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On July 20 2016 10:48 dontforgetosmile wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2016 21:05 Simberto wrote:On July 19 2016 20:54 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:On July 19 2016 18:52 zatic wrote:On July 19 2016 18:32 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:On July 19 2016 03:54 Sent. wrote:
I'm pretty sure most of European countries has laws like that since decades (if not longer), I don't feel like I'm living in a doomed society. France has strict gun laws. Paris especially. 137 dead in a mass shooting last November. Still you don't really even need guns to kill massive numbers of people.We saw that with Nice last week when the madman killed 84 with a truck.We saw that with 9/11 where the hijackers used freaking box-cutters.If some crazy guy wants to kill mass numbers of people he can, guns or no guns. Today a crazy person tried to kill people in Germany. But with our moderately tight gun laws all he could get his hands on was an axe and a knife, resulting in a couple of injuries, but no deaths (except his own). See you can come up with these examples either way. The 17 year old refugee? Yeah i heard about it. Even in the USA though federal law forbids anyone under 21 purchasing a gun. I'm sure if he wanted to obtain a gun illegally he could have easily.Drugs are illegal and they are readily available.Deep web and internet in general make illegal items far easier to obtain than 20 years ago - drugs, weapons, whatever you want.Pay bitcoin.Totally untraceable.You can even 3D print firearms now that will shoot a few bullets.Video online see for yourself. All you are doing with these gun bans is reducing the ability of law abiding people to protect themselves and their families. From what i gather in the US, if you want a gun illegally, you can get one at every street corner, because guns are so common everywhere, which in turn of cause also means that illegal guns are very common everywhere. It is not easy to get a gun illegally in Germany. This is something that a lot of people don't seem to understand. The black market is linked to the legal market. If the legal market is full of guns, and anyone can take a gun from the legal to the black market, since there is no registry, your black market will also be gigantic. If there are fewer legal guns, those are harder to get, and it is even harder to take a gun from the legal market to the black market, your black market is smaller. That means that a) It is harder to find black market guns, as there are less and it is more dangerous for the seller to offer one, b) The guns that are on the black market are more expensive. This means that no, if you want to obtain a gun illegally, you could not "do so easily". If i wanted to have a gun right now, i wouldn't have the slightest idea where to even start looking. I guess i could ask some biker-type guys around a Bordello or something, but i don't think that would be very effective. So if i were to suddenly have the idea to start a murder spree, i simply wouldn't get a gun. I am pretty sure it is like this for a lot of people. Meanwhile, in the US, i would just start asking random people where i can get a gun around here, or google "Gun shop city", and have one slightly thereafter. This is the difference. It is harder to get a gun here. The black market is not obvious nor easy to find if you don't have connections. That means that fewer potential criminals have guns. Which means that some of the either think about their killing spree, or have to go kill people with a knife instead, which ends in a lot fewer deaths. It is never about preventing every single gun crime, it is about reducing the availability of guns and thus reducing the lethality of a lot of crimes simply because the effort to get a gun was too high for the criminal to go through with it. And it works like a charm. so what kind of guns do you want to restrict? is it SUCH an imperative to restrict "assault weapons" or rifles because they are used to take SOOOOOOOOO many lives? how many more restrictions are required to get 248 down to 0?
Stop trying to bait me. I am not the strawman you would like to argue with.
What i would suggest are regulations similar to those in Germany. In my experience, they work quite well.
That means to get any gun, you need to have a license that allows you to own one. These have a few requirements, including that you are
-of age
-sane
-not a major criminal
-trained in handling guns (safety etc...) and
-that you have a reason to own one (usually hunting, collecting or sports).
If the second amendment is really important to you, you could skip the "reason to own" part. Depending on the type of reason, this allows you to own certain types of guns in certain amounts. Any gun you own has to be registered to your name.
This allows you to own those guns, and have them in your house or use them for the purpose that you own them for. So you can use your hunting rifle in a hunting stand, and your sports guns in a sport shooting range. I am not a hundred percent certain here, but it is possible that you are allowed to shoot your gun at home, too.
If you wish to actually carry a gun in public, you need a different type of license which is very hard to get. Usually only if you transport valuables or if you work at a security firm.
As you can see, it is quite possible to get a gun in Germany, if you put in some effort. However, they are then mapped to your name, and you can't just resell them to criminals whenever you want to. And if you are a lunatic that wishes to start shooting people, you will probably not have the patience to go through the legal effort to get a legal gun. Which means that lunatics tend to not have guns around here. I like that state of affairs.
