Likes: 
Faceplams: Something like this. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-h...texas-student/
Active Member
Something like this. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-h...texas-student/
Add Violins
To me, this seems like a really warped notion of "freedom."Originally Posted by DigitalChaos
I've lived in some pretty rough areas, both rural and urban, where guns are extremely prevalent, and I didn't feel particularly "free" there. On the contrary, I felt constricted: I couldn't leave my home at certain hours, had to constantly mind my surroundings, etc. But according to the backwards logic of the open-carry ideology, shouldn't those areas have been incredibly safe? How do they explain this? Maybe the answer is that I too should have carried a gun when I lived there, because doing so would have suddenly made the area feel free and open? Why is it that no one seems to feel particularly "free" in, say, Mogadishu, where there are essentially no enforceable gun control laws and guns are easily attainable? If everyone has a gun, and everyone knows that everyone has a gun, why hasn't that brought about some unspoken ceasefire to the region? Aren't limitless guns supposed to be the path to a wonderful, free society?
This theory about a correlation between freedom and an unlimited access to deadly firearms just doesn't seem based on anything real or tangible. I greatly prefer my current circumstances, where I am able to walk to work in peace without having to fear for my well-being. That's actual freedom.
tempus est umbra in mente
ok... I like a lot of things Chomsky has to say, especially this one:
If we're advocating for more people listening to what Noam Chomsky has to say, I'm all ears
Active Member
Well, then you'll be waiting for quite a while because Chomsky has said very little on the topic. The fact that he disagrees with armed resistance against the government is about all he offers up.
Active Member
Without more info, it's not possible to answer. But there are two likely causes: 1 - You have an irrational fear of guns that keeps you in your house. oooor 2 - You are in a high crime area that is created by factors way beyond the guns in the area. Guns aren't magic. They aren't going to suddenly fix a broken political/economic/social system. Freedom of speech is also an important to a "wonderful free society" yet its presence doesn't automatically create such a society.
Active Member
I've seen that kind of argument recently, the same logic and parameters being applied to ideological violence and terrorism. The point was that religion wasn't the problem currently, but that poverty and disempowerment were the real culprits.
This is a point with which I wholeheartedly agree.
My issue with that reasoning is that it comes down to saying "Faulty gas appliances aren't responsible for fires : oxygen is. If there was no oxygen, there would be no fire."
You can always find a bigger, overarching cause for any problem. Climate change deniers are pretty good at this for instance. The problem with that is that you start to point at issues that can't be addressed immediately. You can blame society for pretty much anything, meanwhile people are still dying and nothing's being done to even slow down the trend.
So, yeah, society's imperfect, and probably will always be. Unless you have a solution to change it radically and make sure everyone's perfectly adapted, content and functioning, that point is completely moot.
Good job here on identifying a serious cause, but everyone's over there looking for serious solutions.
I was nobody. Nothing.
Yes @Deepvoid , precisely like that.
That's just what we need in texas is drunk 21 year olds, raging with the testosterone of youth, navigating the egomaniacal environment of the social hierarchy of college with fucking LOADED PISTOLS literally easier to reach than their cell phones at ALL TIMES.
That's a GREAT fucking idea, right, guys?
Way to take it back to 1816. Good job, Texas Congress!
Throbbing Member
I’m pretty much in the same situation, having to deal with this shit at home and at work. I don’t know about global terrorism, but The United States is what it is because of the constitution. For better or worse the mass proliferation of guns within these boarders is upheld by the constitution, no need to look any further. The zero-sum of it is that portions of the populace get to eat the tragic consequence in order for others to enjoy their rights.
Last edited by Dr Channard; 01-05-2016 at 05:05 PM.
Active Member
You may be LOOKING for serious solutions, but that does not imply that gun control is a serious solution that has an impact worthy of executing on it, especially in the US. Not only has gun control efforts in the US been useless (even when you managed to get beyond the political hurdles)... it may actually be detrimental. Gun sales go through the roof each time gun control comes up and those are guns that are going to be permanently out there... just like the other millions of guns that make future gun control impossible (among other reasons).
