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Stinky_Pete posted:I don't even bother trying to say what the law should be anymore, and just look down from my high horse on all the denizens of a culture that values violence and the ability to produce violence over all else. 1. ability to produce violence is valuable- or have you forgotten that the resources that allow modern American society were taken by force? 2a. A good analogy for guns is cars, because they're also mechanical, typically but not necessarily mass-produced, and a mature technology. There's plenty of room for creativity and new developments, you just need to understand it well to see where those are. 2b. Yeah, okay. It's hard to tell when someone is joking and when they aren't, Poe's law etc etc. Miranda posted:Okay but in the case of mass shootings, it's a lot harder to stab/beat to death 14 people. Fortunately there are many ways to kill people, for example, the worst school mass murder was done without firearms. You could also steal a tank, fly an airplane into a skyscraper, build a car bomb, gas Tokyo's subway system with homemade sarin gas, mail anthrax in envelopes, etc etc. Basically you've got options, is what I'm saying. You could even innovate and steal or build a nuclear weapon, use a repeating crossbow, use a normal bow, turn on the school's sprinkler system and then electrify the floors, falsify coroner's records to "kill" millions and cause incalculable havoc, set a forest on fire, plug up a city's sewer system, poison wells etc. Rest assured that there is no limit to human ingenuity on the subject of murder. Once again, the problem here is of course, that people are performing that murder in an antisocial, unproductive and pointless manner that (in my eyes, at least ) seems to harm everyone and help no-one. Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Dec 4, 2015 |
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Keldoclock posted:Fortunately there are many ways to kill people, for example, the worst school mass murder was done without firearms. You could also steal a tank, fly an airplane into a skyscraper, build a car bomb, gas Tokyo's subway system with homemade sarin gas, mail anthrax in envelopes, etc etc. Basically you've got options, is what I'm saying. Actually, I find this fairly unfortunate most of the time
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Dec 4, 2015 00:02
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:Actually, I find this fairly unfortunate most of the time Well, you know, that's because you are getting murdered, instead of murdering. Sucks, right? Being a human sucks. c'est la vie Anyways, let's do an evaluation. OP, have you succeeded in your goal of understanding why the U.S. has a comparatively light hand on gun control relative to Australia? Rest of the thread, have we agreed that the chief problem is the mass killings and not the means by which they are perpetrated? I'm going to assume we have (please post if you don't agree) and move on to 2. Why don't we know why people are performing mass killings? Is the answer out there and we are simply ignorant, or is the answer yet to be determined by anybody (or unpublished, which is basically the same)? Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Dec 4, 2015 |
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Dec 4, 2015 00:04
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I think the fear about 2nd amendment rights being taken away amounts to this: if a violent person breaks into your home, and it's legal for you to have a firearm, at least you have the chance of defending yourself or discouraging the invader, regardless of how physically-inferior you may be to that person. Many people would be unequipped to stop an attacker, or multiple attackers, based on physical prowess alone. At the same time, I can see few logical reasons why the average person should have access to anything more "automatic" than a rifle or perhaps a revolver. I'm no gun expert, but I can't see a reasonable self-defense or hunting-based (i.e. not mass killing) application for semi-automatic or automatic weapons.
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Dec 4, 2015 00:07
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green chicken feet posted:At the same time, I can see few logical reasons why the average person should have access to anything more "automatic" than a rifle or perhaps a revolver. I'm no gun expert, but I can't see a reasonable self-defense or hunting-based (i.e. not mass killing) application for semi-automatic or automatic weapons. I'm no gun expert either, but I'm at least a gun amateur. 1. Self Defense: The chief purpose of automatic fire (be it exclusively automatic, or the automatic component of select-fire) is twofold: 1. Counterfire on Mass assault: This is the offensive use of automatic fire, and is rare, but is witnessed in war and in these mass shootings, as it is rare in other situations to have so many poorly protected targets. 2. Suppressive fire: This is the defensive use of automatic fire, and is common. The essential function of this use is to use the fire to pose such a high level of threat to prevent your opponent from returning fire. Obviously this has applications in self-defense. It can also be simulated by the firing of many weapons by many people at a single time, but the automatic mechanism(whichever design) simplifies this process and improves results to whatever degree. 