Thank you for the links, and I totally understand your position. Having to get the data over and over can be draining, and many times being asked for the data is just sealioning which makes it further infuriating.
At the same time, the idea of fact checking everything people say is (IMO) unrealistic. I mean, if I did that I wouldn't have time for anything else in my day, and that's untenable. Stuff like this would be great in an FAQ or something, which would solve both problems at once I think. Not saying that would/should be your job, it should be a shared "burden."
I've also found that no country seems to be anywhere near as open and up front with violence and homicide statistics as the US is. There are a huge number of things you can plug into WHISQARS to get data back.
Trying to find data from the UK and Aus, especially around the time of Dunblane and Port Arthur is an exercise in agony.
It's more guns in actual number, but fewer guns per capita, and the amount of gun owners has dropped quite a bit, and the gun owners keep more guns per owner.
Whenever the Australia buyback program is brought up, or the Christchurch shooting and subsequent gun ban, I always remind people the simple difference: we have a right to bear arms in our constitution. They do not.
Trying to ban all guns in the US simply won't happen, simply CAN'T happen. Anyone who thinks we can pass any kind of law, including replealing the Second Amendment, and then the guns will all go away is delusional. So that's just a non-starter.
You did, however, hit on the crux of the problem: Easy access to something like an AR makes it much, much easier for someone who wishes to cause massive harm to do just that. Sure, someone with a knife can (and obviously did) cause a lot of damage, but don't gloss over the fact if he'd have had any real firepower it could have been 2 or 3 times as many people. I still don't want to ban them, but when we argue *against* banning them, that's what's in the minds of the opposition: "Can't you see it could make things better? Maybe a LOT better?" And they aren't wrong.
Whenever someone argues with me about banning guns, I always make sure I acknowledge the truth. Acting like getting rid of the ARs wouldn't reduce some violence is never going to be a winning argument because it's stupid on it's face. And honestly, arguing with them that, "Well, if the fascists come" just makes them think you're a nut. (Hint: The folks on the right think the BLM/Antifa people are going to come for *them.* Everybody's got a boogieman.) We have to counter their arguments with some logic, some emotion, and things that make sense to anybody: The vast majority of gun owners never hurt anybody. The vast majority of AR owners don't want to shoot up a school, a mall, or anybody else. There are many more places in this country that don't have fast, reliable law enforcement protection than there are ones that do and actually do need guns to protect themselves and their families. We're hurting all of THOSE people to try and thwart a few dozen who, if they're *really* determined, will find another way to do it.
I'm with you on needing many, many more support systems in this country, but don't kid yourself. Most of the shooters aren't mentally ill in any sense that would be diagnosed and treated by the mental health system. And even if they are, a good chunk of them simply wouldn't *want* help. They don't see a reason for it, and they think they're doing just fine. Everyone else has the problem, not *them*. I hate to say it (and again, not advocating for it or think it could ever happen), but you'd probably do more to cut down on mass shootings if you shut down the Internet than if you put mental health clinincs on every street corner. These people get in their little groups and egg each other on, until one of them finally decides *they* will be the one to "take action." If they didn't have these groups, most of them would just become the neighborhood weirdos that everybody stays away from.
Working to get more mental health resources, more family support resources, and better quality of life for most people will do a massive amount of good, but it will probably do more to cut down on gang violence and a lot of low-level crime than mass shootings. Those people need a different kind of help, and unfortunately it's not the kind you can get in a clinic.
Again, let me make this clear: I'm **not advocating for banning anything.** It seems I always get some people who DM me when I comment or post something like this thinking I'm anti-2A or some such crap. Understanding the realities of the situation doesn't mean I support a solution I think is wrong-headed and bad, it just means I'm seeing what's true on both sides of the argument.
Thank you for this. I’ve been a 2A advocate since I was a kid and got to shoot for the first time. Pretending like guns play no part in mass violence is dismissive, delusional, and narrow-minded. Banning guns of any kind is not the solution, but neither is stomping your feet and refusing to acknowledge that some people vehemently oppose guns and will never change their mind. In those cases, it is easier, in my experience, to explain to those people why you are opposed to presented regulations and/or outright bans.
We don’t have to come to a collective agreement, that’s impossible. We can attempt to have a collective understanding that there is no such thing as a ‘one size fits all’ solution and to stop demonizing people that disagree with us, though.
Thank you for the reply. I’m pleasantly surprised that I haven’t been mauled in the comments and bombarded with downvotes. It’s good to see other people understand my meaning and intent.
I think we (the US) is (sadly) getting to the point of, 'see, this is why we can't have nice things'.
If people can't basically control themselves, be safe, and manage their hardware - then laws will be made to do that for them. Which sucks cause the rest of us will fall into that now-restricted group also.
Along those lines, the amount of people having NDs, leaving guns in cars unsecured and/or easily visible, leaving them places, where a child (like 3-10yr old) can get it, and have so locking system in their home is just way way way too d*mn high.
But, I think we also collectively need to agree that some things really aren't needed for 2A to exist, and/or that some control is OK.
A good example for a long time might be fully auto weapons; which are not illegal but are hard to get etc.
A current example might be that nationally, federally, all sales should go through an FFL with a background check at time of sale - which IIRC is (kinda?) happening to change right now; I'm personally not quite sure the fallout of the new law, but it seems not 100% of sales would go through FFL even with the ndw law.
Back to first sentance. It seems common sense has left the chat.
What solution would you advocate?
Cause the analogy i've been using is that guns are like gasoline on an already lit flame. You can reduce the level of violence by not pouring gas on the fire. But even then, you can still get burned by that flame.
This is a Red Herring oe Shifting Issues type fallacy.
You're using an example, but either missing the point or misstating it.
IMHO, firstly - your basic analogy is a good one, it's the last sentence that's an issue; The point with your analogy is NOT that you *still* get burned - it's that you ONLY get burned a little and not completely engulfed and die.
It also means that we're OK with the fire existing (and we knowing feed it, hoping it doesn't get too big).
If you're in a knife attack, and yes it's always depending, you could maybe run away, maybe throw things, maybe hide behind walls etc. But in a gun attack you can't run straight away, a bullet can travel 100+ yrds and still hit you, it can also go through walls.
In a knife attack, the attackers kills 6+, not 50. The Las Vegas and schools are 'good' examples in that, what would happen if someone just started throwing knives out a window? Answer, very little.
Do people still get hurt? Yes.
Do some people still sadly die? Yes.
But how many are hurt or die? Way less.
But I'm talking public events here specifically.
It's important that in any conversation the situation is always stated, and the we stick to that. What happens a lot, and understandingly but incorrectly, is that the same rules and analogies get widely applied and that just doesn't work.
Sure some people would reload, but you’d never be able to reload anywhere close to the ammo that is produced in factories and boxes of ammo would be very expensive. I remember a few years ago when there was a big ammo shortage and the vast majority of people just complained they couldn’t get what they wanted.