Of course, you can change that to your american views, if you really insist that guns need to stay a right. Just make it so that if you wish to own a gun, you have to take some safety classes, prove that you are of age and sane and not a major criminal. Something like a gun pass similar to a drivers license. Then have a central registry where people need to register the guns they own.
What specific types of guns you want to allow or disallow is a different question altogether, one that the gun rights defenders tend to focus on all the time, because it makes them superior and means that they don't really have to think about anything because "the other guy doesn't know how guns work!!!!"
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On July 19 2016 19:44 nojok wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2016 10:30 dontforgetosmile wrote:according to some people in this thread prohibition is a-ok! to paraphrase (since i don't remember) one of the sky news reporters during the turkey coup "if you don't have the guns, you don't have the power". it's a simple truth that people can't skirt around. being armed is an essential hedge against coercion. if you want to volunteer your own rights that's fine, but i'd prefer to keep mine  Coercion from who? From the state? Do you really think assault rifles will do shit in a modern warfare? If you want to protect yourself against coercion, you need the right to have tanks and jet fighters in this case. Coercion from an individual? He will have a gun too, I don't see in which case being armed give you any hedge in our Western societies.
Every object you listed is perfectly legal to own in the United States. Nobody uses any of the weapons you listed to murder people in the United States*. Murder by firearm is almost entirely committed with bog standard handguns, not these fancy military machines gun control advocates have nightmares over.
Why did you think a country originated from suspicion of an overbearing government would outlaw privately-owned fighter jets, tanks, and artillery? More importantly, why on earth did you not check whether the objects you listed were actually dangerous for public ownership or not?
For a bunch that claim that they're not worried about gun owners overthrowing the government, gun control advocates seem awfully disinterested in regulating the guns that are actually used for homicide. It seems like the guns that gun control advocates want to ban are those least likely to be used for murder but most useful for opposing the police and military. Those guns are probably the ones disproportionately used for self-defense and disproportionately unused for murder.
*Well, one person in the last eighty years. Close enough.
On July 20 2016 11:19 Simberto wrote:
Stop trying to bait me. I am not the strawman you would like to argue with.
What i would suggest are regulations similar to those in Germany. In my experience, they work quite well.
That means to get any gun, you need to have a license that allows you to own one. These have a few requirements, including that you are
-of age
-sane
-not a major criminal
-trained in handling guns (safety etc...) and
-that you have a reason to own one (usually hunting, collecting or sports).
I notice that you didn't list "self-defense" as a legitimate reason to own a firearm. Guns are used defensively in America between 50,000 and 4 million times a year, depending on who's counting and what's being counted. For reference, homicide by firearm occurs around 10,000 times per year. Under your account of German laws, you would deprive a huge chunk of gun owners of the ability to defend themselves.
According to you, these laws would even deprive almost all Americans from obtaining concealed carry licenses. Concealed carry license holders are one of the safest demographics in the United States; they're convicted of all crimes at rates lower than even the police force*. Even the most restrictive states allow politicians, celebrities, and millionaires to carry concealed weapons; German law would deprive millions of Americans of their right to self-defense outside of home.
You are literally the strawman gun rights advocates look for when they talk about European gun control.
*At least for states approximating Texas' standards for concealed carry. I can't speak for states that allow unrestricted carry.
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On July 20 2016 10:12 Chewbacca. wrote:
I don't think there are many examples of "mass shootings" being stopped by armed civilians, but smaller things like home invasions/robberies....absolutely.
Agreed, and that's why I'm fine with people keeping guns (locked away safely, away from children, etc.) in their homes but I'm not really a fan of them carrying guns in public.
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On July 20 2016 12:40 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2016 10:12 Chewbacca. wrote:
I don't think there are many examples of "mass shootings" being stopped by armed civilians, but smaller things like home invasions/robberies....absolutely. Agreed, and that's why I'm fine with people keeping guns (locked away safely, away from children, etc.) in their homes but I'm not really a fan of them carrying guns in public.
If a mass shooting is stopped by an armed license holder...it's not a mass shooting. It can rarely be proven to have otherwise been a mass shooting, either.
Mass shooting are statistically irrelevant to crimes committed outside of the home. Standard murder, rape, assault, and robbery make up the bulk of these crimes. Guns can be fairly useful for self-defense against all of the above.
