|
A combination of Pandora's Box, culture, cognitive dissonance, and a lack of human empathy. There are a whole bunch of gun owners in the USA, and the vast majority are responsible and law abiding. So when anybody tables gun control, most of them get defensive because they don't view themselves as part of a problem, and therefore by extension the guns they own are not problematic either. The problem is with bad people in their eyes, and the buck stops there. Thus they need guns to defend themselves. What the rest of the world sees, and too many Americans don't, is that making the possession of machines that can kill other human beings in an instant is dangerous and asking for trouble. It is irrelevant that even 99% of gun owners never do anything bad with them, even enjoy them, if 1% are negligent (leaving them lying around) or malicious, or emotionally unstable. Killing just becomes too easy. And personally, I don't see almost any good reason for owning a firearm beyond hunting. Seems mostly like a dick-waving thing to me.
|
#
¿
Dec 7, 2015 21:41
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 09:05 |
|
|
Liquid Communism posted:One point that I will continually credit the founders of America for accidentally putting into place is making it drastically hard for manufactured moral panic and disdain to let the few restrict the rights of the many. We failed to heed that once, and as has been noted, we're still fighting the results of Prohibition on the nature of criminal enterprise in the US. Why are guns important to you, personally, Liquid Communism? As a dickless cuckold you'll have to do me the favour, as I'm too dickless to understand these things without help.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 7, 2015 21:53
|
|
|
Liquid Communism posted:They're not, really. I mean, I like my target shooting and hunting, but I'd do fine without them. OK, so you can take or leave guns, but the right is important? There are lots of things proscribed in society, but I guess you don't lobby on behalf of most of them. So you think the right to bear arms is in some way special and deserves protecting despite the consequences. Is it so you could theoretically rise up against an unjust government? Or something else?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 7, 2015 22:43
|
|
|
Liquid Communism posted:I think the right to bear arms is in no way more or less special than the rest of the Bill of Rights, it is simply the one most often attacked by those frightened of the actions of evil men, and with flimsy logic and emotional appeals. I'm just as grumpy about the post-9/11 inroads against the 4th through 9th amendments in the name of 'Homeland Security' that has amounted to security theatre and widespread violation of the rights of the public; it's just that there's little need to argue that here because it seems to be a generally held opinion. So if I understand you, you really don't care too much about guns or gun control, but care instead about the sanctity of the constitution? Don't you think that the original intention behind the amendment has been completely lost? The "right to bear arms" is just an addendum to the importance of having a Militia, back when something like that could feasibly have overthrown a corrupt government. Not to mention the sheer technological constraints of single shot, muzzle loaded weapons means that they were legislating effectively for a completely different thing. I just fail to see the upside of the 2nd Amendment. Thousands die directly because of it. I don't see finding that problematic as 'flimsy' logic. What good is the 2nd Amendment doing the US? How does it help? How has it helped in the last century?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2015 03:23
|
|
|
bongwizzard posted:It "helps" because people have a right to defend themselves and guns are the best way to do it. Strip everything else away and that is why it is important. Well, strictly speaking the amendment is unrelated to self-defense. The US still uses English Common Law as the basis for its self-defense law, albeit many states have their own modification (like Florida and "Stand your ground".) The real question here is about guns. Yes, a gun is theoretically the best way to defend yourself against another gun. But if tomorrow you could wish away every firearm in the USA, would you have a problem with that? Guns simultaneously provide self-defense and the very thing that needs to be defended from. Developed countries with extremely low levels of gun ownership have greater levels of personal safety. To suggest the benefit of the 2nd Amendment is self-defense is paradoxical, because clearly it simply increases risk. I've sort of answered you above, so I'll just throw something different in here. Defensive gun usage is essentially a fallacy. Just by putting a gun into the equation, the chances of somebody dying, either perpetrator or victim increases dramatically. If both parties are armed, it goes without saying that it becomes even worse. I don't believe that the chances of being robbed in the UK are significantly different than in the USA. Of course, bank robberies and robbing shops probably have a lower incidence, but that probably finds expression somewhere else. However, the chance of getting hurt or dying during a robbery is extremely low, and that goes for the robber too. What I'm going to suggest may be perverse to any red-blooded American, but the safest way to deal with robberies is to let them happen. Insurance covers businesses, and some people, but being robbed on the street will probably cost you as much as the cash in your wallet and your phone. However people caught in the moment and scared, but