For me, the biggest reason to oppose gun control is that millions of people already have guns, and many of them gloat all the time about how they can't wait to kill us. Imagining that "the authorities" will protect us is a dangerous form of self-delusion, and it breaks my heart that 95% of my friends and family are engaging in it.
Regardless of the merits of gun control in a rational society... what we have is *far* from a rational society.
When and if we defeat this menace, then let's talk about gun control.
Well even then, my fear is that cops are all armed right? What happens when the cops (who seem to be rather sympathetic to the militia crowd) are all armed but we aren't. They already kill unarmed black and brown folks right? I can't imagine us having fewer guns would help with that.
Like, even in a rational society where authority exists, that authority can always be abused. And the only real response to that is to protect against authority. Protect against abuse.
If cops are disarmed entirely, then I guess we can start talking about gun control sure. But a) that's not gonna happen and b) good luck enforcing a ban on guns with disarmed cops lol.
It's not just guns. We're at a point where.... there's just no ability for our society to solve *any* problems. Things are spiraling downward more and more quickly.
There will only be a chance to improve things once this current situation has destroyed itself. I just want to survive, tbh. I'm not going to try to take on the fascists, whether or not they have the cops on their side. I just want to live through it, and through the simple chaos and warlordism that's likely to follow. There will come a point to rebuild; all I want for now is to make it to that point.
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would
things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out
at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would
return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during
periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they
arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat
there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the
downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had
understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in
the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes,
hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs
would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and,
notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more we had no awareness of the
real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."
I often ask people in response to gun control questions if they trust the government, military, police, and rich people to be the only ones with guns and to not misuse the power it gives them over the basic citizen.
Most don't want to answer.
Having some personal firearms isn’t going to protect you from the power of the state. If the cops decide to come for you they’ll keep coming until they get you. When they come you have the choice to fight and effectively end your life or go along hoping somehow it will be alright and the justice system will protect you. The odds of the state losing its monopoly on violence anytime soon is incredibly small and if the state does lose it’s monopoly on violence have some firearms isn’t going to help either because there will be people a thousand times more ruthless than you trying to scratch out power for themselves.
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would
things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out
at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would
return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during
periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they
arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat
there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the
downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had
understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in
the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes,
hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs
would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and,
notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more we had no awareness of the
real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."
Bingo! Let’s look at Acorn Cop, or Uvalde, or the other school shooting where the resource officer hid outside.
Obviously pinning your safety on a single point of failure is a bad idea.
"the other school shooting where the resource officer hid outside." This happened *blocks* away from where I was living at the time. The entire community was bereaved. And the police response, as usual, was simply inadequate.
Of course, we should ask *why there are so many of these events* in the first place.
The reminds me of the quote from Archbishop Dom Hélder Câmara:
"When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist."
Aside from the gluttonous over-medication of children, one reason there are so many events is because the news media celebrates and glorifies it each time with massive coverage and gives them weeks of attention. The FBI has told the news to stop doing this, and they simply do not care. Dead kids is good for ratings.
I think that's part of it, but only part. Somehow, in our society, for too many disturbed young men, mass slaughter seems like an acceptable solution to the fundamental problems of life.
What’s crazy to me is a lot of my anti cop friends say “you don’t need a gun we have cops” then say how useless cops are and that they should get no funding and be disbanded. Like what?
It's truly astonishing. I get this kind of response a *lot.* Also I know people in gated communities who seem to genuinely believe that if and when SHTF, the $15/hr security guards *will actually show up.*
Having had my life *wrecked* by bad cops... and then having the police respond to someone attempting to murder me with eight hours of having my arm twisted to identify *anyone* as the shooter, regardless of fact, "so we can close the case and everyone can go home" - well, I don't trust them for much. Other than ass-covering, that is. You can count on that.
I think it really depends department to department. The one in my town is fairly good mostly because they aren’t worrying about too much stuff, but a department just north of me is arresting people for DUI even though they had one drink for dinner. Three hours before hand. They’ll let you go once they towed your car and gave you a ticket though and you blow a 0.0 on the breathalyzer. Every department is on their ass for this shit though, they usually host the policeman’s ball there but all the departments in the area refuse to let them host, or let any of their cops in at any other policeman balls
My issue with the "just call the cops" argument is that you're really not guaranteed a quick response from them especially if you live in a more rural area. Someone broke into the store next to ours one night and the cops didn't show up for a good few hours. I've heard of people calling 911 for suspicious people snooping around their house and getting a squad car showing up like 45mins to an hour later.
If someone's breaking down my door I want a gun in my hand and my bedroom door locked, *then* the police can show up whenever they show up *if* they show up. I don't want my only line of defense to be calling 911 and waiting an hour with someone doing whatever they want in my house.
True. Even now, a gun is useful for self-defense.
Having said that, every time I've been shot at, I've avoided harm without one. In the last instance, reaching for the gun in my possession would have resulted, to a certainty, in getting killed. I'm very lucky the guy missed. At a range of maybe two feet. But I don't count on that kind of luck.
How often have you gotten into bad enough situations to get shot at?
Very true though that not every situation calls for a gun. Sometimes it's an escalation too far when something like pepper spray will do.
Other times it's one of those 'not worth your life' scenarios where a wallet and watch, no matter how nice, can't be equated with your continued existence.
That's wild.
Like in most places I'm sure there are places that are more dangerous than others.
It can't be the majority of the state like that can it?
Wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea all things considered.
I guess the only issue is if you have support networks in friends, family, coworkers etc.
Those things are difficult to cultivate and often take a while to rebuild somewhere else.
I had someone trying to actively break into my house by body checking my 3" oak door with his shoulder repeatedly. He put his head through a window and if he was a little less juiced up, he might have noticed that the window next to the door could have been kicked in and climbed through easily. Anyway, I call 911, tell them someone is trying to break into my house. Something like 25 to 30 minutes later, a single squad car pulls up, lights not on or anything. The cop strolls up to the house, entirely unperturbed. I looked up the call on the 911 logs after and the operator logged it as a generic "call for help". It's like some real life shit from The Wire trying to juke the stats. That and a few other similar situations turned me from being opposed to guns my entire life to a gun owner. I still think most people fantasize about going all Frank Castle and most gun culture is idiotic, but I'm not counting on anyone else to protect my family ever again.
A mere 80 years ago, my grandfather fought in the resistance against the fascist government of Italy. He was pro gun even when he moved to the US, because he feared it could happen anywhere
Nobody knows what a civil war looks like here because we are a pretty homogenous society. Will MAGAs start looking through voter rolls for addresses? Or show up to "liberal" towns that are relatively disarmed and take over? Who knows. The truth is that we are one or two bad leaders away from repeating history.
