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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:i hate to inform you, but people arguing on the something awful forums has zero impact on public policy. This conversation is still not about public policy. 
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Jul 20, 2022 17:27
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:i hate to inform you, but people arguing on the something awful forums has zero impact on public policy. in fact, this is much more likely to be a defensive and childish reaction to being publicly mocked on a discussion forum - "how dare you make fun of me?! your political policies will never be enacted so long as you continue to post like this" and whatnot And if you were the person talking about changing minds, that'd be be relevant. You don't want to, and that's fine. Someone did talk about changing minds, and if that's their approach, they are a wildly incompetent at it. You are just venting, which is cool, the reality that you impact nothing and dead children are meaningless to the majority of Americans is depressing and people need an outlet. Go off.
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Jul 20, 2022 17:31
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Harold Fjord posted:This conversation is still not about public policy. - Guns are dangerous - I'm better at guns than John Wick - Would you trust your neighbor with guns? - He's an idiot but I'd rather have a gun myself and then I can shoot him if necessary - What if guns are illegal - He could get an illegal gun - It would b e almost impossible like in Japan - But not 0% so I'm still better off with a gun Since you seem to be able to get yourself into their shoes, what do you think could work?
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Jul 20, 2022 17:33
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:i hate to inform you, but people arguing on the something awful forums has zero impact on public policy. in fact, this is much more likely to be a defensive and childish reaction to being publicly mocked on a discussion forum - "how dare you make fun of me?! your political policies will never be enacted so long as you continue to post like this" and whatnot Exactly. I did say I wasn't interested in fighting over convincing one goon or not right at the start of this. Cease to Hope posted:It isn't a problem that gets solved by me individually evangelizing people anyway. Even if I was supernaturally persuasive, there aren't enough hours in the day. Mulva posted:I'm sure the people trying to get sick owns off on the person they need to convince will one day change something. No Something Awful forums post will do this. Posting isn't praxis. My point is that it's clear that evidence isn't the way forward, because of this pervasive Good Guy With A Gun fantasy narrative that turns heroic anecdotes into data and actual data into irrelevancies that only apply to Other People. I didn't expect someone to charge in and say that data doesn't apply to him!
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Jul 20, 2022 17:38
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could the protagonist of reality to whom rules don't apply please log on and settle this for all us NPCs? i promise that my dialog tree is shallow and easy to navigate. thank you.
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Jul 20, 2022 17:41
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Cease to Hope posted:. I didn't expect someone to charge in and say that data doesn't apply to him! gently caress you making poo poo up about me. Quote me doing this (You can't. Because I said that statistics don't individualize cleanly when taken in aggregate, not that they are meaningless, rear end in a top hat)
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Jul 20, 2022 17:43
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Harold Fjord posted:gently caress you making poo poo up about me. Quote me doing this Harold Fjord posted:No this is just reality and basic math. Each individual does not have the same exact odds of outcome as all individuals in aggregate. Insisting that they do makes you look stupid as gently caress on top of ineffective approach to changing their minds there's no other way to read this other than you agreeing with cease to hope that people think of themselves as being outside of the law of averages because they're special
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Jul 20, 2022 17:44
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Look you don't understand posts or stats and then you still talk dumb poo poo about them shut the gently caress up. The other way to read it is the exact words written, which are factually correct.
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Jul 20, 2022 17:44
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Cease to Hope posted:Exactly. I did say I wasn't interested in fighting over convincing one goon or not right at the start of this. So you are also just venting at your powerlessness? Then again I say "Go off", you've earned it.
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Jul 20, 2022 17:45
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i'm sorry that you made a weird argument and multiple people read it in a way which is embarassing to you but that is nobody's fault but your own, comrade
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Jul 20, 2022 17:45
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It's not embarrassing to me that you don't understand statistics, don't worry
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Jul 20, 2022 17:46
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Cease to Hope posted:
Well no, on 2 separate occasions ive had to use a firearm to defend myself. Fortunately didn't have to fire. I know a couple of people who have similarly used firearms to defend themselves/ their partners. Perhaps the idea that *you* might need to defend yourself is fantasy but it isn't for everyone. I wish I had your position of being able to view these things in an abstract statistical way but I don't.
