http://freakonomics.com/books/freakonomics/chapter-excerpts/chapter-5/
Yeah, Iâve read Freakonomics, and I disagree with the way the problem was worked because they only accounted for the number of pools, not the number of swimming visits people make each year. That drastically lowers the risk - and it should. Swimming is a risky thing to do, but when you consider that the result I gave you didnât even include beach or lake swimming, itâs not really all that bad. Thereâs just a lot of exposure to the risk.
In fact itâs far less than there is to guns, and I provided you with the percentage of people who died as a result of an accidentally inflicted gun wound in 2011.
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Proof? Seriously? If gun control actually worked, Chicago would not have a âgun violenceâ problem. Most of the deaths would be from knives over there. Bill Clinton signed a bill that put a 10-year ban on larger magazines. Effect on crime and murder? None.
Now, please list anything the NRA has objected to that meets the following criteria:
- Does not just ban anything. Sorry, but simply bans do not really work.
- Does not put an undue burden on honest citizens.
- For those that have rights taken away, is due process involved (such as going before a judge).
- Does not assume that criminals will suddenly start obeying the law.
I await your response.
Yes, and those same cultural differences that prevent comparing gun control between the US and CanadaâŚ
âŚprevent comparing gun control between the US and Canada. So why are you suddenly so hot to compare gun control efforts in US and Canada?
You can demand that these comparisons canât be made. Or you can make such comparisons. Doing both is inconsistent.
Again, your personal opinion is not really a valid argument. The suggestion I outlined puts about the same onus on gun owners as already exists for car owners. The main difference is that cars have uses besides perforating living organisms. There is a secondary difference â that people who donât report stolen cars face lesser penalties than those that donât report stolen guns. This is actually a result of the main difference and directly deals with your objection to trying to crack down on straw purchases.
However, the cost and punishment to responsible gun owners is actually nil in this case because responsible gun owners donât let their guns get away from them; or if they are forcibly stolen, they quickly report it to the police. Right? Again, this is all about a minimal amount of accountability for people who buy lethal weapons. Iâll ask again: do you or donât you think that purchasers of lethal weapons should be held accountable for their ownership of a lethal weapon? I think this is actually a completely reasonable condition. You disagree but you havenât provided any non-fallacious arguments as to why.
A felon trying to buy a gun has already been charged and convicted by definition. Due to a little clause in the constitution, charging such a felon with a crime for which he or she has already been convicted is not legal.
There are all sorts of other conditions which might warrant failing a background check but which do not warrant arresting someone. Having a restraining order against you might be a good reason to fail your background check but it is not cause to arrest you. Having a history of manic depression or schizophrenia seems like a reasonable basis for failing a background check but not for being arrested.
You seem to be asking why people who are denied guns in the interest of preventing crimes arenât arrested for those crimes which have been prevented. Because those crimes were prevented and you canât convict anyone of a crime that never happened. Duh?
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The whole gist of Freakonomics was to turn oneâs conventional wisdom on itâs head.
Private pools are arguably more dangerous than public pools or beaches. They have no life guards and less people to realize something is wrong. Indeed most private pool deaths is from a kid going into the pool alone and with out anyone knowing.
But the point is - there is a danger. Yeah, it really isnât that great. Neither are chances of you dying from an accidental gun shot. Yet the perception one there than a household with a gun is much more dangerous than one with a pool - when it isnât.
Itâs about perceptions and reality which is what make that book so great.
It is also far safer to take a swim that to accidentally fall off of the top of a skyscraper. It is far safer to take a swim than to get in a car accident. Logic fail.
Iâm slowly learning better than to engage even-handedly with zealots like yourself (and please review the amount of text youâve written in just this one thread before denying being a zealot). However, Iâll ask just one question and respond if you care to answer it.
Are you telling me that not a single gun control measure currently on the books has made any difference in gun crime whatsoever?
As for your list:
- Bans do not work in the context of a legal patchwork that allows someone to drive 20 miles to get around a ban. Surprise! Teenagers in my home state usually learn this the first time their uncle takes them a little bit north to buy some fireworks.