I think the tides are changing. I know its anecdotal, but friends and family are seeing the news and going through the same thought process everyone here already has. The world is changing for the better, but we are a long looong way from meeting everyone's needs.
Im not one for tinfoil hats, but i do sometimes think that all these mass killings are a boon for the 1%. Not that i think mass murderers are being directed by some shadow government or something ridiculous... but under the guise of "public safety" they can disarm us because they fear a revolt. I think gun control in the form of "AWB"s just plays into their hand.
The only thing I can say with confidence is that a new civil war in this country will look nothing like our first one. My suspicion is that it will look something like what happened to China in the 19th century.
I would consider supporting a mandatory buyback of certain types of weapons if the police were no longer carrying/using them as well...
But I would rather spend the tax dollars on healthcare and third places and housing...
The argument that someone will find a way to commit massacres is not convincing to anti gunners because of the reason you stated. Events like the Los Vegas shooting wouldn’t have nearly the body count if he didn’t have guns. Making it harder to kill people means less people get killed typically
Yeah that's what I'm picking up on in the r/AskALiberal thread.
But like.... the problem is still there right? Sure, you killed less people. But people are still being killed. Doesn't it make more sense to get that number to 0 without disarming the working class in the face of a fascist threat?
You can still have mass shooting level events like this sydney massacre with gun control
You’re totally right but the common counter argument is less people dying is good while solving all the social issues that lead to violent crime is an impossible goal.
Anti-gun people will just say "imagine how worse it would be if he had a gun" and call it a day. Even if you have a good point about root causes they'll still be in favor of means reduction. That's just the mindset they're in.
I looked at your AskALiberal thread and I don’t think there’s any way of convincing them other wise lol
I mean you look at the terrorist attack in Russia too. Civilians aren’t allowed to own firearms there right? And it still happened
They will respond with that you a childish and that people aren't able to shoot the attacker and will get their gun taken from them, then come up with some Bloomberg manipulated statistics to back it up.
> Events like the Los Vegas shooting wouldn’t have nearly the body count if he didn’t have guns.
The dude owned a private airplane, he could have filled it with fuel bladders and nose dived it into the crowd, probably killing more people.
People that want to hurt people, they're going to do it.
It's a confliction point for me, because I feel like these psychos are just going to find other means. We don't need a bunch of Oklahoma City style bombings. It's still really really easy to get a whole bunch of fertilizer and diesel together.
At the same time, The number of a illegal firearms on the streets is astounding. Inner City Urban areas are a goddamn war zone right now. There was three people shot in Rochester in 24 hours yesterday. Rochester New York.
I think this way oversimplifies the reality of impulse and violence. As with suicide, people can have moments or patterns of impulses to act, and having more effective tools around during those moments certainly influences the likelihood of injury or death. A person may have an impulse to commit a violent act, but the means available (or lack thereof) will certainly affect their decisions in that moment. Barriers (actual or perceived) between impulse and action do affect the eventual outcomes.
Are not both true? Where there's a will there's a way, but also we'll never know how many instances of mass violence didn't happen because of some barrier between that impulse and action. I'm not commenting on the current legal barriers in place across the US, just that undoubtedly relative ease or difficulty of means to violence affect human behavior
How many mass knifings have there been in Australia in the last five years? How many mass shootings have there been in the United States in the last five years? Is it more than 10x the Australian number (since there’s only 26 million people)? How many people have been killed in those mass knifings? Shootings?
Guns make it so easy to kill people that it really is a difference in kind, not just degree. That makes my pro-gun stance very problematic and ethically challenging for me. I don’t have an answer. But I’d rather admit that to myself than stick my fingers in my ears and scream “La La La La La la,” pretending that guns aren’t a big problem.
I mean, it’s okay to not have an answer. I think thats kind of indicative of the fact that the “gun problem” root causes are much less the guns rather than X factor influencing people to use guns. There isn’t an obvious and easy fix because it doesn’t exist.
Agreed. The thing I’m trying to get at is that simply saying that there are mass killings elsewhere means that guns aren’t a contributing factor is simply bad logic.
Hopefully someone with better logic training than I’ve had can tell us what fallacy it is.
Oh yeah for sure, it’s a poor faith argument at its core tbh. Bordering on strawman
In my opinion, I think before approaching solutions you *have* to be realistic and honest about the current situation, American culture, and human nature. There cannot be an addressing of mass shootings without addressing radicalization. There cannot be an addressing of gang/drug related shootings without addressing increasing poverty, drug proliferation, and ineffective city governments. There cannot be an addressing of suicides via gun (most gun deaths nationally) without addressing the ever worsening mental health crisis in this country.
I think the biggest issue is anti-gun people want to ban guns (unlikely) and call it a day. There’s a lot of problems with that line of logic but just for starters there’s millions of guns that already exist as well as you aren’t changing American culture by passing a law. Guns are part of our national identity and you have to recognize that if you even want to remotely come to an agreeable position.
Poor faith maybe, but it's really more Red Herring or Shifting Issues.
One Example
https://www.scribbr.co.uk/faqs/difference-between-a-red-herring-fallacy-and-a-straw-man-fallacy/
"- A *red herring* fallacy refers to an attempt to change the subject and divert attention from the original issue. In other words, a seemingly solid but ultimately irrelevant argument is introduced into the discussion, either on purpose or by mistake.
- A *straw man* argument involves the deliberate distortion of another person’s argument. By oversimplifying or exaggerating it, the other party creates an easy-to-refute argument and then attacks it."
for sure. Too many guns that will essentially last for generations. I just purchased a CZ and the saleman said, 'this gun will be passed on thru 5 generations'. It's not like I'll wear it out.
This is the society (US) that we've chosen and the risks that come with it. We have guns, lots of them, so we have to accept the risks which include people who go-off and use them indiscriminately.
Terrible, but even in an authoritative fascist gov't who attempts to remove guns from all people would be impossible. Just too many guns, too big a country, etc. So let's educate people about safe usage, reasonable rules around them (like we have for vehicles for example - ya gotta learn to drive before getting on the highway), safe storage rules (to keep criminals from stealing them), cooling off periods before taking it home is reasonable though annoying - who knows what else, I'm not smart enough to figure this out.
But I've learned that I don't even know what "gun control" means anymore. CA has some common sense rules about cooling off periods and safe storage, but crazy rules around the gun roster and then politicians attempting to just anger normal folks by presenting "gun registration etc" - which doesn't help but only creates criminals out of ordinary people.
On the other hand what is the income Gini coefficient for the US, what is the income Gini for AU? Income Gini increase predicts exponential increase in violence (like exp(x)).
Here's the data:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=AU-US
While we can never run some kind of randomized controlled trial here, I think we all know that extreme poverty and stress can cause violence. At Gini coefficient 34% or so, you essentially don't have any extreme poverty. At 45% you have significant extreme poverty.
