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If you actually care about those things you would understand and acknowledge that gun-control accomplishes ZERO. If you want to use edge cases to push an agenda, then by all means continue, just be honest with what your actual priorities are.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:19
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Someday I'd really like to unpack this assumption that "criminals will always have guns." It seems to suppose that criminals exist outside of material reality, or to a lesser degree that every crime is premeditated and removing a weapon would never alter how someone approaches a potentially violent situation. If you can make the black market for guns more expensive or harder to access with stricter control rather than stamping it out altogether, how is that not a success?
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Apr 22, 2014 17:24
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StandardVC10 posted:Someday I'd really like to unpack this assumption that "criminals will always have guns." It seems to suppose that criminals exist outside of material reality, or to a lesser degree that every crime is premeditated and removing a weapon would never alter how someone approaches a potentially violent situation. If you can make the black market for guns more expensive or harder to access with stricter control rather than stamping it out altogether, how is that not a success? Ask people who do drugs how hard they are to get and how useful our attempts to make them expensive and harder to get are.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:28
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natetimm posted:Ask people who do drugs how hard they are to get and how useful our attempts to make them expensive and harder to get are. Crime exists: laws declared useless.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:30
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Prohibition laws are generally useless, yeah.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:30
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Crime exists: laws declared useless. So you support our efforts in the drug wars?
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Apr 22, 2014 17:30
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StandardVC10 posted:Someday I'd really like to unpack this assumption that "criminals will always have guns." It seems to suppose that criminals exist outside of material reality, or to a lesser degree that every crime is premeditated and removing a weapon would never alter how someone approaches a potentially violent situation. If you can make the black market for guns more expensive or harder to access with stricter control rather than stamping it out altogether, how is that not a success?
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Apr 22, 2014 17:31
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natetimm posted:Ask people who do drugs how hard they are to get and how useful our attempts to make them expensive and harder to get are. See, if drugs = guns, you'd have a point here, but they really don't. I can't grow a pistol in my backyard.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:32
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StandardVC10 posted:See, if drugs = guns, you'd have a point here, but they really don't. I can't grow a pistol in my backyard. Frankly at this point I'm not even sure what form gun control would actually take, especially since the locus of the problem - if there is a problem, and it's not just an ugly trend or a result of increased reporting - is not criminals at this point. At least, the prototypical situation seems to not be "home invasion" or "mugging" any more, it's "some white guy goes psycho and starts shooting up a public location."
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Apr 22, 2014 17:35
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Please take all gun-control 'arguements' to the gbs gun thread where they may be engaged with anime macros and non-sequiturs as is fitting for totemic ideas such as anti-tiger rocks and homepathy, thanks.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:35
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Nessus posted:Because it isn't an appeal to reason. I don't mean this in some kind of dumb "pro-gun-havers are irrational," but the point of that message is that gun control can never genuinely eliminate the risk of a criminal with a firearm, and therefore the effort is in vain, because you'll never be "safe" in an absolute sense, only "safer," so perhaps it would be better to retain parity in armament. Basically it is pathos described as ethos. You can see in countries that have exceptionally tough gun control like the UK that the murder rates still stay about the same, even if it's happening less with guns. That's because the amount of deaths caused solely by guns existing aren't statistically significant enough to warrant the proposed programs to control them. It's a question of cost vs. benefit. If 10,000 people a year are murdered and 8000 are with guns, does making guns illegal produce meaningful policy when 10000 people are killed the next year and 8000 are with knives?
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Apr 22, 2014 17:35
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natetimm posted:So you support our efforts in the drug wars? I'm a crazy person who understands that guns and drugs are different so invoking them as if it's some big so there is pretty dumb.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:36
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Tatum Girlparts posted:I'm a crazy person who understands that guns and drugs are different so invoking them as if it's some big so there is pretty dumb. What do you think the programs to control guns would look like? What strategy do you think the government would take? Is it a good idea to criminalize another large section of our population for doing things that do not by and large produce victims in significant amounts?
