[farrell2k]

dorknexus, on 16 December 2012 - 11:48 PM, said:

Millions of people exercise safe and responsible gun ownership in this country every single day and would never use firearms in anger or aggression against anyone, regardless of the kind of firearm it is. However, there are certain kinds of people out there who are a threat to public safety regardless of the weapons they might choose. So again, this should really be a mental health debate and not a gun-grabbing debate.

No amount of gun regulation in the world is going to stop someone with a mental health problem from killing and/or injuring people.

Your point about people who have not killed anyone is irrelevant. The discussion is regarding those who have. It also absolutely should be a "gun-grabbing" debate. You cannot prevent mental illness, but you can prevent the mentally ill from acquiring guns.

Regulation most certainly does work, and your assertion that it will not has already been demonstrated to be false. Someone a few pages back already posted statistics for Japan, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the world with 3x fewer people, but 1000x fewer gun related deaths. I get that this is the standard right-wing argument from desperation, but your assertion only has to be demonstrated wrong one time for it to be completely wrong...

The fact is that people with guns kill people, and if you want to prevent people killing people with guns, you remove guns from the equation. Unfortunately, most people will not understand this until they or someone they care about is harmed by someone with a gun.

This post has been edited by farrell2k: 16 December 2012 - 05:03 PM

[dorknexus]

The type of legislation that gets passed targets all the "technical" aspects of firearms in very specific language:

"high capacity magazines"
"barrel shroud"
"forward pistol grip"
"detachable magazine"
"adjustable stock"
"muzzle device"
"..capable of semi-automatic fire..."
"loaded chamber indicator"
"drop safe firing pin block"
"magazine-fire control disconnect"

I don't think you need all the technical knowledge to engage in a broad policy debate, but once it moves from "broad policy" to "semi automatic, centerfire rifles capable of accepting detachable magazines may not be equipped with forward pistol grips or barrel shrouds", i expect you to know what all those words mean before you go and try to make it some federal law.

Does that seem unreasonable?

Quote

The fact is that people with guns kill people

I own firearms and I have never, nor will I ever, kill someone with a firearm.
You forgot the qualifier that MENTALLY ILL people with guns kill people.

This post has been edited by dorknexus: 16 December 2012 - 05:10 PM

[Python_4_President]

Atli, on 16 December 2012 - 04:37 PM, said:

The difference here is that the danger of guns is obvious. You don't have to know what a barrel shroud is to realize the danger of ANY gun, and why regulating them is a good thing. The people trying to pass SOPA, and other such nonsense, have no clue what the hell they are trying to "protect" people from. They were just nodding their heads along with the crowd, all the while thinking: "What the hell is happening here? Why are these music reps handing out buckets of cash?! Actually, who the fuck cares!!"

No.. no there is no difference... SOPA is just another example of nazis being nazis, just like the NFA, the AWB, rules against black people voting, and so on. They just want to limit the power of the people. They use the useful idiots to enforce it.


Oh, I'm sorry.. You mega-dense ultra-semantical types may not understand my use of the word "nazi"... Let me define it for you: CONTROL FREAKS, PSYCHOPATHS, TOTALLY FUCKING INSANE PEOPLE.

Basically,

The world is fucking dangerous. Deal with it. Guns help you deal with some of the more unbearable dangers (like being raped, or being overtaken by nazis), cars help you deal with traveling through fucked up environments, like really cold ones, and really hot ones, and they reduce the months/years it used to take to get from one place to another, and all the dangers that entails. It's all fucking dangerous. EVERYTHING is fucking dangerous.


The real trick to life is to quit being such a pussy. You could learn a lot from wild animals. They don't care if it's cold, or some asshole is threatening them with slaughter. They just live their lives while they can, and they don't worry about irrelevant bullshit like massacres and thieves, and other things that have nothing to do with them. If you're a resource to them, or you threaten their babes, then they'll fuck you up. Otherwise, you probably won't even know they're there. They're just as dangerous as the world they live in, and so too should you be.

The analogy here is the law abiding citizen.. His prey is his work, and he will ravage his prey, and if you fuck with his babes, he'll fuck you up. Otherwise, you won't even know he's there.

The (true) criminal's prey is other people, and he will ravage his prey, and if you fuck with his babes he'll fuck you up.

That's who you should regulate.. People that prey on other people. You do to them what our forefathers did to big cats in North America, and your crime will drop to almost nill.

This post has been edited by Python_4_President: 16 December 2012 - 05:20 PM

[supersloth]

dorknexus, on 16 December 2012 - 02:09 PM, said:

If you give a drunk a car, you can expect bad shit to happen. We don't ban alcohol or cars.
If you give a mentally unstable individual a gun, you can expect bad shit to happen. We want to ban guns?