armed, are very likely to do something stupid. It also puts people, and the police, in a shoot or get shot mentality. I watch US cops gun down unarmed people, or schizophrenic people, or a man with a pen in a wheelchair, because this is the kind of culture arming everybody breeds. You would hardly believe what happened in London the other day. A terrorist entered a metro station and stabbed somebody, nearly fatally. Local cops arrived, i.e. community officers, who then confronted the man and tasered him as he waved a knife around. And the first time it failed, which is when I assume even the coolest headed cop in the US would have turned him into a colander. And let's not forget that if that man had lived in the US, he probably would have gunned down multiple people with a weapon where running away doesn't render it ineffective. I'm sure a good guy with a gun scaring off a non-armed bad guy happens occasionally, and is a good outcome. But it pales in comparison to good guys getting themselves shot, or shooting unarmed bad guys, or both getting shot, or bystanders getting shot. It's a tiny mitigating factor. A Wizard of Goatse posted:Is 'lol your rights have been thoroughly undermined so we might as well just take them away' supposed to persuade anyone of anything except that you're kind of a cock? The right has become outmoded. I fail to see how it has been undermined in anyway, on the contrary it has and is being fulfilled beyond the wildest dreams of its creators. More arms than people, and each one probably several times more deadly than a flintlock pistol. But the right was designed to allow citizenry to overthrow government, not for the citizenry to arm themselves to the teeth. Guns are part of the clause to stop a tyrannical government legislating against arms, then monopolising the use of force. The entire clause is probably derived from a 17th piece of English legislation where the Protestant majority were given permission to be armed, while Catholics were disbarred. By establishing a right to arms, nobody can be disenfranchised in this way. People are blind to associate this Amendment with self-defense, because guns in the 18th century were not shot without planning. A gun in your house was not loaded or primed with powder at all times, let alone the concealed carry laws that now come part and parcel with America and guns. If you wanted to restore the right to a point where it serves some good, you could just as well give every of-age citizen an unloaded weapon then establish citizen run ammo stores, where they can go to become armed Militia when the US government needs overthrowing. Obviously possessing ammo for unlicensed purposes, i.e. hunting or sport purposes would then be a crime.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2015 14:27
|
|
|
Is solving all sources of interpersonal violence somehow a more feasible goal than severely limiting access to portable tools designed to kill other people or animals? The only reason given so far for proliferating guns is self-defense, and the reason people need guns for self-defense is...other people with guns. The only exceptions are extremely rare outlier cases where some axe-murderer breaks into your home for no reason other than to murder everybody inside. Is the solution to that arming every man and woman? How many people die in comparison during school shootings, bungled robberies and the rest? If you want to solve wealth inequality instead of the simpler way, I'd suggest you crack open those gun cabinets and get started on those militias, because wealth inequality is only getting worse.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2015 17:00
|
|
|
bongwizzard posted:Not more feasible, but a lot more desirable. I would rather have grandma have a gun in a violent world full of guns then grandma have nothing in a violent world full of people stronger and quicker then her. I think several people have posted both practical and philosophical discussion points on why proliferating guns is a very poor way of ensuring safety, and by proxy self-defense, so I don't see why you're denying discussion is taking place. If somebody armed with a gun broke into your grandma's house, at 90 she'd probably be nowhere near able to get her gun to defend herself anyway. And if she did grab a gun, it's more likely to cause any armed person to kill her in their own "self-defence". And I'm sure there's a fair slice of demented, racist, half-blind old people out there just waiting to execute some black kid on their lawn. Because obviously, you can have your driving license taken away for being incompetent, but you won't take away granny's .45 Magnum, no sir.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2015 17:20
|
|
|
bongwizzard posted:That is a big pile of assumptions there buddy. The 90 year olds I know are frail and have difficulty enough living without help. Maybe your grandmother carries her loaded pistol in her knickers even when she sleeps, and is a crack shot, I just have a hard time believing your average 90 year old could wake up to a home invasion, whip out their trusty firearm and put them down like dogs. Maybe in another world, granny gets scared and hides in bed while thieves make off with her several thousand dollars worth of porcelain figurines. She suffers emotional trauma, and claims on her home insurance. And in your world, she totters out and confronts whoever is in her home either to a) get hurt or die, b) hurt or kill someone else, c) successfully scare off the invader. Even the fact that a and b are possibilities casts doubt on the usefulness of arming people. I feel it is you who won't enter into discussion. I concede that pragmatically there is an argument for possessing a gun in today's America. But in the theoretical America of tomorrow, I see guns as a harmful thing. I don't think your claim that they benefit self-defense holds water. Can you prove that having millions of guns makes anyone safer, or that owning one enhances your own personal safety? Or is your belief just irrational?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2015 20:48