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Jul 20, 2022 17:53
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mobby_6kl posted:I get what you're going for. But as I said, I don't think it'll be really possible to convince someone in that frame of mind. To any potential issue they can say that they will be the model responsible gun owner. 1. Yes, yes they are. 2. No, but he's fictional. 3. Depends on the neighbor, but we trust him with an F150. 4. Yes. 5. They would be harder to get. 6. Maybe? Depends on his network of friends and how good he is with building things. 7. No, Japan doesn't share a border with Mexico. People are trafficked into Iowa from Mexico, guns could be too. 8. Yes, the police aren't going to save you.
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Jul 20, 2022 17:58
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Statistically speaking, yes gun owners are favoring a power fantasy over their family's actual safety. That's just a fact. From a persuasion standpoint, that's not a convincing argument to make to those people, because of the whole delusional power fantasy thing. Both these things are true.
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Jul 20, 2022 18:29
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Simmer down thread. I know it's a heated topic but surely you are all adults capable of discussing these things without throwing around personal insults. If you just want to vent there's plenty of other places on the forums for that. It's pretty well documented that confronting people with evidence that their beliefs are wrong doesn't change their beliefs, it often has the exact opposite effect. With that in mind, it might be better to start from that assumption and discuss what then might be a better way to convince responsible gun owners that stricter gun control measures are necessary. (A majority actually do, so perhaps it's not most gun owners that are the problem with enacting gun control measures). Sidenote: autocorrect kept trying to change gun to fun, but I think that's probably more suited to the politics in video games thread.
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Jul 20, 2022 18:36
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Anchor Wanker posted:Well no, on 2 separate occasions ive had to use a firearm to defend myself. Fortunately didn't have to fire. I know a couple of people who have similarly used firearms to defend themselves/ their partners. On two separate occasions you felt you needed to threaten someone with a gun to defend yourself, and by your own admission it didn't matter if it was loaded or functional. It's the fantasy that reframed it as a need, a need for a gun in particular. Part of the fantasy is that it takes situations where someone feels scared and brandishes/uses a gun, and turns them into situations where they needed that gun and that it kept them safe. It's self-reinforcing survivorship bias that way. And people are wickedly defensive of that narrative, because, if it's not true, it means admitting error in threatening a person with a gun. I wasn't there, I couldn't know, how dare you second-guess, etc. I know. But even operating on the good-faith assumption your anecdotes are rock-solid just uses of force, there are so many well-documented stories of people killing harmless people knocking on the front door, or starting poo poo and finishing it with a gun. Scared people gently caress up all the time. Ultimately, the need to be safe and the need to feel safe are real, but guns are only doing the second part. It's funny you mention this because the thing that really broke the back of my belief in guns was studying self-defense techniques. I found convincing the school of thought that gun self-defense is chiefly a matter of having a gun and clearly communicating your will and ability to fire it (up to and including shooting someone), rather than maximizing your reaction speed and accuracy. In this school of thought, all of the debate about "lethality" is just marketing noise. The main challenge is clearly communicating will and making sure you're in situations where the would-be assailant is better off trying to flee than to disarm or disable you. This made me realize that the gun itself is mainly a liability. It's useful mainly as a flag that you aren't an easy victim, that fooling with you is dangerous. And it's just as dangerous to you if an assailant sees that flag as a sign that you must be stopped rather than a sign you must be fled. Having that flag to wave is a real need! But guns fit into that hole poorly, even in the hands of a trained professional. (Which led me down the path of realizing how much gun self-defense training is unsubstantiated woo, but that's another story.) That finally cracked the fantasy for me. It's not the totality of why I think guns are bad, but that realization was the start of it. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Jul 20, 2022 |
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Jul 20, 2022 18:41
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Professor Beetus posted:Sidenote: autocorrect kept trying to change gun to fun, but I think that's probably more suited to the politics in video games thread.
