No. Fully automatic weapons are part of the law governing weapons of war and off-limit for mere human beings civilians.
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youâve hit the nail head on.
mental health issues can arise at any point during a persons life. a rational person can become engaged in a heated argument which ratchet upwards in aggression. a person can mistake someone in need as an intruder. a cop can mistake anything for a gun.
just as you say â we cannot find the âbadâ or âcrazyâ people in advance. there is no pre-crime.
thatâs exactly why we must look at gun related deaths as an epidemiological issue: a statistical issue â and not one of âgoodâ gun ownership or âbadâ gun ownership.
we have allowed laws (to try) to get everyone vaccinated for the sake of the greater good. we should allow tighter laws on guns for the same reason.
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If I apply the same philosophical lens to the issue of child pornography/sexual abuse, hereâs what I come up with: Regulating/restricting access to child pornography using the security state (police, courts, jails) does not prevent its circulation, nor prevent harm to children. People just produce and circulate it illegally, and we canât reliably prevent it without creating a full-on totalitarian society.
The more productive approach is to look at the social forces which cause and allow people to sexually abuse children, and address those. Things like what social support is available for adults who were abused as children, what environments and attitudes enable child abuse, how pedophilia is understood culturally (i.e. as a condition that can be managed rather than a moral defect that makes you monstrous) etc.
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Was that a âyesâ or a âno?â Iâm unclear.
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Yay, bazookas, tanks, dynamite and hand grenades for everyone!
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Just snaps for the dogs, please. Theyâre dim.
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I didnât mean to. I meant that in a culture where people think a gun is a good tool to defend themselves against mentally ill mass shooters, mentally ill people will think guns are a good tool to defend themselves against the parts of society that âthreatenâ them. Mentally ill people exist in the same society as other people. Iâm talking about how a culture is reflected through delusionally angry people, not saying that gun owners are all, mostly, or even in substantial numbers delusional, but that delusional people are probably at least as likely as anyone else to be gun owners and enthusiasts.
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The problem with centrist and balanced views is that there are really only two underlying positions for civilian ownership of firearms. All or none. The difference between owning A gun and any number of scary looking guns isnât very large so things get rapidly divided into these polar opposite camps. The middle ground is just confusing and far harder to logically justify than the poles.
Without mutual criminal assaults and suicides the numbers look DRASTICALLY different. The vast majority of non-suicide shooting deaths involve mutual criminals. Ending the war on drugs may be the biggest lever we have to change this number.
Saying there must be a way to prevent criminals from getting guns in America is like saying we should get drugs off our streets.
End the war on personal freedom. Stop the war on drugs. Stop the war on civilian firearm ownership. Stop the war on privacy. Stop the war on personal computing.
And in CA the heavy gun control laws get all their support from the heavy urban centers, but those heavy urban centers are the ones with very high gun homicide rates. Then the rest of the CA population dilutes that down so you get this happy blue dot of high regulation and low death rate, it is a total joke.
As all other developed (and most of the developing) countries disagree: The rest of the world is wrong, isnât it?
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When we no longer need armed military and police I would gladly lay down my arms.
Until then, they are wrong 
The big difference is allowing gay marriage doesnât âtakeâ anyoneâs property (ignoring all the religious folks who feel they are somehow injured). Banning firearms would include a âtakingâ that is a much harder problem to solve.
Police are on track for killing about 1000 Americans this year. Thatâs 3% of all expected gun deaths this year. They are part of the gun violence problem.
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This I 100% agree with. Prohibition would just put the gun business in the hands of organized criminals. It doesnât work for drugs, doesnât work for gambling, doesnât work for prostitution, didnât work for alcohol. In a country that has very few people who want to own guns, prohibition could work.
But itâs not even remotely an all or nothing question. Vast swaths of perfectly legal things are regulated in one way or another. Practically everything is touched by regulation. Guns are too. All or nothing just isnât reality.
