Why dont people ever discuss how guns are simply great fun when used responsibly?
Just like a leisurly drive, its dangerous when done recklessly, but rather safe when done responsibly.
A large population of gun owners simply enjoy shooting stuff. Nothing more, nothing less.
Although I guess its not as sexy as taking everything to the extreme.
Then what is the argument for why other countries have an order of magnitude less of these events? Are Europeans just more mentally stable than Americans? Do Australians take enough more vacation that they don't need to go around shooting people?
Unless one of you can cite data to indicate drastically higher rates of mental health issues in the US, this line of reasoning is pure speculation.
Yes, it is speculation. I'm sure there are tons of mentally stable people who happily go around killing people for the hell of it. Case and point: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/okla-teens-charged-murder-australian-baseball-player-face-trial-article-1.1719738 (For those who don't like clicking eternal links or may not recall the details, teens killed an Australian baseball player out of shear boredom.)
I based my comment off the fact that most of the recent mass shootings have been shown to be done by individuals who are mentally unstable. Though, I would still say it is mental health as well as impulse control issues. Though, I've enjoyed watching the news time travel back to the 90s and early 2000s by proclaiming violent games to be the problem.
I've had this debate ever since my father's murder and my stance as always been the same: People kill people. Guns are just a tool, a means to an end. You take one tool away, they will just find another tool to do the job.
The US has been a source of terrible scares throughout the decades: different trade centers bombed, anthrax sent through the mail, pipe bombs mailed to random individuals, abortion clinics targeted, shootings, serial killers, and even sexual related scares as I remember there was one or two where women contracted AIDS and as revenge started having multiple partners and infecting them. Reducing guns will curve gun violence statistic, but I doubt it will curve the violence statistic as much.
Oh come on, its near impossible to shoot multiple close range fast moving targets with a bolt-action hunting rifle. Its a breeze with a semi or full automatic with an external magazine. Of course a hunting rifle can kill a person, if that was your intent; no one's arguing that. But imagine the Columbine shoots but now with a bolt action rifle. One person dead, the rest are fine after having just run away. In nearly every situation involving people, a bolt action rifle is a very poor choice of weapon.
I didn't compare bolt-actions to guns like an AR-15, but semi-auto is semi-auto is semi-auto. So, do you also lump in semi-automatic hunting rifles with your ban? Because they function every bit as an AR-15. There's no way Grandpa Hugh is going to give up his semi-auto hunting rifle, and even the gun-fearing public are reticent to touch Grandpa's hunting rifle (And, to be clear, hunting misses the point entirely, but that's a whole other discussion). There's a reason the politicians go after and villianize these so-called assault-weapons or "black rifles" as gun rights people call them -- its because its easy to make the argument you're making: They look like military guns, therefore they must perform like military guns, therefore they should not be in the hands of the public.
As I have said, long guns of any type are used in only a very small amount of crimes. The AR-15 in less than half a percent, despite being the single-most popular firearm in the country. If it were such a dangerous gun so ideal for commiting crimes, it'd show up in police evidence lockers far more than it does. Again, I think that both sides actually are willing to work together to reduce gun violence, but the gun-control folks need to stop shopping 'solutions' that look like they're doing something important, but don't actually do much besides make it difficult for the law abiding to go about their business, and likewise, gun supporters need to back down a bit from the "give them an inch and they'll take a mile rhetoric." (pro-tip: gun control folks, stop feeding into that by proposing stupid things).
Taking the car analogy a little further, so you think anyone should be able to drive without a drivers license? There's different licenses for different vehicle types because they operate differently. To group all vehicles together is silly. Likewise pretending a hunting rifle is in the same category as an assault weapon is silly.
Hence why I've said, since the very beginning, what has been lost in this conversation is the distinction between types of guns and their primary uses. I didn't argue that guns should be banned, but I don't think its unreasonable that more dangerous guns require more stringent restrictions.
Unless you plan to drive a commercial vehicle like a semi truck that's not really true in the sense that there's really no additional regulation around most other types of vehicles. To drive a large RV or motorcycle you need a special endorsement, but its basically a few hours training to make sure you have a basic level of competency and is a cheap, rubber-stamp sort of deal. There is no special license needed to trade your '89 civic in for a 200mph super-car.
Furthermore (and I might make a contrary argument if we were talking about that), a car is not currently seen by the law to be a right (that is, you have to apply for the privilege), whereas you do have a natural and irrevocable right to defend yourself, and with that comes a reasonable expectation to acquiring the tools of defense.
Now if we talk about this or that weapon requires this or that class of license, you get into a whole world of messiness. Already there are may-issue states for concealed carry permits where they refuse to issue any unless you can show a "need" -- basically that you've been credibly and specifically threatened -- or that you're some kind of celebrity or rich person likely to be targeted without a specific threat. They use this seemingly-innocent mechanism not to enable lawful concealed carriers as it should be (and that's a court precedent, not my opinion) but are using it to deny most everyone. Now, when you talk about the logistics of efficiently putting every would-be gun owner through such a process (and most proposals want a periodic update every several years) that's no small task given the 100 million plus gun owners. You'll either create a whole new government organization to run it all at that scale, or you'll create a bottleneck so small that it prevents people from being able to posses the guns they're entitled to. Or you maybe privatize it, which has its own problems.
