Gun Control

[Crni Vuk]

You still havn't adressed the issue that in such cases you will inevitably have more bystanders and inocent people draged into such 'fire-fights'. I think many people would not like the thought of getting hit by a stray bullet beacuse two 'assholes' had to find out who's the bigger one while waving their guns around.

 

[Cliffy McEdgeface]

You still havn't adressed the issue that in such cases you will inevitably have more bystanders and inocent people draged into such 'fire-fights'. I think many people would not like the thought of getting hit by a stray bullet beacuse two 'assholes' had to find out who's the bigger one while waving their guns around.

Well, I mean, if Atomkilla's right we're all pretty much assholes anyway, so it's still assholes getting shot. Unless you're going to argue that no, "asshole" is not a human default.

 

[Risewild]

No, the thief will move on to burglary since thieves look for the lowest confrontation. Happened in Chicago when they got concealed carry and muggers started getting shot. Robberies went down because they moved to stealing from the rail yards.

But in my example you are living in a society where everyone has a gun and they shoot assholes. So the thief would shoot to kill to steal stuff. Also it would work well for the thief, since he could just come up with some excuse "he was being an asshole to me and threatening me, so I shot him!". This is not in the real world society, it is in the "shoot assholes on sight" made up society.

 

[Cliffy McEdgeface]

But in my example you are living in a society where everyone has a gun and they shoot assholes. So the thief would shoot to kill to steal stuff. Also it would work well for the thief, since he could just come up with some excuse "he was being an asshole to me and threatening me, so I shot him!". This is not in the real world society, it is in the "shoot assholes on sight" made up society.

Except he wouldn't because thieves don't generally become thieves to kill people and pretty much always opt for the easy score and path of least resistance. Also, they REALLY don't like attention. Guess what killing someone gets you a LOT of? If your logic held true then every burglary ever where the mark was still at home would turn into a murder case. Generally burglars just fucking BOOK IT when they realize someone's home.

 

[Atomkilla]

Well, I mean, if Atomkilla's right we're all pretty much assholes anyway, so it's still assholes getting shot. Unless you're going to argue that no, "asshole" is not a human default.

My basic argument for why your system would never work is quite simple - evil breeds more evil. What you are proposing here is nothing short of total and absolute anarchy where every man is in for himself.
It's not will of the people or whatever strawmen you mentioned in one of the previous posts - it is pure anarchy based on violence and the survival of the fittest - and in this apocalyptic scenario of yours the fittest is the one with least moral scruples, that is, the biggest asshole.
And once the biggest assholes take the reins, you can say bye-bye to whatever fantasy you have cooked up. The rest of the people will just start playing that same game - the asshole game - because that's the way to survive. Goodbye civilization and all that.

Like I've said before, this mental picture you have developed of things fixing themselves like this is pretty naive. Even if things eventually get fixed, it would be over countless bloodied corpses of innocents. If that's your ideal solution, then you have problems.

 

[Cliffy McEdgeface]

My basic argument for why your system would never work is quite simple - evil breeds more evil. What you are proposing here is nothing short of total and absolute anarchy where every man is in for himself.
It's not will of the people or whatever strawmen you mentioned in one of the previous posts - it is pure anarchy based on violence and the survival of the fittest - and in this apocalyptic scenario of yours the fittest is the one with least moral scruples, that is, the biggest asshole.
And once the biggest assholes take the reins, you can say bye-bye to whatever fantasy you have cooked up. The rest of the people will just start playing that same game - the asshole game - because that's the way to survive. Goodbye civilization and all that.

Like I've said before, this mental picture you have developed of things fixing themselves like this is pretty naive. Even if things eventually get fixed, it would be over countless bloodied corpses of innocents. If that's your ideal solution, then you have problems.

Anarchy is not synonymous with evil any more than law is synonymous with good. Also, are you seriously arguing that individual scumfuckery beats cooperative effort in a situation where there isn't rule of law? What the fuck, dude. That is misanthropic and bleak as shit. You're saying "People are assholes by default without some kind of superior force keeping them in line" and at the same time saying "People shouldn't be shot", so you're basically pro-asshole. Do you roll Lawful Evil a lot? Just wondering.

In regards to the "countless bloodied corpses of innocents" - oh, yeah, it's not like we have that with the rule of law in place OH FUCKING WAIT WE DO HMM. And are you now arguing that there are "innocent assholes" or something?

