EPTAnd that's a good thing in my mind.
If you're seeing this topic then another mass shooting hap…
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ForTehDarkseid
8139 Posts
And that's a good thing in my mind. | ||
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ahswtini
Northern Ireland22212 Posts
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On June 16 2016 00:43 ForTehDarkseid wrote: I doubt US citizens would allow gun market to be regulated with the licenses and all that stuff. And that's a good thing in my mind. Here's the thing, the US citizens WOULD allow the gun market to be regulated with licenses. It's the NRA that doesn't "allow" it. Surveys show that the US citizens are marginally in favor of certain specific regulation like background checks (when it's not specifically called regulation), and something like a 57% majority are in favor of regulation when that specific word is used. On June 16 2016 00:45 ahswtini wrote: the issue with requiring a gun license is that by the very nature of a license, it no longer becomes a right but a privilege. licensing is also registration, which pro-gunners maintain will one day allow for confiscation. im sure if there was a way of absolutely guaranteeing gun control measures would end at the "gun license", it would make it much more palatable to pro-gunners. currently, the pro-gunners refuse to yield a single inch, because of their (well-founded) belief that it never stops at that one inch. their rights will be continually eroded at each available opportunity. and they only have to point to britain to show that it is the case. Cars are subject to regulations, saving probably hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide every year, and it's not like it's massively pervasive. Cars being a privilege is fine and probably a damn good thing. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States45684 Posts
On June 16 2016 00:45 ahswtini wrote: the issue with requiring a gun license is that by the very nature of a license, it no longer becomes a right but a privilege. licensing is also registration, which pro-gunners maintain will one day allow for confiscation. im sure if there was a way of absolutely guaranteeing gun control measures would end at the "gun license", it would make it much more palatable to pro-gunners. currently, the pro-gunners refuse to yield a single inch, because of their (well-founded) belief that it never stops at that one inch. their rights will be continually eroded at each available opportunity. and they only have to point to britain to show that it is the case. I think that's the problem; we need to make it crystal clear that owning a modern gun in the year 2016 is a privilege for all practical purposes, regardless of the outdated Constitutional "right" referring to muskets and well-regulated militia. After all, not everyone deserves to have a gun, and some people deserve to lose their gun-owning privileges. | ||
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ahswtini
Northern Ireland22212 Posts
On June 16 2016 00:50 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I think that's the problem; we need to make it crystal clear that owning a modern gun in the year 2016 is a privilege for all practical purposes, regardless of the outdated Constitutional "right" referring to muskets and well-regulated militia. After all, not everyone deserves to have a gun, and some people deserve to lose their gun-owning privileges. saying the 2nd amendment only applies so muskets is like saying the 1st only applies to telegrams | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On June 16 2016 00:57 ahswtini wrote: saying the 2nd amendment only applies so muskets is like saying the 1st only applies to telegrams What's with that dogmatic reverence of the second amendment, though? Since the 1700's, firearms have evolved in a way that speech hasn't, and the 2nd amendment hasn't evolved to keep pace. The ban on fully automatic firearms passed the test of the supreme court in the US, showing that a line is drawn somewhere nonetheless. And it's important to note that since that ban, it's extremely difficult to acquire fully automatic firearms (you need a Class 3 FFL or whatever), and it is now *extremely rare* for fully automatic weapons to be used in shootings. | ||
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spacecoke
Sweden112 Posts
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States45684 Posts
On June 16 2016 00:57 ahswtini wrote: saying the 2nd amendment only applies so muskets is like saying the 1st only applies to telegrams And then needs to be reassessed for modern day upgrades and technology. I'm totally fine with that. That's why the Constitution can be amended... because 2016 isn't the same as 1776. | ||
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superstartran
United States4013 Posts