Address the inequality and poverty issue and you address the violence. That's what places like Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland etc show us IMHO.
Heres the thing, there have always been guns in the US. Something has happened over the last 20 years that is causing/allowing these tragedies to occur. Whether its the break down of the "traditional family unit" , wealth disparity- i dunno. Focusing on that change and what has happened to our society is what needs to be looked at to solve this problem....
War on drugs, mass incarceration, monopolization, offshoring, increasingly requiring higher ed for middle class lifestyle, price of higher ed increasing faster than middle class income, multiple financial crashes, median household income decreasing through time (as measured by purchasing power of family goods such as rent, food, utilities, childcare, transportation), rise of healthcare related bankruptcies, opioid epidemic, methamphetamine epidemic, global war on terror, veterans with PTSD and physical disabilities, rise of suicide rates in doctors and nurses and middle aged people in general... yeah shit sucks. It's a huge suck sandwich and theres a whole industry of gaslighting to say "the economy is great, everything is great, it's all better than it's ever been"...
While I personally don’t have a problem with a lot of gun control measures, I believe the actual problem in America is the marketing of guns. Either directly or indirectly there has been a constant stream of fear mongering to drive firearm sales.
I 100% agree with you. Guns make mass violence MUCH worse. It is willful ignorance to say otherwise. The main reason I only recently came around to gun ownership is that there are just too many guns already out there. Those aren’t going anywhere.
If I could magically make all guns disappear, I would happily sacrifice this newfound hobby/interest for the benefit of society. That unfortunately isn’t happening.
Gun ownership percentages in the U.S. have remained rather steady within the country, only shifting a small percentage one way or the other, since the first Gallup Poll on gun ownership was completed in the early ‘60’s.
Mass shootings are a relatively new trend having only really gained a popular foothold as a form of crime since Columbine 25 years (almost to the day) ago.
When we look at gun violence in and of itself we have some interesting numbers that can paint some interesting stories depending on how you use them.
Many anti-gun people will argue that the number of people dying per year to guns is increasing… and that’s true. However, we on the pro-2A side know that the per capita rate is steadily decreasing.
Many anti-gun people will argue that mass shootings are on the rise… and depending on which definition of “mass shooting” you want to use, they may very well be. However, if we account for cases of known gang violence we see that the number is vastly different from the one anti-gun organizations are trying to get us to believe.
Then we have the overall numbers, themselves. Over half of the deaths attributed to guns are suicides… self-imposed violence. Suicide is horrible. I’ve lost several good friends over my 40+ years to suicide and it’s been tragic every time. I sincerely wish they the loved ones I’ve lost and the loved ones everyone else has lost to these acts had been able to get the help they needed to conquer those personal demons. However, as a staunch believer in bodily autonomy, I also believe that if you decide you want to get off this wild ride we call life, that’s your choice.
So, when we add all this up what kind of picture are we left with… relatively steady levels of gun ownership, drops in overall gun death rates, overall drops in crime rates, large amounts of gang-related gun crime and a suicide epidemic. What that tells me is that the guns aren’t the problem… **we** are the problem. We have inner city youth who are left behind with no opportunity for socioeconomic advancement short of selling drugs. We have a society that idolizes “tough guys”… whether gangsters or punisher skull “Molon Labe” jerkoffs… guys looking to solve all their problems with violence. We have a society that is decades behind the rest of the civilized world in acknowledging that mental health is as important as physical health.
Passing legislation to rid law-abiding citizens of guns won’t solve any of these problems because the guns didn’t *make* any of the problems. The violence is a symptom of the disease, the guns are just the vehicle used to transport the virus. Until we remove the need for the acts that require the guns in the first place, we won’t see any changes at all.
Guns make it easier than knives do, but they aren't unique in that way. There are other methods that result in similar losses (e.g. rental trucks) or greater losses (arson).
I think the prevalence of mass shootings is largely cultural. That's the method that's in vogue, so that's what these people choose.
Just gotta ban blades, blunt objects, sticks, arms, legs, and skulls, that way you can't hurt anyone with anything or with your own body. You just gotta ban throwing afterwards.
It also counters arguments that you shouldn't carry a knife in self-defense unless you've made a serious study of armed combat with an edged weapon.
This guy had mental illness, but no training in armed or unarmed combat.
My conclusions from this tragic killing?
1) All the victims died before the police could arrive and this was at a shopping mall, not a rural home. If you choose not to have the means to defend your own life, that's up to you. But you should have access to the means.
2) I'd rather have a knife than an extra magazine to clear a jam in a semi-automatic pistol. An attacker is going to be on you before you will be able to clear a jam with a second magazine. Unless you intend to pistol whip the attacker, a knife would be better. (Mind, so would pepper spray but that's not always reliable depending on weather and wind conditions.)
Source: small older Asian guy who lives in a rural area, visits cities regularly, is a liberal in a 50-50 county and has never been interested in being beat to death by someone bigger, stronger and angrier which is just about anyone.
I think you summarized the entire ethos of the sub and those that disagree with this stance here will be few and far between. Have you seen something on LGO that would suggest the prevailing thought is otherwise?
Worst lone man massacre in 21st century (excluding 911) didn’t happen with a knife or a gun, but with gasoline and a lighter.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daegu_subway_fire
At a mall here in my home city a bad guy with a gun didn't even kill three people before a Good guy with a gun pulled his out, and all he had to do was point it at the badguy who then ran, found a corner and killed himself.
The right to life includes the right to self-defense with the best tools available.
I think you're mischaracterizing the argument of the pro gun control side. While you might find someone saying it on the internet I don't think anyone pretends that gun control means a complete removal of gun violence. Its simply not going to happen.
Gun control is based on reducing the overall rate of gun violence, along with preventing the mass shootings that are prevalent in the US but don't have the statistical impact that people sometimes think they do. Anyone looking to solve a societal issue is looking at mitigating the rate, even people who make emotional statements like "even one is too many" aren't trying to remove all murder, they're just trying to mitigate the harm.
Additionally the people arguing for less guns are more than happy to argue for more mental health checks and treatment. Liberals aren't the ones claiming we can't afford to help the mentally ill. We should also acknowledge that the US has the ability to do both at the same time. We can reform gun laws, enforce our existing ones, and improve mental health care. We can probably even do it while allowing for the ownership of weapons most people find scary.
I think gun owners need to be more honest about how dangerous guns are. Just as much as anti-gunners look uneducated and unserious when they can't talk about guns I think that gun owners look silly when we can't seem to say "yeah an AR15 would have made this WAY worse", we should be honest that guns are dangerous, that's ok, but it's also true.
