US CE Spring 2022: I'm convinced it's useless which is why I argue about it all day every day

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > US CE Spring 2022: I'm convinced it's useless which is why I argue about it all day every day

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FishBulbia: Dec 22, 2021

I honestly think at this point there is nothing to be said but assume americans actually approve and support such shootings.

# ? May 25, 2022 14:36

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# ? May 23, 2024 23:59

Failed Imagineer: Sep 22, 2018

Good job that uncle who saw his bullied loser nephew getting really into Korn and guns and decided what he needed was more marksmanship training

# ? May 25, 2022 14:38

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

99% of non-mass shootings aren't done by mentally ill people. Almost all shooting deaths in the U.S. aren't from mass shootings either.

Mass shooters are slightly more likely to be mentally ill, but even then, most mass shooters aren't technically mentally ill unless you are taking the tack of "racism is a mental illness/you'd have to be crazy to kill a dozen people!"

There's a million other reasons why mental illness is a red herring for gun violence, but the most obvious one is that out of the tens of thousands people killed by guns every year in the U.S. only about 20 are killed by someone who is mentally ill.

I don't think anyone itt has attributed mental illness to the non-mass shootings, but the common traits among mass shooters do seem to be delusions & hallucinations and other indicators of schizophrenia.

Here's a study published last year that finds a correlation between untreated mental illness & mass shootings:

quote:

A new study finds that many mass shooters in America suffered from a mental illness that wasn't being treated when they committed their crime.

"Without losing sight of the larger perspective that most who are violent are not mentally ill, and most of the mentally ill are not violent, our message is that mental health providers, lawyers and the public should be made aware that some unmedicated patients do pose an increased risk of violence," wrote researchers led by Dr. Ira Glick, from Stanford University's School of Medicine.

Glick's team studied 35 mass shooting cases that occurred in the United States between 1982 and 2019 and involved shooters who survived and were brought to trial.

Analysis of various sources of medical evidence on the mass shooters showed that 28 had mental illness diagnoses. Eighteen had schizophrenia and 10 had other diagnoses including bipolar disorder, delusional disorder, personality disorders and substance-related disorders.

Of the 28 shooters with a mental illness diagnosis, none were medicated or received other treatment for their disorders prior to their crimes, according to the study published recently in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology.

Glick and his colleagues also examined 20 mass shooters who died at the crime scene and found that eight had schizophrenia, seven had other mental health diagnoses, and five had unknown diagnoses. None were receiving appropriate medications.

The investigators pointed out that despite the high frequency of mass shooting events in the United States, there has been almost no medical research on the nature and incidence of mental illness among people who commit these crimes.

"The psychiatric disorders seen in perpetrators of mass shootings are serious brain illnesses -- as much in need of proper diagnosis and treatment as heart disease or any other medical condition," the authors noted in a Stanford news release.

"We need to reduce the stigma associated with these diseases to enable patients to receive appropriate and adequate psychiatric medication and other treatments," they added, "by actually talking to patients and their significant others, we have the opportunity to save lives."

You are correct that the vast majority of gun murders & suicides are not among those schizophrenia. You are correct that most of the gun deaths in this country are not triggered by mental illness. You are correct that access to guns is the culprit of most murders by gun.

But you appear to be incorrect that "Most mass shooters aren't technically mentally ill."

# ? May 25, 2022 14:40

Seph: Jul 12, 2004; Please look at this photo every time you support or defend war crimes. Thank you.

Gumball Gumption posted:

It honestly makes sense that there hasn't been any real movement on gun laws and generally disarming America. It will kick off a hell of a fight and we don't have enough Democrats in government to win it and have not for a long time.

The politicians don't really matter in this scenario. Even if there were unanimous agreement among politicians that guns should be banned, who is actually going to physically take them away from people? How are they going to do it?

The first problem is that there is no federal gun registry. There are hundreds of millions of guns in this county and most of them aren't tracked in any way. Do you just go house to house and search through everyone's stuff?