I don't really understand this obsession with targeting the means rather than the man. What happened to sense and reason?

speaking of sense and reason you realize that cars are designed to get people from point a to point b and guns are designed to shoot and how that is totally different?

[Atli]

dorknexus said:

I own firearms and I have never, nor will I ever, kill someone with a firearm.
You forgot the qualifier that MENTALLY ILL people with guns kill people.

I don't doubt that you mean that you'll never kill, but there is no way you could possible know that to be true. Many mental illnesses can occur at a late stage in life. Can you honestly promise that you'll never develop a mental illness that will make you to lose your perspective on reality and cause you to do something you'd never consciously do when healthy? Of course not. (Though I really hope you don't! )


@Python_4_President. Holy shit dude. You've got a very dark perspective on things. I for one am rather happy most of us have evolved slightly beyond the "law of the jungle" way of living.

By the way, keep the insults to yourself. Argue your point if you must, be lets be civil about it.

[CTphpnwb]

Python_4_President, on 16 December 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

That's who you should regulate.. People that prey on other people.

What you're not getting is that gun regulation is about exactly that. The problem is that every effort to do that is met with obfuscation and resistance by the gun lobby, and you help them do that when you bring up things like gun shrouds or the ability to train yourself to reload magazines quickly.

[Python_4_President]

CTphpnwb, on 16 December 2012 - 05:49 PM, said:

Python_4_President, on 16 December 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

That's who you should regulate.. People that prey on other people.

What you're not getting is that gun regulation is about exactly that. The problem is that every effort to do that is met with obfuscation and resistance by the gun lobby, and you help them do that when you bring up things like gun shrouds or the ability to train yourself to reload magazines quickly.

I still think idiocide is the right answer here..

[jon.kiparsky]

Quote

That's who you should regulate.. People that prey on other people. You do to them what our forefathers did to big cats in North America, and your crime will drop to almost nill.

The fuck? What are you talking about? So you're saying you want to pass laws against being a criminal?

I'm beginning to think you're dumber than a bag of rocks. Start talking sense some time or I'll keep on believing that.

[creativecoding]

Yeah you're totally right Python_4_president! Let's commit mass murder of everyone we think are idiots! Maybe we'll start with you.

Quote

The real trick to life is to quit being such a pussy.

Yeah man! Those 18 kids were wimps! Didn't even fight back.

/sarcasm

You seriously need to rethink your plans and what you say. Of course it's easy to say "We'll lets just kill every insane person", but in reality, how helpful is that really? We're trying to have a serious discussion here on the topic of guns laws after kids were murdered, and you're saying idiots should be executed and little kids should stop being pussies. What the hell are you thinking?!

[Craig328]

jon.kiparsky, on 16 December 2012 - 07:53 PM, said:

Let's play a fun game: it's called "be smart at me". It goes like this:

Assume there is to be a gun-control policy, at the national level. Assume the goal of that policy is to prevent, as much as possible, human death and injury from handguns, considering both crimes and accidental deaths, and also to prevent as much as possible the use of guns in the commission of crime. Assume that registration and licensing are two tools available to execute this policy, and that restrictions on type and configuration of weapon and type of ammunition is also available as a tool. Other tools may be considered, the policy need not be limited to these devices.

You, as a nationally recognized expert on weapons of all sorts, are asked to advise this panel on the formation and the execution of this policy.

What is your advice?

I don't know how DN would respond but before I would I'd suggest your game (which isn't at all "smart") is flawed from inception for one incredibly simple reason. Let's examine that first before we go into depth anywhere else.

You assume that all that's needed is more laws, more restrictions and such to "prevent as much as possible the use of guns in the commission of crime". Just so we're clear, you seem to be suggesting: more laws = problem solved of people not obeying laws. Killing people is illegal. He broke that law. Stealing weapons is also illegal. He broke that law. Taking a weapon onto a school campus is likely illegal (it is in my state). He broke that law. Breaking and entering is illegal. He broke that law. I'm sure he probably did a couple of additional crimes as well but, like every other frickin' law, HE BROKE THEM.

Do you suppose a law licensing and registering a gun (THAT HE FRICKIN' STOLE) would have solved the problem here? Do you think a law that placed "restrictions on type and configuration of weapon and type of ammunition is also available" would have been the clincher?

What is it about yet another law do you think will finally capture the respect and attention of all those people who have been breaking the laws all along when they use "guns in the commission of crime"? Really?

