Another mass shooting in America

[Señor Voorhees]

AxeHappy, those are all pretty much laws in the states to. The thing about guns and those things though is that guns are very accident prone. Just one example out of that list, you may not be likely to fall off a bike, but having the helmet prevents head damage if you do. That's it, nothing more, nothing less. You either don't fall and not hurt your head, or you fall and lessen the risk of damage. There aren't really any other factors. With guns you have to account for a ton of unforeseen factors like, what if it accidentally goes off, or what if the person who has it snaps or the opportunity for a gun crime pops up. I'm willing to bet, and this has no factual numbers behind it as far as I know, that if guns were more readily available and let's say that 90% of everyone in the country had them, that more people would be using them opportunistically. In my ten years of retail all across the country, I would not put it above what I'd guess is at least 50% of these people to shoot you over taking their parking spot, or rushing ahead of someone in line, or hell just to rob people.

The point I tried to make in my last post was that I had a friend who got beaten to the point of needing to go to the hospital. For wearing a baseball hat representing a rival baseball team. If people are willing to harm each other over something so trivial, guns are a no go for the general public.

It's really just a case of you're only as safe as the least sane person out there. Sure good guys might have guns, but so do more of the bad guys, and when you have the drop on people, you can kill people before any of the good guys realize what happened. And if guns are readily available, and most people have them, then judging by my experience with the general public, you're going to have a lot more people just willy nilly doing what they feel. You may not have a SINGLE shooting with THIRTY people dead, but you might have THIRTY shootings with ONE or more people dead.

A lot of anecdotal and "what if" here, but if you honestly look around at the people around you, can you honestly say it's unlikely?

 

[Labrie]

You know the problem with mass shootings in America isn't the guns, but actually the lack of guns.
Derek

This gun toting, cowboy attitude is exactly the problem in America, imo. How does having more guns = less shootings?...I'll never understand that type of thinking. Your arguments about fire exstiguishers and bike helmets is ludicrous at best. I think what you meant to use as an example in your analogy was "bullet proof vest". At least that makes sense.

What you are saying is fight fire with fire, quite literally...and I don't have to be a firefighter, even though I am, to know that is absurd. I don't carry a brick in my pocket when I go for a bike ride to threaten the road lol

 

[estabon37]

I was going to start up a new thread, but I realised that the resulting conversation would probably have been almost identical to what's being said here, so I hope nobody minds this somewhat relevant news artcile from an Australian newspaper:

Boy praised for self defence killing

This happened back in 2010 in a Melbourne suburb. A man connected to a local gang, for reasons not articulated in the article, bashed his way into the home of a woman and her son and started kicking the shit out of the woman. The son tried to stop him and failed. The attacker then dropped a gun, which the boy picked up and shot the man assaulting his mum. The shithead died on the scene, and the world is a better place for it. The judge (rightly in my opinion) told the boy that he did the right thing.

This does not make me think at all that we should have guns in every home. This is an incredibly rare thing in this country. Yes, this plays right in to the "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" argument. If the assaulter was less uncoordinated, the story we'd be reading might well have been "Man shoots mother and son in their home". Then again, it might have been "Man who assaulted woman in her home is arrested for assault and owning an illegal firearm". Then again it might have been "Man connected with gang accidentally shoots self in home" because judging from his spacial awareness as far as his gun was concerned, he didn't have a ....ing clue.

The woman was still assaulted. The home was still invaded. That the arsehole is dead is nice, but ultimately he wasn't STOPPED so much as interrupted violently. Increasing the amount of guns in this country wouldn't decrease the amount of arseholes - it hasn't in the US.

 

[Vostre Roy]

There you go again:

Police: Four killed in St. Louis - CNN.com

 

[Danukenator]

This does not make me think at all that we should have guns in every home. This is an incredibly rare thing in this country. Yes, this plays right in to the "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" argument. If the assaulter was less uncoordinated, the story we'd be reading might well have been "Man shoots mother and son in their home". Then again, it might have been "Man who assaulted woman in her home is arrested for assault and owning an illegal firearm". Then again it might have been "Man connected with gang accidentally shoots self in home" because judging from his spacial awareness as far as his gun was concerned, he didn't have a ....ing clue.
.

It's that type of picking and choosing that I hate. People love to point out things like the Waco Siege as a justification for "the government is evil and we need to arm ourselves to out arm them."

 

[viesczy]

The argument that "Everybody is safer if everybody has guns" is outright debunked by the fact that gang violence exists.

Direct and to the point, so everyone in America owns a firearm and it is on them at all times? You have one on your hip right? You packing a Glock? Sig? S&W? What?

Gang violence exists because of the nature of gangs themselves, illegal organizations involved in illegal activities doing all they can to have as much of that illegal activity as possible as it is a profitable activity for them. The violence generated is a product of our Puritanical war on drugs, not the guns used as the legalization of drugs would dramatically the gang violence.

Remember how WELL the ending of Prohibition ended the gang wars? Direct evidence.

You realize that the 2nd amendment was written to ensure the freedom a free state, that the armed populace is the greatest deterrent of a despot? That's the purpose of it. A quick read of all the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers clearly indicates that.

It is unfortunate that a few have victimized many, but you don't criminalize the many over the actions of a few.

I value all our liberties, I exercise them all. You should too, liberty is one of the things that make America unique.

Derek

 

[Spike Spiegel]

You should too, liberty is one of the things that make America unique.

It makes America an above average place to live or good/great place to live, but liberty is not unique to America. This type of pride in 'murrica is part of the problem. We see ourselves as unique and unable to learn from the rest of the world because we are "the best".

 

[pink freud]

Direct and to the point, so everyone in America owns a firearm and it is on them at all times? You have one on your hip right? You packing a Glock? Sig? S&W? What?