So gun control is more of a "do something, anything" solution than a serious solution. Are there other solutions that don't hit on poverty and education that COULD have some sort of impact? Maybe... but I've yet to see us break away from the sisyphean gun control to figure it out.
Active Member
So, what ? Quit trying, full stop, and let's have experts try to figure it out ?
What kind of realistic, proactive decision are you waiting for, or are advising ? Alright, gun control is out, the US government has heard you. What now ? What happens right after that, what immediate actions are you promoting to have a meaningful and short-term impact on the death toll ? You can't just let it be until something comes up, you have to take steps, even temporary ones...
Gun control may or may not be a solution. But so far I've heard nothing else (apart from "have EVERYONE buy guns and mount them on EVERYTHING") that doesn't rely on a future so distant and so unlikely that it may as well be a Star Trek episode. Especially when your right wing's so fucked up that it would ban the cure for cancer just to spite the leftist who came up with it.
How do you reduce the death toll ? People are coming up with gun control. Let's make a counter-proposal that doesn't rely on arming every citizen past 12. Where are those ? Which are they ?
Last edited by Khrz; 01-05-2016 at 05:20 PM.
Throbbing Member
i actually didn't mean to "like" this post (oops)
wtf? be more scared of concealed weapons! if you're not hiding your gun, you're a responsible owner in my eyes. but i live in a VERY different part of the country than you do...or do i really? in weapon carrying terms of course!
edit: in my parts, if your gun isn't concealed i can breathe easy. i actually feel BETTER if i'm grocery shopping and the dude picking lettuce has a visible gun over me being at a bar, and someone gets shot with a concealed weapon in the parking lot (both things i mentioned i have witnessed.)
double edit: guns don't scare me, dumb people with guns do.
Last edited by ldopa; 01-05-2016 at 11:19 PM. Reason: reiteration
Active Member
If you are actually creating more harm? Yes, you should absolutely stop. And it's not just a massive increase in gun proliferation. There tends to be a lot of negatives. Many of the laws that make it through produce a lot of racist and classist results. Hell, here is a critique from an incredibly liberal person who is very pissed off with the speech Obama gave today on gun control: http://www.autistichoya.com/2016/01/...-stop-gun.html
Even in the cases where it is a neutral result, it's still masturbatory self-righteous bullshit that serves to only make people feel better/safer even though it's not real.
So... focusing on poverty and education aren't viable options? Focusing on mental health (if your concern is spree shootings or suicides) isn't viable? Hell, these would have a much more immediate impact than most gun control would (assuming gun control would actually work as it is imagined). And that's not even counting all the huge benefits those things would have outside of gun problems. And turning away from these sources of change "because the right wing" or whatever doesn't make sense because the right wing is even more opposed to gun control.
tempus est umbra in mente
That is the question...
Not sure. I agree with the proposals that Obama is suggesting, they seem reasonable and I don't get why people are freaking out about them.
At the same time, these restrictions (if enacted, which seems unlikely) would probably not have prevented any of the high-profile incidents he references. Instead, the real-world result of his proposal is a skyrocketing surge in gun sales.
We're at an impasse here. The solution, if we're going with gun control legislation, would at least require more extreme measures which could have possibly prevented one of these mass shootings, and the suggestion of that would have resulted in even more hyperbolic opposition from gun enthusiasts.... which means even more political bickering and ten times the reactionary gun sales.
The first step would be opening a forum for reasonable public debate, hearing from representatives from both sides of the issue. This is going to be a bit of a problem, because one side of the argument here thinks the issue is settled, and that the only counter argument they need to offer is a glib reference to the second amendment of the constitution.
So yes... that is a good question, but if you ask that question loudly enough, a large portion of the people who hear it will answer by stockpiling more guns and ammo.