- This is a matter of opinion. Any amount of burden would be âundueâ in your opinion because you are a zealot.
- Iâm not proposing any rights be abrogated. Iâm proposing the same onus be put on gun owners as on car owners plus a little bit of extra responsibility regarding stewardship of the lethal weapon in question. Surely responsible gun owners can handle that sort of responsibility.
- Just because someone commit embezzlement does not mean he will commit armed robbery. Just because someone commits armed robbery does not mean he will commit rape. Just because someone commits rape does not mean he will commit murder. The notion that there is one distinct class of âgood guysâ and one distinct class of âbad guysâ and that the âbad guysâ wantonly disregard every law on the books is untenable. If such is a premise of your arguments then your arguments are unsound and you are not worth taking seriously. Letâs talk about criminal behavior realistically taking into account that criminals spend most of their time obeying the law and usually only break it in highly context-sensitive ways.
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[quote=âwysinwyg, post:106, topic:38055â]
A felon trying to buy a gun has already been charged and convicted by definition. Due to a little clause in the constitution, charging such a felon with a crime for which he or she has already been convicted is not legal.[/quote]
What are you talking about?
If you get a felony conviction for say robbery, it doesnât preclude you from being tried for a new crime. So if he gets out of jail and does another robbery - thatâs a new crime. Felons canât own guns. So if they try to buy a new one or get caught with one in a traffic stop, thatâs a new crime.
Not everyone who is denied on a NICS is committing a crime trying to do so. There are ways to get flagged for refusal, though you arenât technically denied the right to own a gun. Being a felon isnât one of those. I just find it really hard to believe that out of 80K people, only 44 were actually breaking a law and charged.
sigh
You asked why there were so few arrests as a result of failed background checks. I responded that failing a background check isnât a crime. You said you thought there should be more arrests. I pointed out that there are a lot of reasons someone might fail a background check that donât involve having committed a crime for which one can still be charged.
Itâs actually worse than that.
Right. Not sure where you thought I was saying otherwise. Perhaps you need to read more carefully?
Hereâs the problem, though. You canât fail a background check on account of a crime for which you have not yet been caught and charged. Itâs just a logical absurdity. So if someone is failing a background check due to having committed a crime, they must have already been arrested and charged or already been convicted. Either way, thereâs no cause to go arresting the person again.
Youâre asking a ridiculous question: why donât we arrest more of these people who have either already been arrested and charged or already convicted of crimes (and therefore failed background checks). Iâm telling you your question is ridiculous. There has to be evidence of a crime being committed to arrest someone for committing that crime. Failing a background check is not evidence for a crime. Therefore a failed background check cannot be the basis for arresting someone.
Obviously. In fact, I outlined several reasons for this and have been arguing for several comments that essentially no one who fails a background check does so because of a crime for which they have not been arrested and charged (because, again, that is simply a logical absurdity).
Again, you canât fail a background check for a crime when there is no evidence of that crime being committed in the first place. If you fail a background check due to having broken a law, then you have likely either been already arrested and charged or convicted (in which case arresting you and charging you again is either stupid or illegal). If that was not the case then it would not show up in a background check in the first place.
I think you need to take a few steps back and think this background check thing through a little better.
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Let me put it this way. We ALREADY have background checks. OK, they are not universal. Do you want to make them universal? I see an argument for that, but they need to not be a burden on honest citizens. For that to happen, they need to be instant, and free. Part of instant is that they should be on-line. Go to a web site. Type in your drivers license and social security. Get a response within five minutes of green or red. Make android and iOs apps to do the same thing. That type of universal background check would be just fine, since it would not place an undue burden on honest citizens.
On the other hand, require a universal background check, but keep the current system. Both people have to find a dealer that will do a transfer (many will not do a transfer without a sale). Go, fill out paperwork, pay a fee, and wait days or weeks. Sorry, but no. That is a burden.