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On July 20 2016 12:54 acker wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2016 12:40 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On July 20 2016 10:12 Chewbacca. wrote:
I don't think there are many examples of "mass shootings" being stopped by armed civilians, but smaller things like home invasions/robberies....absolutely. Agreed, and that's why I'm fine with people keeping guns (locked away safely, away from children, etc.) in their homes but I'm not really a fan of them carrying guns in public. If a mass shooting is stopped by an armed license holder...it's not a mass shooting. It can never be proven to otherwise have been a mass shooting, either.
? Of course it is. A mass shooting is defined as 4+ casualties (dead/ injured). If a civilian pulls out a gun while a maniac is racking up casualties and the civilian shoots and stops the maniac, then that would be an example of a carrying gun owner stopping a mass shooting. Certainly, we can also still gather data on shootings that don't hit the 4+ casualty mark either but are still stopped by civilian guns instead of police.
Mass shooting are statistically irrelevant to crimes committed outside of the home. Standard murder, rape, assault, and robbery make up the bulk of these crimes. Guns are fairly useful for self-defense against all of the above.
Compared to other crimes, sure. Just keep in mind that America statistically has a mass shooting every day :/
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On July 20 2016 12:57 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
? Of course it is. A mass shooting is defined as 4+ casualties (dead/ injured). If a civilian pulls out a gun while a maniac is racking up casualties and the civilian shoots and stops the maniac, then that would be an example of a carrying gun owner stopping a mass shooting. Certainly, we can also still gather data on shootings that don't hit the 4+ casualty mark either but are still stopped by civilian guns instead of police.
If a person pulls out a gun and stops the shooter before he racks up four casualties, it cannot be proven the gunman was ever going to rack up 4+ casualties. Therefore it can't be said that the shooter stopped a mass shooting, and it cannot be said that the situation was ever going to be a mass shooting incident in the first place.
Take a not-so-hypothetical example from last year. Let's say someone in a crowd gets angry and pulls a gun facing a group of people. Say someone else with a license intervenes and shoots the angry man before he has a chance to pull the trigger. Who can say whether the angry man was going to massacre the crowd, shoot some guy in particular in the crowd, or wave the gun around (endangering the crowd)?
On July 20 2016 12:57 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
Compared to other crimes, sure. Just keep in mind that America statistically has a mass shooting every day :/
An American drowns in their bathtub every day, too. It means we have a lot of Americans.
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On July 20 2016 13:07 acker wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2016 12:57 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
? Of course it is. A mass shooting is defined as 4+ casualties (dead/ injured). If a civilian pulls out a gun while a maniac is racking up casualties and the civilian shoots and stops the maniac, then that would be an example of a carrying gun owner stopping a mass shooting. Certainly, we can also still gather data on shootings that don't hit the 4+ casualty mark either but are still stopped by civilian guns instead of police. If a person pulls out a gun and stops the shooter before he racks up four casualties, it cannot be proven the gunman was ever going to rack up 4+ casualties. Therefore it can't be said that the shooter stopped a mass shooting, and it cannot be said that the situation was ever going to be a mass shooting incident in the first place. Take a not-so-hypothetical example from last year. Let's say someone in a crowd gets angry and pulls a gun facing a group of people. Say someone else with a license intervenes and shoots the angry man before he has a chance to pull the trigger. Who can say whether the angry man was planning on massacring the crowd or not?
If a civilian pulls out a gun while a maniac is racking up casualties and the civilian shoots and stops the maniac, then that would be an example of a carrying gun owner stopping a mass shooting. Certainly, we can also still gather data on shootings that don't hit the 4+ casualty mark either but are still stopped by civilian guns instead of police.
Either way, it's not hard to record whether a civilian with a gun stopped an attacker or not. The number of deaths caused by that attacker isn't really the point.
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On July 20 2016 13:07 acker wrote:Show nested quote +Compared to other crimes, sure. Just keep in mind that America statistically has a mass shooting every day :/ An American dies every day because a TV falls on his or her head. It means we have a lot of Americans.
First of all, citation needed.
Second, 41 people died due to televisions in 2011, and about 200 people across an entire decade (http://theweek.com/articles/469421/shocking-number-deaths-caused-by-falling-tvs).
Third, a television isn't even remotely close to an accurate analogy of a gun.
And fourth, mass shootings is a subset of the tens of thousands of gun deaths per year.
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On July 20 2016 13:13 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
First of all, citation needed.
Second, 41 people died due to televisions in 2011 (http://theweek.com/articles/469421/shocking-number-deaths-caused-by-falling-tvs).