|
|
|
A Wizard of Goatse posted:The purpose wasn't to let militias overthrow the government. The purpose was to eliminate the distinction between a discrete military caste, who rules as they please, and the subjugated people, who are ruled, because when those two are separate votes only matter as much as the former feels like letting them matter. If you don't see how that's been systematically eroded away regardless of whether grandma has a derringer to ventilate bandits with I don't know what to tell you I did refer to this here: "Guns are part of the clause to stop a tyrannical government legislating against arms, then monopolising the use of force." And militias overthrowing a corrupt gov't is part of it. If the right has been eroded away, the reason it has been eroded is unrelated to America's level of civilian armament, which is massive, or its theoretical ability to form militia. It's just that what constitutes the use of force and power in a modern society is so far beyond being contained in a few rifles and pistols that they have been rendered irrelevant. I don't see it as having been eroded, simply superseded. You could tell me a few ways the Second Amendment has been meaningfully eroded though? I googled for some examples and I just get crackpots talking about how bureaucracy slowing down their concealed carry permits is a liberal, leftist agenda.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 9, 2015 15:53
|
|
|
Helith posted:I thought that this was particularly interesting and telling of the differences between the US and Europe, because yeah, most criminals here don't want to kill you. They want your stuff to sell so that they can make money and probably buy drugs (in the UK at least there is a huge correlation between house burglaries / muggings and drug use). Pretty much this. Being afraid of the possibility that somebody will be breaking into my house with the intention to kill me/harm me is something has never occurred to me, and I do not live in a particularly safe neighbourhood or anything. Something like that would be a pretty extraordinary event. Why would anybody want to break into a house to kill you? It's like some kind of weird delusion. If somebody broke into my house planning only to kill me, then the chances are I'd just die. I also think the same outcome is most likely for anybody in the US, even if they own 100 guns. Hell, owning 100 guns would probably be why they broke in in the first place. Does every American sleep with a loaded gun under their pillow? What if they have a gun? What if you don't hear them break in? Owning a gun makes you more likely to die. Accidentally, by suicide, by somebody else. It literally puts you more at risk of dying. The incidences of a gun being used in necessary self-defense that avert your own injury are also vanishingly small.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2015 02:46
|
|
|
Mahnarch posted:It's to avoid this; At least this is an argument that could make sense, although if memory serves not all of these dictators seriously disarmed their populace. Most rose to power through an armed civil conflict or even democracy. So armed resistance did occur, but failed. If an American tyranny were to come about, you can be fairly certain it would be backed by a large and armed proportion of the population anyway. The idea that a dictator wouldn't be able to flourish because every morally upright American under God would defend themselves to the death their property when the Ronald McDonald Sturmabteilung stomps up in red, white and blue jackboots is a touch naive, I think.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2015 17:13
|
|
|
I've spent some time digesting all the thoughts and information in this thread, and have come to the conclusion that America's gun violence crisis could be averted by enforcing all weapons sold in America be designed as horrifyingly realistic penis simulacra. They can still serve the purpose of self-defense, but no longer are fetishised by whackjobs, and the desire to concealed carry falls through the floor. It would be even better if every male gun owner was forced to take a plaster cast of their own junk upon which his own guns would be modelled, but of course, I'm a reasonable guy and that might be practically a little difficult to implement. This method solves almost every gun related ill in America, while preserving the second Amendment. God bless.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2015 14:57
|
|
|
If gun control was going to happen effectively, it would be over a period of decades anyway. The same is true to the treatment of wealth inequality. But because human beings are retarded, it is much harder to take something away than it is to just make it difficult to obtain in the first place. Taking money away from the wealthy in the US almost cannot happen due to the makeup of the political system, and taking guns away is just as pragmatically challenging. But piece by piece, both could be achieved. However the inertia on both of these issues makes me feel like neither will be solved in the short or even medium term. The closest things recently are Obama talking tough and a Bernie Sanders fever, but whether either go anywhere is doubtful. Of course a Bernie Sanders presidency would be pretty cool, from an outsider's perspective, but the pessimist in me thinks he'll never overcome the wealth and cronyism behind Hillary. FWIW, I think people are seriously underestimating the root and branch changes the entire nation would have to undergo in order to prevent even a fraction of socially alienated spree killers. Like, the social safety net doesn't really exist already. How do you stop a shut in nerd marinating in his own hatred? You almost can't do it. And even the most advanced social safety net in the world can't stop an Anders Breivik.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 12, 2015 16:10