Throbbing Member
I just want to make sure I understand. Poverty, lack of education, mental problems, all issues as old as civilization itself, are the cause of the modern issue of gun violence, and not the modern mass proliferation of… guns?
So, if I fit at least two of your three criteria (poverty and education), does that make me 2/3 responsible for this nation's gun violence?
Active Member
You need to be more specific than "gun deaths" and "gun violence" to be able to find causes and solutions. The majority of "gun deaths" in the country are related to other forms of crime (gang related, etc). The geographic distribution of this type of thing is extremely specific: areas with poverty and poor education, usually higher density urban areas. Go look at the non-stop shooting deaths in Chicago. allegro has frequently posted about it here. Of course, nobody gives a shit about THOSE people... they are only useful for bulking up the "gun death" statistic after there is some spree shooting that is in the news... even though spree shootings are an incredibly tiny slice of that statistic.
tempus est umbra in mente
this is the problem... we're arguing in distanced echo chambers. Dr Channard has a point. The US is not unique in its issues regarding mental health, poverty, hunger, and failing educational systems. We are unique in the way that we fetishize guns, which is a very weirdly American thing.
The US could improve all of those issues which you place the blame on, but even if we didn't we'd still be far ahead of other "first-world" countries in those regards, while they do not experience a similar phenomenon of gun violence and mass shootings. There's an elephant in the room, but the only contribution to the discussion that gun enthusiasts will offer up is "No! The elephant is in a totally different room that has nothing to do with this room!"
Active Member
This may be the first and only post of yours on guns that I have nothing to disagree with!All of this is a pretty accurate representation of the situation.
I do want to elaborate on the "hyperbolic opposition from gun enthusiasts" though. Most people have a hard time understanding it, but it's not too hard if you look at a few things. Obama's announcement of executive orders today is another example of it though. One of the things he attacks is the "gun show/internet loophole" (more accurately the private sale exemption) and that's been a common target in a lot of gun control rhetoric lately. This "loophole" exists because it was an exemption intentionally included in a prior round of gun control. It's an exemption that was intentionally placed there as a compromise. But now it's a loophole that must be eliminated. This is representative of basically all types of "compromise" in gun control. There is never a compromise in gun control that produces more gun rights in return for a restriction, it has always been more restriction. Gun control is also extremely prone to the "slippery slope" problem, as exhibited in the private sale exemption. After decades of this pattern, a lot of people are sick of being sold additional restrictions as compromise and it creates some very rigid opposition.
Hopefully that is enough to give some insight. If not, replace "guns" with any other object or right and apply prohibition/restriction to it in the same pattern.
I haven't dug into them, but tearing holes in HIPPA privacy protections seems very dangerous. There seems to be a lot of concern about this being damaging to mental health care (see the link in my post just above yours).
edit: and it looks like tens of thousands of social security beneficiaries are going to be barred from having a gun too?!? the fuck?! Yeah... that just boosted GOP turnout.
Last edited by DigitalChaos; 01-06-2016 at 01:03 AM.
tempus est umbra in mente
there is also the irreconcilable issue of targeting people with mental health issues... if we start instituting new laws which would bar people who are unstable from owning guns, you'll almost certainly see a tendency for people to not seek help because they feel their freedoms will be restricted should they be on record for taking a particular medication.
This isn't to say that I don't believe certain mental illnesses should bar you from stockpiling weapons... of course they should. But the reality of the situation is that enforcing that restriction will likely result in people resisting medical treatment for their schizophrenia, all the while stock-piling weapons for fear that they'll be made unavailable to them... and there's a good chance that won't end well.
Active Member
It is, definitely ! Albeit in a world where you have enough money to finance all the infrastructures, hire all the professionals, where everyone can agree on the methods, means and needs, where the population is actually willing to follow suit and agrees with your plan and methodology...
That's a great plan, it only requires an absolute and immediate consensus to be an actual mid-term response. If you can get everyone to agree with a solid and precise plan (which is somewhat a scary, lithium-in-the-water thought), then yeah, you may reduce the amount of gun-related victims in the next 50 years.