Also, what if you want to loan your rifle to your own brother, whom you have known your entire life. If your bother were a felon, I bet that you would know. And what if your brother already HAD guns, but his hunting rifle broke so he wanted to borrow yours for a hunting trip tomorrow. How much sense does it make to put him through a burdensome background check in this case? Be honest!
Now, letâs talk about other types of laws. There is talk about restricting guns from people who commit domestic violence. Fine, if done properly. But, there are questions that need to be answered. Does a judge need to be involved, or is just the accusation enough to strip away somebodies rights? If they are never actually convicted of a crime, do their rights return after some time? If so, how much time? A month? A year? A decade? These are the sorts of hard questions that really make the difference, and that band-aid fixes donât usually address.
Same story for restricting guns for mental health patients. Can a single psychiatrist or psychologist take away somebodyâs rights? Should it take a panel of three or five? Can those rights be restored? If so, once again, what is the process? Oh, and suppose a person in an avid hunter, but they need mental help. Will they avoid seeking help because they are afraid of getting their rights taken away, which makes society worse?
Or, does a law simply seek to take away peoples rights in a vain hope that criminals will also follow the law?
I could also see the benefit in mandatory safety training. Never owned a gun before? Be forced to sit through an hour video that covers safe handling and storage. I would be OK with that â IF it were also available instantly. A gun store could have a room with a DVD player. Safe handling and storage is vital.
Now, do I still sound like a zealot? Have I said anything that is unreasonable?
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So, you mentioned legal patchwork. I have covered this before, but I will reiterate. For example, Chicago has a violence problem. They want to keep guns out. Fine, but their solution does NOT work. What they really want to to extend heavy gun restrictions to the entire US, to avoid the patchwork problem you mentioned. So people in Wyoming have to live with a bunch of laws, which if funny because the people on Wyoming are NOT the ones having a problem with violence, so apparently they are the ones doing something right. This is like picking the state with the worst education system and trying to apply those policies nationwide in the hope that it will improve education across the entire US.
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Everything is a trade-off. Some amount of burden is OK if it will actually make a difference. However, the vast majority of measures fail even this simple test. Ban magazines over 10 rounds. First of all, the vast majority of gun homicides use only a few shots, at most. Will this make a major difference in crime? No. Bill Clinton signed laws limiting magazine sizes nationwide. This ban lasted 10 years. Effect on crime? None. Similarly, banning guns based on appearance is stupid. At least limiting magazine size, while almost completely ineffective, has a shred of logic behind it. However, why have such an artificial limitation if it will not accomplish anything? I do not mind obeying laws that make people safer. I mostly obey the speed limit. I drive on the right side of the road. Those make sense. Telling me that I cannot use a 30-round magazine to poke holes in paper makes no sense.
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OK. fine, You want more responsibility. I can handle that, but the devil, once again, is in the details. What, exactly, do you propose?
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I admit that separating people into âgood guysâ and âbad guysâ is a bit of simplification. But there is some basis in truth. Most people do not want to hurt anybody (at least physical, we are talking guns, not sub-prime mortgages). Some do not mind hurting other people if it benefits them (common criminals). A few want to hurt people (psychopath). Simplifications and abstractions are among the most useful intellectual tools. A map of New York that included every single pebble and grain of sand would be useless, and the map would have to be the same size as New York to include EVERY detail. So, an assumption is made that it is OK to take away the details of a street and just replace it with a line. This is also how politicians make law without known the name and address of every single person the law affects. At some point you have to make generalizations and abstractions â you just have to make sure that they are accurate enough.
I stand by my belief that if you take an honest person and give him a gun, it will not turn him into a murderer. If this were the case, the largest organized criminal organizations would be the military and the police (some would argue that this is the case, but most police and soldiers are not murderers). So, when I talk about criminals, I mean the type of criminals that would not hesitate to use a gun. I would have thought that my context would have been obvious, but I guess not. When I talk of criminals, I am NOT talking about people who illegally copy movies that are copyrighted.