Let's go with your scenario for a moment. Suppose the government tomorrow passes a law that says "no assault rifles" (a laughable term in and of itself). Wow. It's a law. Whom do you expect to see lining up at the police station to drop off their now illegal arms? Career criminals? Really? Let's see...cocaine and heroin are also "you can't have" items. Surely THAT means there's no cocaine and heroin anywhere to be found, right?

Why is it that the groups that are so sure that additional laws restricting people (in the case of guns) also tend to be the same ones that tend to rail against the Patriot Act, the TSA and think the war on drugs is a failure? How is it that one set of restrictive laws will surely remove all of one item from peoples' possession but an identical restriction on a different item is an abject failure?

Your original suppositions are fallacious in the extreme. Outlawing guns or certain items doesn't magically make them go away. It makes them magically increase in price and attracts a criminal element to see to their supply. The absolute idiocy is that in arguing that it will reduce crime, it will likely simply increase crime while disarming the vast majority of people who AREN'T breaking the laws in the first place.

[Craig328]

CTphpnwb, on 16 December 2012 - 08:49 PM, said:

Python_4_President, on 16 December 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

That's who you should regulate.. People that prey on other people.

What you're not getting is that gun regulation is about exactly that. The problem is that every effort to do that is met with obfuscation and resistance by the gun lobby, and you help them do that when you bring up things like gun shrouds or the ability to train yourself to reload magazines quickly.

Washington D.C. and Chicago had some of the most restrictive gun laws anywhere...and they were right near the tops of the lists of most gun violent cities. California has some pretty restrictive gun laws. I'm sure they've solved the problem of gun crime, right?

Yes, I'll anticipate your answer: "the criminals were getting guns from outside those areas" so those restrictions weren't able to work.

They worked fine, in fact. Law abiding citizens couldn't get them. Those who had no intention of obeying the law (aka: "criminals") obviously had zero problem getting them though.

[dorknexus]

Quote

speaking of sense and reason you realize that cars are designed to get people from point a to point b and guns are designed to shoot and how that is totally different?

I do realize the uses of the objects involved differ, however the point remains. When a drunken driver kills a family of 8 coming home Christmas Eve nobody blames the cars or the alcohol, they blame the drunk. In other words, they blame the subject and not the nouns.

This post has been edited by dorknexus: 16 December 2012 - 06:52 PM

[Atli]

That's not entirely true. A lot of people do blame the alcohol.

But more than that, if you do realize the difference between the objects used, you must also see the flaw in comparing them straight up like that? A car killing somebody is abnormal, whereas a gun killing somebody is just exactly what it was created for.

[jon.kiparsky]

Craig328, on 16 December 2012 - 08:30 PM, said:

You assume that all that's needed is more laws, more restrictions and such to "prevent as much as possible the use of guns in the commission of crime".

No, I'm not assuming that at all. I'm assuming that if we're going to have gun control policies, those would be the goals, and that if you're complaining that people making policies don't understand the technical details, then you have some input you'd like to add to make those policies work better.

Now, let's take a look at your pet assumption: laws regulating firearms will fail to work in some cases, therefore they can't ever work, therefore they shouldn't exist.

Do laws "magically" solve everything in the domain they apply to? No, of course not. There are red lights, and there are idiots who drive through them. There are laws against breaking and entering, and still there are somehow burglars. We have laws about all sorts of behavior, and yet, somehow, the courts are still full of people being tried for criminal offenses violating those laws.

Why is it that we never hear brilliant legal theorists like you coming out to abolish all of those laws? Clearly, they aren't working, right?

I'll suggest a reason why we don't hear it: it's because you know your argument is idiotic. We have laws regulating behavior precisely because there are people who would like to indulge in behavior that we find harmful to society as a whole. And the laws provide a framework for regulating that behavior, precisely through a mechanism of legal sanctions. "We won't see lines of criminals turning in their guns, therefore it won't work". Really? Can you really be so stupid that you think this is an argument? Try this one: "Someone stole a magazine from a corner store last week, therefore laws against shoplifting don't and can't work, and therefore we should have no laws against shoplifting". Same argument. You still like it?

dorknexus, on 16 December 2012 - 08:49 PM, said:

When a drunken driver kills a family of 8 coming home Christmas Eve nobody blames the cars or the alcohol, they blame the drunk. In other words, they blame the subject and not the nouns.

And they regulate the use of the pair of nouns in a certain sequence. Perfectly reasonable: blame the idiot, and regulate the behavior.

Let's go with that.

This post has been edited by jon.kiparsky: 16 December 2012 - 07:17 PM

[NecroWinter]

depricated, on 14 December 2012 - 11:19 AM, said:

Cause criminals obey laws.

Yeah, criminals dont follow laws, and thus, theres no reason to make anything illegal.

Simplistic reasoning fails.