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Jul 20, 2022 18:51
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Professor Beetus posted:Simmer down thread. I know it's a heated topic but surely you are all adults capable of discussing these things without throwing around personal insults. If you just want to vent there's plenty of other places on the forums for that. Do we need to? Only around one-third of Americans own guns. If a majority of those gun owners support stricter gun control, then the anti-control group is a pretty small slice of the population. If that small group possesses the political power to block gun control, then the right approach isn't necessarily to convince that small group, but rather to look at the factors that cause that group to punch well above its weight politically. An obvious conclusion to jump to is regional bias, but I don't think the numbers work for that. Even in overrepresented and gerrymandered rural areas, gun owners make up less than half the population. I don't think the numbers work out. Even among the Republican base, a majority call for stronger gun laws. What is it, then? Usually, in my opinion, these come down to strength of belief and willingness to take action based on that belief. For example, Pew Research found a few years ago that just 18% of Americans want gun laws to be less strict...but that small group is significantly more likely than the rest to contact politicians and public officials about gun policy. Moreover, gun owners are much more likely to contribute money to organizations that lobby on gun policy, and while Pew didn't explicitly divide that question up by for/against, Pew generally found that (unsurprisingly) gun owners tend to skew more pro-gun than non-owners do. So even though the anti-gun control contingent is relatively small, they're pushing much harder politically. And while Pew didn't directly ask about voting behavior, I think it's a fair guess that someone who feels that gun ownership is essential to their sense of freedom or even a core part of their identity are likely to be single-issue gun voters who prioritize gun policy above all other issues. Meanwhile, it's pretty clear that even if a majority of people say on a poll that they support stricter gun control measures, many of them don't prioritize it over other issues. A fair portion of Republicans support some level of gun control, but they're still happy to vote for candidates who oppose gun control - they prioritize other issues over that one.
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Jul 20, 2022 19:16
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Cease to Hope posted:On two separate occasions you felt you needed to threaten someone with a gun to defend yourself, and by your own admission it didn't matter if it was loaded or functional. It's the fantasy that reframed it as a need, a need for a gun in particular. Why, because you say so? Someone says they needed to use a gun to defend themselves and your response is "You are wrong or lying". Smooth argument, I'd like to see you back it up. quote:But even operating on the good-faith assumption your anecdotes are rock-solid just uses of force, there are so many well-documented stories of people killing harmless people knocking on the front door, or starting poo poo and finishing it with a gun. Scared people gently caress up all the time. Ultimately, the need to be safe and the need to feel safe are real, but guns are only doing the second part. Again, "You are wrong or lying" isn't an argument. And that's all that is, "Well assuming you aren't just stupid and jumpy or telling fibs, so many other people are gently caress ups so really it's like your experience didn't happen." isn't an argument. quote:This made me realize that the gun itself is mainly a liability. That follows from nothing you said, at all, and again just dismisses that conflict happens. Or assumes that everyone is just loving incompetent and shits themselves when it comes time to threaten someone. Like criminals are just this foreign species that are ultra-competent at violence, but your dentist is only capable of crying and passing out or mag dumping into a nearby crowd if someone tries to mug him. You can just say "I don't feel your potential to defend yourself is worth the societal impact that wider gun use has". That's a rock solid statement that nobody can refute. All they can say is "I do".