|
|
|
It sounds wonderful, but so far in human history "let's all just be nice to one another" hasn't caught on, even when most people agree with it in theory. At that point gun control becomes a non-issue, as does poverty, homelessness, and almost every social ill.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2015 15:30
|
|
|
A Wizard of Goatse posted:And again, nobody's been particularly unkind to most of the spree killers out there, the average school shooter's had an easier life than the average normal person. Maybe the true solution...is to start bullying nerds again... You don't have to directly be unkind to socially exclude somebody. Not many (or none?) of these spree killers had lots of friends. Aside from the few who are truly delusional, most school shootings seem to be a kind of lashing out due to loneliness and bitterness. I guess Keldoclock is saying you should be inviting that weird fidgety kid with no friends to your MtG game if you don't want to get riddled with bullets. It is never a question of how easy your life is, but how happy your life is. Social and physical isolation completely distorts a person's view of the world and other people. There is probably no doubt that both Adam Lanza and Seung Hui-Cho would have lived normal unremarkable lives if those around them had made a special effort to include them in lots of activities. It is an unreasonable and unrealistic demand, imo, but it doesn't make it untrue. I briefly scrolled through the list of wiki list of school shootings (so many) and most of the ones I cared to click on showed the perpetrator as bullied or majorly isolated.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2015 15:53
|
|
|
A Wizard of Goatse posted:Or you woulda been convenient to get murdered when they decide to make the lives of a bunch of random people all about them with a nine-mil, there's a reason we're not friends with misanthropic, self-absorbed loners. People aren't born misanthropic loners. If you don't mind me saying, that's a peculiarly American perspective. These people are not innately evil. Almost all of them would turn out roughly well-adjusted if they didn't end up spending several years without any social outlet. A happy person does not go on a school shooting. e: the point about pre-K...maybe? Probably can't hurt. But a lot of anxious depressive tendencies only manifest during puberty anyway. Jeza fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Dec 13, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2015 16:03
|
|
|
The road of a paedophile or child abuser or a kid who acts out is completely separate from that of a spree killer. Spree killers rarely have the same issues, which is why "exposure to meanness" isn't really a relevant yardstick. Nobody is pre-destined to be a misanthropic loner as an infant. I also disagree with your interpretation of spree killers motivations too. It is less a case of "I wanna be famous and my hand was forced because wahhh bad things." and more a case of dehumanising other people and believing that the world deserves it. Socialising with others is a reality check. The longer a person spends alone, the more their thoughts go off the beaten track. When there is no social correction, after a long enough time, some people are so twisted that shooting up a school doesn't even seem wrong anymore. It just so happens that bullying leads some people to social isolation, where others still have friends. "Everyone is bullied" is just convenient dismissal. "Oh I got bullied but I didn't shoot up a school! So this guy must be nutty from the word go!" It's just cognitive dissonance. The chances are most of these spree shooters could have been normal people. You think there's nothing spectacularly wrong with their lives that explains their actions, therefore they must be inherently crazy. Then why do the rates of spree killings keep going up? Are people just being born crazier? Or is it the society you live in that is changing?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2015 16:59
|
|
|
It's cart before horse. Why did Breivik even want to kill dozens of Social Democrats in the first place? Because he thought that it would send a message and raise awareness of the dangers of multiculturalism. Why was he convinced that multiculturalism was such a threat to society, and why did he harbour such a hatred for Social Democrats? The goals and beliefs of almost all spree killers are generally totally incoherent. The question shouldn't be what they hope to achieve by killing all these people, but how they ended up with such a hosed up belief system in the first place. The story usually starts in childhood abuse or prolonged social isolation. I'm sure the internet as a breeding ground for self-justification also helps a bunch.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2015 17:21
|
|
|