 

[Atomkilla]

Anarchy is not synonymous with evil any more than law is synonymous with good. Also, are you seriously arguing that individual scumfuckery beats cooperative effort in a situation where there isn't rule of law? What the fuck, dude. That is misanthropic and bleak as shit. You're saying "People are assholes by default without some kind of superior force keeping them in line" and at the same time saying "People shouldn't be shot", so you're basically pro-asshole. Do you roll Lawful Evil a lot? Just wondering.

Nice way of strawmaning literally every sentence I've written there.

 

[Cliffy McEdgeface]

Nice way of strawmaning literally every sentence I've written there.

You say that as if the accusation were the proof. Go on, prove how I've strawmanned a single thing you said. You've got a brain, presumably, put it to work. I mean, my god I'm HALF-ASSING most of this devil's-advocate shit and pretty much just repeating your own words back to you half the time and you and just about everyone else is running around with your hair on fire because of the friction caused from your brains doing backflips in your goddamn skulls looking for something SOLID to put in front of this crappy argument. I'd ask if you were actually fucking trying but I'm afraid of what the answer would fucking be.

 

[Atomkilla]

Literally every supposed quote you made there is not something I've said, nor does that properly convey any of the points I was making. It's fallacious and you've either misunderstood my words and made your wrong interpretations, at best, or are intentionally misrepresenting them at worst, as to derail the conversation or avoid the answer yourself.
Either way, I don't really care. Arguing about this "shoot assholes on sight" society you've made up has no actual relevance, so I'm just gonna stop.

 

[Cliffy McEdgeface]

It all goes back to whether people should be armed and considered empowered to deal with threats to society. You keep repeating things like "this would be bad because people are assholes" which is either implying that, for some reason, assholes being shot is a bad thing, or it's eliding the fact that there are actually PLENTY of non-assholes out there, some of which are going to have the chops to carry and possibly shoot assholes doing really fucking assholish things including but not limited to armed robberies and spree killings. I'm inclined to think it's the LATTER because you then talk about "innocents" being victimized and assholes aren't innocents, so you're walking back your own idea of "people are assholes" either because it's convenient for you or because you're THAT BAD at articulating your stance in the first place. Hanlon's razor tells me it should be the latter, but then you accuse me of strawmanning you, so you clearly stand by your fucking cocked-up arguments about human nature and you are asserting that I am just misinterpreting your half-assed shit, willfully or otherwise.

I would be lying if I said I had never seen this kind of bullcrap before. "Leave it ambiguous enough that you can accuse the other side of misinterpretation when they try to make heads or tails of your shit". What I fucking LOVE about all of this is that rather than make a post fucking CLARIFYING your stances beyond a shadow of a doubt you're gonna throw in the towel rather than let yourself be pinned to one solid position that can be effectively argued against.

 

[Atomkilla]

your own idea of "people are assholes"

You see, I've never actually said this. You are the one who has been repeating that and pointing finger at me saying it, but if you look back at my previous posts you won't find this statement or anything that resembles it. Go look for the quote.

And as for accusing me of being ambiguous - you're the one who started the whole "assholes" thing. If asshole isn't an extremely ambiguous term in this scenario, I don't know what is.

But whatever, I have no intention of arguing with somebody who misrepresents the opposing side's point, has his own strawmen farm, misquotes and constantly pulls out ad hominems.

 

[Cliffy McEdgeface]

I'd like to think I've done a pretty good job of what "asshole" means in this context, what with terms like "bad actor" and the implication that an asshole is someone who deliberately does overtly harmful shit to others in particular. Regardless, it looks like I mixed you up with Crni at times (though, I mean, you fucking implied that assholery would become the order of the day without rule of law and I have you fucking QUOTED as saying such, so good luck wiggling out of that one).

 

[Atomkilla]

@Arnust I bet this last page looks entertaining.

 

[Crni Vuk]

I'd like to think I've done a pretty good job of what "asshole" means in this context, what with terms like "bad actor" and the implication that an asshole is someone who deliberately does overtly harmful shit to others in particular.

Define "overtly harmful shit", describing a vague term like asshole with another vague explanation isn't going anywhere here. If you really want things to work on that kind of principle, then you have to be a lot more specific.

If I would be you, I would start with selfe-defence laws and principles to somewhat define an 'asshole-situation' where one person is allowed to shoot another. That would be at least a start. But if we take that as our guiding princple then we can say that it's already in effect. The whole point was, that if we had 325,7 million armed citizens crime and bad behaviour would decline or even dissapear, which is in my opinion a very naive way of looking at something as complex like crime and viollence. The real problem here is, that you're having a way to simplistic opinion on human nature and behaviour in general and that you would totally embrace the possibility of innocent people getting killed in the ensuing crossifres or trough accidents if every civilian was armed. I mean imagine a scenario like the North Hollywood Shootout between druged bank robbers in full body armor with automatic weapons fighting not only the police, but also civilians armed with weapons. A lot of hot lead in the air to hit civilians caught in the cross fire. What a wonderfull world I guess.