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Jul 20, 2022 19:36
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Main Paineframe posted:Do we need to? Only around one-third of Americans own guns. If a majority of those gun owners support stricter gun control, then the anti-control group is a pretty small slice of the population. Well, that was essentially what I was getting at with my parenthetical. The obstacle isn't really gun owners at all, but the fact that their interests are overrepresented by the elected officials that they vote for, for a myriad of complex reasons, and the fact that the GOP wields a substantially outsized level of power in our current government. That said, my intention with that post was simply to nudge the conversation in a more productive direction. If folks want to talk about ways to convince others that gun control measures are needed, they are free to do so, as long as they can do it civilly and move things along rather than going in circular arguments. Mulva posted:Why, because you say so? Someone says they needed to use a gun to defend themselves and your response is "You are wrong or lying". Smooth argument, I'd like to see you back it up. Given the lack of context provided by Anchor Wanker, I think it's fair that Cease to Hope made certain assumptions based on what was presented. If Anchor Wanker wants to submit their anecdotes as evidence that guns are occasionally necessary for self-defense, I believe the onus is on them to provide more context as to why the situation that was resolved without actual gun violence could not have been defused without a gun. Otherwise your post is entirely true and the only conversation that can be had is "I needed a gun" and "no you didn't." Which is completely worthless. I'm just going to ask Anchor Wanker directly: why do you believe that the situations you encountered required a gun to be deescalated successfully? I'm not going to pick apart your answers, but I think more context is warranted for your assertions to be taken seriously in the thread. Professor Beetus fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Jul 20, 2022 |
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Jul 20, 2022 19:37
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Mulva posted:Why, because you say so? Someone says they needed to use a gun to defend themselves and your response is "You are wrong or lying". Smooth argument, I'd like to see you back it up. Whether the gun made the difference is unknowable and the alternative conclusion is monstrous, so people are desperately attached to the idea that what happened is that the gun saved them. I'm skeptical of arguments of the form "my anecdotes trump your data!" in general, but I'm especially skeptical in this situation where everyone telling the story is so heavily invested in the story being true, because a mistake would be damning (and a serious crime to boot). "Prove this lucky rabbit's foot didn't save my life" is not a reasonable demand.
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Jul 20, 2022 19:45
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I am confident that the person telling the story thinks the gun was the defining thing that saved them. I am not confident that they are correct. Again, both of these things can be true.
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Jul 20, 2022 19:46
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i've been in a couple situations where someone threatened my life, but i don't carry a firearm, so it was not possible for me to defend myself with a firearm in the once instance i ran away and in the other instance the bartender threatened to call the cops and my assailant ran away. maybe sometimes someone uses a firearm in a legally and morally justified way to ward off a mortal threat, maybe sometimes someone reacts to a perceived insult by killing multiple innocent people. regardless, these are just anecdotes, but added up all together, firearms cause more deaths in the united states than motor vehicle accidents
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Jul 20, 2022 19:54
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Cease to Hope posted:On two separate occasions you felt you needed to threaten someone with a gun to defend yourself, and by your own admission it didn't matter if it was loaded or functional. It's the fantasy that reframed it as a need, a need for a gun in particular. Yeah, no. If i had pulled a phone out of my pocket instead I 99% probably would have been stabbed. Thank goodness jackass had a self preservation instinct. Sometimes it's just that simple though. Fwiw you're right, Doesn't matter how many awful stories we can find about people using guns badly, it aint gonna change anyone's mind. I aint giving up mine *regardless of the law* because simply put, I like my odds better vs relying on cops. There's no fantasy there, thats just genuine lived experience. Quote national stats all you like but its not gonna change the realities of my day-to-day life. And I do also acknowledge that im a statistical outlier as far as these things go, that I am certainly not representative of most or even many gun owners... For now. As right wing violence cranks up even more perhaps even that will change. All the same, most proposed bans only kneecap my ability to protect myself/my loved ones.
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Jul 20, 2022 19:56
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Anchor Wanker posted:Yeah, no. I understand if there are specific circumstances that you would prefer not to share (in case there are public records of your incident available and you do not wish to provide potential doxxable details, for instance), but the binary choice of "threaten with gun" or "be stabbed" is not generally a situation taking place in a vacuum. I would love to hear more context about what happened and why, specifically, the situation was impossible to deescalate without a firearm.
