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I can't believe I live in a time where not only are mass shootings common place but the general political untouchable matter of gun controls means the only solution is generally going to be... Well just carry a gun yourself so you can protect yourself and your loved ones. I'm sure media exposure has become more absolute but Holy shit it's every few months now.
That's great and all... But I can't be the only one that simply doesn't want to live in a country where it's a practically mandatory requirement to carry a firearm to feel secure(so the politicians on the right say anyway) . I thought we were supposed to be vaguely civilized or something.
See I do actually carry concealed and have hundreds of hours of training to back it up. Most people don't and they're just as liable to do more harm than good in a high stress situation. I'd be so much happier to not have this feeling to carry though. I don't want to and yet I feel likewise compelled because I know how insanely easy it is to acquire guns here.
Disciplined firearm ownership.... Yea that went out the window at some point.
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I mean, the idea is as old as Hobbes. As long as the population does not forfeit their right to violence there can be no civil society, it affects police violence, too. It's no wonder there are so many accidents if everybody has to fear for their lives because the whole population is armed to the teeth. There basically can never be any real trust.
It boggles my mind how people would people rather live with that level of violence which costs an absurd amount of lives instead of just doing what almost any other country has done long ago.
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It's called population control. If enough people kill themselves and each other off, then the economy of that country can survive. True, the amount of deaths aren't high enough to really affect economies and most industrialized countries don't have these problems nearly as much, just bear with it.
Jayme, I did military service in the Marines and I'm qualified to operate pretty much everything except a tank. But at the same time, I'm mortified of carrying a weapon just for the off-chance someone takes it the wrong way, concealed or not. I don't need that in my life.
Being responsible and law-abiding means jackshit if you carry a weapon. You are inviting danger whether you think so or not. Criminals will be criminals and arming every citizen to the teeth isn't the correct response. BGC aren't extensive for the simple reason it costs money to do so. And WalMart and other businesses don't want to spend the money to check who they are selling to.
I suggest they force the person who wants to buy a weapon, pay for their own extensive background check. And make the price absurd. Same with licenses and training. A high price deters a lot of people from doing many things.
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That sounds like a good idea but it's not. Criminals won't follow the law and the mentally insane are still going to have access to buy guns if they are undiagnosed. If they think they will die or go to jail for the act what value do they have for money?
Regular gun crime and gun deaths are actually trending downward surprisingly. I'm for more training and gun safety classes but only law abiding people will follow the law.
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On October 03 2015 14:02 Sermokala wrote:
That sounds like a good idea but it's not. Criminals won't follow the law and the mentally insane are still going to have access to buy guns if they are undiagnosed. If they think they will die or go to jail for the act what value do they have for money?
Regular gun crime and gun deaths are actually trending downward surprisingly. I'm for more training and gun safety classes but only law abiding people will follow the law.
Exactly. There is nothing to deter criminals without taking a militaristic attitude towards gun crime. You don't want people sneaking food into theaters? Frisk and check every person/purse. Don't want someone to run a red light? Automatic tire spikes at every intersection. Slippery slope arguments are all that will happen in this debate. It's American gun culture. Although I hate to admit it, it's not going anywhere. The best you can do is live a happy, content, and productive life. If something unfortunate happens, well, as a great man once said, "Stuff Happens."
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That sounds like a good idea but it's not. Criminals won't follow the law and the mentally insane are still going to have access to buy guns if they are undiagnosed. If they think they will die or go to jail for the act what value do they have for money?
That's actually no argument. Make psychological evaluations and thorough backgroundchecks mandatory for gun owners (like in germany and i assume other european countries).
The biggest problem in my mind next to the general "i want to be a badass-attitude" (obviously there's people like ZerO too, who seems to be sensible) is simply the easy availability. I mean, if you get to the point that you sell shotguns, rifles and other kinds of guns in supermarkets, .. I can't even explain how much that boggles the mind of a person that didn't grow up in a culture where gun ownership is pretty much mandatory.
I mean.. You buy a "thing", that is purely designed to kill another person. To take a life. That's its purpose. Yeah yeah, there's sport rifles, but you don't carry them around. I do think making sure that you're the right person to carry it, is not asked too much. That includes jumping through hoops like psychological evaluations, checkups and stuff like that.
Now that being said, of course there's the trouble of so many guns being unregistered in the US, and i agree: you won't control that problem by putting new laws/controls/bans in place. That ship is pretty much sailed. What you can do though, is start to make the US a better/safer place for your kids, and maybe theirs. There is no short term solution like "collect all the guns and melt them, there, done". This is (and imho, has to be) a process over decades, which has to start by throwing every single politcian out who has ties to the gun industry - and in that regard is automatically against anything that takes away from his business.
