this would of never happened. I'm totally down with pilots packing. A person with a gun in an airplane can only be matched by a person with another gun, raising the stakes considerably in a very narrow, body-dense environment with pressurization issues. A person with a boxcutter or any other form of non-gun weapon can be neutralized with small numbers and contact force. That didn't happen on 9/11, probably due to hesitation, but you sure as hell can be sure it will happen from now on... it already has. the overall implication of your argument is that some sort of better background check system would of stopped jared lee in tucson. Nope. The overall implication of my argument is that a better background system would have lessened the risk of it happening. I'm not sure what you were getting at with the rest of that paragraph. your point also doesnt touch on the perfectly legal, mentally stable guy who passes all the el mam's background checks and tests and THEN decides to use it against an innocent person. Nope, it doesn't, but I already acknowledged that some cases will always be impossible to catch. sure, the issue is more of a cultural issue and not a gun issue. this is a great point. but i disagree that 'easy and convenient' access to guns always = boat loads of crime. the swiss are armed to the teeth (required by law if you are in the militia) with full auto weapons, yet the crime rates are very low. This is because the Swiss have an entirely different perception of guns and gun culture. That's my whole point, Americans specifically have a particular relationship with guns that makes them behave differently towards them than other countries do. i think society already is afraid of each other, mainly in urban areas. -...- having open carried on a few occasions, one thing is for sure, when you open carry, you get the best customer service. -...- i also think because people arent used to seeing open carried guns, that they are more scared when they see it. this is largely due to the government restricting it and the conditioning of people to be scared of guns. -...- in fact i feel much safer standing in a walmart line knowing that if a nut job decided to start lashing out his anti capitalist rhetoric in the form of bullets, there is probably at least 10 people in a walmart around here that could attempt to subdue the guy. Of course society is afraid of each other, and giving everyone the ability to inflict hurt (I might get killed, but goddamn I'm gonna make a statement and hurt him first) will tighten the screws. And I'm not thrilled by the thought of 10 dudes trying to play hero at Walmart and multiplying x 10 the amount of bullets in the air. Odds are a few will be bad shots, especially in the fog of it. the even sad part is guns are used defensively over 2 million times a year. from brandishing to actual shots to defend their own lives. and you NEVER hear, except in small town local news about people using firearms to defend themselves. This is unfortunate, and I agree. If anything this would be a step forward for people to begin establishing guns in their mind as part of civil society. But the feedback loop is already ongoing, people are simply more fascinated by stories of guns in the real world being used for villainy as opposed to heroism, and that's what people now flock to and that's what's gonna be on the big news. That's the free market at work for ya. so to the point: you have outlined that you want a mandatory mental health screening, probably by a government appointed doctor for each gun purchase. (they already have access to mental health records) and you want to just tweak the NICS check system. so if these goals are accomplished, will you then cease to support more restrictive gun laws? Sounds abut right to me. With that in place, and a new push to start improving the public perception of guns and reverse the decades of instilled fear, I'd say we'd be on a good path. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Citizen X Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 So I was NOT sleeping last night... it was like 5am on Sunday morning so I found myself watchin Elvira. She was showing 'The Werewolf of Washington' starring Dean Stockwell. So, she does little skits in the breaks sometimes where she interacts with movie clips... this time someone in the movie screams: "The ONLY way to kill a werewolf is to shoot it!" Elvira Palin pops in and says: "Yeah! With a shotgun... from a helicopter!" best joke I heard all week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Citizen X Posted January 31, 2011 Share Posted January 31, 2011 Well, through the magic of TV I just saw that Elvira skit again and I totally mischaracterized it. Apparently Elvira said it all herself. It was late and it wasn't my idea to have the tv on... still funny. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelofdeath Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 A person that kills someone else with a kitchen knife or a baseball bat is, in general, gonna be a lot crazier than a person who murders someone with a gun. With a gun, you only need to toe the line a little bit with irrationality, because the process of killing with one is so easy, detached, and clean; plenty of relatively sane people who do not deserve to be in prison are capable of committing murder with a gun. ok, so the degree of bat shit craziness could possibly be slightly different if someone uses a knife instead of a gun, but the end result is still the same. the major point being that if you could make gun control work correctly, which it never will, you would have no guns in civilian hands. so assuming no guns in civilian hands and considering the amount of violence in america, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind an alternative method of killing would be used and the crazy guy with a baseball bat would be on the same level of craziness as the guy with a gun. your basic argument really tweaks me though. the 'but guns are made for killing...! and chevys and knives have a legitimate use!!!' how can you consider a gun that is used for self defense to NOT be a legitimate use? since when does it matter what i use to protect my life? even conservative estimates place gun use in a defensive manner in the millions per year yet gun deaths are what like 10-15K? those millions of defensive uses are cases where no gun is FIRED. and this is not legitimate? i will never understand the phenomenon of someone getting killed with a high profile murder, everyone calling for banning guns, banning magazines, more background checks, etc. even the clinton justice department placed defensive gun uses at 1.5 million per year. yet if someone drives up on a side walk, mows down 3 people in their chevy, no one calls for banning the chevy. which takes us back to the 'legitimate use' argument. if guns really have no use but shooting people... when a cop straps on his pistol everyday does he do so hoping he gets to kill someone that day? by and large arent most people arrested without firing shots? I admit I have no solutions but not that I am operating in hysterics. i still think most rhetoric, post high profile murder with a gun, is based on hysterics. maybe i could use a better word, but i think it works the best. people do a lot of yammering about more sensible laws needing to be passed, etc etc. its actually the very definition of insanity, calling for and passing the same old measures hoping for a different result. i just saw a clip of clinton claiming after he signed the brady checks in place that this would singlehandedly end gun crime in america. every piece of legislation that gets passed is supposed to 'fix' the problem and it never does. my main question is when in the will they stop? and i never get an honest answer. they have been passing gun laws for 100 years and still are saying the same thing...'we just need one more sensible restriction' and everything will be fixed.' i mean just look at logic for a second. lets look at rep mccarthy's husbands shooting which she used to get into congress. her husband was killed on the subway. it was illegal to bring a gun on the subway. it is illegal to carry a gun in NY period. it is illegal to possess a handgun in NY. it is illegal to murder someone. her biggest cause is banning 'high capacity' mags. are we really supposed to believe that if the same person who broke multiple laws carrying a gun and shooting people that he would of followed the law and not used a high capacity magazine? its absolutely absurd. do we really believe if we just had one more further law that he would of obeyed that one? doesnt it make sense that having a gun to fight back might help save your life? and as far as your other comment about being scared of multiple armed murder stoppers in walmart, i'd say that police have a much higher record of collateral damage. will more armed people mean police have to be more astute in doing their job? yes, but this is life. it will also mean people have more of a fighting chance. lets also consider a side effect of a high cap mag ban. the same thing was seen during prohibition. the potency effect. ban high cap mags. assume for a second in fantasy land that it actually does eliminate high cap mags. instead of using a 9mm, people will then use a .45. gibbons is probably only alive because wacko used a 9mm. during prohibition people didnt want beer, they wanted liquor. look at drugs today they are constantly coming out with more potent varieties, first it was coke, then crack, now meth. i just read an anti gunner piece about the annual shot show going on right after the tucson shooting. heard the same thing about the nra rally after columbine. the whole thing is silly... as one guy pointed out...its like saying this years detroit auto show went on oblivious to the fact that some guy was killed by a drunk driver in ohio. and can you believe people are stlll promoting cars! i just wish people were more honest in their gun control talk. instead of speaking in abstracts, i want to hear exactly how their hysterical rhetoric would of transferred into policy that would of stopped it. they operate on the assumption that 'just passing a law....' means everything will be better. i am glad to hear that you are honest and dont offer a solution other than tweaking the background check system. most are not honest to actually say when they will pack up and go home. but since you are still debating this issue, its probably safe to say you would not be opposed to further gun control measures because you sound as though you have no problem using the state to force your preferences and will on the rest of society. 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