For it to be implemented and effective that fast it requires an amount of control over your government and your population that makes fascism look like a hippie community though, in my opinion.
Societal changes are necessary, whatever your problem is it is bound to your environment. But if societal change is always the solution, it is never the proper and only response. I'd even go as far as to say that you can't jumpstart such changes without immediate (if imperfect) restrictions and modifications to the law, because to have a whole society and culture turn course you need to change the people's habits. People may be smart and kind, but populations are as passive and bent on inertia as a flock of sheeps. If you want your whole people to switch gears, you have to make them, whether by encouraging them or by restricting their options so that they are forced to adapt to the new course.
So yeah, I agree with your solution, even though it's the socio-economical equivalent of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But that's not a proper response.
Active Member
staaaaahp with these agreeable posts! This feels so wrong!
...or don't centralize those solutions on government? There are plenty of options to accomplish this stuff by spending LESS money and using LESS government.
Here is just one example:
Dissolve the govt apparatus behind the drug war. This immediately saves lots of money. You could even find new revenue sources by taxing drug sales. This will quickly remove the crime associated with the drug black market, where most of the killings happen. That, in turn, will reduce the policing costs for current high-crime areas. The lower crime will increase the quality of life for an area and result in the betterment of general life trajectory of children growing up there. It's possible that schooling would see a small bump in quality too (though it would be minimal compared to other efforts) as the area becomes more desirable to live in. Emergency healthcare costs would be reduced for the area with fewer violent crimes and less unpredictability in the drug quality. Prison costs will go way down being that their population is primarily related to crimes connected to drug black market activities.
But that brings us back to:
Which is also a more extreme problem with gun control itself... so it's not like gun control transcends that problem to become the "easier short term answer." In the last few years, the US has made significant changes (not necessarily positive movement, but at least changes) in the topics of healthcare, drug enforcement, and even education. There is quite a lot of support for change around our policing structure and a lot more focus on poverty. But on gun control?.... yeah very little has changed. You are slamming into more of a political wall with gun control than any of the other (much more potentially impacting) routes.
Add Violins
I completely agree with this point about the larger systemic issues being the root of the problem (i.e: economics, the war on drugs bullshit, etc), but the funny thing is that that's a point I myself make whenever I hear stories about someone who successfully used a gun to defend themselves against a crime. Those stories routinely get passed around and romanticized within the gun community, and gun advocates like to imagine that they prove some dramatic point about the necessity to own a gun. But those kinds of anecdotal stories are ultimately pointless when you're looking at widespread societal problems. Guns will never defeat crime in any satisfying way; they can only stave it off in certain lucky moments. And sure, that's nice if you happen to be that special individual who scares off an intruder. But what has really changed in the community around you? At their very best, guns are nothing more than an unreliable band-aid, one which only applies on an extremely short-term, individualistic level. It does nothing to prevent future crimes from happening to you, let alone to all of society.
So gun ownership is just not a realistic way to contend with the crime in our country, and yet crime/personal defense continues to be one of the standard tropes used in pro-gun arguments. In the grand scheme of things, they contribute almost nothing of value.
Throbbing Member
gun ownership is VERY MUCH in an individual sense, most (not all) don't think of the grand scope of things.
edit: guns are fucking powerful. in every sense of the word. when you don't have the respect or intelligence of that power, shit gets bad. and americans focus on both sides equally. that's why gun control doesn't get resolved.
Last edited by ldopa; 01-07-2016 at 02:49 AM.