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Apr 22, 2014 17:39
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natetimm posted:You can see in countries that have exceptionally tough gun control like the UK that the murder rates still stay about the same, even if it's happening less with guns. That's because the amount of deaths caused solely by guns existing aren't statistically significant enough to warrant the proposed programs to control them. It's a question of cost vs. benefit. If 10,000 people a year are murdered and 8000 are with guns, does making guns illegal produce meaningful policy when 10000 people are killed the next year and 8000 are with knives? The obvious solution is an improved mental health care system but hell, THAT might cost some money, that's literally the same as Leninism.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:39
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Nessus posted:It would seem rather straightforward to examine statistics on murder rates in a given nation before and after a substantial gun control scheme is passed. What you are saying implies an unproven thesis, namely that people will just kill each other with knives or bricks in exactly the same proportion they do with guns. But it is harder to stab someone to death than to shoot them fatally, and it is much harder to kill yourself with a brick, deliberately or on purpose. It is also harder to perform acts of mass mayhem with a knife or a brick, which is the usual impetus here. Heironymous Alloy pointed this out earlier, but I think people's political identities are so cought up in trying to gently caress over the other side that instead of seeing better mental health as a goal both sides are in favor of and want to see happen, they retreat to the position of actively trying to gently caress the other side over instead. Should the left really be pushing gun control using the caricature of ignorant rednecks that they seem to hate so much or should they be using the admission by the other side that our mental health needs work as an opportunity to find a compromise? I mean, you essentially have both sides saying the same thing. If the left conceded to stop seeking further gun control measure against the right in exchange for bipartisan support and funding for the treatment of the mentally ill wouldn't that probably produce a much greater net benfit to society? There's an opportunity right there in front of everyone's face to reach out and grab but people are so polarized that it isn't even seen as a possibility.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:54
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natetimm posted:I mean, you essentially have both sides saying the same thing. If the left conceded to stop seeking further gun control measure against the right in exchange for bipartisan support and funding for the treatment of the mentally ill wouldn't that probably produce a much greater net benfit to society? There's an opportunity right there in front of everyone's face to reach out and grab but people are so polarized that it isn't even seen as a possibility. What is this legendary "bipartisanship" you speak of? Is it that thing where Republicans are permitted to do whatever they want? Barack Obama is still President, so no action will occur, barring some comical reversal in 2014. If they retain the House in 2016, no action will occur. If they take the Presidency, why would they want to waste our precious tax dollars on the useless parasites that are the mentally ill? e: Also, do you have any evidence for the claim that restricting guns has no significant effect on murder rates? I am honestly curious.
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Apr 22, 2014 18:01
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:by definition, if you're suicidal you are mentally ill This seems like a gross oversimplification and an attempt to pathologize all aberrant behavior. Some spree killers are suicidal but not all - Chris Dorner for example. Was every British/German soldier who went over the top mentally ill? Or every samurai who committed seppuku? Expression of "mental illness" flows out of culture, and ours is one which alienates large portions of the population through unfulfilling, unproductive work. The vast power of capitalism to ease almost every material want allays this somewhat, but there's clearly a vast spiritual void at the heart of the American soul. The men who act out these rampages and massacres are impelled by exactly that. Changing our materialistic culture would be even tougher than getting rid of guns though, so I suppose we should just designate everyone who doesn't conform/work hard/cooperate well with others/be happy all the time as mentally ill.
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Apr 22, 2014 18:12
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Nessus posted:"If." Here's some stuff to look at: http://crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/2013/12/murder-and-homicide-rates-before-and-after-gun-bans/
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Apr 22, 2014 18:14
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Nessus posted:e: Also, do you have any evidence for the claim that restricting guns has no significant effect on murder rates? I am honestly curious. It's not an easy question, because a controlled experiment or apples-to-apples comparison is virtually impossible, and even things as basic as deciding what qualifies as a homicide or firearms death can vary between countries. However, the sunset of the AWB and liberalization of gun laws in America have had virtually no effect on the trend of the murder rate, which would imply that stricter gun laws were not preventing murders. Similarly, the liberalization of Czech firearms laws following the fall of the Iron Curtain did not produce a notable uptick in their national murder rate.
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Apr 22, 2014 18:22
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natetimm posted:Your characterization of gun owners is about as valid as a universal view of blacks as gun-toting thugs waiting to rape you at a moment's notice. .013% of guns are involved in deaths yearly and the person you're describing is an even tinier percentage of that. The gun nut for the left is the same as the welfare queen for the right. They don't exist in meaningful numbers at all and only serve as a cultural stereotype for people to easily attack. Gun nuts do exist man. Listen to the goddamn NRA spokespeople sometime. Between Wayne Lapierre and Ted Nugent, the right wing has a serious PR issue that it needs to deal with before crying foul about mischaracterization. That said, let's arm the poor instead.