2. Hunting Semiautomatic fire can be desirable in hunting, for example to correct for a missed shot, or when performing large culling actions, such as against feral boars. I can't think of an instance in common hunting where select-fire could be an asset, but perhaps if you were performing a large waterfowl harvesting application, you could save money by using an automatic shotgun rather than building a punt gun. Of course, the reason we don't use punt guns today either is that they are too good at their job, and nearly destroyed the native waterfowl communities of the U.S. and many other countries... but it is conceivable that circumstances could change in the future to where there is either a shortage of human labor or a surplus of waterfowl. Also, automatic firearms are easier to manufacture than semi-automatic firearms and many manual actions. Also, what do you mean when you say 'rifle"? That's an incredibly vague term that could refer to almost any rifled firearm. Revolvers are more difficult to manufacture than self-loading firearms, and have many other undesirable characteristics (for example, there is a small gap between the cylinder and the chamber, letting gases out, the cylinders can develop problems with indexing, it is more difficult to manufacture semi-automatic and automatic revolvers than magazine-fed, they are inherently heavier in weight etc), which is why they have largely been replaced with semi-automatic magazine-fed pistols. Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Dec 4, 2015 |
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Dec 4, 2015 00:16
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green chicken feet posted:I think the fear about 2nd amendment rights being taken away amounts to this: if a violent person breaks into your home, and it's legal for you to have a firearm, at least you have the chance of defending yourself or discouraging the invader, regardless of how physically-inferior you may be to that person. Many people would be unequipped to stop an attacker, or multiple attackers, based on physical prowess alone. revolvers actually kinda suck, there's a reason people started making other kinds of guns like 70 years ago and it wasn't for the benefit of Adam Lanza. it's a lot of the same reason only amish guys and those guys in central park still go riding horsecarts around, even though they are objectively slower and more awkward. the current discourse revolves around self-defense but that's not really the core function of the right or a particularly strong argument for it, it's just a positive day-to-day benefit that can be directly appreciated by the same kind of people who don't routinely engage in significant political speech, practice weird and unorthodox religions, or risk anything should government agents start randomly tossing their house looking for crimes without cause, but appreciate those rights being enumerated anyway. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Dec 4, 2015 |
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Dec 4, 2015 00:31
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Miranda posted:My point is. I don't loving understand this country. I don't understand the obsession with the 2nd amendment or why people are opposed to gun control. Why do you NEED guns?! There are countless accidents involving them, I've taken care of a brain dead 11 year old who'd been shot by his 9 year old friend accidentally, with his dad's gun, which had been left loaded on the coffee table. Do you understand what "amendment" means? It's literally a part of the constitution on the same level as freedom of speech and religion. Saying "pass gun control" is like saying pass speech control or religion control. The courts have laughed such things out the door every time. And no, the constitution will not be amended in your lifetime. Ignoring that, gun crime is a symptom of poverty, the war on drugs, and so on. After controlling for other effects, basically no reputable study has been able to show gun control has a meaningful impact on crime. If you've seen a study that suggests that, I can almost guarantee you they hosed up the study in fundamental ways (because humanities majors can't run statistical trials if their life depended on it). I would hardly say there's apathy on the issue, in fact it's being focused on politically to a degree that hasn't happened since the early to mid 90's. Miranda posted:Okay but in the case of mass shootings, it's a lot harder to stab/beat to death 14 people. Focusing on these sorts of cases is the wrong way to go (besides the fact that the SB shooting was probably terrorism). No gun control laws, without changing the constitution, would stop most of those sorts of attacks, which are a minuscule percentage of gun violence to begin with anyway. What gun control laws might be possible and would actually put a huge dent in gun violence was the elimination of cheap handguns, since the vast majority of gun violence is poor people shooting each other with super cheap pistols. Better mental health is another thing brought up but I have doubts at how effective such a system would be. I like to think of this issue as the lefts version of gay marriage. The courts have spoken, yet some dems are just desperate to push a huge losing issue when they could instead be focusing on inner city poverty, the drug war, or other things that would make a real difference. They've also alienated moderates on the issue by perusing dumb legislation that acts as red meat to the base but would actually accomplish nothing. It's kinda like if the right were to say they really want to work on making the country less racists and have some proposals for doing so. Would any on the left give them a chance? No- their history on the issue taints anything they might propose. The issue is the same here. Personally, I think gun rights being constitutionally protected like speech rights are is loving stupid. But that's the way it is and it isn't changing, so let's focus on things that will make the situation better and not be blatantly unconstitutional. But that's so much harder than going "oh look how scary this rifle looks!!".
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Dec 4, 2015 00:39
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Question for those who think gun control won't solve anything: What is it that other places like Europe are doing that we aren't? Because you don't see very many mass shootings, most certainly not on the scale of this country where there have been more mass shootings* in 2015 then there have been days. *defined as 4 or more victims (or deaths,possibly?) in a single incident.
