Poll: Lets pretend the government passes a law stating that you can't have a gun anymore...
- Thread starter mattttherman3
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How does one even go about getting nerve gas? I'm not Charles Logan. Plus I don't need Jack Bauer knocking down my door yelling DAMN IT!!! all while cutting me. Of course said gas would get out and Samwise Gamji would have to save us by turning on the air conditioner.BloatedGuppy said:
Well, there's a box you have to check on the form you have to fill out every time you buy a gun, but I think enforcement of those boxes is mostly handled by the honor system. =xDascylus said:
I'm not sure how accurate this is. School shootings, including ones in schools for children as young as this, aren't necessarily unforeseen by the gun community. This, too, is anecdotal from being a part of the culture for a long time, so take it with a great grain of salt, but it's not unheard of to see people expressing their concerns over the effect that something like Sandy Hook would have on their rights. Most people do seem to understand that guns are very dangerous, and that things like school shootings will continue to occur for as long as guns are available, but they consider the victims acceptable casualties. This doesn't mean they're heartless monsters, I'm sure a great many of them were just as upset about Sandy Hook as anyone, but that grief is something to be endured as the cost of freedom or whatever you want to call it.
Again, gun culture comprises a diverse group, and some people really do think the answer to gun violence is gun violence and all the rest, but not everyone really cares to do anything at all, and I'd be willing to bet that reflects the majority rather than the minority. Self defence, and teary-eyed dreams of revolution, and tradition, are simply rationalizations and excuses for what is largely a recreational pursuit.
I'm actually in favor of more gun control but if we're being completely honest then I think an assault weapon ban is a terrible idea. It'll do more harm than good in terms of galvanizing gun advocates against further legislation and unless it's broadened to include all semi-automatic handguns it's really not going to make that big of a difference. Mechanically speaking, there really isn't anything that people are doing with assault rifles that they couldn't do with another semi-automatic weapon like a pistol or hunting rifle(some of those, too, are semis). This isn't armchair hypothesizing, the numbers back it up--the VA Tech shooter killed more adults with his pistols than Lanza could kill children with his AR15, and handguns still feature more prominantly in spree shootings than assault weapons. And since they're used in so few regular shootings, and are not necessarily more dangerous than regular old handguns or shotguns or 'hunting rifles,' it really does feel like something of a witch hunt.
The problem with enacting a useful assault weapons ban like this, or even aspiring to consistency and intellectual honesty, is that no one's willing to give up handguns, either, and we've had two recent supreme court rulings affirming protection of handguns by the Constitution. And while I can definitely see how less guns = less gun violence in a vacuum, I'm not sure the difference won't be made up for by the other weapons that will still be very much available anyway, nor am I sure where the line between acceptable casualties and unacceptable casualties lies. Is it worth it for gun owners to give up their hobby so that only x people die every year instead of x+5? X is already a pretty damn big number and if we can live with that it's not exactly a huge leap to go from X to X+5.
Why don't you ask the families of those +5 if it would have been worth it?PeterMerkin69 said:
Trust me, someone's hobby should always be infinitely less valued than a person's life.
Otherwise, if I'm a paramedic and I get paged in the middle of a World of WarCraft raid because someone had a heart attack and needs to get to the hospital... Eh, do I really drop out of the raid just for ONE person's life? What does one person mean in the grand scheme anyway, right?
See, that's the kind of gotcha argument that just doesn't work. I've personally lost people to gun violence when I was growing up(family friends rather than family) and I'm still not convinced.HellbirdIV said:
This is begging a lot of questions, and it's official Peter Policy never to take someone's word for anything. Beyond that, the world just doesn't appear to work the way it "should."
Take alcohol. Gun advocates often misuse prohibition as an (admittedly false) analogy for gun control rather than using it to its full potential, which is a metric for moral consistency(the "should" you mentioned being a moral imperative, and all that). Case in point, a lot of people continue to enjoy alcohol even though it's responsible for contributing to roughly the same amount of of motor vehicle fatalities as guns contribute to murders(I think, don't quote me on that, I don't feel like digging up stats right now.) The important difference is that because enough people dragged their feet, the Temperance Movement floundered, and the nation returned to its wicked, wicked ways. Today, alcoholism is widely enjoyed by a great number of people, many of whom are anti-gun, without being subjected to the same scrutiny as gun enthusiasts over what ultimately amounts to a recreational activity. If someone's hobby should never be more important than another person's life, why is it that we gave up on prohibition? Because it was too hard? Because a lot of people didn't want it? Enacting new gun control is hard, too, and a lot of people don't want that, either, so why should this particular hobby be treated any differently than the other?
Raiding? Probably not, although if you found a blue Fauxkemon it might be different.
Then we need to ban cars, because those 32,367 people that died in motor vehicle accidents is more then the 30,600 people killed by firearms last year.HellbirdIV said:
Headdrivehardscrew said:
Do you suppose that there was a minority of black citizens before the civil-rights movement that looked to communism? Of course not. Frank Davis' goal was "race" equality and in communism he saw the means to achieve that "race" equality within his lifetime through political means.
So are you yourself 'pro-colonialism'? Meaning that you are an imperialist? If so, I'd love to see your time machine and say hello to everybody in the 18th century. If you decide to go back please make sure to tell them that "The White Man's Burden" eventually paid off and those "half-child half-devil" natives (with our help of course!) are now on track to outpace us in every conceivable praxis of civilization within 80 years.
The same Saul Alinsky who organized black communities in protest of "racial" inequality in the 30's and 40's?
Guilt by association. Fantastic.
