Las Vegas Shooting and the Gun Debate

[Dirty_habiT]

^ Don't forget pistol whipping.

 

I, actually, really enjoy this debate. I read Raven's post above in it's entirety and agree with all of it. I think that people get tunnel vision in their day to day life and fail to see the larger picture that there are plenty of other people not living the same reality as you.

 

On the subject of gun ownership, I'm all for it. Open carry, I don't care if you open carry, whatever. You should have the documents to show you're registered to own your weapon just like you have to show that you're allowed to operate your vehicle on public roads. These are items that you should be carrying w/ you when you have your weapon.

 

The one angle on this debate I've never seen anyone be able to defeat is the whole "if nobody is allowed to have guns then you don't have to worry about protecting yourself with one." My counter to that is criminals still will acquire and possess guns illegally and use them for illegal purposes. When a criminal is using a gun, no amount of talking them down, karate, or indiana jones knife skills are going to save you. The only answer is another gun. The same holds true if someone is using a martial art to kick your ass. If you're untrained in fighting and you cannot match equally with the amount of force they can apply to meet their goal then you do not stand a chance. My point is that when nobody is allowed to have guns we're screwed by people that want to use them for malicious intent and we all become sitting ducks in situations where people possessing them illegally want to inflict harm.

 

Casualties are massively reduced in situations where someone in the public had a gun w/ them and could subdue an attacker that thought their victims were easy pickins.

[One Man Banned]

Was discussing this yesterday with a buddy- open carry just seems stupid to me from several perspectives including why let people know what you have, and the fact that walking around with your gun hanging off you all day apears about as stupid as, say, a carpenter walking around all day with his tool belt on even though he's not working. This isn't the old West.

 

Agreed that with no guns criminals, and others, will still acquire them (disregard bitches, acquire firearms?) or other weapons, but some incidents will be reduced. But- to think that because someone else has a gun that the only answer is another gun is about as faulty as saying that if they have a knife and you don't you're fucked. Shit- some of these gun incidents have been stopped if not prevented by unarmed civilians.

[Dirty_habiT]

I agree it is possible but it's just unlikely that someone can do anything without a gun vs. someone with a gun (in my opinion anyway). I also think wearing your gun in plain view is kind of dumb. It's almost like an "intimidation factor" at play to "keep honest people honest." If you show that you're armed I would imagine a criminal will target you first when they decide to commit a crime. It'd be much smarter to maintain the element of surprise by keeping your weapon concealed.

 

I, really, cannot think of a good reason why so many people advocated for open carry. CCH Licenses were already available and that allows you to carry a gun basically anywhere on your person. I can only imagine that one intimidation factor scenario being a reason for open carry.... and I'm not sure what else it's good for.

[Hua Guofang]

Carrying a gun does not equal competence in using it in fluid and uncertain environments.

[Dirty_habiT]

I agree... neither does having a driver's license. I will concede that most of the people I have the "pleasure" of driving with on the public roads are morons when it comes to critical thinking and controlling mechanical devices. I would imagine that gun ownership harbors a similar demographic. Just because people are dumb doesn't mean that someone should attempt to legislate morality or accidental and unforeseen circumstances. Alas, that is what we get when people are polled however..... we get the same mouth breathers that wouldn't be good at driving or owning weapons without shooting a hole in their hand or wrecking into a pole in the snow deciding that adept folks shouldn't be allowed to do what they, themselves, are not good at.

 

People are definitely welcome to live in fear and rely on the protection of others in dangerous circumstances or they can decide, as Raven mentioned above, to take their security into their own hands because nobody is more interested in you living than you are.... unless you're suicidal.

[misteraven]

One would think simply having laws and consequences that dissuade people from harming / killing other people and actually following through with consequences for doing so would be enough.

 

Still boggles my mind that anyone thinks that when that primary law isn't respected, that somehow incrementally restraining the general populace and adding more and more rules / regulations (than in itself only really work when you respect them) and yet expecting a different result, is anything other than lunacy. It's so crazy to me that I honestly can't see it as anything beyond a power grab disguised under a thin veil of supposedly looking out for the greater good.

 

I've typed way too much in this thread and really don't feel all that motivated to keep this going, but I see it as little different than banning spray paint because .00005% of all people with access to a can of paint use it for graffiti.

[misteraven]

Carrying a gun does not equal competence in using it in fluid and uncertain environments.

 

That's true, but if the penalties for misuse are severe and the punishments actually carried out in their entirety, its doubtful we'd see much issue to an already tiny issue. Removing suicides from the equation (which truly is its own issue).we're taking about 10,000 deaths amongst 320,000,000 people... A fraction very tiny fraction of 1 percent. And that figure includes justifiable homicides and criminal on criminal murder, which in itself account for about 70% of that tiny fraction of 1%. Meanwhile, the media and most people seem to ignore that the CDC has projected as many as a half million murders avoided due to the brandishing or implementation of a firearm. Also, a very small fraction of the general populace, yet exponentially more than the casualties tallied.

 

Oh, and driving a car is not a constitutional right in this country, that's been drafted and implemented in such a way that its beyond the ass hats inn Washington (regardless of what side of the aisle they sit on) from taking away if you're to actually uphold the constitution. You literally need to dissolve the charter this country is founded upon and start an entirely new country in order to take that right away. Again, that is if you're to actually follow the constitution.

[misteraven]

Despite not wanting to go off on a tangent and also going off topic in my own thread (though related)...