On June 16 2016 00:03 Simberto wrote: I guess the question is what you are hunting for. Most people hunt for some variation of deer, which tend to run away when shot at, and not attack you. Especially in europe there barely are any large predators to hunt for, and those which exist are usually protected. I guess hunting a wild boar is pretty dangerous, but this is the first time i have ever heard of someone needing a semi-automatic sidearm to hunt. Bears are by far the most dangerous creatures to encounter. They are mostly harmless unless cornered or hungry. First line of defense should be bear spray, but a hungry and desperate animal sometimes cannot be deterred except by putting it down. I've had to kill a mountain lion with my sidearm before when I was caught by surprise. So this whole idea that a sidearm is not necessary is absolute nonsense. You should always avoid confrontation with a wild predator if you can, as I have on many occasions when I've headed up north. I had to abandon an elk kill because a grizzly took it as his own. However, sometimes you or the predator get caught by surprise, or the predator sees you as prey (mostly because of idiot tourists who feed the animals). At that point a powerful sidearm is going to come in much more handy then a long and unwieldy rifle with a low rate of fire. | ||
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oBlade
United States6073 Posts
On June 16 2016 01:04 Djzapz wrote: What's with that dogmatic reverence of the second amendment, though? Since the 1700's, firearms have evolved in a way that speech hasn't, and the 2nd amendment hasn't evolved to keep pace. The ban on fully automatic firearms passed the test of the supreme court in the US, showing that a line is drawn somewhere nonetheless. And it's important to note that since that ban, it's extremely difficult to acquire fully automatic firearms (you need a Class 3 FFL or whatever), and it is now *extremely rare* for fully automatic weapons to be used in shootings. They're highly regulated, but most importantly, rare. Like grenades are technically federally legal from a gun owner's perspective, they're just illegal to make and import and register new ones, and none (or virtually none) exist for people to transfer. The same goes with automatic weapons, and they're also rare, which makes them expensive. But automatic weapons were never common in shootings. Whatever guns people have, it's going to look like those specific guns are the problem. If you hypothetically got rid of handguns and people only killed each other with rifles, people would be calling to ban rifles. If you got rid of rifles and people only killed each other with handguns (like the Virginia Tech shooter), people would be abuzz asking why is it so easy to get a portable killing device. If we had a cultural problem of terrorist snipers instead of mass shooters, people would be calling for a scope and bipod ban the same way the "Assault Weapons Ban" targeted things like pistol grips. The fact is that gun violence is trending down in the USA. The AR-15 is one of the most common rifles there is. It's long, as rifles are, and if you pull the trigger, it shoots one bullet. How do you restrict those attributes? It's such a basic gun. The Orlando shooter had two licenses to carry guns, one for security guards and one for concealed carry. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23894 Posts
On June 16 2016 02:41 oBlade wrote: They're highly regulated, but most importantly, rare. Like grenades are technically federally legal from a gun owner's perspective, they're just illegal to make and import and register new ones, and none (or virtually none) exist for people to transfer. The same goes with automatic weapons, and they're also rare, which makes them expensive. But automatic weapons were never common in shootings. Whatever guns people have, it's going to look like those specific guns are the problem. If you hypothetically got rid of handguns and people only killed each other with rifles, people would be calling to ban rifles. If you got rid of rifles and people only killed each other with handguns (like the Virginia Tech shooter), people would be abuzz asking why is it so easy to get a portable killing device. If we had a cultural problem of terrorist snipers instead of mass shooters, people would be calling for a scope and bipod ban the same way the "Assault Weapons Ban" targeted things like pistol grips. The fact is that gun violence is trending down in the USA. The AR-15 is one of the most common rifles there is. It's long, as rifles are, and if you pull the trigger, it shoots one bullet. How do you restrict those attributes? It's such a basic gun. The Orlando shooter had two licenses to carry guns, one for security guards and one for concealed carry. While I enjoy shooting a 30 round mag as much as the next guy, mag restrictions would be helpful. Not to say no one would be able to have mags over say 5 rounds for rifles 7 for pistols but that it would take an additional layer of screening. Same for an AR-15 vs a bolt action .22. Before we go around the bush of "that doesn't stop everything", no it doesn't, because it's not supposed to. We don't make laws to make something never happen (or at least that's a dumb idea), we make laws so that when they do we can hold them accountable (ignoring for the moment our failed prison industrial complex). Between Hillary and the disingenuous conversation surrounding guns it's more clear for me (who obviously leans left) just how full of it many on the left (in political office specifically) are totally full of it. | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On June 16 2016 02:41 oBlade wrote: They're highly regulated, but most importantly, rare. Like grenades are technically federally legal from a gun owner's perspective, they're just illegal to make and import and register new ones, and none (or virtually none) exist for people to transfer. The