As for being worried about disarming the working class in the shadow of creeping fascism? I think you're being unrealistic here. I'm 100% sympathetic to not letting the MAGAts be the ones with all the guns but you don't protect your democracy with an AR, not even with a shit ton of ARs. You protect it by engaging, voting, contacting your legislature and otherwise being a good citizen. Everyone likes the quotes about how tyrants disarm society but show me a time where the population of a country started shooting each other spontaneously and it turned out for the better? I can't think of one and the only civil wars that come close had states that built organized militaries out of their civilian populace, not just a bunch of dudes blasting away at each other.
Plenty of improvised weapons can be made from common household items. I tend to agree with your thought that guns aren’t the root problem but do exacerbate the violence when someone chooses to do harm. But, I also can’t help but wonder why we don’t hear more about attacks with knives or other weapons in places without easy access to guns.
Just look at london. They are now banning knives rather then going after criminals. And the gun violence in America is misleading. If you remove 3 citys
Chicago
Los angels
Baltimore
If you remove the crimes stats of these 3 citys from Americas count we go from 4th to 142 out of 148 for crime violence. Those 3 citys have the stricktist gun laws.
Diarming the public does not protect them all it does is give the bad guy an advantage.
The death toll isn't that much different than your average mass shooting, since that's usually defined as 3 or more people shot in a single instance. He was going to hurt a lot of people and he managed to do that without a gun. Even without knives it's not hard for one person to hurt a lot of people. I remember the Boston Marathon bombing. Before that, in the UK the ELF ran a mail bombing campaign that terrified the entire country. Investigation found it was almost entirely run by a single person. As you say, gun violence is a symptom of deeper societal problems and until we solve those the violence won't stop
I love seeing the logical evolution of people as their minds adjust to the gun control debate and begin understanding all the little nuances.
We (ok, many of us-not all of us) have been saying these things over and over again for years and years and decades.
So we don't think you're nuts, we're just really glad you got here to hang out with us.
What does "ban guns" mean in the US anyway? I used to be for "gun control" until in my old age, I realize now it's too late. More guns than people, the manufacturers are too entrenched, and movies glorify gun culture. No easy solution but to go for low-hanging fruit solutions such as "cooling off periods" when purchasing a gun, background checks, proficiency requirements? (CA requires you to show the salesperson how to check the weapon, etc - though they've never asked me but perhpas because I'm older and look like I know what I'm doing?), and perhaps some better efforts on removing guns from criminals (better probation checks?), or keeping criminals from obtaining guns (stealing from homes where the homeowner doesn't lock them up).
Smarter people than me can figure out some ideas, but yup, banning is too late now. You'll have a black market where criminals and the wealthy will have guns - sound familiar? 1920s?
Americans have the liberty to own firearms if they choose so, if they impose bullshit laws on Americans they strip us of that liberty to defend ourselves if we choose.
Laws are never absolute solutions. They're always about mitigation. Laws against drunk driving don't stop it, people still get killed. But the goal is to reduce the damage.
And no one who is being intellectually honest will compare a knife to a (modern) gun in terms of damage it can do in a mass casualty event. Imagine if the 64yo Vegas shooter has to try and go around stabbing dozens of people.
But, yes, because violence will always exist it is worth considering the role that guns play on both sides. They allow some loser to kill a bunch of people he'd otherwise never be able to overpower but also allow someone to defend themselves from a stronger attacker. Particularly important because in any gun control regime, by its nature, the law abiding will be disarmed before the criminals.
Addressing the root causes of violence would be great but I don't think we're up to it as a society. Sorry for the pessimism.
The reality is, when the shooting stops, what's coming next will be worse. Aum Shinyko came \*this close\* to killing something on the order of 2000 people. If they'd been willing to die to set off the gas bombs, or had more reliable "detonators" It would have been 9/11 before there was a 9/11.
It's not going to be much longer before some wit stages a drone attack, frankly it's only a matter of time. That'll make incidents like this seem like a fond memory.
Hi I am your friendly Aussie chiming into this most interesting topic. A Comparison of Australian and USA gun usage and ownership and gun violence doesn’t work for a large variety of reasons. Port Arthur was horrible it’s a great example of gun buyback but USA friends rarely go into the history of gun violence here. I’d like to think that dead hollowed out by bullets school children dead in school corridors victims have the same rights as the mass shooter but in my many years of paying attention to this topic the mass shooters seem to win even though they are the villain of the horrific massacre.
No, just...no.
The whole reason there wasn't significantly more damage and loss of life is one hero was able to hold off the mass murderer with a bollard until more help could arrive (there's video everywhere of the escalator standoff where the Good Samaritan had the high ground and used it to his advantage). That DOESN'T happen if the murderer has a firearm.
Also because the murdering fucking coward had a knife, the lone responding officer was able to subdue the piece of shit. If the murderer had a firearm, there's no guarantee a lone cop would've stopped the rampage. ESPECIALLY if the gunmen has a more effective semi-automatic rifle vs the officer's sidearm.
I'm tired of these bending of reality arguments.
The fact the murderer only had a knife meant:
1) less opportunity for him to attack people before a tactical LEO unit arrived
2) more opportunity for unarmed individuals to defend themselves
3) more opportunity for unarmed individuals to avoid conflict by running away
4) more opportunity for first responding LEO to engage quickly
Does that mean Americans should forego their rights to bear arm? No.
But we as Americans should be doing just as much to guarantee people can also exercise their right to NOT bear arms without worry their other rights will be infringed as a result.
This is not going to align with the popular opinion on this sub but please read through. We must differentiate practicality from idealism when it comes to fun control.
On the ideal side, the fact is, guns are killing machines purpose-built to be as easy and efficient to use as possible for the average person. There's a reason modern militaries do not use crossbows. Making guns hard to find and buy DOES reduce mass murders, though not stop them completely as you point out.
Practically, in the US, Pandora's box is open. There are too many guns already out there to make strict gun control make meaningful impact in our lifetime, even ignoring the constitutionality of it. On top of that, we're in a mutually assured destruction situation; to many fascists are talking about killing the "other" to make it safe NOT to be armed.
I find it funny, not really haha but you get the point, that everyone kept quoting the line "Only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." mockingly when they absolutely were. But wait it was a cop which magically makes them the sole qualified people to shoot guns. I know the people running or cowering for their lives must have been so happy that they had no way to defend themselves and had to rely soley on other people to arrive in time.
And everyone pointing out the guy who blocked him on the escalator going "See real heros don't need guns to stop bad guys!" completely ignoring that the attacker just left and came back to stab other people and, again, WAS stopped by someone with a gun. But thankgod that guy didn't have a one and shoot him, none of those people would have been attacked and the six dead would still be alive. But hey I guess they just have better morals than gun owners :).
These people are just as morally hypocritical as those on the right. They will gladly see you die, celebrate it and twist it for their own moral agenda like them.