The second problem is that most gun owners will not be happy to give up their guns. A non-trivial amount of people would be willing to fight to keep their guns. You'd have to send in the SWAT team or military to take them away. You'd have to deal with the fallout when both civilians and military inevitably die when taking guns away.

That brings us to the third problem, which is that the people who are capable of taking guns away (police/military) are some of the most sympathetic to guns. You'd have a significant percentage not willing to follow orders on this.

So any proposal to "ban guns" is worthless unless it addresses these core issues. Passing a law that guns are banned doesn't make the hundreds of millions in circulation suddenly evaporate. You need a way to remove them and I haven't seen a proposal that seriously addresses this.

# ? May 25, 2022 14:43

Failed Imagineer: Sep 22, 2018

Buybacks, and general attrition due to lack of availability.

The argument you're making seems to boil down to "if we can't get rid of all the guns, why bother trying to reduce the number of guns at all?" which is prima facie absurd.

And no, buybacks, even for 300m guns, would not be particularly onerous in an economic sense, especially weighed against the lost economic lifetime productivity of all the toddlers who just got annihilated by an AR15 instead of becoming taxpayers

Failed Imagineer fucked around with this message at 14:51 on May 25, 2022

# ? May 25, 2022 14:48

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Discendo Vox posted:

BATF finished passing the big part of past gun control bills that could be done through admin law in April (I tried to have a discussion of it here).

It might be useful to edit in a link to the prior post that you felt was not given the attention it deserved, especially if it is once again germane to current events.

A catch-all thread like this, not to mention the rapid flow of events, isn't always the best metric of useful information, and there's no rule against bringing it to our attention again.

# ? May 25, 2022 14:51

Bishyaler: Dec 30, 2009; Megamarm

BiggerBoat posted:

Wouldn't the tax increase be basically the same or even less than the premiums and deductibles most people pay through their jobs? Meaning, wouldn't the overall expense be negligible? I've read different studies on it.

The average Joe is going to save money over premiums and deductibles, yes. But I believe every M4A plan that's been put forward involves taxing the poo poo out of the rich to pay for it.

# ? May 25, 2022 14:51

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

Willa Rogers posted:

I don't think anyone itt has attributed mental illness to the non-mass shootings, but the common traits among mass shooters do seem to be delusions & hallucinations and other indicators of schizophrenia.

Here's a study published last year that finds a correlation between untreated mental illness & mass shootings:

You are correct that the vast majority of gun murders & suicides are not among those schizophrenia. You are correct that most of the gun deaths in this country are not triggered by mental illness. You are correct that access to guns is the culprit of most murders by gun.

But you appear to be incorrect that "Most mass shooters aren't technically mentally ill."

No, that is true overall. That study is just of 35 people.

Multiple studies that include all mass shootings all show that between 8% and 15% of mass shooters have a serious mental illness. The study linked below found 11% of mass murderers and 8% of mass shooters specifically had severe mental illnesses.

That is very disproportionate to the total amount of people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, so they are more likely to engage in mass shootings than the average person, but they are still not the majority of mass shooters.

quote:

They then analyzed 1,315 mass murders of all types that occurred worldwide. The article was published recently in the journal Psychological Medicine.

They discovered that only 11% of all mass murderers (including shooters) and only 8% of mass shooters had a serious mental illness. They also found that mass shooters in the United States were more likely to have legal histories, use recreational drugs, abuse alcohol, and have histories of non-psychotic psychiatric or neurologic symptoms.

quote:

Commenting on the study, Gary Brucato said that "The findings from this potentially definitive study suggest that emphasis on serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia or psychotic mood disorders, as a risk factor for mass shootings is given undue emphasis, leading to public fear and stigmatization."

https://www.michiganpsychologicalas...s-mentally-ill-

# ? May 25, 2022 14:52

Gripweed: Nov 8, 2018

Seph posted:

The politicians don't really matter in this scenario. Even if there were unanimous agreement among politicians that guns should be banned, who is actually going to physically take them away from people? How are they going to do it?