Furthermore, you seem to be under the assumption that we need to do something. Why? Over the past three decades or so, murder has gone down by almost 50%. Violent crime in general is down by about 30%. OH NO! The country is getting safer. Letâs do something to change this!
Finally, you also seen to believe that guns are the problem. I believe that socioeconomic factors are more important that simple gun availability. Take a criminal and do not give him a gun. He will use a knife. He might murder LESS since he has no gun, but he is still likely to murder. Instead of stopping the guns, wouldnât it be better to tackle the issues that make a person a criminal in the first place? And, as I have stated, violent crime is much less of a problem in Wyoming that it is in Chicago, yet Chicago has much more restrictive gun laws. If liberal gun laws cause crime, Wyoming would be a blood bath. So there are two possible explanations for this:
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Less restrictive gun laws mean less crime. Personally, I fall into this came, but I believe that it is a weak correlation. If you take a violent place and arm the honest people, I would expect violent crime to decrease a little, but not drastically. Take a peaceful place and take away all guns â I would expect crime to go up a little, but not much.
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Gun laws are largely (but not entirely) irrelevant in the overall crime rate. Bingo! Poverty, economic opportunity, culture, and population density are much more relevant! One again, look at Chicago â two different zip code, but the same laws. One can have lots of murder, and one can have no murder. The difference between these two zip codes is income. Try to tell me that I am wrong on this one. Google âChicago crime gapâ if you do not believe me.
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I never suggested re-arresting a denied person for their past crime. I am suggesting in some situations the act of trying to buy a gun was illegal.
I believe if you are felon and try to buy a gun, that is a crime. I know possession is a crime. Certainly if that is not a crime, it should be.
Second, most of the time one is denied because of one of the items checked off on the form was untrue. So they lied on the form, which I believe is a crime. On the actual form" âI also understand that making any false oral or written statement, or exhibiting any false or misrepresented identification with respect to this transaction, is a crime punishable as a felony under Federal law, and may also violate State and/or local law.â
I read a little more and 44 was the Federal number. Some states have gone after more criminals, but the numbers are still low. Before we expand powers, letâs take care of restricted people dumb enough to try to buy one.
Why? There is no guarantee that getting a driverâs license or a car registration should be instant or free. And they arenât! Voting isnât instant!
A burden is literally a heavy object. You have a right to carry around heavy objects. You have no guarantee that doing so wonât be a burden.
If I borrow someoneâs car and get in a wreck I have to demonstrate to the police that I had permission to borrow the car. I donât have to get the car registered in my name to borrow it. I donât need to have the title transferred. I do need my own valid driverâs license and permission to use the car. Your scenario is directly analogous in an obvious way.
Actually, those sorts of hard questions are exactly the reasons why legislation (including gun legislation) tends to run into hundreds of pages of text. Theyâre also leading questions that have nothing to do with anything Iâve said so far. Please decide whether youâre arguing with me or the voices in your head.
Ditto for the next three paragraphs or so.
Yes, actually. It is unreasonable to expect that a legal right comes along with an onus on the government to make it as easy as possible to exercise that right. That has never been true and never will be true because it is patently ridiculous. You have a right to build a house. You do not have a right to have an easy time building a house. You have to follow relevant regulations which should be proportional to the risks involved in building that house (e.g. the risks of someone falling through an improperly supported floor).
This opposition to the âburdenâ of doing a similar amount of paperwork to that involved in owning a car does make you a zealot IMO.
For one, I have not advocated anywhere to simply naively apply Chicagoâs gun laws nation-wide. I merely pointed out that your talking point is fallacious. You claim that bans do not work, but your evidence only demonstrates that patchwork bans that can be easily circumvented by driving 20 miles do not work. This is not an argument that bans work. This is an argument that you have not demonstrated that bans donât work.
Since I havenât advocated for any of the policies to which you are objecting you seem to be wasting your time.
I already said. Mandatory gun license renewal that involves accounting for all firearms registered under your license. Hell, if we had that I wouldnât mind people owning full auto assault rifles. Like you said: a trade-off.
