Gun Control

[Deleted member 93956]

Damn skippy.

Have we found out what psych meds this kid was on yet? At what point do we hold the parents liable for not securing their firearms from their over-pharmaceuticalized children?

At what point should we blame thr FBI by answering with just interrogating the denouncer of the fact that he boasted of going to start the school shooting thst we now know?

 

[Lanfear]

The average european gun safe can be opened without powertools. You merely need a pry bar.

Sounds like you guys really need to be using better gun safes, then.

I'm not asking you to believe anything. This thread is 71 pages now and before this one there were many others. If I felt the need to prove everything people challenge me (or other gun owners) about in this thread, it would be a full time job.
I don't care anymore. I've tried it before, but it just doesn't work. Every proof can be read multiple ways or simply brushed aside if it doesn't fit a person's narrative.
In the end this is about philosophy and morality.

You don't ever have to change your mind if you want to, no matter what proofs or arguments are offered to you (though personally I find it uncomfortable trying to do this when I'm in what I consider to be an untenable position), but the debate isn't really about what you believe, it's about how reasonable your argument is.

You just brushed aside an Israeli article debunking the whole "teachers and janitors carry guns" thing on the basis that you believe it was politically motivated, but are you actually in any way familiar with the publication? Can you show that it's politically motivated? If not, then why shrug it off? To me what you just did looks exactly like ignoring something purely because it doesn't fit your own narrative.

I don't think I'd agree that the gun control debate is either philosophical or moral, either. For me it's about law and public safety.

 

[Crni Vuk]

For some people it's also about life or death.

 

[SuAside]

Which one? Just curious, as it would surprise me if we're talking about a democracy here.

I assume you meant -western- democracy?

That wasn't my point though. All I am saying is, less guns in circulation equals less gun violence.

And I'm saying I disagree.

Gun ownership an sich is rarely a meaningful statistics.

Legal gun ownership causes little issues. Yes, you'll sometimes have a Breivik that goes off the deep end, but statistically those are outliers. They barely figure in the statistics at all. They make for good displays of cathartic outrage, but they represent little.
One may also make the case that if Breivik had not had legal access to firearm, he may have been even more successful with ANFO bombs which he was clearly capable of making.

Who knows what the situation will be in 2068 and if the people in the US will have more stricter gun laws. Societies change. That's simply how it goes.

Could be for better, could be for worse...
The USA is a-typical in their approach to civil freedoms. I'm not convinced we should be anxious to take away such freedoms because it's been historically shown that in general you lose freedoms easily but regaining them is a long and difficult process that rarely succeeds.

Sounds like you guys really need to be using better gun safes, then.

Maybe.

Or your confidence in your safes is misplaced.

Example using no powertools:


Using prybars is quite silent and easy. But bolting the safe to the wall or the floor makes it harder to do.
If the safe is bolted to the floor and no weakness in the lock or hinges can be exploited, then you can use cheap powertools to cut through most safes in 10-15 minutes.

You don't ever have to change your mind if you want to, no matter what proofs or arguments are offered to you (though personally I find it uncomfortable trying to do this when I'm in what I consider to be an untenable position), but the debate isn't really about what you believe, it's about how reasonable your argument is.

Trying to be "reasonable" has led to constant erosion of freedoms though. Is it really strange that some people now say "no more"?

You just brushed aside an Israeli article debunking the whole "teachers and janitors carry guns" thing on the basis that you believe it was politically motivated, but are you actually in any way familiar with the publication? Can you show that it's politically motivated? If not, then why shrug it off? To me what you just did looks exactly like ignoring something purely because it doesn't fit your own narrative.

The entire article is a farce. It tries to make it sound like gun permits are rare and hard to get (they aren't, as personal friends of mine can attest to). It goes on to give a very political view of what the 2nd amendment should be interpreted as, and then follow it up with "I am far too ignorant concerning the ‘Gun Control’ issue to give much of an educated opinion.".

Does it get any more political than that?

I don't think I'd agree that the gun control debate is either philosophical or moral, either. For me it's about law and public safety.

How could it ever be anything but a philosophical and moral discussion? We aren't talking about things in a vacuum here.

Say hypothetically that if you ban guns entirely that within 100 years, the USA will be entirely free of gun related deaths. From your point of view of public safety, that seems to be enough to simply go ahead with it?