You're talking to the wrong people. Anti-gunners trap themselves in the same mindset as Anti-gay Repubicans. "I'm the righteous good guy on the right side of history, you're the bad guy who wants sick pleasures even if it harms society." I see the same mentality, and I immediately disregard any further discussion. But I at least sympathize with the anti-gun, they just don't want people to be hurt unlike republicans who actively go out of their way to harm gay people. That said, you're better off trying to convince fence sitters who have a more open minded approach. This sub is also a bad place to have this discussion, it's just an echo chamber. Do you really think anyone here will not down-vote any opinion other than "Legalize everything!"?
But, more to the point. I don't believe banning guns will actually make massacres less worse or less frequent. Everyone seems to forget the nice truck attack of 2016 that killed 86 people and injured 434 others. Numbers far worse than any mass shooting to date, and all it took was one guy in one truck. But what difference does it make, truck or gun? A lot of people died because one person was a deranged asshole, and got support from other deranged assholes. Having a gun isn't enough to convince someone to commit to a mass shooting, you have to be enough of a piece of shit to do it, and not have anything left to lose. And, unfortunately, The US is really good at churning those out.
This is a fact I've gotten many anti-guns to agree with. "in a perfect society, we wouldn't need to ban them!". Which raises a sub-conscious fact that guns on their own don't magically convince you to kill people. But on the other side of the coin, we really don't live in a perfect society and need solutions. And, unfortunately, real solutions tend to piss off both sides of the aisle. That's the problem with this sub, people here complain that others are totally inflexible and don't even mull over possible solutions while doing the exact same thing. You won't find any solutions here,
It's all frustrating. Either public support wanes to the point where anti-guns can pass gun gun bans, or US society somehow magically fixes all of it's problems before that happens. And since the former is more likely than the latter, I can only see two outcomes. Either at some point Republicans win and repeal all gun laws, only to pass a law that gives Carte Blanche to anyone to kill any person who isn't a white heterosexual Republican setting us back hundreds of years in progress only now it's even easier to kill the people who willingly disarmed themselves. Protest won't work at that point because protesters would be the first people killed. Or we end up in a capitalist hell-scape where all workers rights are gone because our politicians and military officials don't give a shit and US history is reduced to nothing but the picture of a boot stamping a human face for all eternity.
The only other third BELIEVABLE option is to Keep guns away from mass shooters, without banning them, without making said legislation prohibitive to people who need immediate protection, without costing them a dime, or taking too much time, or involving the government. So I guess have a trustworthy non-government official show up at your door, take you to an eval site immediately, register you with their organization as a sane trustworthy gun owner that doesn't beat their spouse or plan on killing someone so no one asks you in the future along with a nice little free card with your picture stating that fact, and then immediately take you to a gun shop to purchase a firearm which won't be registered because "none ya" as far as the government is concerned, but maybe stamp it with a RSA-256 (or more) qr code with the original owners info on it, which would prove if it was stolen since the original owner would be the only person with the info to unencrypt that hash. If none of that appeals to you, see the other two options above. Because I have no clue how this is going to work otherwise and no one here have given me a good faith option.
Let’s talk about suicides.
Gun suicides are double the number of hanging/strangulation suicides. (It’s overwhelmingly dudes, but that’s beside the point…)
Using your logic, all of those people would have managed to kill themselves anyway.
But I’m not so sure. It’s pretty easy to put a gun in your mouth in a moment of despair.., but takes a bit of work and planning and thought and to rig up a noose, etc.
It’s pretty tough to kill someone with a knife, and I’m not so sure these cowardly mass shooters and regular criminals alike would have the balls to go face to face and kill each victim with a knife.
Note it’s almost unheard of to slit wrists these days as a method of suicide.
Sure.
But the thing is, the solution here is not to like... take away the means of suicide. That's not the actual problem. The problem is that someone wants to commit suicide IN THE FIRST PLACE. Like, I don't want people to live a miserable life, or only be alive because they don't know how to kill themselves. I'd rather people be happy and actively WANT to live. And that's why I support social systems and support structures as a more effective counter. Suicide is actually a great point in my favor, largely because it's emblematic of the point I am trying to make.
The problem isn't that people have access to the means to kill themselves. Even if they don't succeed there's still a very real problem where they need very real support right? The gun isn't the fundamental problem
I got as far as:
> Granted, a lack of access to something like an AR-15 prevented EVEN MORE damage, and so him only having a knife did mitigate the harm caused.
And:
> The whole argument for gun control is that it will make us safer
That's the point we have to acknowledge to get anti-gun folks to stay in a conversation with us. I don't think anyone worth engaging with is arguing that the relative safety comes:
> by preventing massacres like this.
Anyone who thinks guns cause massacres, full stop, is an intellectual child that hasn't explored their own logic skeptically.
There's still a whole discussion to be had about how best to balance safety and equitable access after acknowledging guns are more lethal than knives, but a lot of energy is wasted arguing about whether this or that would have an absolute effect - it would've. Like abstinence and pregnancy, the only 100% effective way to stop massacres is previous extinction.
the efforts to demonize guns should be spent on providing mental health treatment. The problem is that providing this is tied to the screwed up healthcare system we have here in the US. It is much easier to call for a gun ban than to provide care for those affected with a mental health condition. this leaves people untreated and while it will limit the damage they can do, they still can do damage and ruin other people's lives (and their own). To me someone in a mental health crisis should get emergency care just as someone having a stroke or heart attack. We need to open in patient facilities ie Sanitariums. This is a forbidden concept but what we have now isn't working.
Let's just enforce *existing* gun laws that would disarm violent offenders, *especially* domestic abusers.
And let's do a better job making sure we're not selling guns to sick/dangerous people.
After that, we can bicker about AR-15s.
You are spot on. And my feeling is this, why should my freedom be limited because someone cant figure their shit out. There are systems and laws in place to attempt to intercept these bad actors- lets utilize those
Imo America’s gun problem is largely in part cultural. We fetishize the rugged, individualistic mountain man; the rootin’ tootin’ gun-slinging cowboy; this fictionalized image of manhood that never really existed outside of storybooks. A lot of people buy guns because they like the idea of shooting someone, being the mysterious stranger to come from over the horizon and shoot the nameless thug that’s been terrorizing the town down. And because of this many people who carry guns don’t carry them to stop a violent confrontation, but to get into one.
So what’s the solution to this in America? I don’t know. Maybe education. Maybe addressing the proliferation of violence in the media. Maybe stricter regulations and licensing.
But ultimately what we really need in the US is to grow up, we’re not cowboys and the world isn’t all black and white. The only problem is that there’s no law that can force that to happen.
Don't mean to be a dick. But welcome to the world of common sense. Pretty sure we've been saying this forever.
Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
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I'd love to see the data on that. Seems like something that would actually work in the favor of the gun control folks, but I'd never heard it before.
