Gun control defeated in Senate. #Orlando means nothing if you're paid by the NRA

boing
83

Australia never had the gun crime rate we had even before their new laws. Their murder rate is down, just like the US murder rate is down, but it is a general decrease that was already way lower than the US rate. In short, Australia’s crime is different than in the US. Also, the UK and Australia are islands. Much easier to enforce bans, where as we have very porous borders. Though all three seem to get drugs easy enough.

Closest neighbor to the south - Mexico. Extremely strict gun control laws. You can’t even own a gun in a “military” caliber like 9mm or 5.56mm. And they have areas that are basically war zones.

Most of the 3rd world countries with high murder rates have strict gun laws. Poverty and massive political corruption and large organized crime groups seem to be more important than gun legality.

Again - guns are design for different purposes as well. Some are marketed for defense, many are marketed for sports and recreation. Marketing aside, what they are USED for is NOT killing people. It isn’t some unholy object infused with a soul destined to kill. It’s metal and wood and plastic. I swear to god, why can’t you look at the numbers and see that the abusers are almost irrelevant. .015% of anything else wouldn’t be a crisis.

Oh - well - here is my answer. You suck at math worst than me.

First off, I use the lowish estimate of 80 million gun owners. Giving the benefit of the doubt and not inflating my numbers. Now lets take your number of 32% of 318.9 million, we get ~102 million.

Now, lets take the number of gun homicides, which is about 12000 a year (rounded up). Now this isn’t the ACTUAL number of people who commit gun homicides, as this would include people who commit multiple homicides, but again I am giving you all the larger number to make it “fair”.

So 12000 is 0.015% of 80 million. Using your numbers of 102 million gun owners that is reduced to 0.003762% ETA - Whoops - put in the 318.9 million number, so that is overall population. Among 102 million gun owners it is 0.01175. Mea Culpa.

How the fuck you got 1,530,720, I have no idea. Ok, I will go on record. If we have half that number, 750,000 gun owners committing murder per year then I will gladly support a ban.

If you TRULY believed that your 1.5 million number of killers was somehow accurate, I guess I can see why you were so eager to lower it. Look, we magically did lower it by using the actual numbers, vs stats from Yourassistan.

Why is it anyone making this statement, NEVER quote the second half of the amendment. Do you just stop reading? Are you being deviousness on purpose, just hoping everyone takes that at face value.

Let’s look at the second half: “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Yes, the first part explains, partly for the NEED for the second amendment. The early government wanted to use a Militia system and keep a very small standing Federal army. In order for there to be a strong militia system, then you need a pool of well armed citizens to pull from. But being part of the militia isn’t a condition on having the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It is right there in black and white. The mental hoops one has to jump through to think other wise are like Olympics leave amazing.

You are right that the original concept of the militia has been replaced by a large federal army and the state national guards. But again, the militia clause, while one explanation, was not the only reason for the 2nd amendment being there.

2 Likes
84

This is one of the more fun/sad arguments in most gun threads.

In the US everything is fine because compared too much poorer countries the crime rate is low. Using rich countries as benchmark is invalid because of reasons.

9 Likes
85

2,996 people died in the 9/11 attack. And thanks to the disproportionate response we got:

The Patriot Act
Secret Watch lists
Guantanamo Bay Prison
The TSA
10 + years of armed conflict in the middle east with hundreds of thousands dead and millions directly affected.
Increased domestic spying by the NSA
Systematic racism and discrimination against Arabs and Muslims
Increased xenophobia
More hate in the world.
Increase in extremest groups
Crappy Memes on face book.

Has any of those above things made us actually safer?

So yeah - passing laws based on emotion leads to lots and lots of bad things.

Dude, you are fixating on what is basically a NOVELTY. IIRC the army has tested them with mixed results. I bet you can find a picture of an army guy using them, and I am sure someone used one some where in combat, but they aren’t used in the military. The SAW M249 plays the role of sustained fire support, not the M4/M16.