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Apr 22, 2014 22:10
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How many people have Wayne Lapierre and Ted Nugent killed?
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Apr 22, 2014 22:11
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Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:How many people have Wayne Lapierre and Ted Nugent killed? Regardless of whether or not they personally pulled the trigger, propagandists are not absolved of their actions.
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Apr 22, 2014 22:13
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The logical endgame of gun politics is pretty clear... U.S. Senate Candidate Greg Brannon "No Brainer" that 2nd amendment applies to nuclear weapons. This man is polling at 42-40 over the incumbent Democrat. 
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Apr 22, 2014 22:18
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Dead Reckoning posted:It's not an easy question, because a controlled experiment or apples-to-apples comparison is virtually impossible, and even things as basic as deciding what qualifies as a homicide or firearms death can vary between countries. However, the sunset of the AWB and liberalization of gun laws in America have had virtually no effect on the trend of the murder rate, which would imply that stricter gun laws were not preventing murders. Similarly, the liberalization of Czech firearms laws following the fall of the Iron Curtain did not produce a notable uptick in their national murder rate.
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Apr 22, 2014 22:36
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meristem posted:It's pretty fun data, all in all. I'd especially love to know what caused the drop. One person I discussed it with theorised that guns simply became more expensive in the mid-1980s, but another thought that maybe the same reason that caused the change in homicide rates also caused the change in gun ownership rates... Thanks for that link, I fuckin' love giant piles of stats to play with. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Apr 22, 2014 |
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Apr 22, 2014 22:56
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Nessus posted:Sure, but we're asking about the converse here. Surely there's some kind of a natural experiment out there, I know the UK passed substantial gun control laws in the 60s or something around there. That said, rather an encouraging thing to hear, all told Private gun ownership in the UK works on a licensing system controlled by the police. Shotguns certificates are shall-issue, and rifle certificates are may-issue. The two big restrictions of firearms in modern times in the UK were in 1988 following the Hungerford massacre (banning most but not all forms of semi-automatic rifles and restricting access to magazine-fed shotguns) and in 1997 following the Dunblane massacre (which banned virtually all types of handguns*). The effect of these bans on reducing the murder rate was nil. The UK murder rate climbed steadily throughout the Nineties to reach a peak in 2003. The murder rate has since dropped sharply, as part of a general decline in violent crime, but the rates show that there's no correlation between increasing gun control and reducing murders in the UK given the substantial year-on-year climbs following each ban - and even with the Noughties decline, it took 11 years for murders to drop below the 1997 rate and over two decades to drop below the 1988 rate. Other factors are more important for increasing and decreasing the rates. *-The 1997 Firearms Acts are widely called the "handgun ban" but not all handguns are illegal - blackpowder handguns are still legal to use and muzzle-loaded handguns are also legal, so there's a small cottage industry in converting revolvers to make them muzzle-loaded. However, the restrictions on their use are so severe as to make them inaccessible for all but a minuscule minority of very dedicated hobbyists. This led to the nonsensical situation where the UK competition shooting teams had to train overseas - special exceptions to the law have since been introduced to relax that, which makes me wonder why the rest of us can't also enjoy the same, but after Dunblane and the "think of the children!" media blitz gun politics in the UK became so toxic that it's hard to bring up liberalisation without people assuming that you want a Mad Max anarchy. Interestingly, handguns remain fully legal in Northern Ireland, and even despite the legacy of three decades of sectarian violence there the Ulster murder rate in recent years has been lower than Scotland's. Nessus posted:*insert a link to a guide to making a zip gun, or an article on 3D printing a gun, here* This is actually a real phenomenon in Australia. The country also has high gun control and police are finding that home-built firearms are being supplied to gangs. kapparomeo fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 22, 2014 23:27
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You shouldn't take anything Steve Stockman does seriously. This is the guy who invited Ted Nugent to the SotU address, hung an "Obama Fail-o-Meter" outside his office until told to take it down (it measured Obama at 1138 out of 1000 "fails"), tweets out doge memes claiming that the Republican Senate Whip is a liberal ally of Obama, became the first Congressman to accept bitcoin donations, and had his campaign headquarters condemned.