 

[TorontoReign]

This issue will not impact anyone in this forum because they will all be at home posting in this thread forever.

 

[Cliffy McEdgeface]

Define "overtly harmful shit", describing a vague term like asshole with another vague explanation isn't going anywhere here. If you really want things to work on that kind of principle, then you have to be a lot more specific.

If I would be you, I would start with selfe-defence laws and principles to somewhat define an 'asshole-situation' where one person is allowed to shoot another. That would be at least a start. But if we take that as our guiding princple then we can say that it's already in effect. The whole point was, that if we had 325,7 million armed citizens crime and bad behaviour would decline or even dissapear, which is in my opinion a very naive way of looking at something as complex like crime and viollence. The real problem here is, that you're having a way to simplistic opinion on human nature and behaviour in general and that you would totally embrace the possibility of innocent people getting killed in the ensuing crossifres or trough accidents if every civilian was armed. I mean imagine a scenario like the North Hollywood Shootout between druged bank robbers in full body armor with automatic weapons fighting not only the police, but also civilians armed with weapons. A lot of hot lead in the air to hit civilians caught in the cross fire. What a wonderfull world I guess.

"Overtly harmful shit" = Violations of or credible threats to a person's right to life, liberty and/or property. There. Simple.

The North Hollywood bank robbery was an incident apart, the likes of which we literally have not fucking seen since because it was that fucking crazy. If that's your benchmark you're almost setting the entire thing up to fail from the get-go. But if you insist... yeah, you know what? Civvies being allowed to dump on those lunatics' asses WOULD have helped, ESPECIALLY if one of those civvies had a weapon that was capable of defeating body armor. (The cops sure as hell didn't, at first.) I mean, with the amount of fucking lead the cops and robbers were already putting into the air I don't think the extra amount Joe Average would have contributed to it fucking matters, hardly. Fun fact - private gun owners are FREQUENTLY better shots than goddamn beat cops because private gun owners are more likely to do fucking range time beyond the bare minimum required.

A side note about the North Hollywood shootout - there was something definitely fucking wrong about that whole affair. All of it. Fucking bank robbers do not generally fucking BOTHER going in loaded for bear like that. At the time IIRC you could rob a bank with an ordinary handgun and a note (and maybe not even the fucking handgun). Bank robbers don't generally go for trying to have a goddamn endurance-match shootout with the cops - they either run like fucking hell with the money or go full-on hostage situation (latter being pretty damn rare itself because it's a fucking losing gambit). I don't think these guys were there to rob a fucking bank. I don't think they were "bank robbers". I don't know EXACTLY what they WERE, but they were not fucking bank robbers. The fact that they bothered to rob a bank at all just makes it way more fucking suspicious. The more I think about it the more I wonder how that shootout impacted the average Californian fuckmook's opinion of things like, you know, the private acquisition and ownership of firearms and body armor. Because let's face it, the robbers didn't accomplish much except give cunts like Feinstein tons of ammo for increasingly restrictive laws on firearms, body armor and so on. If you were PARTICULARLY conspiracy-minded, you might even say that was the POINT of the whole affair.

Shit, I'm looking up what they were armed with. You know what they had with them? Some really goddamn expensive toys. An HK-91, a Bushmaster XM15 and a Beretta 92FS. The CHEAPEST thing they had were probably the Chinese AK-knockoffs. Their body armor was homemade from aramid fiber, better than police-issue Kevlar. One of them had basically engineered this shit into a plate carrier to boot. Metal plates are probably pretty cheap but I'm pretty sure aramids/para-aramids are not for various reasons. Not particularly easy to work with either, from what I gather.

This issue will not impact anyone in this forum because they will all be at home posting in this thread forever.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

 

[Deleted member 93956]

@Arnust I bet this last page looks entertaining.

Maybe I'm actually not ignoring him and Pariah Dog is just in your head! Wooo, spooky!

 

[Crni Vuk]

The North Hollywood bank robbery was an incident apart, the likes of which we literally have not fucking seen since because it was that fucking crazy.

That's no reason to dismiss it though, as it was a real life scenario and not some hypothetical situation. It happened, and it can happen again.