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Dec 4, 2015 00:48
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Left leaning moderate here. I'm going to approach this topic from a number of angles because it's complicated. 1. Gun ownership was enshrined in the constitution because militias were essential to the US's success against the British and because tyranny is far easier to overthrow when the populace has firearms. There's a big reason that it's the second amendment just after free speech. As I recall the Aussies didn't even have significant freedom of speech laws until 1992. Sometimes you have to defend the rascals to defend your own rights. We should defend your right to say, do or participate in activities that we see as vile because when laws are enshrined to target the worst social offenders among us those laws tend to get used in ways that were never intended by their original use. There's a term called legal creep in the US and while it's not only found in the US, we here see a lot of it. The Patriot Act and RICO (anti-racketeering/anti-organized crime law). The Patriot Act is self explanatory and if it isn't, just wiki it. RICO on the other hand is used for civil forfeiture and is easily abused. Police can claim that your property and assets are being used in crime and contrary to our guilty before innocent way of doing things your money is guilty and then they seize it. You on the other hand can't afford a lawyer because law enforcement has stolen all of your stuff. So yeah, I'm worried about limits on constitutional freedoms. After all the fourth amendment is a shell of what is used to be post Patriot Act. I'm also personally worried about creeping fascism in American politics. I don't expect it'll be a serious problem for another generation at least, but America definitely is slowly trending toward authoritarianism. It'll take something powerful, profound and easy to understand to slow, stop or reverse that trend. 2. Disarming an armed populace is asking for violence. People in the US are paranoid right now and the threat of taking someone's property and the ability to defend themselves is not going to go over well. I won't say it'll end up in a revolt, or at least not an organized one, because I don't think it'll go that far, but I think it'll trigger far more violence than just leaving the guns alone would have done. Also you run right smack into the second amendment and there are well funded organizations and corporations that defend it. Guns make people money and there are interests in making more guns to make more money. 3. The metrics for mass shooting are skewed. Mass shootings currently defined by the FBI is where four or more people are shot or killed. A gangland drive-by could be considered a mass shooting. A man who shoots his wife and two kids before committing suicide is considered a mass shooting. Furthermore some news organizations use metrics which are not from the FBI which either push that number up or down to fit their own narrative. 4. Speaking of news organizations, there's been a push to get them to stop releasing the name of the shooter or talking about him (or her, rarely her though) or his life. Copycat killings are a real thing and people are more likely to copy if the shooter gets national or intentional attention. 5. There's also violent political rhetoric from our right wingers that is the cause of some shootings. At the Planned Parenthood shooting recently the person was shouting "No more baby parts" as he murdered bystanders and police officers. The person was absolutely crazy, but "No more baby parts" has been a line that our politicians have been using. That sort of rhetoric motivates the most insane of our population to violence and the worst among them to killing. The last time I remember this happening was during 2011 in Tuscon where Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head and survived while quite a few other people were killed. The root cause of this was most likely violent political rhetoric influencing a crazy person to homicidal action. As a note the person who created the Planned Parenthood scandal made it up out of whole cloth. People were murdered over lies and our media organizations never made a significant effort to debunk the obviously bad story because they're garbage. 6. I think this is the most important part. Most of the newsworthy spree shootings are perpetrated by crazy people. Throw in the right sticks and carrots and they'll kill whoever. The US used to have a fairly robust system for taking care of the disturbed, incapable and the insane. An excellent system would have room for just shy of a million people. Currently that number is around sixty thousand. Most insane people are either homeless or in prison as prison has become the new home for insane people. Due to our terrible medical system it is too expensive to house some crazy people. Sometimes they get access to guns. Sometimes they kill people. 7. Originally I wanted to say radical Islam, but religion in general is a motivator. I think for a while the US is going to get some spillover from ISIS. Terrorism is rather effective against the US as we're fairly isolated from the Middle East. It doesn't even have to be anything more than conventional tactics with guns and bombs either. However we have our own homegrown problem with evangelical terrorists who target abortion doctors and clinics. 8. There's a large populace of right leaning and/or libertarians who view any government involvement in their lives as an invasion. Let's say you're white. The justice system is either neutral or positive in its treatment of you. You may own land far away from prying eyes. You may have a decent paying job or be self-sufficient in other ways. People like this in general hate government involvement because they're the only power that can seriously inconvenience their lives. They want to be left alone and resent any changes at all to their life enforced by government. On the other hand minorities tend to like government involvement because the legal system may imprison them at a higher rate and government involvement is a good way to get better treatment. 9. Politicians don't really want to fix the problem enough to make it go away. They want a political football. One side gets enough angry people and money to run it one way and then the other side gets angry people and money to run it the other way. Politicians require political donations to stay in office to the tune of two million for a representative and ten million for a senatorial seat. If they solved or reduced the intensity of these problems they would get far fewer donations. Yet another debate about guns is a fantastic moneymaker. People on the left have far fewer firearms and Democrats can get away with terrible legislation that wouldn't fix actual problems, but look good and make it look like they're actually doing something. Republicans on the other hand want to expand gun rights to more and more places, despite some of them being terrible ideas. For an egregious example I point to Tennessee allowing concealed carry in bars. The governor tried to veto the legislation, but was overridden. The bars can choose not to allow people to do so, but there is a short list of places where a firearm would be worse, and a blackout drunk person with a firearm is not safe or responsible. 10. There's also gang culture. I'm not as familiar with the root causes beyond poverty, drugs, lack of opportunity and poor education. Obviously it's more complicated than this and in some places I can definitely be wrong. However, this is the theory I'm going with. I think that a multi-pronged approach would reduce the numbers of spree shooters in the US. Tackling guns directly is not possible in today's climate. Instead other root causes need to be tackled in measured and effective ways. However with a critically dysfunctional congress I really don't expect any real movement on any of these issues. None of this legislation is particularly sexy and it doesn't help someone get elected. People in the US aren't particularly in tune with history, cause and effect or are farsighted enough to address root causes of problems. As a group we're too easily swayed by empty political rhetoric. We're more concerned with ideology over results.