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Apr 22, 2014 23:29
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Rent-A-Cop posted:If I had to take a crack at the reason I'd say it was because under-40s in the 1980s are the first generation of suburb kids. Which means they weren't exposed to either the urban criminal gun culture or the rural gun culture their parents grew up with. Total shot in the dark though. One interesting theory I've seen about declining crime rates is that from the 70s to the 90s they correlated with removing lead from gasoline.
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Apr 22, 2014 23:39
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StandardVC10 posted:One interesting theory I've seen about declining crime rates is that from the 70s to the 90s they correlated with removing lead from gasoline.  When will we get capital control?
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Apr 23, 2014 00:10
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Radish posted:I think it's less that America as a whole is gun friendly, but pro-gun people are absolutely bonkers in their support of this issue above literally everything else. This is true. I believe that the percentage of American households that own a gun is declining, but the average number of guns in the rest continues to rise. The whole gun nut thing seems to be bound up with the broader trend of increasingly reactionary white right-wing paranoia. You're not going to have a reasoned discussion on the trade-offs involved in gun safety legislation with people who are sitting in their bunker cradling an AR-15 between their legs and waiting for the race wars to start, and who have a weird fetishistic(in the religious sense, mostly) relationship to firearms. In a way this is cause for hope. As the boomer demographic wave recedes, so will the subvert white supremacy and the twisted sort of politics it's nurtured for the last forty years, and that includes NRA-style gun nuttery. breaker posted:Gun control arguments are about as productive as Catholics and Sunnis debating why theirs is the one true faith. You will have as much chance of talking a gun owner out of his gun as talking someone out of their religion, and likewise a gunhaver is not going to be able to convince someone who was taught to fear weapons that they should take up arms. Whether you like guns or not in the US is a question of your parents, your economic status, and your surroundings. When people call guns tools of murderers, realize that for about half the country who grew up rural with their dad teaching them how to shoot, you are insulting their family and upbringing. Likewise when a pro-gun person accuses an anti of cowardice they don't understand that person was likely taught to run from physical confrontation and that only criminals used guns by their parents. Basically expect the same level of fervor from gun owners when you impact their beliefs as you see from the religious when you attack theirs. Convince someone that their parents were either monsters or cowards and that everything they were taught to believe is wrong. Do that and you will win the debate. Since that won't happen how about everyone figures out how to stay out of each others way and only deal with problems that are based on hard data. This is mostly wrong, but it's illustrative of a particular pathology: the tendency of the gun fanatics to project on their opponents. The simple reality is that people who support gun safety laws do so for the same reason people support regulations requiring seatbelts and airbags - harm reduction. But if your gun ownership is so essential to your self worth and how you define your own identity, it's very difficult to come to understand that for most of the people who disagree with you it's just about safety. The Insect Court fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 00:27
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The Insect Court posted:This is true. I believe that the percentage of American households that own a gun is declining, but the average number of guns in the rest continues to rise. Repeat for 15 pages.
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Apr 23, 2014 02:06
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Rent-A-Cop posted:No you see, it is you who are the crazies and I'm the reasonable one! Are you really going to argue that both pro-gun people and pro-gun control people attach the anything close to the same significance to the issue of guns? The undeniable truth is that one side here has vastly more invested psychologically and emotionally than does the other.