Most of those Beta C-Mags are sold to people just shooting shit up in a desert or range somewhere. They are heavy as fuck (adding nearly 5lbs to the gun) and unwieldy. Again, fixating on the perceived potential danger, vs the reality that almost no one is using these things to kill people.

I guess if we were make up a scale, it is more dangerous than a standard capacity 30 round magazine, but with 3 magazines I would have 20 more rounds, and one can change them in a second or two with a bit of practice.

4 Likes
86

You can’t have it both ways. Claiming gun control is what we need, when there are clear examples of countries having extremely tight regulations and it doesn’t work at all.

If you take anything away - take this - the reason people want to kill each other has nothing to do with the tools available.

I have said before that our violence problem is worse than other countries because the US IS worse than other countries. We have horrible pockets of poverty. We have less social safety nets to give people alternatives. We have different cultures of people living in the US. We have systematic racism and prejudices helping keep bad things bad.

Look at where the crime is worst in the US. It is almost exclusively poor neighborhoods. Worst crime in the world - poor countries. Clearly there is a correlation that that when one’s life is shit, getting involved in crime and hoping to make your way out of the shit is seen as a viable alternative. They have nothing to lose.

ETA - There have been pilot programs where they target at risk youths, basically paid them a stipend to go to school and stuff, an alternative to crime, and it works. It isn’t like these people want to be criminals for the most part. They don’t want to die or kill others. For many that is just the life they feel they were dealt and that is the game they have to play.

1 Like
87

Whereas the efficacy of their attempts to do so has EVERYTHING to do with the tools available.

8 Likes
88

You know that not just hurts my feelings (I guess like a passed out drunk girl, I am just asking for it, amiright?), but you clearly are letting your biases get the better of you. I hope you don’t gamble much, because you clearly don’t understand basic odds and percentages.

Most likely I will hurt no one. No one will hurt me. And when I die my kid will sell them off and buy something nice for herself.

89

We will never be on the same side with this topic, but thanks a lot for your civil and detailed reply!

6 Likes
90

And which will be home 3D printable before the decade is out.

91

And yet you cling to your rock that keeps tigers away.

2 Likes
92

You’re after my rock collect too now? You can’t have any of my Trilobites.

Maybe ask me how I use my guns, because it doesn’t involve tigers.

93

It would be great if we could point to somewhere else, and apply a solution to a shared problem that worked for them. But, as far as I know, there is no comparable country. Nobody else has such a diversity of lifestyles. Australia does not have an East St. Louis, or an Oakland. Brazil does not have vast suburban middle class neighborhoods.
And the disparity of lifestyles also leads to the political conflict we are right now experiencing. Many here think that the NRA and it’s members are driven by sinister motives, but that is not it at all. I know a ton of NRA members. They are law abiding, hard working people who just don’t see themselves as part of the problem. Of course there is a fringe element to each side. They make a lot of noise, but are statistically irrelevant. With the pro-gun people, that would be folks like the open carry activists. But the reason that the NRA has the power it does is because it actually represents people like my neighbors. Or me, if I were a member.
There is a gun crime problem in the US, but to a large extent, it is about gang members and drug dealers shooting other gang members and drug dealers. In the summaries that I have read, 64% to 95% percent of shooting victims in major cities have felony records. And many of the innocent remainder are family or friends of people with gang associations, who may have been the actual target. I will stick a few links at the end of my post. If we look at the gun crime statistics independent of urban high crime areas, we start to look like Germany or Denmark.
Terrorism, like in Orlando or Paris, is not something that can be prevented with gun restrictions. Shortly before the Bataclan attacks, the French government released an analysis of gun availability there, and how that relates to the threat of terrorism. If I can find it, I will repost it here. But the conclusion was that no steps current or proposed would have a measurable effect on keeping prospective terrorist from acquiring enough guns to meet their objectives.
I would love to be able to support laws that would actually solve problems. But when the arguments keep making reference to things that are exaggerated or untrue, like the “gun show loophole”, you are just alienating all of us who know better.



http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-30-baltvictims_N.htm

2 Likes
94

Primarily their lobbying and industry representation, which are both sinister enough. The laity isn’t as important.