I say that there is far more to consider in the American context.
Banning guns removes a tool for self-defense against both assailants and the government.
It makes your country more susceptible to foreign invasion.
It robs millions of their hobby of sport shooting, hunting, collecting, etc.
It will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs in gunsmithing, retail and ammunition manufacturing.
It removes important historical artifacts from our society.

We should also discuss if we have the moral right to punish the many for the transgressions of the few, and at which point doing so becomes appropriate.

We should also investigate if our motivations on carrying through with this are just and balanced. Firearms related deaths, especially for legally owned firearms are quite insignificant to alcohol or smoking related deaths (both first hand & second hand). So are we merely having an emotional knee jerk reaction to current events? Is this reaction proportional to the threat posed? And does removal of this threat sabotage other values that we espouse?

 

[Gizmojunk]

The USA is a-typical in their approach to civil freedoms. I'm not convinced we should be anxious to take away such freedoms because it's been historically shown that in general you lose freedoms easily but regaining them is a long and difficult process that rarely succeeds.

There are two quotes that come to mind, one from Ben Franklin, the other from C.S. Lewis:

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

*Regardless of their original contexts, they still seem applicable here, and often elsewhere, IMO.

 

[mithrap]

I say that there is far more to consider in the American context.
Banning guns removes a tool for self-defense against both assailants and the government.

The government has drones, tanks and jet fighters though. Not sure how a regular citizen could defend himself against those, even if he was John Rambo.
The self defense against assailants, that's something I perfectly understand and I can get behind that idea. My father has a jewel shop and I'm glad there's a gun there, in case he gets attacked.

It makes your country more susceptible to foreign invasion.

Who on earth could invade USA and why would they ? As said, this is something I'd find very reasonable if we were talking about Israel, Ukraine or Switzerland, they are geographically vulnerable, but the United States are not a nation that can be invaded, and it has little to do with guns. It has nuclear weapons, it is too big, it is surrounded by two powerful allies and it is geographically isolated from all possible threats. Nobody wants to invade the US.

We should also investigate if our motivations on carrying through with this are just and balanced. Firearms related deaths, especially for legally owned firearms are quite insignificant to alcohol or smoking related deaths (both first hand & second hand).

To be fair, I would be surprised if the tobacco industry as we know it still exists by 2060.
Everyone agrees that alcohol deaths are a problem, but nobody really knows what to do about it, except making sure minors can't get wasted.

 

[Lanfear]

Using prybars is quite silent and easy. But bolting the safe to the wall or the floor makes it harder to do.
If the safe is bolted to the floor and no weakness in the lock or hinges can be exploited, then you can use cheap powertools to cut through most safes in 10-15 minutes.

If you can cut or force a safe open easily with any hand tool, then it isn't much more than a cheap box made from high-gauge steel, or with a weak locking mechanism, or both, and in either case it shouldn't have guns stored inside of it. UL and similar groups rate safes for effectiveness. If you're seeing something like UL-RSC on your safe, then it doesn't even really qualify as a safe - it's just a low-grade lockbox. Gun safes should be more secure than this. (For the price I paid for my old gun safe nowadays, you can get a TL-30 rated safe that is difficult even for highly trained technicians to break into.)

That being said, I guess it is true that if time, noise and availability of proper tools are not factors, you can still cut into any safe eventually, or wrap a chain around it, connect it to a ute and pull it out through your front wall, or something, but we're reaching the point at which this ceases to be a burglary and becomes a heist.

Trying to be "reasonable" has led to constant erosion of freedoms though. Is it really strange that some people now say "no more"?

I'm not sure what you're trying to demonstrate - the comic you linked is very reductive and juvenile politicking, it doesn't make a case for or against anything at all. My point was that it doesn't matter whether or not you're willing to move on the issue personally, it still matters to an observer whether you can present a valid argument. Shrugging an article off as politically motivated even if it does present pertinent facts just isn't reasonable.

The entire article is a farce. It tries to make it sound like gun permits are rare and hard to get (they aren't, as personal friends of mine can attest to). It goes on to give a very political view of what the 2nd amendment should be interpreted as, and then follow it up with "I am far too ignorant concerning the ‘Gun Control’ issue to give much of an educated opinion.".