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I don't understand why everyone is always so concerned and gets up in arms when people are shot to death when way more people die from things like alcohol or car crashes. Is it sad when these mass shootings occur? Of course. But there are so many other things that kill just as many people if not more that get nowhere net as much attention.
Edit: Actually I guess I do. It is a politically charged issue so the media always reports on it to get viewers. Causing people focus on this instead of larger less political issues.
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On October 04 2015 00:54 Chewbacca. wrote:
I don't understand why everyone is always so concerned and gets up in arms when people are shot to death when way more people die from things like alcohol or car crashes. Is it sad when these mass shootings occur? Of course. But there are so many other things that kill just as many people if not more that get nowhere net as much attention.
The key difference is intent. A mass shooting is more comparable to someone driving their car through a sidewalk full of pedestrians on purpose, which gets just as much attention.
We also do an incredible amount to try and prevent car crashes and deaths with significant improvement over the years through increased regulation, while guns are a taboo topic.
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On October 04 2015 00:54 Chewbacca. wrote:
I don't understand why everyone is always so concerned and gets up in arms when people are shot to death when way more people die from things like alcohol or car crashes. Is it sad when these mass shootings occur? Of course. But there are so many other things that kill just as many people if not more that get nowhere net as much attention.
Edit: Actually I guess I do. It is a politically charged issue so the media always reports on it to get viewers. Causing people focus on this instead of larger less political issues.
there is a difference if you get killed because you put yourself in immediate danger (drinking alcohol) not immediate danger but still in a dangerous situation (driving a car) or doing something completely unrelated like sitting in a random spot and get shot by a lunatic.
people sympathise more with the latter.
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On October 04 2015 00:54 Chewbacca. wrote:
I don't understand why everyone is always so concerned and gets up in arms when people are shot to death when way more people die from things like alcohol or car crashes. Is it sad when these mass shootings occur? Of course. But there are so many other things that kill just as many people if not more that get nowhere net as much attention.
Edit: Actually I guess I do. It is a politically charged issue so the media always reports on it to get viewers. Causing people focus on this instead of larger less political issues.
Right, why bother with issues when other issues exist?
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I am going to sound like a real douche here, but I'll hit the topic of gun control...
I am waiting for the day when a shooting like this happens in an area like Texas or somewhere else in the south where "Everyone" carries guns and is a super gun fanatic. According to their MO, they will pull out their gun and kill the shooter and be the hero. Sounds like a great story. But what is more likely to happen, is that shots will be fired, 5 people will pull out and raise their guns, and no one will know who the original shooter was. 10-15 people will all die shooting at each other, no one knowing who fired first, with everyone "protecting" themselves. This would be even more tragic if the event occurred over 15-20 minutes or longer, over a large area. It is likely to become VERY confusing for victims and police.
Of course, I hope this never happens and I hope no one EVER dies in a mass shooting again in the US, but I think the notion that "more guns" will prevent the problem seems very misguided. There have been instances where a lone shooter has been taken down by a lone off duty officer, or even on duty, but that is still more of a shooter vs police scenario. Wait until 15 frightened old white people all pull out their guns at once, I promise it will not be a good thing.
Lastly, as to the argument that more gun carrying will prevent these shootings ... um these people know they are going to die. They kill themselves or die to police every time. That is part of the plan, not a prevention.
Unfortunately, we will continue to hear the "more guns will mean less shooting" argument until it happens enough to become undisputable. But we know how this kina stuff goes in America, sadly.
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On October 04 2015 01:30 CursOr wrote:
I am going to sound like a real douche here, but I'll hit the topic of gun control...
I am waiting for the day when a shooting like this happens in an area like Texas or somewhere else in the south where "Everyone" carries guns and is a super gun fanatic. According to their MO, they will pull out their gun and kill the shooter and be the hero. Sounds like a great story. But what is more likely to happen, is that shots will be fired, 5 people will pull out and raise their guns, and no one will know who the original shooter was. 10-15 people will all die shooting at each other, no one knowing who fired first, with everyone "protecting" themselves. This would be even more tragic if the event occurred over 15-20 minutes or longer, over a large area. It is likely to become VERY confusing for victims and police.
Of course, I hope this never happens and I hope no one EVER dies in a mass shooting again in the US, but I think the notion that "more guns" will prevent the problem seems very misguided. There have been instances where a lone shooter has been taken down by a lone off duty officer, or even on duty, but that is still more of a shooter vs police scenario. Wait until 15 frightened old white people all pull out their guns at once, I promise it will not be a good thing.
Lastly, as to the argument that more gun carrying will prevent these shootings ... um these people know they are going to die. They kill themselves or die to police every time. That is part of the plan, not a prevention.
