If you're seeing this topic then another mass shooting hap…

On June 14 2016 03:36 farvacola wrote:
That gun violence figures include a high number of suicides doesn't really counsel against stronger gun control. In fact, strengthened mental health checks pretty clearly address, in part, both suicides and homicides.

On June 14 2016 03:04 oBlade wrote:

This is the vox.com metric where there doesn't even have to be a fatality for it to be counted. Indeed, a large number of the incidents resulted in no deaths. It would be more appropriate to think of most of those as "shootings" than "mass shootings" and you can see there must be a difference somewhere when top news networks aren't scrambling to get daily coverage in the vein of Orlando, San Bernardino, etc. That category includes things like drive-by shootings, drunk people having a bar disagreement, criminals shooting at each other in the street, domestic violence. That's different than someone deliberately wanting to kill a bunch of (random) innocent people.

Do basic dimensional analysis, there's 330 million people in the US, 365 days a year, one "vox.com shooting" per day, you're talking about one such shooting per million people, and if the cutoff is 4 people being shot, that's 0.0004%. Sounds a lot less threatening than "every day," doesn't it? The reason we don't like mass shootings is qualitative. It's not because there's a statistically high risk of dying from it. If that were our concern, the country would only spend money on cancer and heart disease. It's because we think society is a place where defenseless people should never get massacred.


2/3 of those are suicides, which, while a problem, is a different kind of problem than someone going to a public place with the explicit intention of killing as many people as possible.


You must know there's no magic piece of paper you can write on to make 500 million guns just disappear. In reality, you would be taking away people's right to defend themselves, and you could just as easily end up like Mexico or Brazil when it comes to crime.

On June 14 2016 05:14 Simberto wrote:


So on one hand, guns are not really that threatening due to statistics and do not warrant even the slightest amount of control.

On June 14 2016 05:14 Simberto wrote:
And on the other hand, islamic terrorism is a horrible threat to every single american that needs to be dealt with no matter the cost.

It is absolutely necessary to give up all of your freedoms to combat islamic terrorism, but you will not move an inch to maybe possibly consider trying to find data to think about making a law to stop selling guns to mentally ill people.

On June 14 2016 05:14 Simberto wrote:
And that is despite the fact of all of the statistics saying that you are more likely to drown in your bathtub than to be victim of terrorism.

On June 14 2016 05:14 Simberto wrote:
And you are far more likely to be shot when you own a gun.

On June 14 2016 06:18 oneofthem wrote:
guns are not extensively regulated when people with terrorist links and on watch lists can still pass the 'background check' for buying guns. try fixing that first

On June 14 2016 06:36 oBlade wrote:

Are you referring to any cases in particular? Because San Bernardino and Orlando were self-radicalized.

The reason you put people on a watch list is presumably because law enforcement/intelligence is supposed to be watching them. It's not a "Oops, your rights have been suspended without due process" list. Implicit in this is that the intelligence community wants potentially dangerous people doing things over the table so it's easier to keep an eye on them.

On June 14 2016 02:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
Consequences of amending the Constitution and/or banning guns:
Pro: Potentially save tens of thousands of American lives every year.
Con: Hurt the feelings of people who like guns.

On June 14 2016 06:44 Plansix wrote:
I can be denied the right to fly on a plane or get a passport, but not a AR-15 under the current laws. That is pretty dumb. Currently I can threaten someone’s life, have a long history of violence and a restraining order out against me and the cops won’t even get a heads up if I buy a pistol, rifle and 2000 rounds.

On June 14 2016 06:40 oneofthem wrote:

even self radicalized people can be on watch lists, or be under investigation.

On June 14 2016 06:40 oneofthem wrote:
not letting guns into the hands of people with suspected terrorist tendencies/ties is very reasonable and constitutional too

On June 14 2016 07:05 KwarK wrote:

The founders didn't enshrine the right to fly on a plane in the constitution. The removal of constitutionally guaranteed rights is very different from the denial of a service. You can argue that guns should have the stature that they have but for as long as they do have the stature that they have within the US system it is apples and oranges.

On June 14 2016 07:08 oBlade wrote:

They can, but in those cases, they weren't. But those watch lists contain hundreds of thousands of people and have not been populated under the assumption that everyone on them, ignoring the mistakes for now, is to be stripped of a right that usually only felons lose. You should make a new No-Gun List for that.


This is what we want to happen:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/01/14/terror-suspect-arrested-outside-ohio-gun-store/21782153/

On June 14 2016 07:07 oneofthem wrote:
^even heller makes room for 'reasonable regulation' and there is no universe in which terror watchlist based restriction isn't reasonable.

On June 14 2016 07:19 oBlade wrote:
Of course they can't arrest everybody. They're not supposed to be able to arrest people who haven't conspired to commit any crime.

On June 14 2016 07:17 KwarK wrote:

I'm just saying it's a little more complicated than the comparison with flights would suggest. Furthermore if you wish to make a list to deny people a right then it'll need to be a pretty transparent and accountable list with a process for verifying the people on it and contesting mistakes. Basically it can't be anything like the current list.