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Jul 20, 2022 20:05
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Anchor Wanker posted:There's no fantasy there, thats just genuine lived experience. Quote national stats all you like but its not gonna change the realities of my day-to-day life. Every gun owner says these same things about themselves. A whole class of people insisting that they are the outlier. It's characteristic of American individualism in general, but a heightened, intractable case even by those standards. There's no evidence that can crack the fantasy I do not think. No actuarial argument that you are X times more likely to kill yourself or Y times more likely to be a victim that will work. I mostly just wonder what can. Professor Beetus posted:I understand if there are specific circumstances that you would prefer not to share (in case there are public records of your incident available and you do not wish to provide potential doxxable details, for instance), but the binary choice of "threaten with gun" or "be stabbed" is not generally a situation taking place in a vacuum. This is true but I don't think anyone's going to enter a conversation where "I screwed up and threatened someone I didn't need to" is on the table, if only out of reasons of self-preservation. It doesn't seem like a fair request to make to me. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Jul 20, 2022 |
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Jul 20, 2022 20:10
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Cease to Hope posted:Every gun owner says these same things about themselves. Also I've been letting that side, but the overwhelming majority of all gun owners don't carry a gun for self-defense. Hunting, target shooting, keeping it in a loving drawer or some such, collecting. All that is waaay higher than people that get a carry permit. quote:There's no evidence that can crack the fantasy I do not think. Yeah you've said that like six times in the last day, including once directly to yourself when nobody responded. Why? Has anyone told you that there is, or do you just like monologues? e: Also why did you respond to yourself anyway? Mulva fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Jul 20, 2022 |
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Jul 20, 2022 20:18
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Cease to Hope posted:This is true but I don't think anyone's going to enter a conversation where "I screwed up and threatened someone I didn't need to" is on the table, if only out of reasons of self-preservation. It doesn't seem like a fair request to make to me. Fair enough, and I certainly respect someone not going into further detail if they feel that it will just open up their story to be picked apart by people they disagree with. I said I specifically wouldn't, but of course I can't speak for everyone else in the thread. Unfortunately, this also means that these anecdotes are fairly worthless as a point of discussion, and I don't want to see this conversation continue to go in circles.
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Jul 20, 2022 20:22
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Professor Beetus posted:I understand if there are specific circumstances that you would prefer not to share (in case there are public records of your incident available and you do not wish to provide potential doxxable details, for instance), but the binary choice of "threaten with gun" or "be stabbed" is not generally a situation taking place in a vacuum. I would love to hear more context about what happened and why, specifically, the situation was impossible to deescalate without a firearm.
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Jul 20, 2022 20:22
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Mulva posted:Also I've been letting that side, but the overwhelming majority of all gun owners don't carry a gun for self-defense. If we're talking anecdotes, lol that's not true at all. But also statistically.... 
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Jul 20, 2022 20:26
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mobby_6kl posted:Does it really matter? Anchor Wanker could be making poo poo up, or it could be legit one of the cases where things worked out better with the gun. Or maybe if a butterfly flapped its wings a bit faster we would've read about a Wanker-involved shooting in the news. I don't think we can "prove" or "disprove" it either way. At least not without busting out statistics. Yes, this was the conclusion I was getting at with my line of questioning. Unless someone's anecdote is particularly illuminating or interesting, it's not worth discussing in the thread, specifically per rule II.C in the DND rules post, which I assume anyone posting in DND has read.
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Jul 20, 2022 20:28
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:i've been in a couple situations where someone threatened my life, but i don't carry a firearm, so it was not possible for me to defend myself with a firearm Where are you getting that from? There were 38,324 fatalities due to auto accident in 2020. There were 19,384 murders where a firearm was in the instrument in 2020.