The first problem is that there is no federal gun registry. There are hundreds of millions of guns in this county and most of them aren't tracked in any way. Do you just go house to house and search through everyone's stuff?

The second problem is that most gun owners will not be happy to give up their guns. A non-trivial amount of people would be willing to fight to keep their guns. You'd have to send in the SWAT team or military to take them away. You'd have to deal with the fallout when both civilians and military inevitably die when taking guns away.

That brings us to the third problem, which is that the people who are capable of taking guns away (police/military) are some of the most sympathetic to guns. You'd have a significant percentage not willing to follow orders on this.

So any proposal to "ban guns" is worthless unless it addresses these core issues. Passing a law that guns are banned doesn't make the hundreds of millions in circulation suddenly evaporate. You need a way to remove them and I haven't seen a proposal that seriously addresses this.

You don't have to do any of that. You have a buy back period, and then a permanent amnesty for any guns voluntarily turned over.

Since people won't be able to legally buy new guns, and the loss of the American market would lead to drastically fewer guns being produced worldwide, the supply of guns in America would drop over time.

Seph posted:

The second problem is that most gun owners will not be happy to give up their guns. A non-trivial amount of people would be willing to fight to keep their guns. You'd have to send in the SWAT team or military to take them away. You'd have to deal with the fallout when both civilians and military inevitably die when taking guns away.

Oh no, can you imagine if American gun owners started shooting people? What a horrible thought that is! What would the country look like if gunowners who felt threatened by society starting shooting innocent people? People would be afraid of random gun violence! We can't let that happen, that is simply too terrible a state of affairs to allow, we must do everything in our power to make sure America is free from that terror.

# ? May 25, 2022 14:56

Failed Imagineer: Sep 22, 2018

It's less than 5 years since Stephen Paddock shot over 400 people in Las Vegas, with nearly a thousand casualties, he was not mentally ill and there was never any clear motive given for his actions (it was probably a CIA op).

Feel like that gets forgotten about.

# ? May 25, 2022 14:56

Catgirl Al Capone: Dec 15, 2007

In a vacuum I support gun control but I don't see it happening in this country except as another in a long line of excuses for the police to harass minorities. If not in the letter of the law itself in practice enforcement and incarceration will fall disproportionately on innocent people who had the wrong skin color and the right-wing nuts of the country will be given a blind eye to continue amassing guns unimpeded. We'll just have a War on Guns continuing the legacy of the War on Drugs.

I always think about how one of the biggest pushes for gun control only happened after the Black Panthers organized and armed themselves, threatening to reciprocate and defend themselves against the horrific police violence they had been subjected to.

Catgirl Al Capone fucked around with this message at 15:01 on May 25, 2022

# ? May 25, 2022 14:58

RBA Starblade: Apr 28, 2008; Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

Failed Imagineer posted:

It's less than 5 years since Stephen Paddock shot over 400 people in Las Vegas, with nearly a thousand casualties, he was not mentally ill and there was never any clear motive given for his actions (it was probably a CIA op).

Where are you getting the spoiler from?

# ? May 25, 2022 14:59

Seph: Jul 12, 2004; Please look at this photo every time you support or defend war crimes. Thank you.

Failed Imagineer posted:

Buybacks, and general attrition due to lack of availability.

The argument you're making seems to boil down to "if we can't get rid of all the guns, why bother trying to reduce the number of guns at all?" which is prima facie absurd

I never said we shouldn't bother. I said that if your goal is to remove guns from this country, you will need to do that against people's will and be able to address the implications of that.

See your reductive "buybacks and attrition" comment. Buybacks aren't some magic incantation that will make everyone give up their guns. Maybe some gun collectors will pawn off their less valuable guns for a nice markup. Historically though, buybacks haven't removed a significant amount of guns from the community. We're talking a few thousand per year in major cities where there are millions of guns. And there's no evidence that buybacks remove guns from people who partake in gun violence.

Attrition might work in the super long term, like centuries, but guns can last a really long time when even a tiny bit of maintenance is applied. Plus there are enough guns in storage / private collections to supply a black market for decades if not centuries.

