Gun-toting mom shot in the back by her 4-year-old may go to jail for 180 days

boing
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Well. Switzerland has plenty of guns. And people get them and know exactly why they have them. What they are for. What they aren’t for.

They aren’t for bringing to political rallies. They aren’t for shooting neighbors. They aren’t for the Fourth of July. They aren’t a consumer luxury item. They aren’t a symbol of some American way of life.

They’re for shooting coyotes and rattlesnakes and whatnot.

Not kids in hoodies.

I wish this were the discussion we were having. Not the whole guns/no guns stupidity.

That one little overblown wedge issue is soo very effective in splitting urban and rural poor… Because the rural dwelling people need guns (Yes they actually serve a purpose) and urban people really don’t.

But most of this country is lawless in practice. If not word. So there’s still the argument for defending onesself. And it’s strong enough that… If you can’t enforce the laws that protect us, how will you enforce the laws that prevent guns from being in the ‘wrong hands’. You can’t.

Florida mom occupies the tenuous position of trying to make guns part of her political identity. And her kid shot her in the back for her trouble.

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To be fair, using existing legal constructs to let people choose exactly that as easily as getting a job at McDs is what the last five years and all the future years of my life are dedicated to…so I’ve been practicing drilling down to those points for a while. :slight_smile:

(and yeah, totally serious and it’s completely doable, I’m just kind of sucky at putting myself out there and am still trying to collect the last couple of people needed to kick things into high gear)

We’ve chatted about it here a few times, but it’s definitely an ‘If you build it they will come’ scenario unless we find a better/braver communicator than I.

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I agree with all of this. I know I sound like every old person ever, and I realize we have been lamenting the actions of youth since at least the times of the Ancient Greeks, but:

Part of me wants to say it seems society cares less and less about bad behavior. At least some types of bad behavior.

The other part says we care, but I think maybe we just see it more because every time someone does something stupid, we now have a youtube video of it. I mean any sort of fisticuffs is now met with encouraging shouts of “world star!”. But does this increase awareness promote other people to emulate the behavior? Or does it maybe even have an opposite affect? Or do we get numb to it?

And like you said, the media wastes no time showing it off if it will get eyeballs.

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We’re going to start weirding people out of we agree too enthusiastically, but I’m totally with you here.

I think that’s kind of important though, right? We’re all capable of being reasonable, but we’re being externally motivated not to.

The results kind of speak for themselves, and that’s what we should be focused on, IMNSHO. Instead we end up fighting over things like ‘this is my right’ or ‘but Joe did it!’… the same sorts of things that everybody sees through when we do it as grade schoolers becomes the social norm once we join society.

It’s a little surreal, isn’t it?

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I think the heart of the gun control issue, or drugs, or health, or whatever - stems from people and their interactions with each other and their environment. It isn’t a gun problem, or a food problem, or a drug problem - it’s a people problem. People making bad decisions for what ever reason. And we are masters of self-sabotage.

So for example, say you have a kid who likes to throw rocks at other kids. You can take away his rocks, but does that stop his desire to throw rocks? If he got a rock somehow would he probably throw it? Yes. What if he finds something else to throw, will he use that instead? Yes. Only after the kid empathizes that his actions hurts others, or that there are severe consequences to his actions, will he learn to behave.

I feel like while we learned that just yelling at kids and telling them to stop doesn’t work very well, we some how think it will still work with other parts of society. Attempting to take away the tools some people use to commit violence does NOTHING to get rid of the REASON they wanted to commit violence.

“Oh? I can’t own a gun now? Great, that means someone besides McDonalds will hire me even though I got a felony conviction for drug possession when I was 18. I guess I no longer live in a house with 4 other people, bed bugs, and no hot water. I guess I now have more than 1 pair of shoes and clothes with no holes in them. I guess now I can finally pay my property tax on my shit car so that I can finally get my tags updated. I won’t have to fear getting robbed now and finally have hope! Oh and I no longer want to beat my girlfriend!”

See what I mean? Like taking away a kids rocks, we might stop him for awhile, but they will find something else to throw. The reasons for the violence are still there. I think taking away the rock is the clear, easy answer for some, but the reality is a lot messier. But until you find out WHY the kid is throwing rocks and address it, he probably won’t stop.

Or what about someone who wants to commit suicide? You might take away sharp objects, belts, laces, guns of course. But does that remove their want to kill themselves? We can’t monitor them 24/7. If you want to FIX the problem, you need to FIX the person, not lock them away and take away anything dangerous.