Third, a television isn't even remotely close to an accurate analogy of a gun.
And fourth, mass shootings is a subset of the tens of thousands of gun deaths per year.
First, correction: falling appliances. Changed to bathtub drownings.
Second, you're talking about freak incidents, and dying in freak incidents is an accurate analogy.
Third: you're conflating homicides with gun with suicides with guns. Gun homicide is around ten thousand per year, give or take (I believe between 12k-13k last year). Nobody kills themselves 4+ times with anything, let alone a firearm.
On July 20 2016 13:10 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
If a civilian pulls out a gun while a maniac is racking up casualties and the civilian shoots and stops the maniac, then that would be an example of a carrying gun owner stopping a mass shooting. Certainly, we can also still gather data on shootings that don't hit the 4+ casualty mark either but are still stopped by civilian guns instead of police.
Either way, it's not hard to record whether a civilian with a gun stopped an attacker or not. The number of deaths caused by that attacker isn't really the point.
I agree that that would be an event where someone probably stopped a mass shooting, but nobody counts it as stopping a mass shooting because four people haven't been injured. It also discounts incidents where people stop or deter mass shooting incidents before they even begin or before anyone becomes a victim.
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I'm not conflating anything. You're trying to make a semantics argument against the fact that tens of thousands of gun deaths occur every year. I know that only about 1/3 of them are homicides, while most are suicides. I also know that they include mass shootings, and that mass shootings are based on guns, as opposed to televisions or bath tubs or other strawmen freak accidents whose primary purposes aren't to kill. Mass shootings aren't freak accidents, and I'm not really sure why you're going down this road.
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On July 20 2016 13:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
I'm not conflating anything. You're trying to make a semantics argument against the fact that tens of thousands of gun deaths occur every year. I know that only about 1/3 of them are homicides, while most are suicides. I also know that they include mass shootings, and that mass shootings are based on guns, as opposed to televisions or bath tubs or other strawmen freak accidents whose primary purposes aren't to kill. Mass shootings aren't freak accidents, and I'm not really sure why you're going down this road.
Think of it like this. We could lower the national speed limit on all roads by ten and save tens of thousands of lives every year almost instantly. Its proven from Scandinavia that this drastically reduces fatalities. Why isn't there as much outcry over that compared to gun violence which is statistically already on the decline.
Its not a semantics argument to say that mass shootings and suicides would be solved with mental illness legislation and to question the reasoning behind gun control advocates.
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On July 20 2016 13:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
I'm not conflating anything. You're trying to make a semantics argument against the fact that tens of thousands of gun deaths occur every year. I know that only about 1/3 of them are homicides, while most are suicides. I also know that they include mass shootings, and that mass shootings are based on guns, as opposed to televisions or bath tubs or other strawmen freak accidents whose primary purposes aren't to kill. Mass shootings aren't freak accidents, and I'm not really sure why you're going down this road.
If you're going to say that something is noteworthy in America because it happens every day, I expect you to be consistent about what you consider important. It's really that simple.
To be honest, I'm not sure why you're so upset. It's not my fault gun control proponents like to claim that few mass shootings are stopped by license holders because 4+ people don't get shot before that happens. I'd love to say that people definitively prevent or deter mass shootings with zero casualties. I'd love evidence that CWP holders stop mass shootings on a larger scale. But I can't say that.
If you want to talk about the larger picture, the 30,000 deaths committed with firearms, you absolutely have to break it down into suicides and homicides. Conflating both is disingenuous because both have completely different incentives, underlying issues, and solutions. Even the demographics are completely different. If you want to talk about the big picture about guns in general, I'd like to talk about defensive gun use as well, which outweighs death by firearm by an order (or orders. or not order) of magnitude depending on the study.
I'd also like to talk about objects that you presumably don't get angry about that have no primary purpose whatsoever, no utility for society, and kill multiple times as many people...but you probably wouldn't like that. People tend to get angry when their beer is threatened.
That said, you should probably learn a bit more about firearms if you believe that "their" primary purpose is to kill. You seem to have zero awareness about varying firearm types and firearm cultures and conflate them all into "dead bodies". This isn't even true for all firearms designed for use against other people.