Seph fucked around with this message at 15:02 on May 25, 2022

# ? May 25, 2022 15:00

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

No, that is true overall. That study is just of 35 people.

Multiple studies that include all mass shootings all show that between 8% and 15% of mass shooters have a serious mental illness. The study linked below found 11% of mass murderers and 8% of mass shooters specifically had severe mental illnesses.

That is very disproportionate to the total amount of people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, so they are more likely to engage in mass shootings than the average person, but they are still not the majority of mass shooters

https://www.michiganpsychologicalas...s-mentally-ill-

The abstract says they were looking at "lifetime psychotic symptoms" whereas schizophrenia doesn't usually emerge till late teens/young adulthood.

I don't disagree with the finding that focusing solely on mental illness would not be useful in preventing mass shootings, but they also mention factors such as chemical dependency and "non-psychotic psychopathology" as contributing factors, which winds us back to the issue of untreated mental illness and the difficulty of access to treatment.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:02

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

CYBEReris posted:

In a vacuum I support gun control but I don't see it happening in this country except as another in a long line of excuses for the police to harass minorities. If not in the letter of the law itself in practice enforcement and incarceration will fall disproportionately on innocent people who had the wrong skin color and the right-wing nuts of the country will be given a blind eye to continue amassing guns unimpeded. We'll just have a War on Guns continuing the legacy of the War on Drugs.

People of color are overwhelmingly the victims of gun violence in America.

Even in a hypothetical worst case scenario, where it results in an organized national harassment campaign that 100% targets people of color who own guns in exchange for getting gun violence down to the same levels as Canada or the U.K. would be a massive net good for society in general and people of color disproportionately.

Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 15:05 on May 25, 2022

# ? May 25, 2022 15:02

CuddleCryptid: Jan 11, 2013; Things could be going better

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

People of color are overwhelmingly the victims of gun violence in America.

Even in a hypothetical worst case scenario, where it is an organized national harassment campaign that 100% targets people of color who own guns in exchange for getting gun violence down to the same levels as Canada or the U.K. would be a massive net good for society in general and people of color disproportionately.

I mean, yeah, this would drive a new War On Drugs mass incarceration and murder spree among POC people while middle and upper class whites would be unaffected with their "family heirlooms"

On the other hand, those POC should really be thinking of the bigger picture.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:05

Gripweed: Nov 8, 2018

Seph posted:

I never said we shouldn't bother. I said that if your goal is to remove guns from this country, you will need to do that against people's will and be able to address the implications of that.

See your reductive "buybacks and attrition" comment. Buybacks aren't some magic incantation that will make everyone give up their guns. Maybe some gun collectors will pawn off their less valuable guns for a nice markup. Historically though, buybacks haven't removed a significant amount of guns from the community. And there's no evidence that buybacks remove guns from people who partake in gun violence.

Attrition might work in the super long term, like centuries, but guns can last a really long time when even a tiny bit of maintenance is applied. Plus there are enough guns in storage / private collections to supply a black market for decades if not centuries.

You can't compare voluntary local buybacks to a nationwide buyback coupled with a ban on guns or certain types of guns going forward. That should be obvious.

You're doing that thing where you try to separate gun owners from "people who partake in gun violence". The classic "responsible gun owners" gambit. For that distinction to be at all meaningful, you would have to prove that most guns used in violent crimes were obtained illegally. And even then, how many steps removed are they from being legal? If someone legally purchases a gun, and then that gun is stolen and used in a crime, then banning the legal sale still stops that gun from being available for crime.

I guarantee you that the black market for guns after a ban would not be larger than the current black market and legal market combined. The total gun market would still be smaller.

And finally, if gun owners respond to a ban by taking all their now-illegal guns and burying them out back or locking them in a hidden compartment in the basement, good? That's also fine with me. It would be better if they were destroyed but sealed away in a hidey-hole is a step in the right direction.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:07

Dietrich: Sep 11, 2001

CuddleCryptid posted:

I mean, yeah, this would drive a new War On Drugs mass incarceration and murder spree among POC people while middle and upper class whites would be unaffected with their "family heirlooms"

On the other hand, those POC should really be thinking of the bigger picture.

