evilweasel posted:

we think you're lying idiot

gowb posted:

I'm sorry? Why? I'm honestly just curious. Short of traveling to PR myself, there seems to be little I could do to verify all this, so I'm hoping there's some proof that will trump my uncle and friends' anecdotal evidence that the aid is getting through and everything is fine.

Squalid posted:

I can't help but think about the knock-on effects of mass weapons ownership. I believe one reason police are so likely to use lethal force in this country when it would have been avoided anywhere else is that they have to act as if everyone they interact with is potentially carrying deadly weapons.

Mulva posted:

That doesn't answer the question. We aren't a happy well adjusted nation that just happens to have lovely gun laws that make everyone go crazy and shoot everything up. We have deep rooted social problems across the board that guns exacerbate. Why do you assume that changing our laws turns us into Australia, where their laws seem to have actually worked, as opposed to our neighbor Mexico, where they do sweet gently caress all to make things better?

VitalSigns posted:

Mulva posted:

You aren't answering the question. Literally everything you mentioned about Mexico applies to the US [Rising inequality, drug prohibition, a long porous border with a neighbor willing to embolden their criminal tendencies]. The closest you have to what would be different is "Well the US is the biggest supplier of guns to Mexico, so obviously if the US isn't making civilian guns anymore they can't supply guns to themselves". Which is both incredibly naive and also kind of loving short sighted. Mexico doesn't supply the US with a lot of guns because there is no market for it. There's instantly a market for it if the US bans guns. We can stop sweet gently caress all from Mexico coming into the country in basically unlimited amounts. Drugs, sex slaves, you name it it just comes on over. Beyond that there has always been a big push of technological innovation in our gun community directed towards loving over the ATF. That's where poo poo like the bump fire stock comes from, or people selling cheap CNC machines to work 80% lowers into firearms, or all that poo poo. There are, today, thousands of people who see it as their patriotic duty to make completely untraceable firearms as an expression of their Second Amendment rights. What exactly do you see that crowd doing in the future, saying "Good game, guess we are done now" and moving on?

Why do you think we'd fundamentally accept gun restrictions as a nation when we've clearly shown that we don't particularly value human life more than guns?

Mulva posted:

You aren't answering the question. Literally everything you mentioned about Mexico applies to the US [Rising inequality, drug prohibition, a long porous border with a neighbor willing to embolden their criminal tendencies].

Mulva posted:

"Well the US is the biggest supplier of guns to Mexico, so obviously if the US isn't making civilian guns anymore they can't supply guns to themselves". Which is both incredibly naive and also kind of loving short sighted. Mexico doesn't supply the US with a lot of guns because there is no market for it. There's instantly a market for it if the US bans guns. We can stop sweet gently caress all from Mexico coming into the country in basically unlimited amounts. Drugs, sex slaves, you name it it just comes on over. "Good game, guess we are done now" and moving on?

Mulva posted:

Why do you think we'd fundamentally accept gun restrictions as a nation when we've clearly shown that we don't particularly value human life more than guns?

VitalSigns posted:

Yes this is the true problem, which you are contributing to with "well even if I did care more about human lives than my toys it wouldn't make a difference."

Mulva posted:

I don't own firearms, for a myriad of reasons. I do like blowing poo poo up, but guns aren't actually the best way to do that. And explosives are a sometimes treat.

I just question why you continue to compare the US to Europe and Australia when we've never really had all that much in common with them. "Well it works there", you say as if we've ever had a system that values the same things they do or operates the same way. "The West" actually isn't a real thing, and we've always had more in common with our enemies than our friends.

yronic heroism posted:

Hmm yes why would an British colony with same language and common law traditions have anything in common with Britain?

KiteAuraan posted:

Yep, a culture involving violence as a solution for problems tied heavily into toxic masculinity. Just like the US.

Au Revoir Shosanna posted:

This is pretty loving grim.

https://twitter.com/splinter_news/status/915226219259580416

Crowsbeak posted:

Actually it is his. But I am not going to get at how this man should be denied commmunion.

Oh and for any committed Socialist I will remind you what these committed Socialists and men committed to racial justice thought of attempts to disarm the populace.



Gun control will only happen when the forces of Capital see more and more groups like the Huey P. Newton gunclub and the John Browns out in the open. They care nothing for those murdered largely from the losers of their system.

Mulva posted:

I don't own firearms, for a myriad of reasons. I do like blowing poo poo up, but guns aren't actually the best way to do that. And explosives are a sometimes treat.

I just question why you continue to compare the US to Europe and Australia when we've never really had all that much in common with them. "Well it works there", you say as if we've ever had a system that values the same things they do or operates the same way. "The West" actually isn't a real thing, and we've always had more in common with our enemies than our friends.

Squalid posted:

The thing is any complex phenomena like crime or suicide is going to be effected by many variables. However that doesn't mean changes to any causative factor must necessarily have no effect.

