Is it so hard to grasp? I always use smoking as an example – not everyone who smokes gets cancer (in fact, less than 50% do). But smoking GREATLY increases your risk of developing lung cancer.
Most people get that.
Some, very, very few people might act extremely violently – but it’s more like a super rare side effect than the norm.
Not only that, states can take that a step further and many deny gun ownership to people who have committed a felony of any kind. Even in states with fairly weak gun laws often do that and it’s pretty common knowledge that they do so that strongly undermines the credibility of anyone making an argument along those lines. It is absolutely not unconstitutional to restrict access to firearms.
My personal opinion is that background checks, waiting periods, safe storage of guns and ammunition, and licencing owners and users (so you’re not permitted to access a gun in your household unless you also have a licence) are possibly more useful measures.
Specifically the “you’re not permitted to access a gun in your household unless you also have a license” part. You don’t understand how licenses work. A license requirement can do things like prevent someone from buying something through legal channels, or justify harsher penalties for someone having or doing something that they’re supposed to have a license for, but they’re not an effective means of stopping people from doing really anything.
I don’t have a pilot’s license, but I know enough that I could climb into most any single-engined civilian aircraft and get it from one place to another. The only thing that is stopping me is the consequences that will come from me doing the thing without the license–it might be jail time, or a fine, or probably both, but that’s enough of a deterrent because I neither want to go to prison, nor do I want to pay huge fines to the FAA. That’s it. The license isn’t a shibboleth that dispels a magical ward that prevents the airplane from working, it’s just a thing that says I passed a set of common requirements to be satisfactorily competent to operate certain classes of aircraft.
If the person committing the crime has no intention of continuing on with a “normal” life a license is a meaningless gesture. It won’t fix anything because by the time it matters the license is no longer an issue as the would-be perpetrator has made up their mind that this is the end of their “normal” life and they’re either dying, going to prison, or expecting to run from the law for the rest of their lives.
Deterrents don’t work when the people you intend to deter are just willing to die instead of facing whatever punishment has been established.
Reminded me of Nina Hagen a bit. 
Hooray for fewer people being dead!
I think it’s an interesting comment on the state of things when I find myself thinking “This is great!” when I see that statement. I agree with it, but it makes me sad to realize that “fewer people being dead” isn’t what I assume any more when events like this occur.
I am not a huge Nina Hagen fan, but know who she is and like that you know who she is. She was on the KMFDM symbols album, and has done some stuff with En Esch.
I played her album Nun Sex Monk Rock a lot in the mid 80’s. I like her but can also see why some find her a difficult listen. I lost track of her in the 90’s. I will need to go give the symbols album a replay to listen for her. And En Esch doesn’t sound familiar. Will check them out too. May just be coffee brain.
Hypothetically, if the owner and licencee of a gun could face significant penalties if an unauthorized person accessed their firearm, it might act as an incentive to store it more securely. I realize that it wouldn’t necessarily act as a disincentive for someone to use the gun if they could access it.
I’m thinking more specifically in this case about minors accessing guns that adults have legally obtained.
En Esch was one of the core members of KMFDM until the split after the Adios album. And I was wrong, Nina was on the Adios album - which has Ogre on it as well, and is a bit of an eclectic sound than some of their other albums.
Symbols has probably my favorite song of theirs ever, Megalomaniac, as well as Anarchy, though the rest of the album isn’t as strong as some of their others.
So, I went and looked at her website (it looks like it’s straight up Geocities from 1998 or whatever). but the weird thing is she had all these pictures of herself, in sort of fashion poses, but her face is the exact same in every picture. It’s a little creepy.
I don’t usually comment on these types of threads but your analogy triggered (!) something in me that I feel compelled to respond.
You’re absolutely correct that lacking a license will never stop a motivated person from getting a gun - just like it doesn’t prevent you from joyriding in a plane. What it does do though is place a barrier (albeit a small one) from those who are serious from those who are merely opportunists. If my hobby was flying and I was serious about it, I may go about the necessary steps to obtain a pilot’s license. If my hobby was shooting, then a license would just be a formality for obtaining and using a gun.