My dude, the only way to avoid a mass incarceration and murder spree on POC people by the police would be to abolish all laws. (Or the police)

# ? May 25, 2022 15:08

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Failed Imagineer posted:

It's less than 5 years since Stephen Paddock shot over 400 people in Las Vegas, with nearly a thousand casualties, he was not mentally ill and there was never any clear motive given for his actions (it was probably a CIA op).

Feel like that gets forgotten about.

I dunno; I think mental illness is probably more likely than being a CIA op.

quote:

During his last months, Paddock reportedly often smelled of alcohol from early morning[34][50] and appeared despondent.[34] He was reported to have filled prescriptions for the anti-anxiety drug Valium in 2013,[33] in 2016, and finally again in June 2017, the latter being four months before the shooting.[51] The chief medical officer of the Las Vegas Recovery Center said the effects of the drug can be magnified by alcohol,[51] as confirmed by Michael First, a clinical psychiatry professor at Columbia University.[51][52][53][54]

During an interview with local CBS affiliate KLAS-TV, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Paddock had reportedly been losing "a significant amount of wealth" since September 2015, which led to his having "bouts of depression".[55][56][57] According to his girlfriend, she noticed a decline of affection and intimacy towards her from Paddock, who had been romantic at first during their relationship; he attributed it to his declining health.[3]

According to a Radar Online article from February. 2, 2018, Paddock texted a prostitute "...telling her he�s a government experiment and that they are listening to everything he says and does, and they can hack into his brain and take over.�[58]

***

Investigators believe that he was obsessed with cleanliness and possibly had bipolar disorder. Although a doctor did offer him antidepressants, he only accepted anxiety medication; it was reported that he was fearful of medication and often refused to take it.[60][99] The doctor also described Paddock as "odd" and showing "little emotion". Psychologists ex post facto have noted a distinct similarity between Paddock's demeanor and the psychological construct alexithymia,[100] which might have modulated his decision to conduct the shooting given its association with various mass murderers throughout history.[101][102][103]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Paddock

# ? May 25, 2022 15:10

Failed Imagineer: Sep 22, 2018

RBA Starblade posted:

Where are you getting the spoiler from?

It's a meme that I don't really take that seriously, mostly because it's utterly unknowable.

I think really it's just extrapolation from how quickly the letter agencies moved on from the investigation, plus some government connections that Paddock had, multiplied by the JFK assassination.

I should have made it clear that I was being somewhat facetious, but it's hard to indicate that when I simultaneously wouldn't be at all surprised if it were true

# ? May 25, 2022 15:10

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

CuddleCryptid posted:

I mean, yeah, this would drive a new War On Drugs mass incarceration and murder spree among POC people while middle and upper class whites would be unaffected with their "family heirlooms"

On the other hand, those POC should really be thinking of the bigger picture.

Nobody is saying that is a good outcome. Just saying that gun violence in the U.S. is so bad and so disproportionately targeted at PoC, that even a 100% worst case scenario of harassing PoC gun owners while getting gun violence down to U.K. levels would be an incredible improvement.

And lol at the idea that the police have been going easy on PoC because they didn't have a way to harass the segment that are carrying guns legally.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:11

RBA Starblade: Apr 28, 2008; Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

Failed Imagineer posted:

It's a meme that I don't really take that seriously, mostly because it's utterly unknowable.

I think really it's just extrapolation from how quickly the letter agencies moved on from the investigation, plus some government connections that Paddock had, multiplied by the JFK assassination.

I should have made it clear that I was being somewhat facetious, but it's hard to indicate that when I simultaneously wouldn't be at all surprised if it were true

That's fair, I wasn't sure if there was something that came out that I wasn't aware of or not lol

# ? May 25, 2022 15:12

Seph: Jul 12, 2004; Please look at this photo every time you support or defend war crimes. Thank you.