same goes with automatic weapons, and they're also rare, which makes them expensive. But automatic weapons were never common in shootings. Whatever guns people have, it's going to look like those specific guns are the problem. If you hypothetically got rid of handguns and people only killed each other with rifles, people would be calling to ban rifles. If you got rid of rifles and people only killed each other with handguns (like the Virginia Tech shooter), people would be abuzz asking why is it so easy to get a portable killing device. If we had a cultural problem of terrorist snipers instead of mass shooters, people would be calling for a scope and bipod ban the same way the "Assault Weapons Ban" targeted things like pistol grips. The fact is that gun violence is trending down in the USA. The AR-15 is one of the most common rifles there is. It's long, as rifles are, and if you pull the trigger, it shoots one bullet. How do you restrict those attributes? It's such a basic gun. The Orlando shooter had two licenses to carry guns, one for security guards and one for concealed carry. The full auto firearms are rare because they're highly regulated, they're not rare "in a vacuum" so to speak. I'm not calling for a ban anyway as you can see, I'm calling for regulation. If you regulate semi automatic handguns, then there's going to be fewer of those. If you regulate semi automatic rifles, there's going to be fewer of those. People will start using less effective weapons to do their shootings. Maybe people will start calling for regulation of those too. Do you restrict semi-auto rifles? Well yeah, why not? It's restricted here in Canada and I am in the process of doing a lot of annoying stuff to get my hands on one eventually. Am I oppressed under a tyrannical government? I hardly think so. It's very laborious for me to get an AR15 and that's a good thing. And I don't care about the pistol grip or the terms that'd be used in a legislation that'd aim to make semi-auto firearms less readily available. Restrict all the guns with those "basic attributes". In Canada all semi automatic rifles with a pistol grip are restricted, I believe. What's important though is I can still get it. Or I can more easily get something like a Ruger Mini-14 because it doesn't have a pistol grip - and I think that's a bit silly. Restrict that too. Whatever. There's no real value in a complete lack of regulation. Put a few steps to climb before you can get the guns. Those who really care will do it. Sick people might resort to less regulated weapons which should presumably be less deadly. It's a perfectly reasonable middle ground which would statistically save lives in a nation of 300mil people and it would gradually decrease the number of guns flowing into the market while not preventing people who really want them from getting them. And since I've used the term "regulation" like a billion times many people would read me and they'd say like oh my God that's Obamer wanting to take my gunz and he's a nazi! Nah. People underestimate the power of administrative fuckery. I say it's a small price to pay. | ||
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Kickboxer
Slovenia1308 Posts
Wow, how nice it must be to not have Mexico and South/Central America at your borders. Must be nice to have a nearly 95% homogenous people which tends to reduce crime rates. You mean to tell me that Slovenia isn't America? What a shock. Thanks for enlightening us that we're actually different countries with different issues. Just one thing, you might want to read your first and second paragraphs and spot the duplicity. Maybe we should have some crips and bloods or MS13 emigrate to Slovenia to even things out a bit, eh? I don't understand. In America, armed civilians are battling gangs? Is that your point or something? You have latino gangs because of the "war" on drugs, p4p most retarded policy of all time, especially since tons of people in the US obviously want to buy them. You have black gangs because zero social mobility and zero "socialism". In that climate being a gangbanger / dealer is the only legitimate career path. I'm sorry but from the overseas perspective these things are painfully clear. The gun violence is because everyone has guns. Legal guns create an environment where every conflict, including road rage and romantic breakup, potentially becomes a life-or-death situation. With the amount of crazy, desperate, drunk or just plain "young and angry" people running around, social explosions become inevitable. So, the 2nd amendment is the cause and reason of "radical" gun violence and now that every criminal and his dog have 7 firearms in your country, because you have been selling them wholesale in kiosks, there's basically no way back. I can understand that part, but the frothing defense of the EMENDMENT is downright comical. The amendment is going to wreck you. | ||
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opisska
Poland8852 Posts