If you know your constitutional history, you'll know that the amendments are not an enumeration of rights granted by government to the people. Rather, the constitution was a document that gave power from the people to the government they were giving birth to. The amendments -- indeed, why they're "amendments" at all, and not in the main body of the document -- are the clauses added by the states to make it explicit what the people *were not giving up* -- the states would not sign on until those amendments were included. This was in large part because the early government distrusted standing armies (which is why the third amendment talks about the quartering of troops), but also because they recognized the natural right of a person to defend them-self against an aggressor of any kind, and in doing so would need access to equal or greater means of inflicting harm.
I'm sitting here, reading this and all I can see is:
American: "but if we don't have guns the bad mans will murder and kill us and take all our stuffs!"
As someone who lives in the UK, where legal ownership of guns is highly restricted, all I can say is "Wut?".
I would love to have a German-style autobahn with 140mph speed limits right here in America. The trouble with that is that we're too geographically spread out. We would never pay for maintaining the quality and construction of roadways that would be necessary at such a scale as we have interstates or freeways. Furthermore, our car culture is different -- we don't eliminate distraction from driving to the point of omitting cup-holders, for instance, as most German cars do. My point is: what works in Germany won't work here.
There are more guns than people in the US, and even if somehow it was decided tomorrow that everyone was to turn them in or even register them, no one would comply. They didn't comply in New York, they certainly aren't going to comply in Montana or Texas or Arizona. Certainly the bad guys aren't -- their guns don't have any paper-trail whatsoever, and they're about gain a huge advantage if any of the population does give theirs up. And certainly no police force wants the job of trying to enforce that ban by confiscating them -- its unpopular, both because it could turn dangerous, and because no one want's to go door to door telling their friends and neighbors that we're taking something from you that you've never misused.
People that say "Lets just ban guns" think about it like the guns will vanish the moment that the President puts pen to paper and signs the bill. Again, it wasn't so in New York, and it won't be so anywhere else. People would do well to remember than whenever you pass a law, no matter how small, it comes with an implicit threat of violence -- if you are cited for jaywalking and refuse to pay your fine, eventually someone will come to place you in jail, and if you protest your arrest too actively you'll be tased, beaten, subdued, possibly shot and killed. That doesn't mean there should be no rules, but it does mean we shouldn't be in the business of creating laws that make offenders out of non-offenders, or otherwise non-violent people.
throw table_exception("(? ???)? ? ???");
So, I saw this thread and had a relevant experience last night.
We had some hurricane winds last night (Hurricane Joaquin), and while not full force, my girlfriend saw our shed doors open at night, and asked me to close them. Of course I was messing around on the internet, and 2 hours later, my girlfriend came running in the room, and told me that I didn't close the shed yet, and she noticed a light coming from inside, and that she thinks someone was in there. Obviously I thought she was just paranoid, so we went to take a look outside, and the shed's door was now closed (The way our shed closes, it can't really blow closed, you need to line up both doors and pull both at the same time).
Worried that someone might be robbing me of my shed stuff (weedwacker, lawn mower, chainsaw etc), I grabbed my shotgun and went out to investigate it, while my girlfriend followed with a flashlight. When I got to the shed, I yelled if anyone could hear me, I have my gun, and unless they come out now, I'll shoot them on sight. A few second later, a guy in a hoodie kicked open the door, saw my gun, froze up, and dropped a hammer (Not one of mine, I think he brought it in case he had to break in). He then apologized, and I told him to run before I call the cops.
I think crimes prevented like this are extremely under-reported. In addition to this, violent crime rate has been falling since the 70's in the USA (http://time.com/3577026/crime-rates-drop-1970s/), so I think the reason for these instances flaring up in the media are solely for sensationalism.
It's always a sensitive subject around here (the U.S.), for some reason or other. I've lived here all my life, and heard this discussion come up again and again for a little over half of that, and I still don't really understand how it is that the dialogues always play out this way: there is a mass shooting (not the collateral damage kind, but the monster wants to execute a bunch of largely random people), someone mentions something that sounds at least a little like a legislative or policy change that might help, and then the response to that suggestion is "go f yourself, gun-grabber!". It's absolutely insane. INSANE.
It's been pretty clearly demonstrated that states which allow easier carriage and use of guns, through laws like concealed-carry and stand-your-ground, have higher rates of gun violence and gun homicides than those with more restrictions. This is true between states and within states, with a before-and-after effect for the latter. If there are any numbers indicating that other types of crime drop after adoption of such laws, I haven't seen them.
It would be nice to blame all mass shootings on some mental illnesses. It would be easier to live in a world where that was true, and my reflex is always to deem a mass shooter mentally ill solely through my observation that they committed a mass shooting. Unfortunately, outside of the comforting tautology that doesn't seem to be well supported. It's great news, I guess, if mass shootings are declining. But that doesn't get us too far because we still have a lot of them.