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Dec 4, 2015 00:50
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tsa posted:What gun control laws might be possible and would actually put a huge dent in gun violence was the elimination of cheap handguns, since the vast majority of gun violence is poor people shooting each other with super cheap pistols. For an argument that this would be ineffective, please see the fine array of cheap pistols poor people worldwide have manufactured themselves with the express intent of shooting each other with them, linked earlier in this very thread. Geniasis posted:What is it that other places like Europe are doing that we aren't? . I don't know, but I can guess. 1. being ethnically and culturally homogeneous 2. suppressing media 3. distributing wealth 4. not already having a trend of mass murder(although they are not unheard of in europe) 5. being smaller in population and geographic size, with more borders. Do you know the answer to this question? I don't know the answer to this question.
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Dec 4, 2015 00:53
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Geniasis posted:Question for those who think gun control won't solve anything: It's path dependent and the starting point is very, very different. How many countries in Europe have a few hundred years of legal and cultural history based on the right to bear arms? If firearms were just being invented / popularized today, the culture and legal status would almost definitely be very different (not unlike the arguments about alcohol vs. marijuana were they introduced today).
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Dec 4, 2015 00:54
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Keldoclock posted:I don't know, but I can guess. I also think that the US fetishizes violence more than almost any other country on the planet as well. I mean we really, really love our violence in the media.
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Dec 4, 2015 01:16
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Keldoclock posted:For an argument that this would be ineffective, please see the fine array of cheap pistols poor people worldwide have manufactured themselves with the express intent of shooting each other with them, linked earlier in this very thread. i feel like it would also be pretty hard to get a good death rage going when you've just eaten a whole bunch of frogs and snails and poo poo and had your rear end in a top hat hosed out
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Dec 4, 2015 01:33
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:i feel like it would also be pretty hard to get a good death rage going when you've just eaten a whole bunch of frogs and snails and poo poo and had your rear end in a top hat hosed out Speak for yourself buddy, I get my best death rages going in the bathroom.
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Dec 4, 2015 01:37
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Keldoclock posted:Speak for yourself buddy, I get my best death rages going in the bathroom. see, you definitely want like a Baconator or something for that
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Dec 4, 2015 01:38
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Keldoclock posted:I'm no gun expert either, but I'm at least a gun amateur. These are all points that hadn't occurred to me, except for the one about making it easier to defend against a larger number of assailants. Still in the case of robberies or such, it usually isn't 20 people invading a home (at least, I don't think!) whereas in mass shootings you see 20 innocents getting mowed down. So it seems more sensible to me to make weapons easily enabling mass murder more difficult to obtain. About the rifles remaining legal - I'm talking about the kind that where you have to pause to re-chamber the ammo. I'm sorry, I don't know the technical term or if it is really referred to as a rifle or shotgun. But I'm talking about what your dad or grandpa might have hanging over his mantle and not military type of weapon like an AK-47. If someone is hunting a dangerous animal such as boar, then they could have multiple friends along to help, or try to shoot from a safer vantage point. People hunted animals in the past without the aid of automatic fire. My basic thought is... allow the average person to have some kind of firearm that allows defense at a distance, and yet limit the legal types to weapons that aren't easy to use to mow down large numbers of people. As far as I know, many of the weapons used in mass murders / school shootings were obtained legally. These guys weren't the types of people with black market or gang connections.