Gripweed posted:

You can't compare voluntary local buybacks to a nationwide buyback coupled with a ban on guns or certain types of guns going forward. That should be obvious.

You're doing that thing where you try to separate gun owners from "people who partake in gun violence". The classic "responsible gun owners" gambit. For that distinction to be at all meaningful, you would have to prove that most guns used in violent crimes were obtained illegally. And even then, how many steps removed are they from being legal? If someone legally purchases a gun, and then that gun is stolen and used in a crime, then banning the legal sale still stops that gun from being available for crime.

I guarantee you that the black market for guns after a ban would not be larger than the current black market and legal market combined. The total gun market would still be smaller.

And finally, if gun owners respond to a ban by taking all their now-illegal guns and burying them out back or locking them in a hidden compartment in the basement, good? That's also fine with me. It would be better if they were destroyed but sealed away in a hidey-hole is a step in the right direction.

Why do you think a national buyback would compel people to get rid of their guns more than a local one? The federal government could maybe offer more money than a local one, so there might be marginally more uptake. But that wouldn't sway legal gun owners who want to keep their guns, nor would it compel criminals who feel the need to have a gun for crime.

Gun owners wouldn't need to bury their guns in their yard unless you're also proposing a national search and seizure campaign (which was the point of my original post). If someone is an otherwise law-abiding person with (unregistered) guns in their basement, why would they bother burying their guns? There is no risk to their guns unless someone will be knocking on their door to check.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:20

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

CuddleCryptid posted:

I mean, yeah, this would drive a new War On Drugs mass incarceration and murder spree among POC people while middle and upper class whites would be unaffected with their "family heirlooms"

On the other hand, those POC should really be thinking of the bigger picture.

If your reason to not do anything is because police will be lovely to POC then you can never do anything ever. It doesn't need to be accepted of course but the police will use loving anything to harass POC.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:27

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

At least our boys in blue justified their school presence, by immediately running away and hiding in their cars because guns are scary.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ? May 25, 2022 15:31

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

Yinlock posted:

At least our boys in blue justified their school presence, by immediately running away and hiding in their cars because guns are scary.

The two police engaged him before he went into the school and were both shot.

It was basically an ideal "good guy with a gun" scenario that didn't play out like the people who espouse that theory say it always will.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:33

TheIncredulousHulk: Sep 3, 2012

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

People of color are overwhelmingly the victims of gun violence in America.

Even in a hypothetical worst case scenario, where it results in an organized national harassment campaign that 100% targets people of color who own guns in exchange for getting gun violence down to the same levels as Canada or the U.K. would be a massive net good for society in general and people of color disproportionately.

Why are we assuming that a national racial harassment campaign would achieve that?

# ? May 25, 2022 15:37

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

TheIncredulousHulk posted:

Why are we assuming that a national racial harassment campaign would achieve that?

Because the person who initially said "I support gun control in a void, but" said that even if they did do that, then it wouldn't be worth it because it would just result in the police harassing legal gun owning PoC.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:39

FlamingLiberal: Jan 18, 2009; Would you like to play a game?

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

The two police engaged him before he went into the school and were both shot.

It was basically an ideal "good guy with a gun" scenario that didn't play out like the people who espouse that theory say it always will.

This also happened in Parkland

The armed SRO who was ostensibly there to prevent things like this ran away and the cops just stood outside the building for most of the shooting

# ? May 25, 2022 15:40

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

FlamingLiberal posted:

This also happened in Parkland

The armed SRO who was ostensibly there to prevent things like this ran away and the cops just stood outside the building for most of the shooting

The SRO in Parkland ran, but the two in the shooting yesterday didn't.

There were two of them and they still didn't stop him because they both got shot.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:41

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

Gripweed posted:

After shootings you see a lot of calls for more mental health, but is there any actual proposal involved? or any kind of clear idea as to how more mental health would prevent shootings? It seems like most shooters are lonely, vulnerable people who got radicalized. Unless "mental health" is code for monitoring everyone's internet and involuntarily committing anyone who spends too long on 4chan, I don't see how mental health fixes that.