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On July 20 2016 13:57 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2016 13:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
I'm not conflating anything. You're trying to make a semantics argument against the fact that tens of thousands of gun deaths occur every year. I know that only about 1/3 of them are homicides, while most are suicides. I also know that they include mass shootings, and that mass shootings are based on guns, as opposed to televisions or bath tubs or other strawmen freak accidents whose primary purposes aren't to kill. Mass shootings aren't freak accidents, and I'm not really sure why you're going down this road. Think of it like this. We could lower the national speed limit on all roads by ten and save tens of thousands of lives every year almost instantly. Its proven from Scandinavia that this drastically reduces fatalities. Why isn't there as much outcry over that compared to gun violence which is statistically already on the decline. Its not a semantics argument to say that mass shootings and suicides would be solved with mental illness legislation and to question the reasoning behind gun control advocates.
??? I agree, but he's said literally neither of those in his comments to me. While I do think that talking about speed limits and/ or mental illness legislation are useful things to talk about, neither of those are relevant to anything that acker said to me. I'd be happy to have a discussion about those other things, as I find that they're more relevant than his point about televisions and bath tubs.
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On July 20 2016 14:06 acker wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2016 13:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
I'm not conflating anything. You're trying to make a semantics argument against the fact that tens of thousands of gun deaths occur every year. I know that only about 1/3 of them are homicides, while most are suicides. I also know that they include mass shootings, and that mass shootings are based on guns, as opposed to televisions or bath tubs or other strawmen freak accidents whose primary purposes aren't to kill. Mass shootings aren't freak accidents, and I'm not really sure why you're going down this road. If you're going to say that something is noteworthy in America because it happens every day, I expect you to be consistent about what you consider important. It's really that simple. To be honest, I'm not sure why you're so upset. It's not my fault gun control proponents like to claim that few mass shootings are stopped by license holders because 4+ people don't get shot before that happens. I'd love to say that people definitively prevent or deter mass shootings with zero casualties. I'd love evidence that CWP holders stop mass shootings on a larger scale. But I can't say that. If you want to talk about the larger picture, the 30,000 deaths committed with firearms, you absolutely have to break it down into suicides and homicides. Conflating both is disingenuous because both have completely different incentives, underlying issues, and solutions. Even the demographics are completely different. If you want to talk about the big picture about guns in general, I'd like to talk about defensive gun use as well, which outweighs death by firearm by an order (or orders. or not order) of magnitude depending on the study. I'd also like to talk about objects that you presumably don't get angry about that have no primary purpose whatsoever, no utility for society, and kill multiple times as many people...but you probably wouldn't like that. People tend to get angry when their beer is threatened. That said, you should probably learn a bit more about firearms if you believe that "their" primary purpose is to kill. You seem to have zero awareness about varying firearm types and firearm cultures and conflate them all into "dead bodies". This isn't even true for all firearms designed for use against other people.
Why do you keep saying that I'm upset and angry? That repetition sounds very passive-aggressive to me.
The original statement made by Chewbacca- which I agree with because it's true- is that very few mass shootings are stopped by armed civilians. In other words, we were talking about the subset of gun deaths that happen to be mass shootings (a few hundred every year- about one per day). And your response to that was to specifically not look at mass shootings, state that those non-mass shootings aren't mass shootings (duh), and then say that we can't know whether or not they'd hypothetically become mass shootings since they were stopped early. Sure, but we weren't even talking about these "potential" mass shootings being prevented and limited to only 1-3 casualties; we were talking about mass shootings. So your points can be great ones, but they were irrelevant as responses to what was originally said.
I don't even necessarily disagree with most of what you said (except relating mass shootings- which are intentional and greater in number- to accidental deaths caused by appliances), but it makes no sense to me that you would say those things as a response to what I was initially agreeing to. That's why I'm puzzled.
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On July 20 2016 14:48 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
Why do you keep saying that I'm upset and angry? That repetition sounds very passive-aggressive to me.
The original statement made by Chewbacca- which I agree with because it's true- is that very few mass shootings are stopped by armed civilians. In other words, we were talking about the subset of gun deaths that happen to be mass shootings (a few hundred every year- about one per day). And your response to that was to specifically not look at mass shootings, state that those non-mass shootings aren't mass shootings (duh), and then say that we can't know whether or not they'd hypothetically become mass shootings since they were stopped early. Sure, but we weren't even talking about these "potential" mass shootings being prevented and limited to only 1-3 casualties; we were talking about mass shootings. So your points can be great ones, but they were irrelevant as responses to what was originally said.
I don't even necessarily disagree with most of what you said (except relating mass shootings- which are intentional and greater in number- to accidental deaths caused by appliances), but it makes no sense to me that you would say those things as a response to what I was initially agreeing to. That's why I'm puzzled.