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Dec 4, 2015 01:56
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green chicken feet posted:About the rifles remaining legal - I'm talking about the kind that where you have to pause to re-chamber the ammo. I'm sorry, I don't know the technical term or if it is really referred to as a rifle or shotgun. But I'm talking about what your dad or grandpa might have hanging over his mantle and not military type of weapon like an AK-47. If someone is hunting a dangerous animal such as boar, then they could have multiple friends along to help, or try to shoot from a safer vantage point. People hunted animals in the past without the aid of automatic fire. You don't need to use the black market or gang connections to acquire firearms illicitly, although of course, you don't really need connections to use the black market either.  You're probably talking about bolt-action rifles, and I knew that's what you meant before, but I just wanted to point out that the word "rifle" can refer to any firearm with a rifled barrel.  The thing is, this sort of rifle was a military weapon as recently as 70-80 years ago and they continue to appear alongside the AK in conflicts around the world. You could also be talking about a lever action rifle,  Or a pump-action rifle  But fundamentally there is no real difference in capability. All have been in military service at one point or another in history, because, unsurprisingly, the military is a big force for development of weapons. No, the reason you want follow-up shots for feral boar is because they start running when you start shooting, so you have to get the whole group of them quickly if you want to maximize your meat haul. You can go to TFR's hunting thread, there's a poster there that hunts feral boar. Also, I was referring to semi-automatic fire in that example, not automatic fire. Like I said, there is no common hunting application for automatic fire, as generally one shot is enough to kill an animal and shooting it more would ruin more of the meat that, after all, you are trying to eat. That people have hunted boar in the past(and indeed, today) with bolt-action rifles, muskets, bows and arrows and even spears, is not really a good reason to not use a better method. Anyways, you probably won't succeed in your goal at actually stopping people from being able to fire two shots by pulling a trigger two times. The trouble is the firearms are real objects, made of steel and wood and plastic, and, being inanimate objects, are incapable of caring about laws. For example, in Japan, where firearms are heavily restricted, Japanese target shooters build tremendously expensive, very accurate slug-firing shotguns to get around the laws that forbid them from owning rifles. Banning guns is just like banning bicycles- they're such a simple and elementary machine (ultimately being 19th century technology) that you can't really stop anyone who wants to have one from having one, and all that a ban does is terribly inconvenience those people. Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Dec 4, 2015 |
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Dec 4, 2015 02:25
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As someone also born abroad in a country that restricted gun access after a mass shooting, I don't fully understand it either. The value of guns and the importance of the 2nd Amendment is something that most Americans grow up with and take for granted. I would argue that all the things the second poster in this thread mentioned- freedom of speech, assembly, etc.- are "needed" for a healthy society, but that access to weaponry isn't that important. Most Americans would disagree. There are various arguments for this point of view, from "it's a god given right to own whatever property I want" to appeals to the revolution and the necessity of an armed populace in keeping the government from exercising tyranny. All of these I can understand to some degree. I'll just never understand the added emotion about it that Americans have, because of where I was raised. I would question the idea of mass shootings being solely the result of access to guns. There are lots of countries with a very strong gun and hunting culture that don't experience these tragedies constantly. As weird as I feel recommending a Michael Moore documentary, Bowling for Columbineis actually the opposite of what a lot of people expect because he explicitly contrasts the USA to Canada. Canada has a high rate of gun ownership but low incidence of mass shootings. The closest Moore comes to a conclusion is hypothesizing that there is something in American culture that is responsible. Whether it's the idea he puts forward that there is a "culture of fear" stoked by the media and distrust of one's neighbours, or something else, it does at least seem to be part of the equation. Do Americans perhaps think of guns as being more for defending yourself from human beings than hunting for some reason, such as the collective memory of the revolution? Maybe it's something to do with the American Dream: people are raised to believe they can achieve anything, and when that turns out to be false they want revenge against society. I don't know. In the end, this is one of those issues that I just have to throw up my hands and go "oh well, this is something for born American citizens to decide for themselves." I don't have a problem with being semi-evangelical about my other political views and might vote on them if I stay here long enough to get in a position to do so, but I'm taking a backseat on this. It would be like moving to India and trying to interfere with the caste system- a thing that has many downsides, but is part of cultural and religious history there and has seen many attempts at reinterpretation by figures like Gandhi. It's too far outside my experience to understand in quite the same way. Weldon Pemberton fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Dec 4, 2015 |
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Dec 4, 2015 02:30
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Weldon Pemberton posted:As someone also born abroad in a country that restricted gun access after a mass shooting, I don't fully understand it either. The value of guns and the importance of the 2nd Amendment is something that most Americans grow up with and take for granted. I would argue that all the things the second poster in this thread mentioned- freedom of speech, assembly, etc.- are "needed" for a healthy society, but that access to weaponry isn't that important. Most Americans would disagree. There are various arguments for this point of view, from "it's a god given right to own whatever property I want" to appeals to the revolution and the necessity of an armed populace in keeping the government from exercising tyranny. All of these I can understand to some degree. I'll just never understand the added emotion about it that Americans have, because of where I was raised. Consider that the possibility of a tyrannical military dictatorship is a bit more immediate and real in parts of the world that actually have a military beyond like seven dudes and a US airbase, and right up until they got colonized and disarmed by America 70 years ago the basic state activity of all those peaceful democratic countries that obviously maintain stability through pure enlightenment was exterminating as many of their own and each others' people as they could lay hands on. The original point of the second amendment, which got a bit lost along the way much like the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth, was that democratizing hard power in a country where that's a necessity is key to making it structurally impossible for the central government to slip back into militarized autocracy. It's been defanged and eroded to the point of near meaninglessness in practice (much like the rest of the bill of rights), and the specific implementation the founders had in mind probably wouldn't have worked anyway, but people still want what little they got left, and the principle still shows its value in the, uh, majority of attempts at democracy worldwide where simple petitioning by the people fails to be enough to stop them reverting to military dictatorships once some general realizes he's the boss of all the guys with actual guns and poo poo and doesn't have to listen to anybody. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Dec 4, 2015 |
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Dec 4, 2015 09:12
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lol what kind of poo poo country do you live in where you need a gun to feel safe. go live in Syria.