Does every white supremacist go on a spree killing? The ideology is almost irrelevant in this situation. The ability to go on an murder spree of total strangers is related to being able to dehumanise other people. It takes a specific upbringing or mental issue to enable a person to do that. Dunno why you selectively quoted half of what I posted, but there's nothing mythological about it. Your own example, Breivik, is on record is having been abused as a child: quote:He spent the first year of his life in London until his parents divorced when he was a year old. His father, who later married a diplomat, fought for his custody but failed. When Breivik was four, living in Fritzners gate, Oslo, two reports were filed expressing concern about his mental health, concluding that Anders ought to be removed from parental care. One psychologist in one of the reports made a note of the boy's peculiar smile, suggesting it was not anchored in his emotions but was rather a deliberate response to his environment.In another report by psychologists from Norway's centre for child and youth psychiatry (SSBU) concerns were raised about how his mother treated him: "She 'sexualised' the young Breivik, hit him, and frequently told him that she wished that he were dead." In the report Wenche Behring is described as "a woman with an extremely difficult upbringing, borderline personality structure and an all-encompassing if only partially visible depression" who "projects her primitive aggressive and sexual fantasies onto him [Breivik]". The psychologist who wrote the report was later forbidden from giving evidence in court by Behring, who herself was excused from testifying on health grounds. Many others too. It isn't that abuse is a necessary component, but it is a lead on component to the social isolation I am talking about. Everybody acts the way they do for a reason. Sprree killers are made, not born. It is a mistake to think what happens in their childhood is irrelevant.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2015 14:47
|
|
|
drat u wizard of goatse!! its a valid pointttttt seriously. Being an irredeemable racist may make you a shitbag, but it doesn't automatically qualify you into the "I can kill dozens without a conscience" sweepstakes. My argument here is that a spree killer's motivations are almost irrelevant. They are different in pretty much every case, and the methods don't match up to the stated goals. They are just petty self-justifications. A person always needs an internal logic before doing something. Nobody snaps and kills people for no reason. There is always a reason, even if that reason is spurious and deluded. If you dismiss spree killings as incomprehensible freak events or the results of ideology, you can never hope to address them.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2015 18:58
|
|
|
Spree killing, serial killing, and religiously driven suicide bombing etc. are all quite distinct in terms of who carries them out. You seem especially interested in discrediting the idea that bullying could play a role in developing spree killers, but the facts speak otherwise. The majority underwent especially consistent patterns of bullying, and especially end up out in the cold from regular socialisation. You claim everybody in the US is bullied, but I wonder really if you can really compare the two. Maybe everybody experiences a few incidences of bullying, but I can hardly imagine that significant numbers are singled out as seems to often be the case. You say they are less picked on than everybody else, but every report I've ever seen indicates otherwise. It's also worth mentioning that just because something affects one person one way, does not make it fallacious to suggest it can affect another in a different way. I'm also not fully convinced that media coverage is the best explanation for these cases. It certainly can't help, but mass media coverage of shooting incidents is much the same as it has been for decades, except the world-weary tone we get now. If that hasn't changed, then you have to ask the question "what has changed?". It is my belief that any desire for notoriety is always secondary to the root reasons for a spree killing, namely their deep emotional and psychological problems. The idea that people will shoot up a school just to make something of themselves had always seemed to me a convenient dismissal, turning something very grey into something black and white. I doubt very much a media gag on school shootings would prevent them from occurring, even if it would help some. You'd do just as well assassinating your local Senator if notoriety was your only goal. Most people shoot up a school or a university because there is something they resent about that place, and the people there. hey check it out we're solving the world's problems over here, move over d&d
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2015 20:13
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 09:05 |
|
|
The launchers themselves seem relatively cheap, but, for example, a Stinger missile cost tens of thousands of dollars. I guess a firearm company can't manufacture these things for cheap personal use because a) nobody wants them really, and b) they primarily sell to the US or foreign militaries so they will obviously want to price gouge as hard as possible. There are apparently lots of laws and red flags associated with buying and storing these kind of explosives and weapons, so if you were going to commit some kind of atrocity, you'd be better off doing it under the radar. I found a curious reference to what I imagine is a very antiquated law against "frighting", which could possibly be used to stop a person walking the street with a missile launcher on their shoulder. It's a law also designed to stop people walking around in public places with a big axe and scaring people, i.e. being a general nuisance.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 15, 2015 17:44
|
|