The bigger issue is one of availability and access. I can’t fly a plane - not because I don’t know how but because I have no idea how to get one. I don’t know anybody with a plane and I’m not sure where to find one other than the local airport where lots of security will most likely prevent me from getting to a plane. In other words, I have little access to planes other than via a formal (and expensive) process.
I don’t own a gun and have no real desire to. However, I can go to the local superstore down the street and walk out with a gun within minutes. A background check may delay this by a few hours but the accessibility and availability is shockingly high. Again, a license will not stop me but it is a small and reasonable barrier to help stem the unbelievably easy access of guns to just about anyone.
We need licenses to operate cars, own a dog or catch a fish yet we will not require even this basic level of certification for obtaining and using a deadly weapon. This logic just baffles me.
I’m listening to Cheesy right now. Kind of reminds me Consolidated so far. I like it. In '93 my music horizons were expanding in all sorts of directions and while I continued to enjoy Industrial-ish music it took a back seat to new (to me) genres. I will listen to Symbols next.
KMFDM is one of those bands I have always enjoyed but for whatever reason never delved very deeply into. Ogre and SP on the other hand I was obsessed with although even with them I lost track mid 90’s after The Process.
Her music has a definitive 80’s obscure punk-pop flair. Wonder where she got that from.
This.
Mental illness encompasses anxiety, depression, psychopathy, schizophrenia, OCD, and ADHD. All very different in their presentations, treatments, and outcomes.
If we look at “physical illness” using the same umbrella term, you’d be lumping cancers with colds.
I think the belief is fueled by American persecution myth that NRA has created amongst the extremist gun enthusiast segment.
Well, I’d say that the difference is that smoking is highly visible and a voluntary action, and doesn’t have wildly varying risks depending on what brand you smoke.
Mental illness has many subtypes, mixed types, is invisible in many cases, and is highly complex in terms of person, environment, diagnosis, social support system, individual support system, and many other factors combine to create wild differences in behavior even in highly similar individuals.
So I guess the takeaway here is that this is comparing apples and quasars, there’s almost nothing in common except that they exist in the same general universe.
I just noticed something about America. Mass shooting are happening almost every day. That means when you (for an arbitrary “you”) wake up in the morning you have almost a 1 in 325M chance of committing a mass shooting today. If propensity to mass shoot was normally distributed, that would mean it was around 5.8 standard deviations off the mean.
Germany has only had a couple of mass shootings in a decade. So if you wake up in the morning in German you have almost a 1 in 300B chance of committing a mass shooting today. It turns out to be about 6.8 standard deviations off the mean.
So from the perspective of a person living in Germany, the average American is about a standard deviation towards mass shooting. The propensity of the average american to have a mass shooting would fall in about the top 15% range for Germans.
Edit to clarify: This is junk math, by the way. I guess that’s probably not immediately obvious to everyone. I mean it in a sort of tongue-in-cheek way. But the general observation, just thinking about how the likelihood of being a mass shooter suggests not just that they are more common but that the average person is closer to that mindset is probably valid.
I’m fine with the latter, but the former here, losing your ability to vote, I never understood. Why does this make sense as punishment?
You say that as if it’s an argument that tighter gun laws don’t help. I see it as evidence that even these very mild restrictions may have limited the carnage in this case.
By committing a serious, federal offense, you’ve proven you lack the ethics to be a voter or juror. (For example, if you’ve committed mail fraud, why would we expect you to ever deliver a guilt verdict in any fraud case?) We’re not trying to give people a fair battleground, we’re trying to build the institutions of a functional nation.
And if it wasn’t for harsh federal drug sentencing, the above would all sound pretty obvious.
I don’t own a gun (yet), but do hold a Foid card. I come from a family of deer hunters, so guns have always been in the house.
My brother is a police officer, and he bought an AR-15 a while back. I asked him if he was able to own it because he was on the force and his response was along the lines of, “Nah. I just walked into the gun shop and bought it. No special license. I got it at “The Barn” which is just some redneck with a ton of guns he sells out of his barn. Actually, putting on my Cop hat, it was deeply disturbing at the time”.
The Barn is in Northern Illinois out by DeKalb, for those wondering what the heck kind of backwoods red state such a creature exists in.