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Dec 4, 2015 10:20
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Ice Phisherman posted:The Patriot Act and RICO (anti-racketeering/anti-organized crime law). The Patriot Act is self explanatory and if it isn't, just wiki it. RICO on the other hand is used for civil forfeiture and is easily abused. Police can claim that your property and assets are being used in crime and contrary to our guilty before innocent way of doing things your money is guilty and then they seize it. You on the other hand can't afford a lawyer because law enforcement has stolen all of your stuff. While the rest of your post is very solid and should be read, I'm going to fishmech a bit here: RICO asset forfeitures are only a very specific kind of asset forfeiture. It would be nice if it were the only way to do it, because RICO has some fairly specific requirements before the Department of Justice will indict you and everyone you have ever met. Asset forfeiture in general is... somewhat more flexible and harder to fight. That's a big part of why it's incredibly awful (and very common).
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Dec 4, 2015 10:46
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GreyjoyBastard posted:While the rest of your post is very solid and should be read, I'm going to fishmech a bit here: RICO asset forfeitures are only a very specific kind of asset forfeiture. It would be nice if it were the only way to do it, because RICO has some fairly specific requirements before the Department of Justice will indict you and everyone you have ever met. Asset forfeiture in general is... somewhat more flexible and harder to fight. That's a big part of why it's incredibly awful (and very common). Thanks buddy. I was just under the impression thought that RICO is where most other asset forfeitures came from. I'm not as read up on that as I should be though.
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Dec 4, 2015 17:07
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SealHammer posted:Am I the only one who thinks this would be really interesting to see, even once? It would sure break up the loathsome monotony of "Guy walks into place and point-blank executes a whole bunch of people in comically unhurried manner." It'd likely be the last thing you ever saw. The US likes guns because the NRA has convinced huge groups of poorly educated people that if the government ever decided to restrict gun ownership, fascism and tyranny are right around the corner, so they may at any time need to fanatically defend their and their families freedoms against the government. Even the most common sense legislation is fought over and inevitably defeated because of this fear. Incredibly loose gun regulation combined with a poor healthcare system results in many damaged individuals getting weapons and doing damage.
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Dec 4, 2015 17:33
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Weldon Pemberton posted:
People wonder why so many mass killers are younger white males, generally on the lower end of the economic spectrum. When you get told your entire childhood that you can do anything if you just work hard enough, when you reach adulthood, and start working as hard as you can and still end up going nowhere, it becomes really easy to start looking for someone to blame. Some people like Harris and Klebold realized the fact that the American dream is just a pipe dream and we really aren't so far removed from the caste system as angry teenagers, and it caused them to do what they did. Some people blame minorities for why all their hard work isn't giving them anything to show for it, and do things like shoot up churches. It's not the culture of fear, it's that there is the consistent lie of the opportunity to advance past how you grew up, when these days that opportunity doesn't exist. It's probably a large part of why (I'm not a sociologist) mass killings are on the rise. As more and more people that came of age during the recession go out into the work force and realize that even if you're the hardest working employee there it doesn't get you much outside of an a for effort, I don't think that the number of mass killings is going to decrease. Gun control is a moot point until the issues behind their motivations are addressed. Canada doesn't have the same stigma against welfare, doesn't have some of the massive inequality issues, doesn't give people the same reasons to go out and seek revenge on a cold cruel world
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Dec 4, 2015 18:01
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Keldoclock posted:Fortunately there are many ways to kill people, for example, the worst school mass murder was done without firearms. You could also steal a tank, fly an airplane into a skyscraper, build a car bomb, gas Tokyo's subway system with homemade sarin gas, mail anthrax in envelopes, etc etc. Basically you've got options, is what I'm saying. You could even innovate and steal or build a nuclear weapon, use a repeating crossbow, use a normal bow, turn on the school's sprinkler system and then electrify the floors, falsify coroner's records to "kill" millions and cause incalculable havoc, set a forest on fire, plug up a city's sewer system, poison wells etc.
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Dec 4, 2015 18:25
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AA is for Quitters posted:Canada doesn't have the same stigma against welfare, doesn't have some of the massive inequality issues, doesn't give people the same reasons to go out and seek revenge on a cold cruel world There's absolutely a stigma against welfare in many parts of Canada. Our inequality issues are less severe than the US, but still present.
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Dec 4, 2015 18:32
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AA is for Quitters posted:People wonder why so many mass killers are younger white males, generally on the lower end of the economic spectrum. virtually all of these guys are embittered comfortably middle-class losers who never worked hard at anything in their lives and want for nothing save celebrity status, spree killing is as white and bougie as Whole Foods. Poor folks kill each other at a much, much higher rate, but in ways that don't tend to make the news, targeting specific people, no street kid's going all Isla Vista because he can't get laid. That's a big part of why they scare people. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Dec 4, 2015 |
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Dec 4, 2015 20:53
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Geniasis posted:Question for those who think gun control won't solve anything: War on drugs and systematic racism for 500, Alex.