Israel has 7.5 guns per capita in private ownership, which is very low. They have strict gun laws, most likely stricter than those in Belgium. Many people in Israel aren't even eligible to apply for a gun license. Common citizens only qualify if they live in a frontier area or if they're licensed hunters/animal control officers. You don't qualify if you haven't been an Israeli resident for at least 3 consecutive years, you need to pass a comprehensive background check and you need to be able to prove you have a genuine reason to be licensed. 40% of gun licence applicants are rejected. License holders have to renew their licenses at least once per year to ensure their reasons for being licensed are still valid. All of this stuff is a matter of record, whether you think that article Buxbaum linked was political or not.

Your friends in Israel who claim gun licenses are easy to get ahold of over there are either mistaken or misrepresenting the facts for whatever reason, which is why anecdotes should never be taken at face value.

How could it ever be anything but a philosophical and moral discussion? We aren't talking about things in a vacuum here.

Say hypothetically that if you ban guns entirely that within 100 years, the USA will be entirely free of gun related deaths. From your point of view of public safety, that seems to be enough to simply go ahead with it?

Please don't strawman the argument in favour of gun control, it only cheapens the discussion. Throwing "ban all guns" in with "restrict gun ownership and circulation" is just an exercise in misrepresentation, or at best conflation of an uninformed gun control argument with every other gun control argument.

Banning guns removes a tool for self-defense against both assailants and the government.

Carrying a gun will rarely afford you any extra protection against an armed assailant. It will allow you to maximise your chances of getting injured or killed if you're reckless enough to want to wager your life on your ability to draw, aim and shoot a gun at your assailant before they have any chance to react, as I discussed earlier, which is the main reason for why law enforcement professionals recommend against doing so. As for protecting yourself against the government - I find this a difficult argument to comprehend. The notion that gun ownership should be deregulated in order to allow citizens to execute a coup d'etat on their own government exposes the sort of siege mentality I would expect to find in a war-torn country which is attempting to replace a preceding political system with a new, unproven one, rather than in a developed country such as the US.

It makes your country more susceptible to foreign invasion.

It also makes it harder for domestic terrorists to acquire weapons with which to execute attacks. Which do you think the US ought to be more concerned with?

It robs millions of their hobby of sport shooting, hunting, collecting, etc.
It will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs in gunsmithing, retail and ammunition manufacturing.
It removes important historical artifacts from our society.

Alright, stop here. The point about gunsmiths being out of work wouldn't hold water as a reason for or against instituting public law even if it were true, the other two points hinge on the notion that gun control advocates want to destroy all guns everywhere forever.

We should also discuss if we have the moral right to punish the many for the transgressions of the few, and at which point doing so becomes appropriate.

Well, that's law. All law. Every law in existence represents a government making a judgement on whether enacting a legal mandate on its citizens is of overall benefit to the nation as a whole. This is why lawmakers exist.

Inversely, one might ask why those who are injured or killed in various shootings deserve to be punished for the benefit of those who want to be able to easily acquire firearms.

We should also investigate if our motivations on carrying through with this are just and balanced. Firearms related deaths, especially for legally owned firearms are quite insignificant to alcohol or smoking related deaths (both first hand & second hand). So are we merely having an emotional knee jerk reaction to current events? Is this reaction proportional to the threat posed? And does removal of this threat sabotage other values that we espouse?

They're fewer, but by no means insignificant (around 33,000 gun-related deaths in the US per year, versus 100,000 alcohol-related deaths). The celebration of alcohol abuse and the willingness to turn a blind eye to the damage caused by tobacco use are indeed amongst the great hypocrisies of our culture, you won't find me disagreeing with that. But the existence of those problems in no way trivialises the problem with firearms.

Put another way, one problem not being as severe as another doesn't make the first problem unworthy of any solution. Arguments to this effect fall prey to what is referred to as the fallacy of relative privation: there will always be a bigger problem somewhere.

Regardless of their original contexts, they still seem applicable here, and often elsewhere, IMO.

Yes, the Franklin quote in particular was actually referring in its original use to a landowner trying to buy the government off so that he wouldn't have to pay tax for the state defense of his own lands. It was a defense of taxation and of the government's right to legislate in the defense of collective security, almost the opposite of what most people use it for nowadays.

 

[Crni Vuk]

@SuAside If you really want to make the claim that less guns doesn't equal less gun related viollance and/or crime, then I have to ask you for some statistics.