Periodically there are efforts to expand things like background checks or stiffen penalties for dangerous uses of guns. Most Americans back those. Most Americans oppose banning guns outright, but there really isn't a push for a policy that's even remotely like that. The National Rifle Association, however, constantly frames every policy intervention related to guns as a nascent ban and leans heavily on politicians to kill any sort of legislation that might reduce gun sales, and those politicians oblige.
Gun control legislation, no matter what's in it, will not end all gun violence or all mass shootings. That's an unreasonable standard. But the reality of things is that Americans, as a whole, seem uninterested in doing anything in an effort to reduce them. We certainly haven't, even in the face of massacres of dozens of children. I'd like to believe that the obstacle is the fear of something like a gun ban, but at present that fear itself is so poorly grounded in reality that it gets harder and harder for me to believe.
-------R.I.P.-------
Selective Quote
~Too Late - Too Soon~
It's always a sensitive subject around here (the U.S.), for some reason or other. I've lived here all my life, and heard this discussion come up again and again for a little over half of that, and I still don't really understand how it is that the dialogues always play out this way: there is a mass shooting (not the collateral damage kind, but the monster wants to execute a bunch of largely random people), someone mentions something that sounds at least a little like a legislative or policy change that might help, and then the response to that suggestion is "go f yourself, gun-grabber!". It's absolutely insane. INSANE.
It's been pretty clearly demonstrated that states which allow easier carriage and use of guns, through laws like concealed-carry and stand-your-ground, have higher rates of gun violence and gun homicides than those with more restrictions. This is true between states and within states, with a before-and-after effect for the latter. If there are any numbers indicating that other types of crime drop after adoption of such laws, I haven't seen them.
It would be nice to blame all mass shootings on some mental illnesses. It would be easier to live in a world where that was true, and my reflex is always to deem a mass shooter mentally ill solely through my observation that they committed a mass shooting. Unfortunately, outside of the comforting tautology that doesn't seem to be well supported. It's great news, I guess, if mass shootings are declining. But that doesn't get us too far because we still have a lot of them.
Periodically there are efforts to expand things like background checks or stiffen penalties for dangerous uses of guns. Most Americans back those. Most Americans oppose banning guns outright, but there really isn't a push for a policy that's even remotely like that. The National Rifle Association, however, constantly frames every policy intervention related to guns as a nascent ban and leans heavily on politicians to kill any sort of legislation that might reduce gun sales, and those politicians oblige.
Gun control legislation, no matter what's in it, will not end all gun violence or all mass shootings. That's an unreasonable standard. But the reality of things is that Americans, as a whole, seem uninterested in doing anything in an effort to reduce them. We certainly haven't, even in the face of massacres of dozens of children. I'd like to believe that the obstacle is the fear of something like a gun ban, but at present that fear itself is so poorly grounded in reality that it gets harder and harder for me to believe.
I think it's because we've seen what happened over the years to Australia/Europe, and are worried similar things will happen if we support expanding background checks, because the next time something happens, people will look for something else to take.
It's better to protect our rights and give nothing, instead, so background checks (for example) remain the issue.
I think it's because we've seen what happened over the years to Australia/Europe, and are worried similar things will happen if we support expanding background checks, because the next time something happens, people will look for something else to take.
It's better to protect our rights and give nothing, instead, so background checks (for example) remain the issue.
That doesn't track well with the overwhelming public support for some policies, like background checks. Nor does it track with the fact that gun rights are selectively applied to the population, rather than universal.
Regardless, I can understand the sentiment, but it's still irrational. We have to reject any policy change, at all, today, because we are unable to reject policy changes and that will be a problem in the future? Nonsense. And that's not even considering that the current interpretation of the Second Amendment (I assume that that alone is what you're referring to by "our rights", above) is both pretty recent and not super matched with the text of the amendment. It also is a socio-political stance that either any given policy change will have zero effect or that widespread gun violence is a price that is worth paying and that advocates are choosing to pay. Even when the victims are children.
-------R.I.P.-------
Selective Quote
~Too Late - Too Soon~
I think crimes prevented like this are extremely under-reported.
Well, I don't think it is that they are under reported I just think that media fosters a culture of panic and only reports on things that are negative. If you notice, they never really report crimes stopped due to home owners having fire arms, rather they focus on how many home owners are killed with their own firearms. That is the other angle that some people don't take into account, not all shooters use their own guns, but rather guns they have stolen from someone else. It's hard to stop gun violence that is done with a stolen gun, as I believe the Sandy Hook shooting was done by a man who used his mother's gun (which he used to shoot her). That brings up the point of if you own guns, make sure they are locked in a safe of some kind and that you are the only one that can open it.
You're implying there are reasonably usable stats on how many crimes are stopped due to guns. Could you please share those statistics? I don't know where to find them.
Well, I don't think it is that they are under reported I just think that media fosters a culture of panic and only reports on things that are negative. If you notice, they never really report crimes stopped due to home owners having fire arms, rather they focus on how many home owners are killed with their own firearms.