But that's not the point, granted it's rather rare and not something that happens every day. What happens all the time though, is people going out in to bars, concerts, parties, demonstrations and rallies. I mean who knows how many drunk people start fights in a bar? I am sure there are plenty. Now imagine if every person was armed. Alcohol, aggressive behavior and weapons, what's the worst that could happen, right? And I am not even talking about the people that start the quarrel, but it is fair to assume that once the bullets start to fly, bystanders might be hit accidentally. Or imagine riots with people being armed to the teeth, because a cop shot a black kid again and the whole hood is on fire. Or something like Charlottesville where a guy decides to drive his car in to a crowd, or if two groups would clash together and someone starts to panic and shoot basically causing a mass shootout. Another important issue that you should consider is the confusion if shit really hits the fan, law enforcements have laterality no way of telling the difference between good citizens with a gun and the crazy ones that want to kill everybody. Hell, you have police officers shooting unarmed people already now, simply because they thought there was a weapon involved.

There are so many possibilities that things can go very wrong very fast and become pretty messy.

 

[Cliffy McEdgeface]

But that's not the point, granted it's rather rare and not something that happens every day. What happens all the time though, is people going out in to bars, concerts, parties, demonstrations and rallies. I mean who knows how many drunk people start fights in a bar? I am sure there are plenty. Now imagine if every person was armed. Alcohol, aggressive behavior and weapons, what's the worst that could happen, right? And I am not even talking about the people that start the quarrel, but it is fair to assume that once the bullets start to fly, bystanders might be hit accidentally.

No one likes the assholes that pick barfights. If I were an asshole picking a fight in a bar and all of a sudden a bunch of people draw on me I'm probably going to scurry the fuck out right quick. Then again, alcohol doesn't do wonders for judgment, so you might have a point here.

Or imagine riots with people being armed to the teeth, because a cop shot a black kid again and the whole hood is on fire.

Rooftop Koreans with rifles is a good thing when rioters start getting riot-y.

Or something like Charlottesville where a guy decides to drive his car in to a crowd, or if two groups would clash together and someone starts to panic and shoot basically causing a mass shootout.

Assuming the Charlottesville Challenger driver was doing it out of malice he damn well SHOULD have been shot by someone or multiple someones. (I don't think he did it out of malice, though. It looked like the protesters had him surrounded at full stop and then started pounding on his car, he put his head down and panic-floored the gas to get the fuck out of there.)

There are so many possibilities that things can go very wrong very fast and become pretty messy.

What's worse - protracted messiness because no one had a gun to put a rabid dog of a person down, or a quick brilliant flash of messiness as suddenly EVERYONE puts a rabid dog of a person down? Assholes should be DEATHLY frightened of starting serious shit with people, and I can't think of many better ways to make assholes super-fucking-afraid than the possibility that every Joe and Jill Average carries the tool of their undoing. I mean, I dunno about you but I get super fucking polite (more than usual, anyway) around armed officers of the law even though I have a bit of a mixed view of them in general. Their badge and authority aren't what prompt this sudden figurative clenching of buttocks, either.

Another important issue that you should consider is the confusion if shit really hits the fan, law enforcements have laterality no way of telling the difference between good citizens with a gun and the crazy ones that want to kill everybody. Hell, you have police officers shooting unarmed people already now, simply because they thought there was a weapon involved.

A good citizen with a gun will comply with an order to drop their weapon issued by an officer of the law. Bad guys, not so much. As for cops shooting unarmed people already now because of what they THINK - I don't think that's a valid reason to disarm citizens. Being an officer of the law is by its nature a dangerous fucking profession and a cop who can't cope with the idea of an armed citizenry is a bad fucking cop who needs to not be a cop anymore. There is inherent, assumed risk in being a fucking police officer and any cop who whines about wanting to feel safe is missing the point of his fucking job.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Like Atom said, you're having a bit of a trouble to actually read what someone writes. I never said citizens should be 'disarmed', mind you I am not against your right to get a firearm, just the idea that everyone owning one solves all the issues of criminals and assholes doing shitty stuff. You're also not really addressing my point of 'accidents' here, maybe you mixed it up or it's a language thing? No clue. I am not talking about the crazy guys getting shoot, but INNOCENT BYSTANDERS caught in the crossfire. I mean seriously, you're making so many assumptions, that every citizen will be a sharpshooter, that would be always easy to tell the crazy ones from the good ones apart and so on. Even armed conflicts where people wear uniforms, can be damn confusing, and soldiers are usually trained for it. Now imagine the average citizen here in a dangerous situation. And shooting at demonstrators because they panic? That's a little bit crazy, don't you think? Even if it would be a riot, people do not deserve the death penality for burning a car or throwing a trash can around. Let that one sink in for a minute. I mean this is exactly the point I am trying to make here, you would have to deal with many very confusing situations where you can not tell who is who.