I am not really sure what would be better for US today, but "250 years ago they wanted to protect the universal right to bear arms" should not be an argument at all. | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On June 16 2016 05:14 opisska wrote: I honestly don't understand the american obsession with arcane laws from two centuries ago. I understand that for the pro-gun people, the 2nd amendment is a convenient "argument", but why is everyone so happy to buy it? It's one sentence, taken miles out of context, approved by people that have very little to do with the most american citizens today. Traditionalism as a concept is completely irrational in the world that profoundly changes every decade and I feel it is abused by anyone cherry-picking "traditions" when convenient to them. Wouldn't it be much better to sit down and reconsider all contentious issues, instead of following outdated laws for the sake of following outdated laws? I am not really sure what would be better for US today, but "250 years ago they wanted to protect the universal right to bear arms" should not be an argument at all. Yeah I agree. We can about it this way: imagine the second-and-a-half amendment was the right to bear motor vehicles (lul). One day, those cars will be rendered obsolete and will be considered wildly dangerous as road accidents will be nearly nonexistent due to self-driving cars that are solar powered or whatever the hell they come up with. We'll be faced with like, human driven cars that increase the fatality rate by 50000% over self-driving cars. Now understandably there are people who like cars with gas engines and they'll want to drive them anyway. And that's fine. However this comes with a huge risk, and the legislator needs to recognize that and adjust their laws. And so those cars will need to be regulated because they pose a significant public health risk which CAN be avoided or at the very least diminished. Laws need to be based on reality, and now we have to let any idiot drive a 2 ton hunk of death at 60 mph because it's convenient, but in the future that won't really make sense. | ||
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Nukid
United States240 Posts
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saocyn
United States937 Posts
The fact that more and more youths and deaths that occur BECAUSE it's unregulated and misused should be a call for reform. It's understandable if no murders, deaths, robbery, occur because of this, but that isn't the case. | ||
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FiWiFaKi
Canada9859 Posts
If there was actual evidence of guns being bad, I could see an argument. The reality is that the US has a homicide rate of 3.9 per 100,000 people. For reference, western countries average around 1.0 per 100,000 people (Germany 0.9, Sweden 0.9, Australia 1.0, France 1.2). Next, statistics say that 72.5% of homicides are committed by firearms, so that's 2.8275 per 100,000 people. Assuming that you can prevent all homicides by regulating guns, you'll at best still be at the rate of 1.0725 per 100,000 people. Furthermore, it's extremely stupid quoting number of killings in US versus other countries, because the US is so much bigger. Yes, 500~ people died in mass shootings in 2015 (worst mass shooting year in history) in the USA. To be clear, that is 1 in 640,000 people a year. So onto the numbers, roughly 9048 people die from gun shootings in the US every year, so that's 1 in 35,400 people. And to be clear, no amount of banning or regulation would get that number down to zero, not to mention the lives that guns do save. Currently in the US you have a 1 in 443~ probability you will die from gun use assuming a life expectancy of 80. Just to pull a random number out of my ass, assume that you'd reduce this number by 50% in 20 years, that's 4500~ deaths. Now compare that to the amount of people that die from unintentional injuries every year, 130,000 people, or how about the 40,000 people dying every year from suicide? Honestly, I'm not sure what percentage of homicides is due to crime and gang related activity, but I'd wager around 50-75%. I'm having trouble finding sources, so this article says in NYC it's 49% due to only gangs, so I'll be conservative and assume 4500 deaths in United States occur to people not involved with serious crime. Compare that to 32,700~ deaths involving car accidents, 2500~ due to choking, 2700~ due to fires, 25,000~ due to falls, 2,000 due to drowning, and "only" 600 due to accidental shootings. We might as well require people to have a swimming license before they go swimming (plus 50% of the population can't even swim) if we're going to have firearm licenses and all that. So kindly, big brother government, fuck off. Originally I had the liberal view that yes, guns are bad, lets get rid of them, but I switched. It's such a nonsense argument, spending so much money and pissing off so many people, to an issue that is hugely over exaggerated. I sincerely think any competent person cannot think restricting guns in the US is a good idea (if we got to decide at the start it'd be a different argument). Just continue to educate to populace, and the rates will steadily decrease. Every "freedom" that people receive is naturally going to cause some potential risk, and the policy of zero crime, zero of anything is unattainable. It's about finding the right balance of freedom and security, and this is one glaring issue I feel like the democrats are completely backwards on. | ||
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FiWiFaKi
Canada9859 Posts