There is no war on civilian firearm ownership. Itâs about as real as the war on Christmas. There are definitely people who would like to have more controls on firearms. There are definitely people who would like to ban guns completely. The fact that people disagree with you doesnât make a war.
In 1999 the NRA said that no-gun-zones in schools just made sense - why would we want guns around our children? Now they say that no-gun-zones in schools kill children and that they are on a slippery slope towards the government seizing everyoneâs guns in preparation for a fascist takeover. In that time states have passed laws interfering with doctorâs relationships with their patients in the name of gun rights. There are stand your ground laws that basically encourage the escalation of violent situations. The entire fantasy of self-defense is built around the idea that once someone initiates a crime they forfeit their life. Itâs summary judgement death penalty for everything. That is not a war on guns, it is a war on sanity. What worries me about the discussion of guns in America how paranoid people who are against gun control sound. Paranoia and guns arenât a good mix.
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I agree that the flip flop in NRA rhetoric around the GFSZ is definitely suspect. Iâve never like them, they just seem like hate crime laws, legal enhancements that are just special interest pandering and donât seem to add any value to the justice system.
I also agree that the tinfoil hattery and paranoia crowd seems overly represented among firearms enthusiasts and that it is disturbing.
I do think there is enough to call it a war. We face a number of (from my point of view as a 2A/civilian firearm ownership supporter and California resident) bad and nonsensical laws each year at the city, state, and federal level. At the same time we have media attacks like reporters using FOIA to publish the names and addresses of CCW license holders (gun owners) for no seeming reason other than to out them. It is a culture war around gun acceptance and I see a bunch of the same tactics Iâve seen for other political issues Iâve followed a bit more closely like land use and gay rights (but maybe all political fights ultimately look/feel/smell the same?). We also have issue activists like Soros and Bloomberg putting a lot of money into banning guns to keep it afloat.
Have you looked at some of the studies put out by the gun banners favorite âresearchersâ who would likely receive money from the CDC. Most likely you would be appalled at their conclusions and the headlines they feed to the media. CDC cause death stats, and the FBI uniform crime report (name?) are the two most objective sources we have.
The stats on CCW permit holders seem to indicate that this type of violence from licensed gun owners is extremely rare. it is a strawman argument outside of suicide completion.
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Crime statistics on murders tend to disagree unless you think most murders are not committed by people that know each in the heat of the moment.
Not to mention that there is no such thing as âlicensed gun holdersâ since there is no licensing requirement to own a gun in America. There are licensed concealed weapon permit holders but they are a subset of people with firearms (and a tiny slice of them, in fact).
So, please, check your own strawman argument.
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To the extent that someone passes a special purpose law that provides extra punishment for using guns on school ground, I agree that is pointless. People who are going to go and shoot someone at a school arenât doing risk/reward calculations against maximum sentences. Itâs more the notion of whether a school would be better off as a place where no guns are allowed at all, or a place where people carry guns to fend off potential assailants. The NRA argument against them isnât âwell this law is ineffectiveâ itâs âwe need guns in schools to kill bad guys who come to schools.â
Alright, I can see how that feels like a war. At the same time itâs not really comparable to the war on drugs. In the war on drugs, the solution is clear: the government needs to end the war on drugs. But with firearms, you have the kinds of tactics you are talking about, public pressure on both sides, and state and federal governments taking different approaches. Thereâs no one to point to and say, âYou, just stop it.â Itâs more like something where there needs to be a gradual shift, but there arenât even real leaders that could have peace talks. Plus, itâs a little hard to imagine trying to de-escalate a social conflict with people who pass âStand Your Groundâ laws.
I donât know, the hatred between the left and the right in America seems really extreme. Of course, I guess itâs getting that way in Canada too (thanks to political leadership schooled in US culture wars).
So how do dystopian societies likeâŚohâŚany country in Western Europe, survive? Itâs all Mad Max there all the time?
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