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Dec 4, 2015 21:13
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AA is for Quitters posted:Gun control is a moot point until the issues behind their motivations are addressed. Why? Sure, it's hard to stop someone who is determined and willing to plan ahead, but making guns less easily available should cut down on the amount of people doing rash, impulsive things with them, and it's easier to make guns less available than it is to fix the healthcare system, the inequality issues, and change the entire psychological makeup of a nation. (I'm from the socialist hellhole of Norway, and as far as I know we've had exactly one mass shooting in the history of ever)
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Dec 4, 2015 21:17
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There are enough privately owned guns in the US to give every one of Norway's 5 million people 65 of them and have some left over. Those aren't going away without confiscation. P.S. your entire population is smaller than oUR cities.
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Dec 4, 2015 21:32
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Liquid Communism posted:There are enough privately owned guns in the US to give every one of Norway's 5 million people 65 of them and have some left over. Those aren't going away without confiscation. Well, yeah, my point remains that it's simpler (in terms of practicality) to remove the easy availability of guns than to make the massive changes everyone seems to claim must be made first. (There have been 355 more mass shootings in the US this year than in Norway, and you don't have 355 times more people living there, so the statistics aren't in your favour. We're a radically different society, I just added my background to show how completely alien your countrys whole mentality about making guns more available than healthcare is) Edit: “Yes, it does happen in other places. But boy, does it happen a lot in the U.S., and boy, does it happen really frequently” Sockmuppet fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Dec 4, 2015 |
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Dec 4, 2015 21:50
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Sockmuppet posted:Well, yeah, my point remains that it's simpler (in terms of practicality) to remove the easy availability of guns than to make the massive changes everyone seems to claim must be made first. lmao yes well you see if you pick exactly the right definitions of "mass", "shooting", "ever", "other countries", whether 3 or 4 victims makes a killing count as worthy of consideration, and well you have one study but I've got another unpublished unreviewed study that Teaches the Controversy, then the US is unique in the exact way I say it is and my favored policies are the only ones that will impact the kind of violence I've decided counts as real. this is the kind of rhetorical contortion I'm used to seeing in evangelical literature where they try to pin the headlining disaster of the week on gay marriage. Saudi Arabia locks up its queers and it never gets earthquakes above a 5.0 magnitude, except for the Gulf of Aqaba. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Dec 4, 2015 |
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Dec 4, 2015 22:18
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One thing I don't understand is why the thought of any regulation on guns at all is seen as an attack on gun rights. For example, those on one side argue for mandatory waiting periods, while those on the other argue that doing so infringes on their constitutional rights. Yet the first amendment grants the right to peaceably assemble in protest, but most local governments require permits to be filed and approved before the protest is allowed. I know this isn't a perfect comparison, but I hope you get my point. Another common statement is that "[insert proposed gun legislation] won't stop all violent crime so we shouldn't do it." That is certainly true; even removing from existence all guns wouldn't stop violent crime. But why not make it just a little bit harder for a lone wolf/domestic terrorist/international terrorist/etc. to get a gun? Is the need for immediacy in a gun purchase so great that any background check is too much of a burden? The Senate voted down a measure yesterday to require anyone on the terrorist watchlist or no-fly list to be prevented from purchasing a weapon. Why is that a bad thing? The first amendment has caveats associated with it (you can't say whatever you want, you can't use religion to do whatever you want, the press can't write whatever they want), why not put some caveats on the second amendment that would make it maybe just a little bit more difficult for bad people to get guns?
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Dec 4, 2015 22:46
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Omne posted:why not put some caveats on the second amendment that would make it maybe just a little bit more difficult for bad people to get guns? To me, this sounds like the people that say support the Patriot act because you shouldn't be afraid of surveillance if you're doing nothing wrong. That's bad logic for a number of reasons. The fact that policymakers have their heart in the right place (and not all do) is not an excuse for lovely, expensive, and often useless policy.