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@Mister44 @shaddack That gun control cake needs stupid addendums for having to show identification and be videotaped in order to eat the cake legally with a biometrically unlocked spoon (no forks or knives please, too dangerous).

@grimloki Our conspicuous consumption and social luxury lifestyle focus isn’t just a gun issue. But I do think that fundamental freedoms are something we, as Americans, should support and celebrate. The right to arms is one of those freedoms. Maybe when America matures a bit more our attitudes will more resemble the Swiss. They had a couple hundred years of a head start as an independent nation. Also - the blatant display of firearms is often a reaction to the segments trying to get rid of them. Most of these open carry types wouldn’t be worried about it if people weren’t trying to have the firearms use restricted in the first place.

I don’t think anyone is promoting uneducated and irresponsible gun ownership, but giving the government the mandate to impose restrictions and dictate those levels prior to any a person exhibiting dangerous behavior is akin to voter education and licensing. Both of these have been abused and manipulated in the US and elsewhere to suppress and control minority populations. Many are in favor of this and point to the automobile/driving licensing and registration, and it all falls back to whether you think firearms ownership is a fundamental right. Gun owners don’t want to be the new subject to some version of “driving while black”. Do we want to roll back voting to only landed citizenry voting? We all want responsible and educated voters right? Voting rights and the right to arms share a history of being similarly restricted, many today argue that we are past the need for personal arms, but that seems to ignore much of recent history.

Once you give up that cake, it generally ain’t coming back. When we don’t need armed police and military, maybe then we won’t need personal arms. But if we reach that point, who would be committing these gun crimes anways?

End the war on drugs
End the war on private firearms ownership
End the war on privacy
End the war on general purpose computing
Support personal freedom

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Actually, we have tons of evidence that that first intervention is HUGE, so that might not be the best example, in fact one of the reasons WHY the interventions work is because they’re finally getting attention and being taken seriously (among many many other things, of course)

When you get down to it there are two really obvious lines that we tend to blatantly ignore because of ‘freedoms’ and such.

Line number one is 'Interacting directly with other people in a way they’re not openly consenting to’. Honestly IMNSHO you shouldn’t get treated like a grown-up if you can’t understand ‘leave me alone’.

Line number two is ‘reckless endangerment’, which is really the same for guns, cars, bombs, or feeding people spoiled food.

There are analog scales there (the more people you’re potentially interacting with the more responsible you need to be), but these are super simple concepts that, when applied to most problems, have fairly clear and obvious boundaries.

It’s not complicated. We MAKE it complicated because personal responsibility annoys us. But that doesn’t mean that rights and responsibilities shouldn’t go hand and hand when those ‘rights’ can harm other people, and the fact that it’s not a key part of the law of the land is a big part of our problem.

Try some scenarios! It works pretty well!

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No one can take away America’s guns. We can pass laws. Whatever.

There’s the logistic problem of how to get 350 million guns out of the hands of a populous of roughly the same amount of people.

They give them to you willingly, are you just aren’t gonna get them.

Also the second amendment is pretty solid.

I know the future is uncertain. But not the future of guns in the US. That shits here to stay like it or not.

The people who celebrate it are largely assholes with wider political agendas. It’s not Americana. It’s jingoistic political bullshit.

And ironically it’s also why I have a gun. To protect me from people who are ALL EXCITED about firearms. The amateurs.

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Agree that we can’t explain away the link of firearms and suicide completion. Ultimately I think this comes to a seemingly distasteful, cold-hearted conclusion that increased suicide completion is outweighed by the benefits and freedoms of personal firearm ownership.

Saying that people will just kill themselves another way seems to ignore the data that they are far less likely to be successful if they choose other methods.

Life is fragile, and we can’t protect ourselves via laws from all things.

We are currently installing suicide prevention barrier nets under the Golden Gate Bridge. How much will that affect the completion rate in CA, probably not by much. I wouldn’t say I’m a proponent of the change, but I am not going to oppose it. When it comes to restricting personal firearms ownership in the name of suicide prevention, I am opposed.

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I understand, I wish I felt the same certainty you do.

We are close to testing some of this in California.

If they pass a ban on possession of magazines greater than 10 rds, the state won’t be compensating the citizens. I don’t think we have firm numbers, but you are probably talking about confiscation and voluntary surrender of personal property for half of the gun owners in CA (half is my guesstimate, 10+ rd magazines were made illegal to purchase for non-LEO in California starting in 2000).