Um, what?
Your initial statement was that, because mass shootings aren't stopped by CWL holders often, people should not carry guns in public.
+ Show Spoiler +On July 20 2016 12:40 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2016 10:12 Chewbacca. wrote:
I don't think there are many examples of "mass shootings" being stopped by armed civilians, but smaller things like home invasions/robberies....absolutely. Agreed, and that's why I'm fine with people keeping guns (locked away safely, away from children, etc.) in their homes but I'm not really a fan of them carrying guns in public.
My reply was that mass shootings make up a tiny fraction of crimes that actually happen in public that warrant an armed response, and that no counterfactual exists for mass shootings that may or may not have been stopped by CWP holders.
If you believe that stopping mass shootings is the only legitimate reason someone should carry a gun in public, well ok then. It's simply not believable that you don't care about rape and murder and armed robbery outside of the home. This confuses me; why do you believe that it's not ok for people to carry guns in public in response to more common violent crimes?
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On July 20 2016 14:23 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2016 13:57 Sermokala wrote:On July 20 2016 13:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
I'm not conflating anything. You're trying to make a semantics argument against the fact that tens of thousands of gun deaths occur every year. I know that only about 1/3 of them are homicides, while most are suicides. I also know that they include mass shootings, and that mass shootings are based on guns, as opposed to televisions or bath tubs or other strawmen freak accidents whose primary purposes aren't to kill. Mass shootings aren't freak accidents, and I'm not really sure why you're going down this road. Think of it like this. We could lower the national speed limit on all roads by ten and save tens of thousands of lives every year almost instantly. Its proven from Scandinavia that this drastically reduces fatalities. Why isn't there as much outcry over that compared to gun violence which is statistically already on the decline. Its not a semantics argument to say that mass shootings and suicides would be solved with mental illness legislation and to question the reasoning behind gun control advocates. ??? I agree, but he's said literally neither of those in his comments to me. While I do think that talking about speed limits and/ or mental illness legislation are useful things to talk about, neither of those are relevant to anything that acker said to me. I'd be happy to have a discussion about those other things, as I find that they're more relevant than his point about televisions and bath tubs.
The point is that hes questioning the reason behind your arguments. If its about saving lives then hes attacking that. If you really wanted to save lives there are many other ways to get around to that without getting into constitutional issues.
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On July 20 2016 15:24 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2016 14:23 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On July 20 2016 13:57 Sermokala wrote:On July 20 2016 13:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
I'm not conflating anything. You're trying to make a semantics argument against the fact that tens of thousands of gun deaths occur every year. I know that only about 1/3 of them are homicides, while most are suicides. I also know that they include mass shootings, and that mass shootings are based on guns, as opposed to televisions or bath tubs or other strawmen freak accidents whose primary purposes aren't to kill. Mass shootings aren't freak accidents, and I'm not really sure why you're going down this road. Think of it like this. We could lower the national speed limit on all roads by ten and save tens of thousands of lives every year almost instantly. Its proven from Scandinavia that this drastically reduces fatalities. Why isn't there as much outcry over that compared to gun violence which is statistically already on the decline. Its not a semantics argument to say that mass shootings and suicides would be solved with mental illness legislation and to question the reasoning behind gun control advocates. ??? I agree, but he's said literally neither of those in his comments to me. While I do think that talking about speed limits and/ or mental illness legislation are useful things to talk about, neither of those are relevant to anything that acker said to me. I'd be happy to have a discussion about those other things, as I find that they're more relevant than his point about televisions and bath tubs. The point is that hes questioning the reason behind your arguments. If its about saving lives then hes attacking that. If you really wanted to save lives there are many other ways to get around to that without getting into constitutional issues.
The Constitution/ 2nd Amendment is not at all clear about what is and what isn't okay to do with your gun (and which guns to use), unless you're joining the militia, and I wasn't talking about the Constitution.
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On July 20 2016 15:10 acker wrote:
If you believe that stopping mass shootings is the only legitimate reason someone should carry a gun in public, well ok then. It's simply not believable that you don't care about rape and murder and armed robbery outside of the home. This confuses me; why do you believe that it's not ok for people to carry guns in public in response to more common violent crimes?
I didn't say I didn't care about rape and murder, but for every study I find that says carrying around a gun helps deter criminal activities, I find another that says they don't. I've read articles about how there are correlations between high civilian ownership of guns and more crime, or how guns can cause escalation during a situation (potentially having a robber- who just wants your wallet- to end up attacking the victim), or how the number of prevented crimes is inappropriately extrapolated.
