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

On March 09 2018 10:40 micronesia wrote:
He's making an off topic point about how the USA has a problem with many cases of improper police shootings of victims resulting in unneeded deaths of predominantly black Americans. I sympathize with his point but it was entirely uncalled for here given the post he was quoting and the thread he did it in.

On March 10 2018 02:59 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
Apparently another school shooting Wednesday. 1 death.

On March 06 2018 00:30 Silvanel wrote:
An example how things can end in totally different environment. Here is article (polish only, its a small local story) http://lodz.naszemiasto.pl/artykul/strzelanina-w-zgierzu-policjanci-oddali-strzaly-do-pijanych,4500960,art,t,id,tm.html
I acctualy know more since i have friends in local police force.

In essence a police patrol in an unmarked car (and obviously in civilian uniform) noticed during the night five men hiting a parked car. They get out of the card and asked them (in typical polish police way) "WTF. For fucks sake??" or something along that line. They were attacked in response (with hands and stool). They shouted they are from police, but it didint help. They started to run but were caught. One of policeman where hit with a stool (9 stiches on head) the other pulled out a gun and after firing a warning shots started to shot at attackers. Fifteen shots fired in total (including warning shots), three knees and one foot hit. Attackers alive and in hospital (later turned out to be Ukrainian economic migrants, no criminal ties or past, sober but probably on drugs).

Now we can ask ourselves. Is this outcome good? In US they would have a huge chances of dying while assaulting policeman. In Poland police can only shoot if their life (or someone else) is threatend (and this is determined by court not police) and only after firing warning shots. Most people say that polish law is retarded and rigorously strict when it comes to using deadly force (including selfdefence by civilians).

I know this story isnt strictly about gun control but it shows at least one important aspect, how relative scarcity of guns in population allows totally diffrent rules of engagment concentrated not on safty of policeman but safty of civilians (even performing criminal acts).

On March 11 2018 00:48 KR_4EVR wrote:


You know, cars kill more people than guns. Why not talk about restricting car access to people vetted by the FBI? I mean, many people died in a massive car-death just yesterday. Why aren't we talking about taking peoples' cars away?

I really don't understand people who think 'gun-control' will prevent murder. A gun is a tool. So is a knife. So is a car. So is a cellphone. You know what, somebody was found guilty last year of encouraging a depressed person to commit suicide by text.

Get the point already. It's not about the means. Pschopaths will find a way to murder.

You know what I hate more? It's the same people who say "It's the gun's fault" who in 5 years forget what happened and want the murderer to get an easy sentence, or oppose the death penalty for murderers. Then, that psychopath gets out on probation and murders someone else. This time with a knife or drugs. Oh, and by the way, if you're for restricting gun access but not for restricting drug access, that's also morally reprehensible. Drugs kill way more people than guns.

In other words, you want to control the weapon, but have zero desire to otherwise restrict the future possibility that the psychopath commits murder some other way again.

I call BS.

On March 11 2018 00:48 KR_4EVR wrote:


You know, cars kill more people than guns. Why not talk about restricting car access to people vetted by the FBI? I mean, many people died in a massive car-death just yesterday. Why aren't we talking about taking peoples' cars away?

I really don't understand people who think 'gun-control' will prevent murder. A gun is a tool. So is a knife. So is a car. So is a cellphone. You know what, somebody was found guilty last year of encouraging a depressed person to commit suicide by text.

Get the point already. It's not about the means. Pschopaths will find a way to murder.

You know what I hate more? It's the same people who say "It's the gun's fault" who in 5 years forget what happened and want the murderer to get an easy sentence, or oppose the death penalty for murderers. Then, that psychopath gets out on probation and murders someone else. This time with a knife or drugs. Oh, and by the way, if you're for restricting gun access but not for restricting drug access, that's also morally reprehensible. Drugs kill way more people than guns.

In other words, you want to control the weapon, but have zero desire to otherwise restrict the future possibility that the psychopath commits murder some other way again.

I call BS.

On March 11 2018 00:48 KR_4EVR wrote:


You know, cars kill more people than guns. Why not talk about restricting car access to people vetted by the FBI? I mean, many people died in a massive car-death just yesterday. Why aren't we talking about taking peoples' cars away?

I really don't understand people who think 'gun-control' will prevent murder. A gun is a tool. So is a knife. So is a car. So is a cellphone. You know what, somebody was found guilty last year of encouraging a depressed person to commit suicide by text.

Get the point already. It's not about the means. Pschopaths will find a way to murder.