Numbers I’ve seen for CA gunowners are at around 7.8 million total, so 1/3-1/2 would be 2.6-3.9 million and if you took an average of two magazines, we are looking at a $70+ million dollar confiscation and significant restriction on firearm ownership (using a very conservative $10/magazine value estimate). Even if the number of owners affected is 10%, it is still huge.

I hope these things don’t come to pass, but we may have a test of the hypotheses regarding compliance and confiscation in the USA.

Some other added related data.
California spent $24 million dollars to take 9,700 guns out of the hands of approximately 7,500 people they determined had become prohibited firearms owners. They are requesting millions more to process the remaining 12,000 prohibited owners on their list.

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Bugger! That’s what you get for looking at captions underneath … :laughing:

As you say, the UK experienced a spike in gun violence and all murders in the early 2000s, which then dropped off again. Murder rate and suicide by firearm is still much lower there than the US. Lower also than NZ and Australia.

The experience in Australia after was rather different, with there being a drop off in gun murders after gun controls and a buy back were introduced in response to the Port Arthur Massacre.

australia-gun-deaths-bi.png960×720 75.2 KB

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Have you ever seen gun confiscation work ever?

I’ve seen troops going house to house in Iraq. Pulling everyone out on the front yard, pointing guns at adults while everyone screams don’t kill me.

I’ve seen villages cleared and swept.

I’ve also seen videos of folks whittling their sotcks out of lumber for the AK-47 receiver they just made with the lost wax method and pot iron… So. Pretty sure you can’t magically pass a law to get rid of guns. The same way you can’t pass a law to get rid of sex. Or cancer. (I guess that’s the two prevailing opinions on firearms… Right?)

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That may happen later in the future with actual cakes, with the growing push to control everything. And to patronize us for our own good. Just wait for the War on Diabetes.

And the total surveillance we are increasingly under will make sure we will be compliant, and the data will be fed directly to our respective insurance companies, to be handled democratically and freely by private corporations, outside of the oppressive yoke of governments. You will have a choice of the corporation that will take care of your freedoms. Like you can do with your cable providers. Adam, here’s Eve - choose freely. Or, Kang vs Kodos - pick what you want.

It will start with “sin tax” on sugar…

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Ummm…right above your response, yup. That’s basically what they did in Australia. It’s just different from your example because it wasn’t done at gunpoint by a foreign occupier but actually by reasonable people acting like adults.

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Mmmm. Don’t mind if I do …

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I agree, it is unlikely to work well but we may see what an attempt looks like.

No - I haven’t served or witnessed confiscation attempts. I’m only looking at what I’ve seen in CA and what I’ve heard about Australia, Canada, Nazi Germany…

The California Assault Weapons registration results provide little data. In 2000, most ARs and AKs were deemed illegal if they had not been registered by the deadline. The numbers bandied about seemed to indicate that there was about registrations received from only about 10% of the required owners, so that left the outcomes as:
??% Unaware of registration and now unknowing criminals
??% Aware of registration and defiant criminals
10% Aware of registration and registered compliant (I’m in this bucket)
??% Aware of registration and chose to remove firearms from state or sell them compliant

Post 2007 many of those owners would be able to reconfigure their rifles into a legal California compliant configuration, but for those ~7 years there were just a lot of paper criminals.

If we go to a 10+ round magazine ban, it won’t be an outright confiscation, but will give us a taste of what it might look like.

Just because it won’t work doesn’t mean the California voters and government won’t pass a law to try.

California has registration records of all handguns purchased post 1991, if I recall correctly. And beginning in 2016 they have registration of all rifle purchases as well.

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The can have my gun when I get a phaser with stun and kill and pleasant warming sensation settings.

I am holding out until then.

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Don’t I know it.

Agree we will have our short list of government approved substitutes, no doubt they will be using proprietary patented substances and the patent holders will have paid large amounts of money to lobby our elected officials in helping institute such restrictions and mandates.

Your cake is ready citizen. Make compliant happy enjoyment face during mastication for video verification observation device.

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Citizen, according to the computer analysis, your microexpressions indicate unhappiness with your assigned dietary ration. Report at your earliest convenience but no later than in 48 hours to your assigned supervision station for a remedial education. Remember, compliance is freedom.

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Second best Professor Elemental song ever!

(This forum constantly surprises me!)

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