Active Member
I too argue that point with the stereotypically scared of everything conservatives. If they are afraid of crime, they should shift their politics to mitigate crime instead of just worrying about the last line of defense: guns. Though, I'm not sure how you take this line of thought and use it to support gun control.... because if you remove a lot of crime, you've also removed nearly all the justification that is used to justify gun control. Also, there are a lot more people who believe in guns as self defense who would also love to have things like the drug war ended. Go over to many of the urban areas and ask around. NPR did a great segment on Oakland a while back. There are extremely law abiding families who feel that it is an absolute necessity to own guns (purely for self defense) due to the crime they are surrounded in. Each person can list dozens of close friends and family who carry, despite it being illegal (thanks to some of the strictest gun control in the country). After all, guns are one of the greatest equalizers in many situations, as I think @ldopa is pointing out.
Active Member
this is excellent.
http://defdist.tumblr.com/post/13684...l-is-a-feeling
"This demand, for aesthetic reaction instead of political conclusion, is escapist"
this one made me laugh: "we’re telling you the way to fight gun culture is by making more people gun dealers" .. And sadly, that's one of the things Obama is saying.
Add Violins
Well, first of all, I'm not entirely sure where I stand on gun control at this point. I've generally always agreed with the concept in the abstract, and I guess I still do, but I currently wonder about it's practicality within this country. I haven't really come to any solid conclusions on the issue, at least in terms of what I think is a positive, yet realistic path forward. I'm still kind of processing it all. Stricter gun control should have been passed many years ago, back before the gun lobby had such a tight grip around the government's neck, back before we had saturated the country with so many guns that that there are now more guns that people. There's part of me that feels like it's just too late, we missed the boat, and now the mess is here and we have to figure out how mitigate the damage, deescalate the whole fucking situation, and try to change the culture and mentality around guns.
In an ideal world, I would happily support something like Australia's mandatory buy-back program from the 90s as a way to reduce the overall amount of guns in general circulation, but that's a pipe dream in the current political climate. The gun crowd went into frothing hysteria over the incredibly minor and meaningless executive actions that Obama announced this week. Christ, if they actually tried to institute something major like a mandatory buyback program, they'd probably burn this country to ashes. Especially that idiotic militia/anti-federalist crowd (re: the Oregon bullshit). That whole segment of our society is a fucking loose canon. If they got pissed off enough, who knows what kinda stupid bullshit would happen. Blood would run through the streets and they'd parade through our neighborhoods with baby heads on pikes.
So in the meantime, we have to work with the shitty circumstances we've got, which probably means trying to work around the problem in order to gradually erode the support for guns (hopefully).
Second of all, I don't believe that a reduction in crime would automatically result in a reduced demand for guns. Our crime rate has been steadily dropping ever since the 90s, especially our violent crimes. In particular, the murder rate hasn't been this low since the early 60s (you can see all of this on the FBI crime stats page, btw). And yet, despite this, our gun ownership rate has increased at a fucking astronomical rate. Why should I expect this to change, regardless of how low the crime gets? Most people don't buy guns because of any practical reason, and they don't know or care about the actual crime rates in the country (which, again, have plummeted). Sure, they constantly invoke the hypothetical threat of crime, but it's an incredibly small percentage of gun owners who end actually up using their weapons to fight crime. People buy guns because we've turned this into a big issue. There's a whole fucking culture around guns in this country. It's part of people's identity. It's a hobby, a passion, a crusade. And that's part of why this has become such a big problem. People can't just look at things rationally and objectively.
Really? Do you have some kind of research or support for this? I'm well aware of the libertarian crowd (like yourself) who opposes both gun control and the war on drugs, but my impression (not saying this is correct) has always been that this group is a bit of a smaller faction within the overall pro-gun crowd. Ending the war on drugs is generally a pretty left-wing position, while most conservatives (and pro gun advocates) support the war. Not saying that any of my impression here is based on anything more than my personal observations of things, but still...I'd be really fucking shocked to find out that the majority of pro-gun advocates also support ending the drug wars, so I'm curious to know where you're getting this.
Active Member
"missed the boat" is spot on and what others in this thread have said too.