Because there is enough proof that show, less guns means less gun related deaths and viollence. I mean that's kinda logic. There is for example a reason why we're not seeing many sword related deaths and viollence ... I am NOT(!) arguing that crime or viollence in general would decline. Just that if there are less guns in circulation, that it means less guns will be used.

 

[Walpknut]

I wanna know what these mythical countries with more gun violence than the US and stric gun laws even are. Very curious tbh.

 

[Lanfear]

I wanna know what these mythical countries with more gun violence than the US and stric gun laws even are. Very curious tbh.

You won't find any of them on a list of developed countries, I can tell you that much.

 

[Walpknut]

I mean, preemtively someone bringing up my home country of Colombia, we have been in a 50 year long multi faction civil war (altho it's maybe soon getting better, hoepfull), so the numbers are super skewed towards the regions where the conflict hits the hardest, and as soon as the Main guerrilla faction agreed to the peace threaty the gun violence numbers in the country have been at an all time low.

 

[Lanfear]

What are the gun laws like in Colombia at the moment? I know possession and sales laws are relatively restrictive, but I thought guns were also permitted for use in self-defense, and also that it was fairly straightforward to get a carry permit for a handgun in most parts of Colombia outside Bogota. Did that change recently?

 

[Walpknut]

Nah, that's pretty much it.

 

[Deleted member 93956]

You know, I find pretty interesting the "laws don't work!" point. They must work for you to have been able to reach that point in the first place and have something to lament losing, right?

Another thing is that I find a bit hipocritical the bottomline of "they're used to protect people". I can see that. However to better protect people there are some sacrifices to be made, as surface level as they might be. If the point is indeed to protect people, why is compromise such an absurd motion?

Lastly... You REALLY expect your respective government to enact some grand plan involving killing, brutalizing and overall fucking-with their own citiziens, but in a way that they somehow could in any meaningful way be stopped by those subjects, or something? That of course before the rest of the world realizes...

 

[Lanfear]

You know, I find pretty interesting the "laws don't work!" point. They must work for you to have been able to reach that point in the first place and have something to lament losing, right?

I'll play devil's advocate here: the argument generally goes that they don't work to reduce gun-related crime, only to punish law-abiding gun owners, as criminals don't care whether they own their guns legally, whereas law-abiding gun owners do.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Except that no one here ever made the argument that all guns will dissapear or that criminals/psychos would never get their hands on weapons.

The point is to have sensible regulations to prevent at least some cases, to remove some guns before they even get in to the hands of psychos and criminals. But before you can do that, you need at least some kind of framework the authorities can use to apply measures that gives them the chance to act accordingly. But then you hear from some, that this is the first step to an Orwellian state ...

 

[Gizmojunk]

How many people here have completely read 1984? (... and how many times?)

*And Animal Farm?

 

[Lanfear]

It's odd that the US is arguably the most Orwellian developed country currently in the world, in spite of all of its guns.

 

[Deleted member 93956]

How many people here have completely read 1984? (... and how many times?)

*And Animal Farm?

I'm sure that Orwell really liked systematic denial and <just about everything else than the age of information has ensued>.

Aaaand of course Trump added to the mix the "well the FBI was distracted on investigating the Russian involvement xD" and me thinking that at least he had brought one facet of the problem...

 

[SuAside]

The government has drones, tanks and jet fighters though. Not sure how a regular citizen could defend himself against those, even if he was John Rambo.

Do you think nazis felt most at ease raiding homes of jews who had been previously disarmed, or the houses of those that potentially still had guns?

People always reference tanks and attack helicopters, but the average jackbooted thug is just another guy with a gun.

Who on earth could invade USA and why would they ? As said, this is something I'd find very reasonable if we were talking about Israel, Ukraine or Switzerland, they are geographically vulnerable, but the United States are not a nation that can be invaded, and it has little to do with guns. It has nuclear weapons, it is too big, it is surrounded by two powerful allies and it is geographically isolated from all possible threats. Nobody wants to invade the US.

Just because that is the case now, why would you assume that that will stay the same? The USA is an infant and things change in history.
With that argument, you could easily have Switzerland demilitarized as they're quite well protected by EU countries and are unlikely to ever be attacked by their neighbors.

Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Israel has 7.5 guns per capita in private ownership, which is very low. They have strict gun laws, most likely stricter than those in Belgium. Many people in Israel aren't even eligible to apply for a gun license. Common citizens only qualify if they live in a frontier area or if they're licensed hunters/animal control officers. You don't qualify if you haven't been an Israeli resident for at least 3 consecutive years, you need to pass a comprehensive background check and you need to be able to prove you have a genuine reason to be licensed. 40% of gun licence applicants are rejected. License holders have to renew their licenses at least once per year to ensure their reasons for being licensed are still valid. All of this stuff is a matter of record, whether you think that article Buxbaum linked was political or not.

Your friends in Israel who claim gun licenses are easy to get ahold of over there are either mistaken or misrepresenting the facts for whatever reason, which is why anecdotes should never be taken at face value.

Not sure what you're going out of your way to prove, but nearly everything you mentioned are all things I face in Belgium as well?
Including getting a doctor to sign of on my physical & mental health every 5 years? Having to prove each year that I have not committed any felonies?

Please don't strawman the argument in favour of gun control, it only cheapens the discussion. Throwing "ban all guns" in with "restrict gun ownership and circulation" is just an exercise in misrepresentation, or at best conflation of an uninformed gun control argument with every other gun control argument.

You're entirely misreading the premise. I was saying that even if we had some guarantee that all gun crime would disappear in 100 years time after enacting a full ban, there were still other things to consider than mere statistics.

Carrying a gun will rarely afford you any extra protection against an armed assailant. It will allow you to maximise your chances of getting injured or killed if you're reckless enough to want to wager your life on your ability to draw, aim and shoot a gun at your assailant before they have any chance to react, as I discussed earlier, which is the main reason for why law enforcement professionals recommend against doing so.

That's debatable. The statistics vary.
A gun remains a universal equalizer. It gives you a chance to resist where previously there was nearly none, especially if you're of frail build or outnumbered. In the US, several hundred fatal shootings per year are viewed as "justified".
Can I in good conscience argue for the removal of concealed carry permits that may some a woman from being raped or a man from being murdered simply because someone else chose to misuse a firearm? That's really murky territory.

Well, that's law. All law. Every law in existence represents a government making a judgement on whether enacting a legal mandate on its citizens is of overall benefit to the nation as a whole. This is why lawmakers exist.

And it's also why we need a decent discussion about this rather than throwing around statistics.

Inversely, one might ask why those who are injured or killed in various shootings deserve to be punished for the benefit of those who want to be able to easily acquire firearms.

Sure, but you'll find that the vast majority of the pro-gun crowd has indeed thought of this and has accepted the cost.

They're fewer, but by no means insignificant (around 33,000 gun-related deaths in the US per year, versus 100,000 alcohol-related deaths).

If you factor out people who were already legally not allowed to own firearms, you get far far less. The vast majority of those are gangland shootings.

@SuAside If you really want to make the claim that less guns doesn't equal less gun related viollance and/or crime, then I have to ask you for some statistics.

Because there is enough proof that show, less guns means less gun related deaths and viollence. I mean that's kinda logic.

Why are you asking me things that you find for yourself easily?
If you want extreme examples, then take Iceland. They have as many guns per capita as France, Canada, Belgium, etc and virtually none of the gun crime. It clearly illustrates that you can have a fuckton of legal firearms ownership with virtually no gun crime.

I wanna know what these mythical countries with more gun violence than the US and stric gun laws even are. Very curious tbh.

Almost any South American, Middle American or African country tbh.
Not sure what's unexpected about that.

I can see that. However to better protect people there are some sacrifices to be made, as surface level as they might be. If the point is indeed to protect people, why is compromise such an absurd motion?

Because you're basically taking someone else's choice away from them.

Lastly... You REALLY expect your respective government to enact some grand plan involving killing, brutalizing and overall fucking-with their own citiziens, but in a way that they somehow could in any meaningful way be stopped by those subjects, or something? That of course before the rest of the world realizes...

Are you blind to how common genocides have been in our history?
Fucking hell, in Srebrenica Dutch peacekeepers stood down and let the entire population be sorted out and get selectively massacred.

The veneer of our society is troublingly thin. Assuming anything else is inviting disaster.

The point is to have sensible regulations to prevent at least some cases, to remove some guns before they even get in to the hands of psychos and criminals.

The question in the context of the USA, is if such "sensible" regulations can be enacted without damaging the other core values of the country which gun ownership was meant to protect.