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Dec 4, 2015 23:18
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Omne posted:One thing I don't understand is why the thought of any regulation on guns at all is seen as an attack on gun rights. mainly because the main force pushing for gun restrictions at the state and national level is a bunch of pseudo-religious fringers who openly despise 'gun people', who they characterize as basically the hillbillies from Deliverance and seek to punish for everything from the drug war to Planned Parenthood getting defunded, and in the past when the exact same incremental increases in restriction they propose now were adopted they have only ever lead to them to demand more arbitrary laws as the crime rate (and mass shootings) held on unaffected. When someone like that comes up to you smarming about their 'reasonable', 'compromise' policies that didn't do poo poo before and ain't even about what's happening, you kinda assume bad faith and tune them out. Very, very few of the spree killers in particular would have been affected by any gun legislation that's actually been proposed - the standard spree killer is a white or asian dude in college or working a middle-class-ish job, with no significant criminal record or documented mental health history that'd DQ them and not like half of the rest of the population, using whatever poo poo comes to hand. Our last big one out here was a cranky loner college student who used a 9mm pistol, a .22, and a goddamn mountain of 10rd mags that he left trailing behind him wherever he went like murder Hansel, and he wandered around town killing 32 people before anyone stopped him. Like, the only gunpundit talking point that even comes close to relevant here is he mostly killed people in a university gun-free zone, although I guess I can't say for certainty that LaPierre wasn't right and he wasn't driven to murder by Newgrounds flash games. The no-fly list thing specifically is a bad idea because the no-fly list is a secret government shitlist with no known consistent selection method and a track record of red-flagging everyone from dissident journalists to Senators, and once you're on it unless you're a celebrity you have no recourse to ever get off or find out why. It's bullshit when applied to travel and it's intolerable when used to strip away peoples' actual rights as citizens. Anyone pushing for this is a fascist trying to spook you into unthinking obendience with the T-word, plain and simple. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Dec 4, 2015 |
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Dec 4, 2015 23:29
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Geniasis posted:Question for those who think gun control won't solve anything: It's 4 or more bodies with new holes, alive or no. I think the gun-protectors are envisioning a law that says "okay less guns" but there are already lots of guns floating around in America, so I guess the idea would be that everyone who's going to shoot people has a gun already? But I'm pretty sure that in most of these cases, the guns were purchased in the month or week leading up to the event. However, I think tsa is mostly right on the political part of this, which is that this is a fight the left is wasting its energy and clout on. Bringing hypertension screening to underserved communities, e.g., could save millions of people from dying in their 50s. Now, while mass events are a drop in the bucket for premature American deaths, I also think that focusing on deaths alone is a red herring, because injuries from firearms do also impose a real cost on society. Every time someone needs to go to the hospital for shooting themselves in the foot, that means more medical resources are used, and thus more money that isn't used for something else that has a more growth-oriented (rather than maintenance/reparative) impact on the economy. If anything, I'd just like a big tax on guns that recognizes the risk someone's putting on the rest of us as a gun owner, and of course vision/safety skills tests that must be renewed every 2-5 years. But I can't be arsed to fight for it.
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Dec 5, 2015 00:03
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antiga posted:To me, this sounds like the people that say support the Patriot act because you shouldn't be afraid of surveillance if you're doing nothing wrong. That's bad logic for a number of reasons. Are the are restrictions on the 1st amendment also like the patriot act? Because that seems like a bit of a leap to me.
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Dec 5, 2015 00:18
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Geniasis posted:Are the are restrictions on the 1st amendment also like the patriot act? Because that seems like a bit of a leap to me. I get his point on the Patriot Act and it's definitely a slippery slope. I actually hadn't thought of gun control that way before, but I see where it comes from. My point is that rights aren't always "all or nothing, any infringement is wrong" because certain rights do have those caveats or restrictions. Gun ownership seems to be "any single restriction whatsoever is a massive infringement on my rights." Would, say, waiting three days be an unspeakable infringement? A Wizard of Goatse, I hear you on the no-fly-list thing. What would you say if the same legislation that made those on the list restricted from owning a firearm also include more transparency on the list. It would be something like "you are on this list for X reason. To get off this list, do Y." That way people would know why they are on it (i.e. my name is close to someone else's name and I can prove I'm not them) but also be given recourse on getting off of it. I think the total lack of transparency on those lists is a huge violation. One point that I tend to agree with is a lot of mass shootings are caused by unstable people (i.e. Adam Lanza, James Holmes). To help prevent those, mental health screening or other methods could be used to limit the occurrence of that, no?
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Dec 5, 2015 01:45
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One of the problems with gun control in the US is that most advocates don't really understand the gun's place in the US mythology and craft messages that don't really appeal to the voting public. Instead they complain about how the NRA doesn't compromise with them(their notion of 'compromise' is 'give us something and expect nothing in return'). No wonder they fail to connect. For example, watching gun control advocates rage about AR-15s just shows how out of touch they are with either the statistics of crime using guns or the people they're trying to convince. Omne posted:One point that I tend to agree with is a lot of mass shootings are caused by unstable people (i.e. Adam Lanza, James Holmes). To help prevent those, mental health screening or other methods could be used to limit the occurrence of that, no? Most of these people could pass a mental health screening unless it was extremely strict at which point few 'normal' people could pass it.
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Dec 5, 2015 01:45
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Panzeh posted:...and craft messages that don't really appeal to the voting public. Instead they complain about how the NRA doesn't compromise with them(their notion of 'compromise' is 'give us something and expect nothing in return'). No wonder they fail to connect. Part of this is that they're not trying to convince the NRA types. The politicians message is designed to rally their own supporters and convince the undecided portion of the public that their opposition is inherently evil or otherwise bad. There are legitimate non political types that are very interested in gun control but sadly they're not really better at suggesting viable solutions. Omne, if you're asking me I don't think a three day waiting period is overly onerous but you have to prove/convince someone that the policy will have a positive effect. Maybe there's a possibility that someone flips out, tries to buy and then comes to their senses in 72 hours. To me, that's not very compelling. I thought three days was already in effect in a lot of places but it could be a state thing. antiga fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Dec 5, 2015 |
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Dec 5, 2015 02:14
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