Here are two examples (there are countless more examples, just as how there are just as many on the pro-gun side):
""We found no support for the hypothesis that owning more guns leads to a drop or a reduction in violent crime," said study researcher Michael Monuteaux, an epidemiologist and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. "Instead, we found the opposite.""
~ http://www.livescience.com/51446-guns-do-not-deter-crime.html
"5) Underneath all these statistical problems is a larger conceptual problem. When we hear "defensive gun use," we're invited to think of a law-abiding citizen confronting a criminal aggressor. Yet crime does not always present itself so neatly. The vast majority of homicides take place between intimates, not strangers. Assaults, too, are often an acquaintance crime. When guns are produced by two parties to a confrontation, one party may deter the other. Yet it may be seriously misleading to designate one of these persons as a "criminal" and the other as a "law-abiding citizen." Perhaps when we hear "defensive gun use," we should not imagine a householder confronting a prowler. Perhaps we should think of two acquaintances, both with some criminal history, getting into a drunken fight, both producing guns, one ending up dead or wounded, the other ending up as a "DGU" statistic -- but both of them entangled in a scenario that would have produced only injuries if neither had carried a gun."
~ http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/30/opinion/frum-guns-safer/
So, given the tons of studies that are apparently pro-gun and the tons of studies that are apparently anti-gun, I'd rather err on the side of caution (or, at least, what I consider to be caution) and prefer not to be around strangers with guns. Of course, in a concealed/ open carry state, I don't exactly have a choice, but I'm merely talking about what I would consider a personal preference of mine. That's why I said "I'm not a fan..."
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Why do zero states in America follow the findings concerning resistance with a firearm? Even the states that favor strict gun control regulations offer concealed carry permits to the rich, famous, and (sometimes) endangered. New York City is infamous in concealed carry circles for only handing out carry licenses to politicians, celebrities, and millionaires*.
In my understanding of the world, homes with lead paint only go to the poor. Gun carry licenses appear to go the opposite direction; despite the alleged danger, the poor are priced out and the wealthy aren't.
*And armed guards and jewelers.
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On July 20 2016 11:19 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2016 10:48 dontforgetosmile wrote:On July 19 2016 21:05 Simberto wrote:On July 19 2016 20:54 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:On July 19 2016 18:52 zatic wrote:On July 19 2016 18:32 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:On July 19 2016 03:54 Sent. wrote:
I'm pretty sure most of European countries has laws like that since decades (if not longer), I don't feel like I'm living in a doomed society. France has strict gun laws. Paris especially. 137 dead in a mass shooting last November. Still you don't really even need guns to kill massive numbers of people.We saw that with Nice last week when the madman killed 84 with a truck.We saw that with 9/11 where the hijackers used freaking box-cutters.If some crazy guy wants to kill mass numbers of people he can, guns or no guns. Today a crazy person tried to kill people in Germany. But with our moderately tight gun laws all he could get his hands on was an axe and a knife, resulting in a couple of injuries, but no deaths (except his own). See you can come up with these examples either way. The 17 year old refugee? Yeah i heard about it. Even in the USA though federal law forbids anyone under 21 purchasing a gun. I'm sure if he wanted to obtain a gun illegally he could have easily.Drugs are illegal and they are readily available.Deep web and internet in general make illegal items far easier to obtain than 20 years ago - drugs, weapons, whatever you want.Pay bitcoin.Totally untraceable.You can even 3D print firearms now that will shoot a few bullets.Video online see for yourself. All you are doing with these gun bans is reducing the ability of law abiding people to protect themselves and their families. From what i gather in the US, if you want a gun illegally, you can get one at every street corner, because guns are so common everywhere, which in turn of cause also means that illegal guns are very common everywhere. It is not easy to get a gun illegally in Germany. This is something that a lot of people don't seem to understand. The black market is linked to the legal market. If the legal market is full of guns, and anyone can take a gun from the legal to the black market, since there is no registry, your black market will also be gigantic. If there are fewer legal guns, those are harder to get, and it is even harder to take a gun from the legal market to the black market, your black market is smaller. That means that a) It is harder to find black market guns, as there are less and it is more dangerous for the seller to offer one, b) The guns that are on the black market are more expensive. This means that no, if you want to obtain a gun illegally, you could not "do so easily". If i wanted to have a gun right now, i wouldn't have the slightest idea where to even start looking. I guess i could ask some biker-type guys around a Bordello or something, but i don't think that would be very effective. So if i were to suddenly have the idea to start a murder spree, i simply wouldn't get a gun. I am pretty sure it is like this