Fox Business News host Kennedy doesn't think trucks are controlled

boing
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I have to

No, you chose to.

It’s exhausting to try to interject perspective because fraction of a fraction of a percent use guns for crime. It is insulting to suggest I need to pay an insurance for this sliver of a population who use guns for evil.

And yet … every other country manages to struggle by with an even smaller fraction of a fraction of a percent.

By the by, your maths is a bit wonky. On an annual basis its a fairly small proportion but over the course of several years or decades then the proportion of gun owners - and the general population - who cause or are victims of firearms violence approaches something fairly close to 1. There is already a reasonable number of ‘veterans’ of multiple mass shootings.

Yet my point stands. Mexico you cant even own a gun in a military caliber. They are extremely restrictive yet awash in gun violence. The point is their laws don’t stop the violence.

You’ve just reinforced the point @gatto made: the best you can aspire to is emulating Mexico? Well, ok.

So we should forgo our rights so the government won’t hurt us. Great idea, I am sure they would love that.

A) it’s an AMENDMENT. Amend the amendment.
B) Seriously? You think your fūcking rifle is going to save you from the government? That’s the most delusional thing I’ve heard in a long time.

it is rather shocking the nativity that this problem can be fixed by laws.

Hmm. Let’s see. We have two examples: On the one hand, we have a large number of countries with functional government and a generally high standard of living coupled with sane firearms regulations. these countries have modest amounts of firearms violence. On the other hand we have America.

but don’t act like making things illegal will make it go away.

You mean like how we made murder, rape, fraud, tax evasion, jaywalking, and speeding ilegal? Oh thank you Mister Overcompensating! How could we have been so naïve!?

You can’t really show past gun control directly affecting crime.

Except you really can. See Australia for an especially relevant example.

laws that targeted ways to keep them out of the hands of criminals but nearly every suggestion I see will mainly affect most of the normal people

That is because everyone is a ‘normal person’ before they become a criminal.

I find this idea as absurd as banning Muslims because some Muslims are terrorists

Why, because firearms have more rights than immigrants in the US? Well, yeah, but that doesn’t make it a good model

you then have to deal with a country the lax security that has 13 million illegal immigrants and who imports literally tons of drugs will some how get its act together and keep illegal guns out.

Wait … are you blaming the immigrants? You know they have a lower rate of crime than the general population, right?

these things deal BILLIONS of dollars in damage a year, ruins lives, and are used to set up crimes and even terror attacks.

You’re talking about firearms here, right, and acknowledging why they should be well regulated?

Hearing your own voice back to you is more pleasant anyway, amiright?

I don’t know - is it? You certainly don’t appear able to hear any other voices.

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Years ago I pulled statistics on vehicle fatalities in the U.S. and compared them to casualties from the Vietnam War. You know, that war that everyone was so upset about because it was so horrific? Well, the numbers showed that our car culture was killing about as many people (or more) every single year than we lost in all 20 years of war put together. That was an eye-opener. Teenage me realizing that I would literally be 20x safer being shot at by enemy troops in a distant and unfamiliar jungle than driving down to the convenience store to get a snack.

Over time, cars got a lot safer. They still kill vast quantities of people, but not quite as much as before. So now, in some areas, domestic gun fatalities are beginning to exceed vehicle fatalities. That’s a mixed result. But some perspective might be in order. If our domestic casualty rates are approaching or exceeding recent conventional wartime casualty levels, it’s worth considering why are we effectively at war with ourselves.

War on Drugs, War on Poverty - are these sustainable things with merit? Because people with drugs, people in poverty, they are our people. We’re at war with ourselves. How does that make sense? Accidents and suicides will happen, but why so many? We have systemic problems.

Sure, play around with tightening up gun control if you want. But don’t forget the underlying issues. If we don’t address them, it’s just going to get worse - masking a symptom while the disease grows. And more pessimistically, would additional gun control affect middle class white people, or would it disproportionately affect poor people and people of color? I suspect the latter in our current culture.

Really, gun control still comes down to blaming inanimate objects for people’s actions and behavior. If it helps a bit to mitigate the severity of problems, ok, that’s worthwhile. But it’s still the people’s actions and behavior that are the problem and that we need to find a way to change.

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Sure, because there’s obviously no difference between an illegal mod that requires some skill to manufacture and being able to just buy the part straight off the shelf, by the dozen, ready to install… yeah, the dynamics are completely identical. How could I be so silly? And while we’re at it, making it illegal has zero impact because look, they managed to get machine guns in Paris despite it being illegal. A well organized terrorist organization managed to do the same thing as a single fucknut with some c-notes burning a hole in his pocket! (Let’s just ignore the huge disparity in relative frequency of the events between the two countries…)
Etc.

Non-sarcastically: YES, products that make vehicles significantly more dangerous do get kept off of the market by laws. (The truck equivalent of what he bought would be a gas-tank that explodes when you ram into someone, or a bumper with giant spikes.) Because that’s what we’re talking about in this case, a legal product, not a modification that required any skill on his part.