The question is whether it is a useful simplification. Let me use your own example to demonstrate:
Thatâs great if youâre trying to find your way uptown. Suppose Iâm a utility worker and need to find a buried pipe? In this case the simplification is not so useful.
I have never even begun to suggest otherwise.
Do I? Or have I simply been pointing out fallacious arguments by you and @Mister44? At @Mister44âs urging I proposed a gun policy that makes a lot of sense to me, but I donât think I ever said anything about âneeding to do somethingâ. Please show me where if Iâm wrong about this.
Iâve argued with you about this before and you pulled the same bullshit tactic. Do you think the country is getting safer because of guns? If not then this is simply not a valid argument against gun control.
Again, please show me where Iâve said anything in this thread even remotely like this.
Youâre using that bullshit simplification again. This is not a valid argument. Not all âcriminalsâ (i.e. people who have committed a crime) will use a knife in the absence of a gun. Not all criminals would use a gun in the first place! Are criminals really particularly likely to murder? Is there one murder committed for each robbery? Is someone murdered every time a joint is smoked? Of course not! I simply canât take you seriously if youâre going to reify âcriminalsâ and âcrimeâ in this ridiculous way.
Yes, obviously if you compare a high income area with a low income area the low income area will have higher rates of violent crime. The more interesting comparison to me is to take a look at two different low income areas and see whether different laws make a different in the rates of violent crime in that context. You canât legislate a low-income area into being a high income area but perhaps there are different ways laws can have an impact on rates of violent crime. You see, crime is a complex phenomenon (I know, you have trouble dealing with this fact) and trying to isolate a single cause for the high crime rate in some neighborhoods of Chicago is pointless. There are multiple contributing factors. If availability of guns is one of these that can be realistically addressed then itâs worth at least seriously looking at.
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The status quo, according to most gun owners Iâve heard from, is a nonsensical, nonfunctional mess.
Perhaps it would be more effective to reassess the strategy being used rather than doubling down on it?
Make it as ânot being killed in a home invasionâ and the odds then quite change.
Then further expand the scope to an entire set of people, and if such actions make such invasions (whether forced entry by cops or by thieves/violent criminals) less palatable, you can end up with overall lowered risk. Even for the unarmed ones, who then âfree-rideâ on the armed ones. Donât underestimate the value of a good deterrent.
How about speech? Do you need a license and a background check to speak your mind? Driving is a privilege. Gun ownership is a right. There is a difference. And, apparently, free and instant background checks sound so horrible to you that it is a deal-breaker, so you prefer the current system, right?
Ahhh. THIS is where things get interesting. The famous âcar analogy.â First, I would like to make something clear. You do NOT need a license or insurance to drive a car. You only need those things to drive a car ON A PUBLIC ROAD. If you have 100 acres, you can drive a car around your own property all day without a license, license plate, or insurance. Similarly, in most states, to carry a gun around town, you need a concealed carry permit.
Now, if you borrow a car from your brother, how about filling out a stack of forms first, then waiting a few days to hear back from the government that it is OK with them. That is what the current background check system is like. Plus, in some places, you have to pay for that honor too. Does that sound OK to you?
So, according to your analogy, I should be able to loan a gun to a friend. My friend already has a concealed carry permit, so he is allowed to carry a gun. That is exactly what I have been arguing FOR! Thanks for proving my point!
Yet most the the laws, and most of the people around here, want to ban things. Nobody should have (insert noun here). Nobody needs (insert noun here). How many posts on here are along the lines of âNRA is evil, guns are evil?â
Hey, mentioning the âvoices in my head.â Nice âad hominemâ attack there. Very well done. You seemed to be so logical, so why are you resorting to personal attacks?
Ah, once again failing to realize what a right actually is. Should it be burdensome to speak? How many forms do you think are required before you can stand on a street corner and talk to people? What kind of paperwork should you fill out to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Also, the house analogy completely fails. Building something is completely different from buying a pre-made object. Should you have to fill out a pile of paperwork to buy a new computer? How about a new socket set? How much paperwork is needed for that? That is a much better analogy.