Unfortunately, we will continue to hear the "more guns will mean less shooting" argument until it happens enough to become undisputable. But we know how this kina stuff goes in America, sadly.
sounds like the next quentin tarantino movie
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What about this one, which more closely exemplifies the issue he is talking about:
http://www.khou.com/story/news/2015/09/27/one-man-injured-after-carjacking-shooting-at-gas-station/72923278/
Our gun culture is out of control, and as a result the conservatives are right on this issue, for the most part. Gun control won't work. There are way too many guns, and they are far too accessible for people wanting to do criminal behavior. Tightening restrictions on law-abiding citizens will do nothing to curb that, unfortunately. I wish we didn't have so many guns in circulation, but now that we do the cat is out of the proverbial bag.
The reason gun bans work in some other countries is because there weren't a huge amount of them to begin with, meaning that after the ban, the price of a gun on the black market is prohibitively expensive. I doubt that would be the case if the U.S. suddenly banned guns, not regarding how difficult that would be to do in the first place.
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The idea behind a ban is to get people to turn in their guns. Anybody carrying/owning one after the ban and buy back period has passed is committing a crime. The buyback is the critical part. Give people money if they turn in their guns.
Many countries that have bans on certain weapons have amnesty periods where anybody can turn anything in without being arrested or even logged as having had it. This is to decrease the amount of weapons in circulation, they are always imported from some source (know of a case of a person turning in a WW2 grenade, the police weren't amused). Making weapons isn't hard, unless you want modern assault rifles. So as with moonshine that might be a bigger problem than imports from outside the US in the case of a ban.
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On October 04 2015 03:29 ZasZ. wrote:What about this one, which more closely exemplifies the issue he is talking about: http://www.khou.com/story/news/2015/09/27/one-man-injured-after-carjacking-shooting-at-gas-station/72923278/Our gun culture is out of control, and as a result the conservatives are right on this issue, for the most part. Gun control won't work. There are way too many guns, and they are far too accessible for people wanting to do criminal behavior. Tightening restrictions on law-abiding citizens will do nothing to curb that, unfortunately. I wish we didn't have so many guns in circulation, but now that we do the cat is out of the proverbial bag. The reason gun bans work in some other countries is because there weren't a huge amount of them to begin with, meaning that after the ban, the price of a gun on the black market is prohibitively expensive. I doubt that would be the case if the U.S. suddenly banned guns, not regarding how difficult that would be to do in the first place.
^ This moronic argument keeps coming up.
Gun control can easily work. It's not like these other countries passed a law and immediately were fucking safe havens. It takes time, it takes money, it takes critical thinking, and it takes persistence to make it happen. Of course there's always a black market. You can make that black market prohibitively expensive by decreasing the supply and increasing the cost of using illegal firearms. You can add layers of bureaucracy which leave a paper trail to say who is responsible for what gun (and no, we don't have that, as it's basically optional at this point). You can buy up all the ammo like government agencies do at the end of their budget cycle. There are literally millions of ways of achieving the end goal, and it's pretty hard to discredit any of them by saying that America is unique, because it isn't.
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On October 04 2015 03:54 Jormundr wrote:Show nested quote +On October 04 2015 03:29 ZasZ. wrote:What about this one, which more closely exemplifies the issue he is talking about: http://www.khou.com/story/news/2015/09/27/one-man-injured-after-carjacking-shooting-at-gas-station/72923278/Our gun culture is out of control, and as a result the conservatives are right on this issue, for the most part. Gun control won't work. There are way too many guns, and they are far too accessible for people wanting to do criminal behavior. Tightening restrictions on law-abiding citizens will do nothing to curb that, unfortunately. I wish we didn't have so many guns in circulation, but now that we do the cat is out of the proverbial bag. The reason gun bans work in some other countries is because there weren't a huge amount of them to begin with, meaning that after the ban, the price of a gun on the black market is prohibitively expensive. I doubt that would be the case if the U.S. suddenly banned guns, not regarding how difficult that would be to do in the first place. ^ This moronic argument keeps coming up. Gun control can easily work. It's not like these other countries passed a law and immediately were fucking safe havens. It takes time, it takes money, it takes critical thinking, and it takes persistence to make it happen. Of course there's always a black market. You can make that black market prohibitively expensive by decreasing the supply and increasing the cost of using illegal firearms. You can add layers of bureaucracy which leave a paper trail to say who is responsible for what gun (and no, we don't have that, as it's basically optional at this point). You can buy up all the ammo like government agencies do at the end of their budget cycle. There are literally millions of ways of achieving the end goal, and it's pretty hard to discredit any of them by saying that America is unique, because it isn't.
Sure, the situation in the US is easily comparable to "these other countries". No reason at all why things would be more difficult in the US, not at all.
Literally millions of ways guys.
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EPT