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Jul 20, 2022 20:28
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Scuffy_1989 posted:Where are you getting that from? i'm including the 24,292 firearm suicides
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Jul 20, 2022 20:30
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Mulva posted:Also I've been letting that side, but the overwhelming majority of all gun owners don't carry a gun for self-defense. Hunting, target shooting, keeping it in a loving drawer or some such, collecting. Unless you specifically mean "carry all the time," this is the opposite of the truth. Most gun owners cite self-defense as a main reason for owning a gun. No other reason even gets to a majority of gun owners.
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Jul 20, 2022 20:30
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:i'm including the 24,292 firearm suicides Why? Japan has a higher suicide rate than the United States and it's nearly impossible to get a gun there. https://www.statista.com/statistics/622249/japan-suicide-number-per-100-000-inhabitants/ https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71...%20population).
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Jul 20, 2022 20:33
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Scuffy_1989 posted:Why? Japan has a higher suicide rate than the United States and it's nearly impossible to get a gun there. because suicides by firearm are a death, caused by a firearm, included when i said "deaths by firearm" if you want to pick apart the details for some reason then i have some troubling information for you about the motor vehicle death rate for people who do not operate nor ride in motor vehicles
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Jul 20, 2022 20:37
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Cease to Hope posted:Every gun owner says these same things about themselves. A whole class of people insisting that they are the outlier. It's characteristic of American individualism in general, but a heightened, intractable case even by those standards. By your own stats I am very obviously the outlier in that I have deployed a gun at all ever. I dont think by the other measures here (risk of accidental death) that I am anomalous at all. I keep mine locked up, have no mental health issues or history in the family, etc. Normal by those counts. Still, as a visibly not-straight person, I'll take my chances with the gun vs with cops. In that case you're correct, there is no argument you could make to convince me unless cops or society radically changed from what they are and where they are going. As far as what happened with the knife fellow, you're right, i don't want to get into it much. poo poo sucked and reckoning with almost shooting some drunk rear end in a top hat who probably has a family also sucks. but in broad strokes, de-escalation failed, retreat was impossible. If it was anything else I promise you there would be no gun involved.
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Jul 20, 2022 20:38
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Jaxyon posted:But also statistically.... What compelling statistics. How many people did they ask, what did they mean by protection, and also it's kind of loving illegal in a lot of the country to walk around with a gun if you don't have a license so we can easily track how many owners versus folk walking around with guns exist in those places. Admittedly there's gently caress all we can do in no license states, but even walking around Texas I didn't notice 1 in 4 adults walking strapped on average. I've never seen conclusive polling on how many carry a gun for protection, I think the last I remember was a national firearms survey in 20....15? And it was 9 million carry at least once a month, with 3 million every day. As you are a big fan of statistics, you will find it amusing that 65% of people said they own a gun for protection against people. That's just like that 67 in your poll! What you might not is that they own a gun, they don't carry one. Because they estimated in that poll that 57 million people owned a gun, of whom 3 million admit to carrying every day. And only 9 more than once a month. Or once a month I forget. Easily solved, find the poll. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7758/rsf.2017.3.5.02#metadata_info_tab_contents Blammo, numbers. So I repeat: THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF GUN OWNERS AREN'T CARRYING A GUN AROUND LOOKING TO SHOOT SOMEONE. A bunch might be afraid of someone coming into their home and taking their poo poo though.
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Jul 20, 2022 20:38
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:because suicides by firearm are a death, caused by a firearm, included when i said "deaths by firearm" Suicides are deaths caused by people wanting to commit suicide, banning the gun isn't going to stop people killing themselves. People use countries like Japan as evidence of the effectiveness of gun control but Japan's near total ban on guns doesn't help its suicide rates. What makes you think it would work here?
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Jul 20, 2022 20:47
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i'm simply pointing out factual information amount the number of deaths caused by firearms in the united states in 2020. any struggles you have with this factual information are your responsibility alone to overcome you are the only person in this conversation to bring up japan or gun bans. i wish you well on your adventure to find someone to participate in this argument with you but i cannot join you on your quest
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Jul 20, 2022 20:48
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