A mandatory buy-back would be impossible to execute, even if it passed AND it didnt result in a rebellion. NY and CT recently had an experiment with that. They made specific guns illegal and required a surrender of the guns by a certain deadline. A few trickled in, but the deadline passed and hundreds of thousands of gun owners simply refused to let go of their guns. By law, every one of them is now committing a felony. Now both states need to figure out how they want to handle that... Imagine this situation in some of the states that are less friendly to gun control if it were applied nationally, and then to ALL guns.
edit: I think one of these might have been a mandatory registry (or both?) but the result was the same: felony defiance by hundreds of thousands.
Oh I never said it would result in lower demand for guns or less presence of guns. I just said that it would result in the justification for gun control to heavily vanish. They won't be able to point to the huge "gun deaths" numbers if crime, one of the primary sources of that number, were to dramatically fall.
And you are right. Crime has been heavily and very steadily dropping for the last 20+ years. Sadly, perception of crime has not followed (I blame the media). http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...hts-increases/ So, the desire for gun control would probably persist with portions of the current gun control supporters... but their justifications would be quite a bit more narrow. Without crime induced deaths, we'd have accidents (statistically small), spree shootings (insanely small risk), and suicides.
They aren't as vocal, but there are a lot of democrats and left-leaning independents (that make up a chunk of Dem votes) who support gun rights. Blue Dog Democrats, etc. You can see evidence in it on most of the polls. This is the first thing that popped up on google. It may be shit, but just as an example... While most Dems do support more gun control, 21% actually oppose it. 51% of independents oppose more gun control too. That's a lot of people. It really seems like Dems could destroy Repubs in the elections without even trying if they simply stopped pushing for gun control (and everyone actually believed it).
Active Member
Totally. We are just having an interesting discussion based on pragmatic approaches and theoretical futures.
But that's my view of what SHOULD happen. I'll gladly step outside of the morality approach to discuss a theoretical approach of what COULD happen. Honestly, that's the approach most of our historical political attempts have ignored and/or handled very poorly.
Last edited by DigitalChaos; 01-08-2016 at 12:11 AM.
Active Member
sadly, until we have publicly financed elections (campaign finance reform....meaning that no one can donate to candidates anymore, which would hopefully destroy or drastically reduce the special interest/lobbyist power influence on our gov't), all of the major problems facing our country will not go away. If you ever want to hope for meaningful gun reform, prison reform, a stop to the military-industrial complex, etc, then we all need to support organizations like Wolf-PAC, Mayday PAC, etc.
It frustrates me to see such intelligent, fair debate from both sides on here. B/c none of it matters until our representatives will vote based on their actual views/what their constituents want. Other than the small groups of honest actors on both sides of the fence in Congress, the VAST majority of both nat'l and state representatives vote completely based on what their donors want. This fraud needs to be stopped, but we are a long ways away.
Active Member
I am *so* down for that. I've been ranting about this for ages and looking at various aspects of it. The Sanders situation seems to have given some extra life into the movement. I hope it lasts. Seeing Debbie Wasserman Schultz (head of DNC) get challenged gives me some hope. Meanwhile, watching Lawrence Lessig (of Wolf PAC) get pushed out of the election was bullshit.
But to loop this back to guns and gun control... I honestly believe that gun control would be further halted if we went toward public financing for elections. Meanwhile, the beneficial things would actually get traction (reducing the drug war, mental healthcare, etc). The NRA frequently gets held up as a strawman for "evil big money keeping guns on the streets" but it's not if you actually examine things. The big money is almost primarily in the support for gun control.
Last edited by DigitalChaos; 01-09-2016 at 06:57 PM.
Active Member
This video was posted yesterday. This is not a unique situation, but the video is getting some attention.
A lot of people assume gay people are anti-gun because "democrat" but the reality is this: it's easier to hide my guns than my spouse. Luckily, we are moving away from forcing people to make that sacrifice.
@elevenism - something for you to think about when your stance on gun control is influenced by your personal comfort
Last edited by DigitalChaos; 01-13-2016 at 12:20 PM.
Reply With Quote