Much like calls for expanding background checks, the idea is to draw the focus away from guns by placing it on the individuals that hold the guns instead. Both tactics strongly imply that the gun violence problem boils down to "bad guys with guns", and that it should be tackled by targeting the "bad guys" rather than the guns (with an additional implication that the "bad guys" would be easy to identify if the system simply invested more resources into doing so).

Of course, it also contributes to stigmatization of mental illness, stigmatization of people with criminal records, and the expansion of the surveillance state. But throwing various vulnerable groups under the bus to protect gun rights is par for the course.

CYBEReris posted:

In a vacuum I support gun control but I don't see it happening in this country except as another in a long line of excuses for the police to harass minorities. If not in the letter of the law itself in practice enforcement and incarceration will fall disproportionately on innocent people who had the wrong skin color and the right-wing nuts of the country will be given a blind eye to continue amassing guns unimpeded. We'll just have a War on Guns continuing the legacy of the War on Drugs.

I always think about how one of the biggest pushes for gun control only happened after the Black Panthers organized and armed themselves, threatening to reciprocate and defend themselves against the horrific police violence they had been subjected to.

This is already the case. It's illegal for felons to own guns, and minorities are disproportionately likely to have a felony conviction on their record. One third of all African-American men are convicted felons, and are therefore unable to legally own a firearm. Combined with police tendencies to disproportionately target minorities with baseless searches, particularly in tactics like stop-and-frisk, plenty of black and Latino men have been sent to prison simply for possessing a firearm in the course of their day-to-day business.

For example, one particularly egregious case is that of Kwmaine Davis, who went to prison for 18 months because he tweeted a photo of himself at a firing range using a gun in a responsible and safe manner. Turned out the police were actively monitoring the social media accounts of local young black men with criminal records. As soon as they saw the photo of him with a gun in his hand, they started on the paperwork for prosecuting him as a felon in possession of a firearm.

But this already happens, even with just the minimal gun restrictions that exist now. If you don't want minority groups to be persecuted for having guns, you'd have to completely remove all anti-gun policy. I don't just mean removing all gun restrictions and gun control laws, either. I also mean sentencing laws that increase penalties for crimes involving guns, legal precedents allowing harsher treatment if you think the suspect has a gun, and the presumption that cops can use "I thought they were reaching for a gun" as an iron-clad excuse to murder people. After all, Philando Castile legally owned his gun and was legally licensed to carry it, but that didn't stop a cop from murdering him just for having it.

The idea that gun control might lead police to preferentially oppress minority groups to discourage gun ownership among those groups makes sense. But it's a position born from ignorance, because the police already preferentially oppress minority groups with the intention of discouraging gun ownership among those groups.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:41

cat botherer: Jan 6, 2022; I am interested in most phases of data processing.

https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/1529468474413694976

In the least surprising news ever. Be sure to Vote! this November everyone

# ? May 25, 2022 15:44

Nonsense: Jan 26, 2007

https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/1529468474413694976?s=20

This is also another strategy for tackling spiraling out of control gun violence.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:45

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

WaPo has more specifics about the shooter's gun purchases.

- Purchased "two AR platform rifles," a semi-automatic pistol, 375 rounds of ammunition, and 7 30-round expanded magazines from a local gun store on May 20th.

- He had just turned 18, so it was all legal.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:45

Gripweed: Nov 8, 2018

Seph posted:

Why do you think a national buyback would compel people to get rid of their guns more than a local one? The federal government could maybe offer more money than a local one, so there might be marginally more uptake. But that wouldn't sway legal gun owners who want to keep their guns, nor would it compel criminals who feel the need to have a gun for crime.

Gun owners wouldn't need to bury their guns in their yard unless you're also proposing a national search and seizure campaign (which was the point of my original post). If someone is an otherwise law-abiding person with (unregistered) guns in their basement, why would they bother burying their guns? There is no risk to their guns unless someone will be knocking on their door to check.