On June 16 2016 09:36 saocyn wrote: It's rather laughable that, we live in a country who thinks guns should be given out freely and with very little regulation. The concept of a person having the POWER to END ANY life at his whim or discretion sounds preposterous. it's a cold hard logic and fact to get to the bottom of this, compare every scenario that a person who had a gun was able to prevent a suicide bomber, robber, rapist, w/e and then compare the amount of scenarios where guns are misused and taken innocent lives. How many lives has a gun saved vs how many lives did it actually take? The concept of every person needs one to protect themselves sounds like horse shit if were to actually get the statistics of that. The fact that more and more youths and deaths that occur BECAUSE it's unregulated and misused should be a call for reform. It's understandable if no murders, deaths, robbery, occur because of this, but that isn't the case. And cutting someone's neck with a knife, smashing their head with a bat or crowbar, injecting people with one of the many substances you can buy at your home hardware store - or 3D printing a gun nowadays. Come on, we live in a society... i.e. we need shared values, we need to work together. Maybe it's possible to function completely secluded from everyone else, but is this really how you'd like to envision the human race? I don't have a gun, I don't live in a place like the US, but I will say that a guns bring a sense of freedom, even though it may not be a tangible one. Anyway, it's nice to feel like you have some control in your life, and you COULD do something, even if you wouldn't. It's nice having more choice than choosing whether to buy the red or green peppers in your supermarket... It's bullshit how we need to wait 1-2 months to get a fishing license (and pay for it too) here when we want to go with a friend in a one-off occurrence, doing this with guns... I dunno, I'm not a fan. | ||
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MoosyDoosy
United States4519 Posts
On February 20 2012 03:11 Yongwang wrote: Hello everyone in this other thread! As to answer the OP's question, as I'm sure you already know my stance on this from the other thread, I fully support the right to bear arms and the right to carry. At the end of the day, there is no legitimate reason for the government to take away either of those fundamental rights. Remember kids, fear is not a reason to take away people's freedom. This is absolutely false. I hear people say "oh government's taking away our guns, stop them!" and that's absolutely false. There's this special fearmongering around Obama that's especially ridiculous because he's never done anything of that sort. In fact, more guns have been bought during his term as president than any other time. And don't think Obama's spreading guns either. What he has been trying to do is push through standard checks and procedures that should take place. A comparison can be made with buying a car. When you buy car, you have to prove that you have the ability to by obtaining a driver's license, show you have no medical condition that prevents you from driving, etc, etc. Why are these things in check? Because we saw ridiculous auto fatality rates in the past. So we researched why that was the case and put different things in check. One part was making sure the driver was responsible and other steps such as fixing roads, stepping up driving laws and enforcement were others. In some states, this is not the case with guns. You can walk into any store and buy a gun with ammunition as you want. That's without any of the prerequisite steps like a driver's license, showing you have no medical condition, etc, etc. All we want are some standard checks in place like background checks that make sense. And you know what's ridiculous? It's been stated and it's known that the FBI cannot stop a known ISIS endorser from walking into a shop and buying a gun. They have a list of individuals that visit ISIS supportive sites and they can stop them from boarding an airplane but they can't stop them from buying a gun. When you think about it, isn't it ridiculous? An ISIS supporter can't board a plane but they can buy a gun. And that's because whenever background checks and other procedures are proposed as prerequisites to buying a gun that could show an ISIS supporter for who they are, the NRA raises its banner and rallies gun owners under the false pretense that the government is taking away their guns. NO. That is absolutely not the case. I don't understand why people are so adamant about this. If you are sane and capable of using firearms you can still access them in the future. But the steps that people want to put in place are to ensure the insane are not walking into a shop and buying firearms. There are other implications of this. In other countries where guns are less easily obtainable, police methods revolve around coercing an attacker into submitting without force. There are videos of police from European countries surrounding a machete or knife wielder until the attacker submits to arrests. In America, we shoot that attacker on sight. Why? Because police are trained to shoot in such situations because the attacker might have a gun. If we make guns only available to those capable and sane enough to wield them, they have a means of self-defense and we can change police training as well. I am in full support of the 2nd amendment and would never propose taking it down. But making sure insane individuals don't get access to guns easily is not taking down the 2nd amendment but supporting it imo. | ||
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