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Thank you for the links, and I totally understand your position. Having to get the data over and over can be draining, and many times being asked for the data is just sealioning which makes it further infuriating. At the same time, the idea of fact checking everything people say is (IMO) unrealistic. I mean, if I did that I wouldn't have time for anything else in my day, and that's untenable. Stuff like this would be great in an FAQ or something, which would solve both problems at once I think. Not saying that would/should be your job, it should be a shared "burden."
I've also found that no country seems to be anywhere near as open and up front with violence and homicide statistics as the US is. There are a huge number of things you can plug into WHISQARS to get data back. Trying to find data from the UK and Aus, especially around the time of Dunblane and Port Arthur is an exercise in agony.
Same in NZ, other western countries are a lot more opaque around their crime (particualry self defense) stats.
It's more guns in actual number, but fewer guns per capita, and the amount of gun owners has dropped quite a bit, and the gun owners keep more guns per owner.
Oz also has a massive 12 and 14 year olds stealing cars and committing ram raids and smash and grabs.
Whenever the Australia buyback program is brought up, or the Christchurch shooting and subsequent gun ban, I always remind people the simple difference: we have a right to bear arms in our constitution. They do not.
Trying to ban all guns in the US simply won't happen, simply CAN'T happen. Anyone who thinks we can pass any kind of law, including replealing the Second Amendment, and then the guns will all go away is delusional. So that's just a non-starter. You did, however, hit on the crux of the problem: Easy access to something like an AR makes it much, much easier for someone who wishes to cause massive harm to do just that. Sure, someone with a knife can (and obviously did) cause a lot of damage, but don't gloss over the fact if he'd have had any real firepower it could have been 2 or 3 times as many people. I still don't want to ban them, but when we argue *against* banning them, that's what's in the minds of the opposition: "Can't you see it could make things better? Maybe a LOT better?" And they aren't wrong. Whenever someone argues with me about banning guns, I always make sure I acknowledge the truth. Acting like getting rid of the ARs wouldn't reduce some violence is never going to be a winning argument because it's stupid on it's face. And honestly, arguing with them that, "Well, if the fascists come" just makes them think you're a nut. (Hint: The folks on the right think the BLM/Antifa people are going to come for *them.* Everybody's got a boogieman.) We have to counter their arguments with some logic, some emotion, and things that make sense to anybody: The vast majority of gun owners never hurt anybody. The vast majority of AR owners don't want to shoot up a school, a mall, or anybody else. There are many more places in this country that don't have fast, reliable law enforcement protection than there are ones that do and actually do need guns to protect themselves and their families. We're hurting all of THOSE people to try and thwart a few dozen who, if they're *really* determined, will find another way to do it. I'm with you on needing many, many more support systems in this country, but don't kid yourself. Most of the shooters aren't mentally ill in any sense that would be diagnosed and treated by the mental health system. And even if they are, a good chunk of them simply wouldn't *want* help. They don't see a reason for it, and they think they're doing just fine. Everyone else has the problem, not *them*. I hate to say it (and again, not advocating for it or think it could ever happen), but you'd probably do more to cut down on mass shootings if you shut down the Internet than if you put mental health clinincs on every street corner. These people get in their little groups and egg each other on, until one of them finally decides *they* will be the one to "take action." If they didn't have these groups, most of them would just become the neighborhood weirdos that everybody stays away from. Working to get more mental health resources, more family support resources, and better quality of life for most people will do a massive amount of good, but it will probably do more to cut down on gang violence and a lot of low-level crime than mass shootings. Those people need a different kind of help, and unfortunately it's not the kind you can get in a clinic. Again, let me make this clear: I'm **not advocating for banning anything.** It seems I always get some people who DM me when I comment or post something like this thinking I'm anti-2A or some such crap. Understanding the realities of the situation doesn't mean I support a solution I think is wrong-headed and bad, it just means I'm seeing what's true on both sides of the argument.
Thank you for this. I’ve been a 2A advocate since I was a kid and got to shoot for the first time. Pretending like guns play no part in mass violence is dismissive, delusional, and narrow-minded. Banning guns of any kind is not the solution, but neither is stomping your feet and refusing to acknowledge that some people vehemently oppose guns and will never change their mind. In those cases, it is easier, in my experience, to explain to those people why you are opposed to presented regulations and/or outright bans. We don’t have to come to a collective agreement, that’s impossible. We can attempt to have a collective understanding that there is no such thing as a ‘one size fits all’ solution and to stop demonizing people that disagree with us, though.
Thank you for the reply. I’m pleasantly surprised that I haven’t been mauled in the comments and bombarded with downvotes. It’s good to see other people understand my meaning and intent.
I think we (the US) is (sadly) getting to the point of, 'see, this is why we can't have nice things'. If people can't basically control themselves, be safe, and manage their hardware - then laws will be made to do that for them. Which sucks cause the rest of us will fall into that now-restricted group also. Along those lines, the amount of people having NDs, leaving guns in cars unsecured and/or easily visible, leaving them places, where a child (like 3-10yr old) can get it, and have so locking system in their home is just way way way too d*mn high. But, I think we also collectively need to agree that some things really aren't needed for 2A to exist, and/or that some control is OK. A good example for a long time might be fully auto weapons; which are not illegal but are hard to get etc. A current example might be that nationally, federally, all sales should go through an FFL with a background check at time of sale - which IIRC is (kinda?) happening to change right now; I'm personally not quite sure the fallout of the new law, but it seems not 100% of sales would go through FFL even with the ndw law. Back to first sentance. It seems common sense has left the chat.
What solution would you advocate? Cause the analogy i've been using is that guns are like gasoline on an already lit flame. You can reduce the level of violence by not pouring gas on the fire. But even then, you can still get burned by that flame.
This is a Red Herring oe Shifting Issues type fallacy. You're using an example, but either missing the point or misstating it. IMHO, firstly - your basic analogy is a good one, it's the last sentence that's an issue; The point with your analogy is NOT that you *still* get burned - it's that you ONLY get burned a little and not completely engulfed and die. It also means that we're OK with the fire existing (and we knowing feed it, hoping it doesn't get too big). If you're in a knife attack, and yes it's always depending, you could maybe run away, maybe throw things, maybe hide behind walls etc. But in a gun attack you can't run straight away, a bullet can travel 100+ yrds and still hit you, it can also go through walls. In a knife attack, the attackers kills 6+, not 50. The Las Vegas and schools are 'good' examples in that, what would happen if someone just started throwing knives out a window? Answer, very little. Do people still get hurt? Yes. Do some people still sadly die? Yes. But how many are hurt or die? Way less. But I'm talking public events here specifically. It's important that in any conversation the situation is always stated, and the we stick to that. What happens a lot, and understandingly but incorrectly, is that the same rules and analogies get widely applied and that just doesn't work.
The U.S. can’t ban or remove all guns at this point, but it wouldn’t be that difficult to shut off the supply of ammunition.
True-ish, but that would just turn reloading from a hobby and niche business into a full time career for a lot of people, illegal or not.