Because the national buy back would be it, the final time you can get money for your guns legally. After that, you are committing a crime by owning them. If you don't see how that gives a greater impetus to turn in your guns than a regular buyback, I don't know what to tell you.

Like, you still insist on separating legal gun owners from criminals, but in this scenario the legal gun owners who didn't sell back their guns would become criminals.

You're getting too focused on the one example of burying guns and missing the point of the whole paragraph. If the gun owners just hide their guns, then that's OK too. After a while most of them won't care that much about their guns that they can't do anything with, Can't go to the shooting range, can't go hang around at the gun shop, gun culture will wither without legal guns. The guns will just be a talisman, a sign that they didn't give in to the man by turning in their guns. In the end when the gun owners die their kids will probably just turn their guns in because it's too much of a hassle to deal with them.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

WaPo has more specifics about the shooter's gun purchases.

- Purchased "two AR platform rifles," a semi-automatic pistol, 375 rounds of ammunition, and 7 30-round expanded magazines from a local gun store on May 20th.

- He had just turned 18, so it was all legal.

One of those legal gun owners we hear so much about. Until he wasn't.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:45

WAR CRIME GIGOLO: Oct 3, 2012; The Hague
tryna get me
for these glutes

Ahem. Read up on:

The strategy of tension.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:47

uPen: Jan 25, 2010; Zu Rodina!

cat botherer posted:

https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/1529468474413694976

In the least surprising news ever. Be sure to Vote! this November everyone

Put a bill on the floor so people have something to rally around. Oh no vote in November and maybe we'll do background checks, perhaps.

Democrats are going to be obliterated and they deserve it.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:49

CmdrRiker: Apr 8, 2016; You dismally untalented little creep!

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

The two police engaged him before he went into the school and were both shot.

It was basically an ideal "good guy with a gun" scenario that didn't play out like the people who espouse that theory say it always will.

I hope this point gets more visibility in the press and people become more receptive to the reality that fighting guns with more guns isn't a viable option.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:55

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

TheIncredulousHulk posted:

Why are we assuming that a national racial harassment campaign would achieve that?

Because *literally anything done* can be spun as a national racial harassment campaign. I am not saying it won't happen, I am saying 'do nothing because the police are a racist poo poo organization' means nothing happens.

Speed limits allow that. Drunk driving laws allow that. Walking down the street allows that. It is a horrifying problem that needs to be destroyed but you can't just say 'police had so do nothing.'

# ? May 25, 2022 15:56

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# ? May 23, 2024 23:59

Cranappleberry: Jan 27, 2009

FishBulbia posted:

I honestly think at this point there is nothing to be said but assume americans actually approve and support such shootings.

Americans don't. Almost all americans support greater gun control (including most gun owners) and can even get specific about what. It's politicians and monied interests that don't want it.

Failed Imagineer posted:

Buybacks, and general attrition due to lack of availability.

The argument you're making seems to boil down to "if we can't get rid of all the guns, why bother trying to reduce the number of guns at all?" which is prima facie absurd.

And no, buybacks, even for 300m guns, would not be particularly onerous in an economic sense, especially weighed against the lost economic lifetime productivity of all the toddlers who just got annihilated by an AR15 instead of becoming taxpayers

To respond to this, and all the people talking about it on this page- there are individuals and groups wayyyy too into gun culture to ever turn over their guns and indeed some of them find ways to manufacture weaponry- there are kits and guides on the internet, disseminated for good and bad reasons. They find ways to modify weaponry to skirt laws or else make it into something more deadly just to prove they can. Moreover, there are groups that will use this to justify more anti-government sentiment and more acts of violence. Whether you consider that the last gasp of a dying movement or a declaration of war depends on your perspective, I guess.

The most comprehensive gun control in the country, which exists in NY, has utterly failed. Part of that is the way the law was written but a big part of that reason is the lack of enforcement. You have to get cops to actually enforce the bans, which they don't want to do even if a crime is committed and they find illegal guns. It does happen but not nearly often enough.

# ? May 25, 2022 15:57

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > US CE Spring 2022: I'm convinced it's useless which is why I argue about it all day every day

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