You know what I hate more? It's the same people who say "It's the gun's fault" who in 5 years forget what happened and want the murderer to get an easy sentence, or oppose the death penalty for murderers.

In other words, you want to control the weapon, but have zero desire to otherwise restrict the future possibility that the psychopath commits murder some other way again.

I call BS.

On March 11 2018 01:21 Dan HH wrote:
Are cars a tool whose only purpose is doing damage?

On March 11 2018 02:03 micronesia wrote:

I'll address this one. No, but neither are guns. I don't consider a hole in a piece of paper, a tin can, or a clay pigeon to be damage. They can do damage, and they are exceptionally good at certain types of damage, which is where you should be focusing when discussing what the rules should be. The same applies to cars.

On March 11 2018 02:03 micronesia wrote:

I'll address this one. No, but neither are guns. I don't consider a hole in a piece of paper, a tin can, or a clay pigeon to be damage. They can do damage, and they are exceptionally good at certain types of damage, which is where you should be focusing when discussing what the rules should be. The same applies to cars.

On March 11 2018 02:03 micronesia wrote:

I'll address this one. No, but neither are guns. I don't consider a hole in a piece of paper, a tin can, or a clay pigeon to be damage. They can do damage, and they are exceptionally good at certain types of damage, which is where you should be focusing when discussing what the rules should be. The same applies to cars.

On March 11 2018 03:14 Jockmcplop wrote:


I've seen this argument hundreds of times before and the thing that confuses me is that people who take the same stance as micronesia seem to think that target practice is exactly as necessary as getting from A to B. The primary function of a car is to get people where they want to go quickly. The primary function of guns is to kill stuff, and you can practice that in a non lethal way to improve your skill at killing stuff if you want to.
Obviously we all know that target practice is a thing and so is competitive shooting, but the world would function exactly as well without such things. Its bizarre to have to go back and explain such absolute fundamentals to someone who is obviously intelligent.

Cars are not the same as guns here and the argument works differently for both.

Of course, if you actually think the main purpose of guns is to shoot targets, just ban all guns except paintball guns and shoot away!

On March 11 2018 03:18 Dan HH wrote:

I'll skip over the semantics of damage. If cars were obsolete as transportation and we used cars for bumping them into cardboard, or empty barrels, or clay bears rather than transportation, it would make sense to me to discuss further restrictions in light of them being used in attacks. Practical purpose should matter in regard to regulations as far as I'm concerned, we don't have to bind ourselves by the abstraction of items.

On March 11 2018 03:33 PoulsenB wrote:

Guns were invented and designed with the sole purpose of harming people and destroying things. Just because some people use forks to scrape paint off walls doesn't mean that a fork isn't a tool designed for the purpose of using it to eat.

On March 11 2018 00:48 KR_4EVR wrote:


You know, cars kill more people than guns. Why not talk about restricting car access to people vetted by the FBI? I mean, many people died in a massive car-death just yesterday. Why aren't we talking about taking peoples' cars away?

I really don't understand people who think 'gun-control' will prevent murder. A gun is a tool. So is a knife. So is a car. So is a cellphone. You know what, somebody was found guilty last year of encouraging a depressed person to commit suicide by text.

Get the point already. It's not about the means. Pschopaths will find a way to murder.

You know what I hate more? It's the same people who say "It's the gun's fault" who in 5 years forget what happened and want the murderer to get an easy sentence, or oppose the death penalty for murderers. Then, that psychopath gets out on probation and murders someone else. This time with a knife or drugs. Oh, and by the way, if you're for restricting gun access but not for restricting drug access, that's also morally reprehensible. Drugs kill way more people than guns.

In other words, you want to control the weapon, but have zero desire to otherwise restrict the future possibility that the psychopath commits murder some other way again.

I call BS.

On March 11 2018 03:47 Nebuchad wrote:
The cars argument works better against a strawman version of gun control which goes something like "We can't have guns because innocent people get killed sometimes." Then you can say something like, hey, I notice that innocent people get killed by cars sometimes too, and you're still fine with having cars, so that means your argument is illogical. This is true, but nobody thinks that we can't have guns because innocent people get killed sometimes, so the fact that it's true isn't really thought provoking. Incidentally, a lot of people use a version of that argument against the death penalty, where the death penalty is fine in principle, but we can't have it because innocent people will be killed sometimes; and in this case, you can use the cars argument against them because they don't have a consistent world view.

In the case of guns, people are way ahead of this. The problem isn't that we can't have nice things if sometimes people die because of the nice things, the problem is that, after analysis, we've concluded that guns are not nice things. The only benefit is people having the illusion that they're safer, which is not an actual benefit.