Wrong
See: rest of world.
False equivalence is false.
Every one of those things you named is NOT a weapon.
Every firearm IS a weapon.
At itâs root, the design and purpose of every single firearm is to kill. People, animals, whatever. It is a thing for KILLING.
The vast majority of people use them for something else, but every firearm is engineered and optimized for KILLING.
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If it is made for only KILLING, why is it millions of people own guns and manage not to kill anything with them?
There is a whole world of guns that doesnât involve crime or even hunting or defense.
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In 2 words, I can give you a good example to follow:
Driverâs License.
Weâre focusing on a tiny piece of the pie here, though.
Via Wikipedia, gun deaths per 100k people: 10.64
Homicide: 3.55
Suicide: 6.70
Accidental: 0.16
Undetermined: 0.9
Seems like our priorities should be:
-Mental Health
-Better regulate gun sales (itâs fairly easy to buy one without a FOID card at a gun show)
-Mandate training for FOID cards and the like
If that doesnât prove to be good enough, ban the domestic sale of handguns.
The point is, yes, we could reduce gun deaths by banning guns entirely. But @Mister44 thinks we donât have to. I tend to agree.
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So, presumably, they must be using firearms which are incapable - by design - of killing then, no?
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Are your kitchen knives made for killing?
Are they capable of killing?
Do people use them to kill things?
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Because the professionals seem to think thatâs a bad, and very odd idea. We donât have good criteria for it, and because your mental status varies with time. Very rarely after a mass-shooting do we get someone with a clear history or pattern of behavior that would have made it obvious that they shouldnât own a gun. That pattern of behavior tends to result in people becoming felons well before they work their way to shooting up a crowded area. Maybe, maybe we get, âhe was kinda weird.â Also, we donât do the whole âpredict the future actions of peopleâ thing with any accuracy whatsoever.
Even when these professionals have a good idea that the patient may go on to harm himself or others, their ability to do anything about it is limited to the issue being imminent. Because, again, theyâre doctors not oracles of future behavior. More likely than not, it just makes people who need to get help, avoid getting help. No way that could possibly go wrong.
Hereâs a thing, universal background checks: Letâs try them. They make getting guns a little more inconvenient, but they could go a long way. Worst case scenario is that itâs harder for private citizens to legally resell a gun. A hassle? Yes. The end of the 2nd Amendment? Not even close. How is this not middle ground? It may not solve everything, but it seems like a reasonable and sober step that is worth trying with very little downside. I donât think we need a massive overhaul of our gun laws. Iâll settle for incremental changes and tweaks based on evidence.
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See: false equivalence post by @davide405
That attack was a highly organized terrorist attack involving a number of coordinated perpetrators. Less analogous to these movie theater shootings than to the London Subway Bombings of 2005.
Want to compare a senseless gun attack to a senseless knife attack? Try Sandy Hook vs. Chenpeng. Same week, same motive, same kind of mentally unhinged psychopath bent on taking as many innocent lives as possible. They had almost exactly the same number of victimsâ24 innocents knifed in Chenpeng versus 26 shot in Sandy Hook. It was practically a lab experiment in âwhat if this same attack was carried out with a different weapon?â
All 24 people stabbed in Chengpeng survived.
All 26 people shot in Sandy Hook died.
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That article is flawed. That 40% number is basically made up, based on very old phone survey.
To be clear, the law as it is now, unless I meet someone privately, face to face, and we both live in the same state, you HAVE to go through an FFL and go through a check. Anyone buying over the internet either has to meet face to face, or they ship their gun to an FFL. Nearly everyone at a gun show is actually an FFL and everyone has to go through the same checks.
The reason I think outlawing face to face sales is because I donât see it hindering crime that much. If you are an honest person and wanting to sell to another honest person, and the person wanting your gun is all squirrelly, would you sell to them? I wouldnât. The trade forums I am on actively vet people on the boards and ban people posing with drugs other criminal activity. Many people want a copy of your CCW card (proving you arenât a felon) or at least take down your license.
Now - if none of that matters to you, you donât care if you sell to a meth head or a gang member (selling to a prohibited person is already illegal) - would a new law making that illegal stop you? No, why would it? âOh hey, i donât mind breaking one law, but I draw the line at two!â
The other reason is because I have seen the reports by the Dept of Justice and criminals usually get their guns from friends and relatives. People who know they shouldnât have guns. That new law wonât stop that.
One thing I did agree with the article was NICS needs to keep working on updating and networking itâs database to make it more inclusive and the same across all states.
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Not really. Most people donât buy their gun with the intent on killing people. Many, many guns are set up for specific sports and wouldnât make great hunting or defense guns. And while some are bought for hunting, and others for defense, people very rarely resort to killing someone even in defense.
Again - I need to write this exact number down, but it is a fraction of 1% of people who hurt others with guns. You claim me irrational, but I do not see the rational in further penalizing people because of a tiny sliver of abusers. If you can suggest a law that targets the abuser specifically, Iâd get behind it.