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After decades of the NRA and their GOP minions pushing “not enough guns,” don’t even fucking trot out the argument that now that there are so many, there’s no way to regulate them. Don’t even.

And here it is again: the “no true Scotsman” trope that gun advocates pull out every time this happens. This guy was a NRA poster-boy until he started raining lead on innocents on the Las Vegas Strip, and now he’s a nutso, lone wolf, pure evil. Guess what: he’s yours. This is exactly what one of millions of “safe and respectable” gun owners becomes when that one stops being so safe or so respectable. He’s yours; own it.

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But… they are using it accordance with the original intention of gun manufacturers and designers : killing people. Gun are designed to kill people. You don’t need to kill people.

Stop nitpicking. It’s exhausting and useless to the point, I will now say rapid boom boom machine. The simple fact he can have rapid boom boom machine is the problem. All of those things should be illegal.
Accordingly to ABC :

“Even though civilians are banned from buying or selling fully automatic weapons made after 1986, individuals can legally possess older weapons after passing a background check and obtaining a special permit.
There are about 176,000 pre-1986 machine guns registered with the US government that can be legally transferred, and they typically cost tens of thousands of dollars.”
Las Vegas shooting: These were the guns used in America's worst shooting in modern history - ABC News

You don’t need to contemplate this problem hopelessly, regulation is the first part of the solution.
It will not stop gun violence and it will not stop mass shooting but it will slow them down and maybe in the long term bring them to a level more comparable to a comparable country.
I made a quick calculation : in 2014 the US had proportionally 4,2 times more gun related death than France. (33594 death in the US, 1594 in France).

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However, here’s an observation that may well be relevant: most people can’t evaluate risks for themselves, instead relying on laws to tell them how to think.

This is no idle speculation; after thirty years of utterly ridiculous mandatory bicycle helmet legislation in Australia, the average Australian is under the impression that normal cycling is some sort of extreme sport, and anyone who rides a bike without a helmet must have a death wish.

And when I inform folks that they face double the risk of a serious head injury when riding in a car, I’m rarely even met with disbelief; it just tends to go in one ear and out the other, without even registering.

So if legislation was to be passed in the US transforming gun ownership from a right to a heavily-regulated privilege, you’d be fucking amazed just how many more people would end up considering that to be perfectly natural state of affairs than currently do.

Scratch a ‘rugged individualist’, and you’ll likely see a bootlicking authoritarian lurking under the paint. We know how these turkeys ‘think’; it’s about time sensible people started exploiting that.

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Gun insurance must become mandatory.

Insurance companies won’t tolerate the blackout on gun violence statistics

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I really like those proposals. Good for business too which should get the Republicans on side.

All those new insurance policies (presuming each gun needs to be insured and registered, rather than just insuring the owner).

Mind you - registering and inspection sounds like MOAWR GUV’MINT, so no chance.

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Oh they would. As long as they get access to the actual figures, they’d be quite happy for no one else to.

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NRA already offers “Kill Somebody” insurance. Talk about profiting off of arming america.

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I have often wondered…why has this not happened at an NRA convention or gun show? The obvious answer is “well…every is armed, too easy to defend”…

However, most of the perpetrators of these acts don’t seem to mind being killed in the process. Is it more that those individuals idolize and revere or are even card carrying members of the NRA and supporters of all they espouse?

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It might be hard to imagine what would stop this guy. Norway is a country where many categories of guns are banned, but they still had Anders Breivik. The difference is that Brevik, by his massacre, tripled or quadrupled the typical number of annual murders in the country.

“Gun control won’t work” and “This is the price of freedom” are the gun-loving right’s equivalents of “Those coal jobs are never coming back” and “The economy is actually doing well.”

One day there’s going to be a reckoning for smug dismissal of people who don’t know how suppressors work, for pointing out you can buy guns on the dark net, for ignoring the problem in favour of answering peoples words.

It’s time for the experts to offer a solution instead of a dismissal. The answer can’t just be that America is a shit country that can’t do what every other developed country does.

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And why do you think that is?

Hint: it’s not because the car lobby pushed for the reduction or elimination of any and all safety regulations surrounding the manufacture, distribution, and use of automobiles.

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They already jail and kill us with impunity, dude.

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Because Ralph

1965-Unsafe-3-310

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Having watching @Mister44 fight these battles for many years now, I can say he listens, and replies, and uses real information and real cites - and when he makes a mistake, he acknowledges and amends. This makes him significantly more honest and intellectually rigorous than 99% of the people he argues against, as well as 99% of the people arguing on his side.

People of good will with profound disagreements have the opportunity to gain additional insight on real issues from a perspective other than their own, if they can just exercise a tiny amount of simple kindness. Manners are the lubricant that makes multicultural societies work.

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You’re saying he’s a1%-er ?

Hint: they aren’t generally known for their broad- minded world view.

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Yeah, but there’s usually room for escalation.

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There always is.

That doesn’t mean that giving up/doing nothing is a viable option.

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An Abby normal!