2 Likes
95

I’m just amazed at how the all-important War on Terror has rendered nearly every inch of the Bill of Rights as ambiguous. We’re at war so here’s a Free Speech Zone. We’re at war so we’ll spy on you because of your religion. We’re at war so you’ve got to expect unreasonable search and seizures. We’re at war so you don’t get a trial. We’re at war so torture is now necessary and legal.

But the amendment that “arms the enemy”? Sacred. Untouchable. The Literal Word of the Founding Fathers.

Wouldn’t it be great if the NRA felt strongly about the the Bill of Rights in general? Wouldn’t it be great to see angry open-carry folks leaping to defeat all assaults on our rights as citizens?

8 Likes
96

I just really hope that the political will currently on display can be channeled into some less shitty laws. (I’m strongly pro gun control, but not as strongly as I’m against abridging rights based on a list that you could be put on without trial or review)

How about repealing the congressional ban on CDC research related to firearms
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/864797

2 Likes
97

Huh. Wouldn’t have anticipated this, but even The freakin’ Guardian seems to agree with you:

Mass shootings are a growing and alarming phenomenon in the US. By a purely numerical count, the United States has seen more than 1,000 mass shootings in 1,260 days. By a stricter definition, the number is smaller but still sobering: 19 public mass shootings since the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in December 2012.

But by any definition, they make up only a tiny percentage of the overall toll of gun deaths. […] The US could end all mass shootings today and its rates of gun violence would still be many times higher than other rich countries.

The article includes some dynamic visuals that I can’t post here, but even a quick one-minute scroll will give you an idea of what kind of percentages we’re talking about.

4 Likes
98

Sure is funny how gun industry lobbyists protect the only aspect of the constitution that matters.

99

A quick recap:

@Mister44 is right that the lists are unconstitutional and they shouldn’t be further empowered
@GideonTJones is right that the lists are racist and therefore these laws are racist
@pjcamp is right that the people opposing these laws backed the creation of these lists and there is no reason to think their stance against the laws is principled
@CarlMud is right that lawmakers can make laws so while its good for them to vote against bad laws the point is that they ought to be writing good laws instead of doing nothing

It seems like the bigger problem than guns is have a government that doesn’t remotely work for the people it governs. Gun legislation is just a small corner of that.

10 Likes
100

Oh. Those guns are to shoot tyrants. No doubt.

What’s a tryant? A ruler who wishes to rule without a mandate.

How do we get a mandate here? Popular vote.

What if the rep no longer represents the will of the people? Refuses? Government gets gamed?

Well… if its 1790 they do it all over again.

A revolution in 2016? No power and no food haulage in and three days later every metro area is asking for a boot on their neck and a poptart dropped from an airplane.

Pulling a gun is an excuse these days.

Its how you become a militant terrorist, not an activist.

Its how you get shot, and become the scapegoat for tyrrany.

But if its Trumpists or the NWO, I so pick the NWO.

New world order. Because the old one is slavers and rapists.

3 Likes
101

Most Americans seem to think that a “good law” is one which drives people they don’t like into a state of seething frustration.

Personally I’d like to give all our lawmakers a five-year paid vacation. With an extension or two perhaps.

2 Likes
103

Wouldn’t it be great if the other large nationwide “Civil Liberties” organization cared as much about the 2nd amendment as they do about the rest of the bill of rights? Are you also disappointed in the EFF for not spending resources on fighting eminent domain cases?

The ACLU has in the past said No call to protect the second amendment, the NRA has it covered (paraphrase, I can’t find the original quote).

2 Likes