Gang violence exists because of the nature of gangs themselves, illegal organizations involved in illegal activities doing all they can to have as much of that illegal activity as possible as it is a profitable activity for them. The violence generated is a product of our Puritanical war on drugs, not the guns used as the legalization of drugs would dramatically the gang violence.

Completely irrelevant. The motive for violence is not connected to the propensity (or lack thereof) of violence in relation to gun availability.

Gang members kill gun-carrying gang member all the time, therefor the notion that people won't shoot armed people is proven false.

 

[Konfyouzd]

Making huge break throughs in my sax tonguing...

 

[estabon37]

You realize that the 2nd amendment was written to ensure the freedom a free state, that the armed populace is the greatest deterrent of a despot? That's the purpose of it. A quick read of all the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers clearly indicates that. Derek

It's also not the only law that was written in an attempt to ensure freedom and deter despots. The long term invention of democratic liberal minimalism (otherwise known as protective democracy, because it aims to protect people over politicians) by several theorists across many points on the globe based on the histories of several nations means that these things that you fear are deterred through things like regular elections by popular vote: it's not as common as you'd think, and was far more effective and influential in shaping the politics of the US than allowing regular folks to have lots of guns. Hell, these days US doesn't allow a president to stick around for more than two terms, and removing that law would take a lot more effort than any change to the gun laws. Say what you will about any of the last four or five presidents, none of them are comparable to Putin, and that's a good thing.

Realistically, a quick read of the Constitution and Federalist papers shows that gun possession is a very very very small part of what keeps the US free. France as we know it is a nation born of revolution, just like the US, enjoys the same overall level of freedom as the US, but doesn't have the right to bear arms or the insane level of gun violence as the US. This is not a coincidence.

What percentage of adults in the US votes? Every citizen has the right to select their leader, but how many do it? Every citizen has the right to political participation, through joining parties, through donating, through active involvement in the political scene on any level. Is it really possible that so many people believe that active political participation is LESS effective than buying a gun and saying "If the people who are in power through no means that I care to involve myself in don't do the job right, I'll shoot them.". Because those same people in power have WAY better weapons than ... well, the rest of the planet. Your guns do not protect you from despots, your laws do. And if you don't like the politicians (or the police, or the fire brigade, or the military, or the local librarian) then you need to get in there and change it from within, because they won't change just because you're brandishing a weapon at them. Civilians severely outnumber politicians, but civilians can not outgun them, not really.

Political revolution is possible. Create a party, or join a party. Win popular elections by giving the populace what it wants. And then sit back, and wait for all of the accusations of unfairness and corruption that are being hurled at the current bunch of unfair, corrupt jerks.

Yay! Politics!

 

[narad]

You realize that the 2nd amendment was written to ensure the freedom a free state, that the armed populace is the greatest deterrent of a despot? That's the purpose of it. A quick read of all the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers clearly indicates that.

So...you're interpreting the 2nd amendment as ensuring freedom from domestic threat? I see a serious logical hole in that:

1. If the actual military is in the control of said despot, and if an armed populace can hinder it any way at all, then that half-trillion annual military budget has been severely misplaced. That's what happens when you dump an absolutely awesome (by textbook definitions) amount of money into defense spending -- it's unstoppable.

2. If the actual military is acting against said despot, then there's no force of arms that would compare, and our liberties are "protected".

i.e., our military's power is only tempered by ethical concerns, not by comparable firepower. If you assume that the military would be used against us, then you also remove those ethical considerations that the military otherwise operates under. And when you have the biggest economy in the world and you prioritize military might above all else, that's what you get. Compared to a freestanding militia?



The Swiss are actually much better at implementing the 2nd amendment than we are. A standing militia isn't a bunch of overweight and over-the-hill gun collectors shooting cans and deer -- it's people who are repeatedly required to formally maintain skill with their weapons and in coordinated military maneuvers.

 

[Yul Brynner]

Unfortunately, this just means that cute puppies, boobs, celebrities and shitty knock-off memes wind up passing for news, because this is the internet, and apparently this is the shit we want to see.

I clicked on those boobs. They were censored

 

[estabon37]

I clicked on those boobs. They were censored

Sorry about that. News sites tend to think nipples are offensive, so they don't get a pass, unlike the footage of the recent murder of the British soldier in London, where for days we saw the bloodied weapons and hands of the murderers splashed all over the news with the poor man's body still on the ground behind the jerkwads. Similar leniency has been shown by media organisations for basically every terrorist attack, and a lot of footage of allied nations blowing up 'strategic targets' in the Middle East, resulting in the deaths of both combatants and civilians.

So remember: footage of people dying or being killed is fine, just don't let any of the 51% of the world's population who have breasts get them out in front of a camera. That's why you'll never be able to find tits on the internet. Anywhere. Ever.

 

[flint757]

That is really sad isn't it. Not because I care about tits being in the news, but the fact that they care less about gore/violence and have a shit fit if their is a curse word or nudity on a public broadcast tv station is just bizarre to me.

 

[Grand Moff Tim]

Maybe if America glorified tits instead of guns, we'd have mass flashings instead of mass shootings.

Think about it.

 

[Grand Moff Tim]

The right to bare tits.












I need a vacation.

 

[AxeHappy]

If you actually look up the picture she is wearing niplpe covers and underwear and the photo is merely censored for sensationalist purposes.

 

[estabon37]

If you actually look up the picture she is wearing niplpe covers and underwear and the photo is merely censored for sensationalist purposes.

You're killing the dream, man. WHY CAN'T YOU JUST LET US BE HAPPY?!

 

[Cloudy]

You're killing the dream, man. WHY CAN'T YOU JUST LET US BE HAPPY?!

No one is allowed to be happy on the internet.