You have to understand that gun ownership is a RIGHT. However, that right does have some limits, so you have to balance safety with freedom. Is it too much to ask that the freedoms removed be as little and painless as possible, considering that this is a right?
OK. You want evidence about bans? Australia. Back around 1996, they put MASSIVE restriction on gun ownership, and had a major buy-back program. I have numbers for 1995 (just before the ban) and 2007 (latest numbers that I have handy). I also have numbers for the US for the same period.
Murders: Australia â down by 25%. USA â down by 32%.
Violent Crime: Australia â up by 40%. USA â down by 32%.
Australia numbers from Australian government web site. USA numbers from FBI. I adjusted for population. I have looked at more recent numbers from Australia, and things look better for them if you use 2012 numbers, but not by much. USA still had a much better improvement that Australia did. Australia does not quite have a ban, but it is pretty close.
Fine. What I see is a chorus of voices that seem as if nothing short of outright prohibition would satisfy them. I apologize if I have mistakenly put you into that group.
So, you seem to be in favor of registration. I am opposed to this for the simple (but not only) reason that it would make it easier for confiscation to occur. I am sorry, but I simply do not trust our politicians to not do this in the future. You could mail-order guns 100 years ago, just like you could mail-order a new guitar. Laws have been steadily eroding that freedom.
Keep in mind that I am not necessarily OPPOSED to registration. I could even see supporting it IF AND ONLY IF there were some sort of guarantee that this would be the last infringement on that which âshall not be infringed.â That would be the âtrade-offâ required. The problem is that many politicians would NOT stop there and uphold their side of the bargain. âTrade-offâ involves I give something to get something. It is NOT a case of âI give something, I get something that you will take away in a few decades.â Sorry, but that is NOT a trade-off, and there is not much you can say to me to convince me that I can trust the government in this.
Nope, you are wrong. Simplification IS useful, but you need a different map. A utility worker would not need a map that included all Starbucks locations. A coffee lover would not need a map that had manhole covers listed. Everybody needs simplifications and abstractions, but you have to tailor the model to the problem at hand.
Once again, I apologize. Many around here WOULD happily ban all firearms.
Way to draw conclusions that I did not intend (your form of âbullshitâ). I think that there are a LOT of reasons that crime has decreased, one being the decrease of lead in the environment. I do strongly believe that banning guns would NOT make the country safer, and there is no evidence to suggest that. However, if what you are doing is getting you where you want to go, do we really need a major policy change? Thins are improving. Do we really NEED more gun control? For whatever the reasons, we are much safer now from crime that we were 30 years ago. If it ainât broke⌠We are not where we need to be, but the trends indicate that we will get there if we hold the course.
Once again, I thought it was OBVIOUS that by criminal, I meant âthe kind of criminal that would not hesitate to use a gun if the had one.â There, does that make it better? In this sense that does not include shoplifters, people who tear the tags off of mattresses in the store, and people who drink milk past the expiration date. I though that the context of this discussion would be sufficient to clarify my intent. I apologize.
Oh, back to the personal insults (âI know, you have trouble dealing with this factâ). My point is that socioeconomic factors are far more important in the crime rate than the presence or absence of guns. or the gun laws.
I wanted to do the analysis myself. However, for the life of me, I could not find ANY crime data broken down by zip code that was actually available in a downloadable format. There are some interactive maps out there, but that makes it hard to get data for ALL zip codes and analyze them using a spreadsheet. If you know of any, please let me know. I would love to have (and be able to quantify) the correlation between income, population density, and crime.
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I think a more apt comparison would be carrying around fire extinguishers that operated via spraying some form of horrible contact toxin - the intent isnât to kill people, it is to put out the fire, but thereâs the nasty problem of people dying if your aim is bad.
Oh, and sometimes this compound also causes the fire to explode out of control unpredictably, becoming far worse than it had been before you tried to extinguish it.