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Apr 23, 2014 02:23
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The Insect Court posted:Are you really going to argue that both pro-gun people and pro-gun control people attach the anything close to the same significance to the issue of guns? Yes, reading your last post I can just feel your completely neutral and dispassionate interest in ~harm reduction.~ I don't disagree with your general thesis, but most people who support gun-control aren't the ones proposing the laws, advocating publicly, or posting in threads like this one. I also don't think being more invested in general is a very good argument that proponents of a position are necessarily crazy or unreasonable- they might be, but its hardly indicative. edit: And lack of investment also shouldn't be taken as an indication that someone's views are more reasonable. They've probably spent less time thinking about it, are more likely to accept the first "reasonable" solution that comes along, not consider the full consequences of your policy proposals, and not fully appreciate the "reasonable" sacrifices you're asking others to make. For a non-gun example consider civil unions vs. full-on gay marriage. LGD fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 02:43
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The Insect Court posted:This is mostly wrong, but it's illustrative of a particular pathology: the tendency of the gun fanatics to project on their opponents. The simple reality is that people who support gun safety laws do so for the same reason people support regulations requiring seatbelts and airbags - harm reduction. But if your gun ownership is so essential to your self worth and how you define your own identity, it's very difficult to come to understand that for most of the people who disagree with you it's just about safety. This is false because while seatbelts and airbags demonstrably reduce harm in auto accidents a lot of gun control legislation is pretty much pointless. Consider this firearm which is illegal to purchase in California:  Now consider this totally legal rifle that you can get without any issue:  Feel safer? Can you explain to me how a law that prohibits a pistol magazine that attaches in front of the grip makes anyone safer? The tec-9 is banned in California but you can get a pistol that fires the same round at the same rate and holds the same number of rounds legally. Thumbholes in stocks are illegal in California if the gun has a detachable magazine. The reality of gun control is that it is often (but not always) an emotional reaction against tragedy instead of an objective attempt to make people safer. Rifle:  Assault weapon:  Salt Fish fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 02:44
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The Insect Court posted:Are you really going to argue that both pro-gun people and pro-gun control people attach the anything close to the same significance to the issue of guns? Which is why anti gun laws are doomed to fail in the USA. Anti-gun people don't feel like they're losing anything by banning guns. Gun owners and pro gun people literally lose both rights and physical property for what time has shown again and again are illusory gains. It is like straight people railing against gay marriage. It doesn't actually affect straight people but gay people are financially, emotionally and legally effected by it. It is something that forces people to be politically active and be really passionate about it.
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Apr 23, 2014 02:53
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Fat Ogre posted:Which is why anti gun laws are doomed to fail in the USA. Anti-gun people don't feel like they're losing anything by banning guns. Gun owners and pro gun people literally lose both rights and physical property for what time has shown again and again are illusory gains.
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Apr 23, 2014 02:57
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Nessus posted:Well, that's quite an analogy. I'm not sure it's sufficiently forceful though; perhaps you could extend it to the Holocaust or the martyrdom of early Christians instead. It's not a bad analogy, it's just that it's in the wrong direction. The greater acceptance of equal rights for gays is in large part a result of demographic change. The same demographic change means the "angry old white guy" vote is dwindling in significance, which is why we're far likelier to see real gun control twenty years from now than some lolbertopian fantasy where you can buy an AK-47 from a vending machine.
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Apr 23, 2014 03:04
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There won't be a genuinely helpful discussion/debate about guns in crime until antis acknowledge that the vast majority of gun crime is not perpetrated by those who'd be affected by their "common sense" ideas. Read: "assault weapon bans" These threads do not last long in here because they become an echo chamber of antis shrilly posting about what they know very little to nothing about.
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Apr 23, 2014 03:20
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The Insect Court posted:It's not a bad analogy, it's just that it's in the wrong direction. The greater acceptance of equal rights for gays is in large part a result of demographic change. The same demographic change means the "angry old white guy" vote is dwindling in significance, which is why we're far likelier to see real gun control twenty years from now than some lolbertopian fantasy where you can buy an AK-47 from a vending machine. Gun laws have liberalized in a lot of major ways in the past 10 years. While anti-gun proponents have had mixed success in banning cosmetic features of guns, pro gun-rights groups have been really successful at expanding concealed carry and self-defense laws, which have a much bigger practical effect than scary black rifles. With crime falling since the 1980s, 1980/90-style gun control is going to be much harder, doubly so for any legislation that bumps up against DC vs Heller.
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Apr 23, 2014 03:21
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Salt Fish posted:This is false because while seatbelts and airbags demonstrably reduce harm in auto accidents a lot of gun control legislation is pretty much pointless. Consider this firearm which is illegal to purchase in California: A Good Start Fog Tripper posted:There won't be a genuinely helpful discussion/debate about guns in crime until antis acknowledge that the vast majority of gun crime is not perpetrated by those who'd be affected by their "common sense" ideas. Read: "assault weapon bans" Banning what guns there is political support for banning is a step towards banning all guns whereas not banning any guns is not.
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Apr 23, 2014 03:26
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