 

I was recently told I'm pre diabetic after far too many years of sugary eating and high carbs. I was told to follow a Keto / Paleo type diet as modern nutrition and science now say that the food pyramid we were taught for the last several decades is complete shit and that grains, starches or any other carbs is metabolized as glucose by the liver, which is essentially the same as eating sugar. That according to new science and study that we should be eating mostly fats and proteins, followed by non-starchy vegetables that are minimally processed. That all sugar is bad in any amount and that processed foods of any type (regardless of whether it says "natural" on the box or not), is basically spiking your glucose levels.

 

Since then (about three weeks ago), I've been doing my own research on the subject and come to find that basically the food industry is mirroring what the tobacco industry was doing in the 1970's... That they're aware of the bodies addictive response to carbs and are knowingly adding is as much as they can, because they've proven that people eat much more food when its cabs based due to the addictive quality and how the body is far less satiated by them then anything else, in turn meaning you eat way more of it (and they sell way more of it). Likewise, carbs are far easer to produce and store for far longer, which is win / win when your goal is to make money regardless of the consequences. Apparently its a general mystery to everyone not paying attention (myself included, at least until recently) why heart disease and diabetes is growing exponentially along with various cancers and other diseases.

 

I've been off sugar 100% for 3 weeks and on a very low carb diet (target is 3 - 5 grams a day). I've also started taking fish oil and D3 (not a lot of sun this time a year where I live) and not for nothing, but I'm completely blown away by how much more energy I have and more surprising, how much more mental clarity I've gained. I had no idea how lethargic I'd become and basically figured that me noticing I wasn't as sharp as I'd remembered was just me growing older. I can't overstate enough what a profound difference I already feel, but to the point... How science is saying that pretty much what we should be eating is almost the exact opposite of what we'd been taught. And that as a result of that, we've been killing ourselves much younger at an exponential rate.

 

Considering the stats for premature death, diet related complication and disease, I'm honestly shocked how none of this is running on the news cycle 24/7 (or at least as often as the gun debate is, say 18/5). That is unless you realize that there might be a broader agenda at play, or if you aren't as jaded as me, that its simply not the glamorous low hanging content that helps keep people arguing with each other and clicking links. I find it offensive that so much energy gets devoted to the topic of gun control, generally under the umbrella of "we need to protect the people" when you literally have many thousands fold people killing themselves with shitty diets and very little effort or attention is going to that, beyond the very related topic and common opinion that health care should be provided to all, even if someone else has to pay your way.

 

Not for nothing and despite my "awakening" to this subject I think people should be free to put whatever shit they want int their bodies, though more obvious and accessible information should be available as to the consequences. I do not believe we should legislate away people's desire to eat shitty, but like gun ownership, I believe its that individuals responsibility and that they should be responsible for their own actions. Regardless of it all, if we were really concerned about protecting as many innocent lives as possible, we'd all be arguing the merits of healthy diets and how that might prevent obesity and disease, as well as improve quality of life in general, considering the impact of that on society versus the tiny minuscule of innocent people across our population that are affected by gun deaths each year.

[misteraven]

Oh yeah, doc says I'm actually pretty healthy otherwise and I'm scheduled to get a new blood test at the 8 week mark in which he believes that diet and exercise should bring my glucose levels down significantly. That after a few more months, should I keep with it, I should be back to normal levels and that the by product of those efforts is that statistically it improves my chances of not developing health problems or disease by as much as 400%.

 

*for those wondering.

[One Man Banned]

.

 

Yeah man you're a little late to the party re: food, diet, food production, etc., but better late than never. Americans are definitely killing themselves with food, and allowing themselves to be killed by food. You really need to read the labels and understand them, the majority of food products contain the most unhealthy additives and fillers. Of those, many are dervied from the same few products such as corn, soy, palm oil, or sugars, and the production of those things are controlled by a few rich companies and conglomerates. Lot of good documentaries have come out on this over the years, think Food Inc. was one. There was a pretty informative doc I found on Youtube, a bit old, but it was about Big Sugar, the sugar industry. Sugars in this country are super fucked up. The sugar industry basically runs slave plantations to produce large quantities of sugar cheap. Then there's sugars such as high fructose corn syrup and the science behind that- how can we make shit more sweet and addictive? With corn syrup, because if you used that much raw sugar in a drink there would be granules sitting in the bottom and you wouldn't buy/drink that, but corn syrup dissoves right in. You can look at how farmers are forced to overproduce corn and soy and how those 2 products load our foods, the farmers are essentially forced to produce or perish, and you can look at how the seed companies (particularly Monsanto, also makers of Agent Orange) have a monopoly on crop production in the U.S. You can look at the manipulation of the dairy industry. When Americans wanted to eat more healthy they wanted reduced fat or skim milk. But what to do with all the rest of that milk? Is it a surprise that we saw a rise in cheese production around that time? We were bombarded with Real Cheese, California Cheese, Wisconsin Cheese, on billboards, in magazines. And of course, the Drink Milk campaigns. Google and look this shit up. All this and more have affected diabetes, obesity, cancer, more. We're all being force fed, willfully.

[Mercer]

I got the same wakeup call myself when I went in for a checkup about 2 years ago. Pre-Diabetic is a much better diagnosis than full Diabetic. Most people can't afford to even get that warning.

 

Here's an interesting recent JRE Podcast that goes very in depth on this subject.

 

[misteraven]

I got the same wakeup call myself when I went in for a checkup about 2 years ago. Pre-Diabetic is a much better diagnosis than full Diabetic. Most people can't afford to even get that warning.

 

Here's an interesting recent JRE Podcast that goes very in depth on this subject.

 

 

Hey Mercer, welcome back and happy new year! Will listen to that podcast for sure, thanks.