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The funny thing* is, the only people talking about banning firearms is you and Mister44.
Australia hasnât banned firearms.
Austria hasnât banned firearms.
Canada hasnât banned firearms.
Chile hasnât banned firearms.
Czech Republic hasnât banned firearms.
Denmark hasnât banned firearms.
Estonia hasnât banned firearms.
Finland hasnât banned firearms.
Germany hasnât banned firearms.
Iceland hasnât banned firearms.
Luxembourg hasnât banned firearms.
Netherlands hasnât banned firearms.
New Zealand hasnât banned firearms.
Norway hasnât banned firearms.
Sweden hasnât banned firearms.
Switzerland hasnât banned firearms.
Taiwan hasnât banned firearms.
United Kingdom hasnât banned firearms.
Yet all of them have lower firearms deaths, and as much if not more freedoms. Magic? Yeah, it must be magic. Couldnât be anything else.
Jon
- actually not funny. Itâs a fucking annoying strawman that Will. Not. Die.
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And so the problem with UBC would be?
Ah, inconvenience. So?
15 years is old, but not that old. Extrapolation is not unwarranted, and I donât care if itâs exactly 40%, itâs likely within the right order of magnitude.
Because this isnât about illegal sales, but about legal sales. Although youâve been very consistent about pretending that there is absolutely nothing that can or should be done to limit violence in this country. You get points for effort, but frankly I lump you in with the people who want to eliminate gun ownership entirely in terms of your level of actual reasonableness.
Sorry, but your extremism (which isnât to say that extremists arenât occasionally right) isnât really adding anything to the discussion. Telling me there is nothing to be done like gun crime is akin to immutable laws of physics just raises the old skeptical eyebrows.
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If you are not talking about banning guns, what is your nuanced plan then?
I donât think I have seen it come forth yet, just a lot of disapproving noises about guns, and the people that like them.
Oh, and the vague notion that we should basically be more like other countries.
Fine! @Mister44 is for some kinds of gun control. I am for still more kinds of gun control. If you want more gun control, and not a blanket ban, just say so. If you disagree with the specifics of gun control, also just say so.
Otherwise, I donât see anything constructive youâre adding to the discussion, other than noise.
I still favor gun ownership in America. I do think some regulation could help reduce âmass shootingsâ, however you define them. Military personnel returning from war zones with documentation that they suffer from PTSD should probably be carefully evaluated before being allowed to take up a weapon again. Anyone suffering from a condition which results in progressive mental degeneration should face the same inquiry. Anyone under the age of 18 ought not to be able to buy or own their own gun. Parents of some children will still put them in their hands, but Iâm hoping for a better world, not a perfect one. There will always be outliers, crazies, criminals. We can still do better than we currently are doing.
I think we already do a lot to limit violence. We already have a ton of gun laws. There comes a point where the returns donât make the amount invested worth it. For example I think the TSA is a huge money sink and wast of time that does little to nothing to make anyone safer.
I think to stop crime you need to go after the social ills that breed it. Gun crime is down dramatically from the 90s with out any massive legislature. I think we can continue to reduce crime with other means.
Drugs are illegal and cause all sorts of crime and social ills. How do we fight that? Double ban it? Lock up everyone that does them? That isnât working, is it? Why would guns be much different? Unless you could magic all guns away - then it would maybe work as importing guns illegally is more difficult. But that isnât feasible and the pool of black market guns out there wonât go away with more laws.
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Pick any of those 18 countries, and copy their laws.
But the points made by others above about the importance and relevance of effective social safety nets are important too.
Yes, itâs tricky, and likely to be expensive. On the other hand, if you only value a life at $1M, then your budget to work with is up to $30billion.
Edit: the Transportation Department put the value of a life at US$9.4M, meaning your budget for addressing the problem is up to approx US$300billion. Do you think you might be able to achieve something useful with that chunk of change?
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We can look to them for how specific changes worked out according to the numbers, but this isnât cheating on a test in math class. Different cultures, different social problems, different ethnic makeup, different class makeup, different weather (actually relevant). A copypasta job on gun laws is not well thought out as a position on gun control. You need to do some more homework than sorting tables on Wikipedia.
I do like what Switzerland and Israel (and a few other countries) have going with mandatory military service for young adults. It would be unpopular, but I think it would contribute to addressing a lot of problems in the U.S. (Why those two countries? They have a lot of guns, and not a lot of gun crime)
Gosh, itâs almost like all of those things arenât designed solely for the purposes of killing!*
*or penis substitution
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I must have missed in the wider conversation about mental health and the gun control debate where we shifted to âmental health background checksâ.
The wider discussion on mental health always seemed to be more that:
-If we remove the stigma of mental illness in popular culture
-Take diagnosis and treatment more seriously in the healthcare community
-Revise healthcare so treatment is available to everyone
Then we will have a much smaller pool of unhinged people in the populace to begin with, thus reducing mass shootings and suicides as a result.
Can we all get behind that plan?
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