Mulva posted:

Yes how odd that a bunch of people that didn't like life in Britain and fought 2 wars with them inside 40 years would develop in a different way, shocking.

Kilroy posted:

yeah you really got to shoot the rich if you're going to have any hope of eating them

Squalid posted:

If there could ever be a reasonable policy on gun control in the United States I think it would look exactly like as you have described. Just mandating every gun owner must have a safe and keep his weapons in it when not in use would do far more for public health than any weird regulation on peripherals like suppressors.

yronic heroism posted:

You're the one saying we have so much in common with our enemies...

The Muppets On PCP posted:

that's a dead end because the second you mandate something all hell breaks loose among gun nuts

gun store owners got death threats just for voluntarily carrying a line of pistols with embedded smart locks

VitalSigns posted:

This is demonstrably false: we know exactly what factors cause the problems that accompany drug and alcohol prohibition and those factors do not exist with guns. And this is not theoretical either because we have empirical proof from the rest of the industrialized world which have more effective gun regulation than we do, up to a to a near total ban except for strict licensing like in Australia and the social problems that accompany alcohol prohibition are not present in any of them.

BrandorKP posted:

I don't believe that you don't know which particular abstract concept I'm referring to. I think you want to dodge the implication. That's being a coward.

And we definitely give up free speech and privacy in rather specific instances where it prevents the loss of life or could cause loss of life. These ideas are ours and are whatever we decide they are collectively. It's perfectly fine to draw boundaries around them, rather than acting like a monster casually writing off a mass shooting for a belief.

Squalid posted:

Well for one thing weapons in Mexico overwhelmingly enter the country from the United States. There's no comparable source that could supply an illicit US arms market.

A weapons regulation program in the United States doesn't need to eliminate guns to be effective, it just needs to reduce their availability for illicit and rash means. I'm not an economist, but I suspect the market for drugs and illegal guns function very differently.

Dead Reckoning posted:

I'm confused here. Do think that Europeans don't have illegal guns, or that there isn't an illegal arms trade in Europe, or that there aren't violent organized criminal gangs that make money in the illegal arms trade in Europe? Because in the 90s Scandinavian biker gangs were blowing up each other's club houses with anti tank rockets. The problems that accompany prohibition are that people want the prohibited thing, and that organized crime steps in to meet that demand, and then criminal gangs go to war over territory. Which of these do you not foresee happening with respect to guns in America?

Instant Sunrise posted:

Where gun control is the most effective isn't against the comparatively rare pre-meditated murder 1 cases. These are somewhat uncommon from a statistical standpoint, but the NRA tries to act like these are the only crimes that ever happen.

Where it's the most effective is against Murder 2 cases where you have an argument get out of hand and somebody pulls a gun because it's there and they have immediate access to it.

In 2012, for every case where a gun was used in self-defense, there were 32 murders, suicides or accidents.

If you have a gun in your house, you're more likely to kill or injure yourself from an accidental discharge than defend yourself against a home invasion robbery.

Also an AR-15 would be loving terrible for defending your home against a break-in. If you miss, that bullet's going to go through your walls and your neighbors walls. So you'd better pray that it didn't end up going through your neighbor's baby's crib or something.

Dead Reckoning posted:

This is incorrect. It is closer to 36%.
Of the guns submitted by Mexico to the ATF for tracing, which are successfully traced, 95% are traced to U.S. sources. But Mexico doesn't submit all the guns it recovers to the ATF. When the authorities find a fully automatic AKM with South American acceptance marks, or an M-16 with Mexican Government property numbers, they have a pretty good idea where it came from.

BTW, the market for illegal guns and illegal drugs are remarkably similar, because the primary customer base for illegal guns is criminals looking to protect their criminal enterprises, usually drugs. The only difference is that most crime guns are stolen, straw bought, or diverted from legal sources rather than imported (despite the best efforts of Norinco).

Dead Reckoning posted:

No, I seriously don't know. I'm defending the rather concrete concepts that 1) people should be allowed to own guns for self defense, hunting, recreation, collecting, or any other lawful reason without having to justify themselves, and 2) that there is no significant correlation between legal access to guns and homicide rates.

Dead Reckoning posted:

That is not at all what I said or what I asked, so...

BrandorKP posted:

"Rather concrete concepts", more concrete to you than the dead and injured apparently. Reasonable restrictions and regulations can reduce the scale of events like this (and all those suicides other posters have brought up).

Dead Reckoning posted:

At the end of the day, I accept that my freedom means that someone may exercise their freedom in a way that harms me. I'm content with a system of laws that punishes those who do wrong, rather than grinding all the sharp edges and abusable liberties off of life in order to prevent the possibility of bad things happening.

VitalSigns posted:

...and I couldn't figure out how to use those damned three seashells.