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Mass shootings: Australia â down by 100%. How you guys doing?
Homicide rate: Australia â down by 68% http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html
See what I mean about your stats?
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So⌠just fuck the people who die because no efforts were made to properly manage gun ownership? Itâs also not a âmagicalâ act of impossibility. It was done in Australia fairly effectively. Of course there are illegal guns (many of them manufactured in the US of A), but the point is that if you see someone on the street with a pistol or a rifle (and theyâre not a cop or a licensed security guard), you know that something is up and to call authorities immediately.
We also have a thriving shooting community. I drive past a gun shop every day (and yes, Iâve been in there⌠as Iâve said before I like guns because theyâre highly engineered works of art). The fact that people cannot privately own certain types of guns, and cannot carry their gun in public does not damage a shooting communityâs viability, while also making being in public safer.
Most new guns laws proposed would have little to no effect on gun crime
This is your presumption. It may be right, but it may also be totally wrong. I think there are no legitimate reasons to not, at the very least, have a nationally uniform system of gun licensing and rules related to gun sales. The fact that you can buy guns undocumented at gun shows is a glaring loophole in the law that is inexcusable.
Your exasperation at all the guns clearly being the reason violence doesnât stand the test of the data.
You say that, but there could be any number of reasons that crime is falling that are independent of gun ownership and it doesnât mean whatsoever that restricting gun ownership wouldnât positively influence the downward trend in crime even more.
How is the rest of the worldâs attitude relevant?
Because many places had or still have gun cultures that are similar to America yet made the decision to enforce more sensible gun laws?
Respect the culture.
What, the culture that underpins your right to bear arms which is paranoid distrust of the government and a belief that somehow individuals having a bunch of weapons keeps them honest, despite the fact that the government has way more and way better weapons? No. Itâs dated, foolish and counterproductive.
If I were say something they do in China was âwrongâ because no other culture does it, Iâd be labeled a bigot
It depends on the thing. Foot binding is wrong and I would criticise anyone who thinks it should be respected. Female circumcision is brutal and moronic and I will say to the face of any person who supports it for religious (or other reasons) that theyâre full of shit, their god is a delusion and they should not be allowed to raise the child they want to maim. Itâs acceptable to take a position on matters where there is an innocent victim, and I canât think of many other things that create as many innocent victims as guns.
You mean like in Iraq or something?
Various European countries allow ownership of such guns.
Youâre point?
Must⌠resist⌠snarkâŚ
The problem with that is what people consider âspecifically designed for their ability to kill large groups of thingsâ is largely arbitrary.
No⌠just no. Youâve tried to validate private use of such weapons by saying that theyâre used for sport, unfortunately for you itâs undeniable that the intended purpose behind the design of AR weapons is the military application of portability and versatility of uses - neither of which are necessary for sport.
Come on - youâre better than that.
Not against the NRA. I will belittle and aggravate as much as possible, since thatâs their modus operandi. Itâs clear the NRA is only interested in their opinion and are not in any way open to discussion, so the game is to trolley their supporters while making a salient case that their opinions are selfish and ignorant.
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Once again, youâre trying to put words in my mouth. The word âassault rifleâ defines the weapon. You donât need to âknow thingsâ about guns to understand their purpose. Itâs a highly portable gun that can hold a large number of rounds and can shoot effectively over a range of distances. All of these functions make it an effective killing tool, and none of those functions are necessary for hunting or target practice. Donât let me stop you from crafting such a beautiful straw man though. Yeah⌠itâs materials Iâm scared of⌠thatâs the ticket.
there was no justice.
What about the charge he got for the only crime that was provable? Based on your defence of this NRA scumbag I thought youâd be all for the presumption of innocence?
If it was a DUI, he would have been eligible for years in prison
Actually, probably not in those days.
No, YOUR bias is that he went to work for the NRA.
Now itâs about me? I thought it was about Mother Jonesâ bias? Try to stay on topicâŚ
Rather than pausing to wonder if youâve just walked into a fucking Arbys.
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