for a lot of people. Meanwhile, in the US, i would just start asking random people where i can get a gun around here, or google "Gun shop city", and have one slightly thereafter. This is the difference. It is harder to get a gun here. The black market is not obvious nor easy to find if you don't have connections. That means that fewer potential criminals have guns. Which means that some of the either think about their killing spree, or have to go kill people with a knife instead, which ends in a lot fewer deaths. It is never about preventing every single gun crime, it is about reducing the availability of guns and thus reducing the lethality of a lot of crimes simply because the effort to get a gun was too high for the criminal to go through with it. And it works like a charm. so what kind of guns do you want to restrict? is it SUCH an imperative to restrict "assault weapons" or rifles because they are used to take SOOOOOOOOO many lives? how many more restrictions are required to get 248 down to 0? Stop trying to bait me. I am not the strawman you would like to argue with. What i would suggest are regulations similar to those in Germany. In my experience, they work quite well. That means to get any gun, you need to have a license that allows you to own one. These have a few requirements, including that you are -of age -sane -not a major criminal -trained in handling guns (safety etc...) and -that you have a reason to own one (usually hunting, collecting or sports). If the second amendment is really important to you, you could skip the "reason to own" part. Depending on the type of reason, this allows you to own certain types of guns in certain amounts. Any gun you own has to be registered to your name. This allows you to own those guns, and have them in your house or use them for the purpose that you own them for. So you can use your hunting rifle in a hunting stand, and your sports guns in a sport shooting range. I am not a hundred percent certain here, but it is possible that you are allowed to shoot your gun at home, too. If you wish to actually carry a gun in public, you need a different type of license which is very hard to get. Usually only if you transport valuables or if you work at a security firm. As you can see, it is quite possible to get a gun in Germany, if you put in some effort. However, they are then mapped to your name, and you can't just resell them to criminals whenever you want to. And if you are a lunatic that wishes to start shooting people, you will probably not have the patience to go through the legal effort to get a legal gun. Which means that lunatics tend to not have guns around here. I like that state of affairs. Of course, you can change that to your american views, if you really insist that guns need to stay a right. Just make it so that if you wish to own a gun, you have to take some safety classes, prove that you are of age and sane and not a major criminal. Something like a gun pass similar to a drivers license. Then have a central registry where people need to register the guns they own. What specific types of guns you want to allow or disallow is a different question altogether, one that the gun rights defenders tend to focus on all the time, because it makes them superior and means that they don't really have to think about anything because "the other guy doesn't know how guns work!!!!"
here's the problem with your approach. you don't actually care about the practicality of the regulations you propose, you care that it makes you FEEL more safe. to you, putting a large amount of restrictions on weapons is worth it to lower that 248 deaths. here's the problem, that's not a universally accepted view.
you can blanket ban guns in the country and would it start to lower the amount of gun deaths eventually as guns filter off the streets? yes, eventually, you'd be stupid to argue otherwise. the point is there is a fundamental utility to these weapons that you are not understanding (especially for americans) and that your morally black and white approach to gun deaths is going to do nothing but alienate the opposing side.
i could bring up the car analogy, like i have several times before, to demonstrate that if something has enough utility for us we essentially accept the deaths that come along with it. if you fail to see this, there is really no point in continuing the discussion, because nothing is going to change your mind if you think that any amount of deaths from guns is unacceptable.
On July 20 2016 12:40 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2016 10:12 Chewbacca. wrote:
I don't think there are many examples of "mass shootings" being stopped by armed civilians, but smaller things like home invasions/robberies....absolutely. Agreed, and that's why I'm fine with people keeping guns (locked away safely, away from children, etc.) in their homes but I'm not really a fan of them carrying guns in public.
i'm not sure where to begin with this. i really think comments like this are a result of a large misunderstanding of why people carry in the first place.
first, as far as i know, for almost every state, the requirements to conceal carry are more stringent than it is to simply own a firearm. secondly, if i gave you a pistol and dropped you in the middle of a mass shooting event why would you WANT to stick around and have a shootout?
once again, a firearm is a LAST RESORT. if your legs can safely carry you away from danger, i don't see why you wouldn't take that route.
this is why it is important to understand what you are regulating, it's not because people who are pro-gun want to obscure the argument with technicalities. it's because most people don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
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EPT