If you're going to recommend a book on politics, try not to recommend one written 55 years ago by a paranoid religious conspiracy theorist who wrote more illegitimate, disingenuous bunk than L. Ron Hubbard and Joseph Smith put together.
Compare alcohol to smoking, instead - because cigarettes are proven to be dangerous to people other than just the person using 'em, many places around the world, both on national and local levels have gone to great lengths to ban smoking in public, to similar childish outrage.PeterMerkin69 said:
Now, personally I believe alcohol should have more restrictions put on it - for example, only being allowed to drink at a pub, bar or club would significantly lower the amount of domestic violence (or street violence) caused by drunk shitheads who can't control themselves.
Personally I don't see why anyone who uses guns as a "hobby" can't just switch to using an air gun or something, like normal hobbyists. If all you're doing is shooting at sheets of paper, do you really need a shotgun or semi-automatic handgun?
Then you can say that your hobby is actually harmless because you're just using a complex toy, not a deadly weapon - alcohol may be a contributing factor to drunk driving or idiots taking instagram pictures of their dicks, but at least it has a purpose other than violence.
Lets look at the difference in manpower usage to incident however. According to the US government, your average American spends about 100 hours per annum commuting too and from work. Now if we (just for the sake of 'good enough for forum work') take it as read that people will then spend roughly the same amount of time running up to the shops after work, that gives us 200 hours per annum and then if we assume that they drive somewhere over the weekend, to the shops but not to work, lets call it about 233 hours per annum (the weekend being roughly a third of the week we add roughly a third)TornadoADV said:
so if we then multiply that by the US population we ger roughly 72600916661 driving hours in the US per annum.
Now, going by a 32,367 road toll per anum that gives us one fatal incident per every 2243053.6 driving hours.
Now outside of a range (which nobody, to the best of my knowledge is trying to shut down ranges) and hunting (ditto) a firearm is lying inactive unless it is being used for the purpose of defence and offence. Now do you really think that they can match that usage hours to fatal incident ratio?
On top of that, it is called a road toll for a reason, it has been deemed, due to the nature of an interconnected economy that cars are necessary to keep it running, what is being discussed now is does the US need to accept a 'firearm toll', are they performing enough good to justify the death toll?
In addition it must be remembered that cars are under higher restrictions in the US than firearms are. your car must be registered and you must be licensed to drive it. Both of these need to be renewed regularly. Vehicles can be deemed un-roadworthy, you are not to operate them drunk or under the influence of drugs, you must be insured for third party damage and there are road rules that must be followed in operating a vehicle.
Alcohol and Firearms are both considered aggravating factors in terms of the seriousness of the crime in US Law. So in the eyes of the law, they ARE the same.HellbirdIV said:
That would be awful but I can appreciate your consistency. Still, though... pubs and bars only? Have a heart.HellbirdIV said:
Define normal, because most people in the US use powder actuated weapons for their shooting hobby.
It's fun because it is a little bit scary and dangerous. You're using controlled explosions to lob a pointy piece of metal very far, very quickly. Air rifles go pfbt and it's over. There's quite a difference between marksmanship with slow weapons and fighting a semi-auto to keep it true, too. One is more about self control, the other is about controlling the weapon.
I wouldn't go so far as to say they're harmless, it's physically impossible to divest yourself of the responsibility for making accessible weapons by supporting the industry, or politicians, or lobbies, but it's not necessarily the same as shooting someone yourself. If you go to a baseball game where beer is sold, or visit a pub, or buy alcohol and drink it at home, you're just as responsible for traffic accidents as I am for mass shootings.
I don't accept intent or purpose as a valid arguments against guns, though. That's too close to the hoodoo notion that guns were created to kill and so they have bad vibrations or whatever. Poppycock. We can use them for whatever we want, including benign marksmanship, and besides the people killed in traffic accidents are just as dead as people who were shot. If it's truly about the victims then it shouldn't really matter to us how they died, just that they died.
I obviously wouldn't give up my guns. I wouldn't do anything to anybody, unless they physically came onto my land and tried to take my property from me. Lets just say my closest neighbor is about a mile away, and it's real easy to lose things around these parts...
One thing I wouldn't do is tell everyone ;-)
Take a look at what happened with New Jersey's attempt. I think you had to either sell out of state, render inop, register, etc your AR15 after they passed their little "Assault Weapons Ban". I believe the total compliance was in the single digits percentage wise. I'm sure there are a lot of guns in NJ Backyards a few feet down.
A ban in the USA would probably result in everyone just hiding their shit. Now a ban with confiscation? As in actually trying to enforce it? LOLerskates. That'll be fun.
And who's gonna do it? Local cops are some of the biggest gun guys I know, and they generally agree that law-abiding citizens who own a few AR15's because they like the damn things aren't the problem with society that politicians are currently making them out to be.
Take a look at what happened with New Jersey's attempt. I think you had to either sell out of state, render inop, register, etc your AR15 after they passed their little "Assault Weapons Ban". I believe the total compliance was in the single digits percentage wise. I'm sure there are a lot of guns in NJ Backyards a few feet down.
A ban in the USA would probably result in everyone just hiding their shit. Now a ban with confiscation? As in actually trying to enforce it? LOLerskates. That'll be fun.
And who's gonna do it? Local cops are some of the biggest gun guys I know, and they generally agree that law-abiding citizens who own a few AR15's because they like the damn things aren't the problem with society that politicians are currently making them out to be.
"Why? Because fuck you, that's why"TK421 said:
And the great thing about the USA is that that's all the reason you need for a nice gun collection (in free states at least.) =D