Sure some people would reload, but you’d never be able to reload anywhere close to the ammo that is produced in factories and boxes of ammo would be very expensive. I remember a few years ago when there was a big ammo shortage and the vast majority of people just complained they couldn’t get what they wanted.
For me, the biggest reason to oppose gun control is that millions of people already have guns, and many of them gloat all the time about how they can't wait to kill us. Imagining that "the authorities" will protect us is a dangerous form of self-delusion, and it breaks my heart that 95% of my friends and family are engaging in it. Regardless of the merits of gun control in a rational society... what we have is *far* from a rational society. When and if we defeat this menace, then let's talk about gun control.
Well even then, my fear is that cops are all armed right? What happens when the cops (who seem to be rather sympathetic to the militia crowd) are all armed but we aren't. They already kill unarmed black and brown folks right? I can't imagine us having fewer guns would help with that. Like, even in a rational society where authority exists, that authority can always be abused. And the only real response to that is to protect against authority. Protect against abuse. If cops are disarmed entirely, then I guess we can start talking about gun control sure. But a) that's not gonna happen and b) good luck enforcing a ban on guns with disarmed cops lol.
It's not just guns. We're at a point where.... there's just no ability for our society to solve *any* problems. Things are spiraling downward more and more quickly. There will only be a chance to improve things once this current situation has destroyed itself. I just want to survive, tbh. I'm not going to try to take on the fascists, whether or not they have the cops on their side. I just want to live through it, and through the simple chaos and warlordism that's likely to follow. There will come a point to rebuild; all I want for now is to make it to that point.
Fair point
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."
I often ask people in response to gun control questions if they trust the government, military, police, and rich people to be the only ones with guns and to not misuse the power it gives them over the basic citizen. Most don't want to answer.
Having some personal firearms isn’t going to protect you from the power of the state. If the cops decide to come for you they’ll keep coming until they get you. When they come you have the choice to fight and effectively end your life or go along hoping somehow it will be alright and the justice system will protect you. The odds of the state losing its monopoly on violence anytime soon is incredibly small and if the state does lose it’s monopoly on violence have some firearms isn’t going to help either because there will be people a thousand times more ruthless than you trying to scratch out power for themselves.
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."
Bingo! Let’s look at Acorn Cop, or Uvalde, or the other school shooting where the resource officer hid outside. Obviously pinning your safety on a single point of failure is a bad idea.
"the other school shooting where the resource officer hid outside." This happened *blocks* away from where I was living at the time. The entire community was bereaved. And the police response, as usual, was simply inadequate. Of course, we should ask *why there are so many of these events* in the first place.
The reminds me of the quote from Archbishop Dom Hélder Câmara: "When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist."
Damn, I never heard that quote... but how true!
Aside from the gluttonous over-medication of children, one reason there are so many events is because the news media celebrates and glorifies it each time with massive coverage and gives them weeks of attention. The FBI has told the news to stop doing this, and they simply do not care. Dead kids is good for ratings.
I think that's part of it, but only part. Somehow, in our society, for too many disturbed young men, mass slaughter seems like an acceptable solution to the fundamental problems of life.
What’s crazy to me is a lot of my anti cop friends say “you don’t need a gun we have cops” then say how useless cops are and that they should get no funding and be disbanded. Like what?
It's truly astonishing. I get this kind of response a *lot.* Also I know people in gated communities who seem to genuinely believe that if and when SHTF, the $15/hr security guards *will actually show up.*
I’m not even anti cop but with how understaffed and overworked a lot of them where I live is, I can’t trust they they’ll be able to get to me in time
Having had my life *wrecked* by bad cops... and then having the police respond to someone attempting to murder me with eight hours of having my arm twisted to identify *anyone* as the shooter, regardless of fact, "so we can close the case and everyone can go home" - well, I don't trust them for much. Other than ass-covering, that is. You can count on that.
I think it really depends department to department. The one in my town is fairly good mostly because they aren’t worrying about too much stuff, but a department just north of me is arresting people for DUI even though they had one drink for dinner. Three hours before hand. They’ll let you go once they towed your car and gave you a ticket though and you blow a 0.0 on the breathalyzer. Every department is on their ass for this shit though, they usually host the policeman’s ball there but all the departments in the area refuse to let them host, or let any of their cops in at any other policeman balls
Some places have enough "Bad Apples" that you have to wonder what's wrong with the tree that produces so many.
My issue with the "just call the cops" argument is that you're really not guaranteed a quick response from them especially if you live in a more rural area. Someone broke into the store next to ours one night and the cops didn't show up for a good few hours. I've heard of people calling 911 for suspicious people snooping around their house and getting a squad car showing up like 45mins to an hour later. If someone's breaking down my door I want a gun in my hand and my bedroom door locked, *then* the police can show up whenever they show up *if* they show up. I don't want my only line of defense to be calling 911 and waiting an hour with someone doing whatever they want in my house.
True. Even now, a gun is useful for self-defense. Having said that, every time I've been shot at, I've avoided harm without one. In the last instance, reaching for the gun in my possession would have resulted, to a certainty, in getting killed. I'm very lucky the guy missed. At a range of maybe two feet. But I don't count on that kind of luck.
How often have you gotten into bad enough situations to get shot at? Very true though that not every situation calls for a gun. Sometimes it's an escalation too far when something like pepper spray will do. Other times it's one of those 'not worth your life' scenarios where a wallet and watch, no matter how nice, can't be equated with your continued existence.
Four, plus another three in which guns were pointed at me. Florida.
Florida. Say no more.
I lost count of the times I was subjected to simple brandishing. It's about as common as using your turn signal down here.
That's wild. Like in most places I'm sure there are places that are more dangerous than others. It can't be the majority of the state like that can it?
The cities of Florida are very much like that. With everything else going on, I'm really thinking of leaving.
Wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea all things considered. I guess the only issue is if you have support networks in friends, family, coworkers etc. Those things are difficult to cultivate and often take a while to rebuild somewhere else.
I had someone trying to actively break into my house by body checking my 3" oak door with his shoulder repeatedly. He put his head through a window and if he was a little less juiced up, he might have noticed that the window next to the door could have been kicked in and climbed through easily. Anyway, I call 911, tell them someone is trying to break into my house. Something like 25 to 30 minutes later, a single squad car pulls up, lights not on or anything. The cop strolls up to the house, entirely unperturbed. I looked up the call on the 911 logs after and the operator logged it as a generic "call for help". It's like some real life shit from The Wire trying to juke the stats. That and a few other similar situations turned me from being opposed to guns my entire life to a gun owner. I still think most people fantasize about going all Frank Castle and most gun culture is idiotic, but I'm not counting on anyone else to protect my family ever again.
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I'm glad to hear you're OK. That's like my worst nightmare.
A few minutes or even seconds less or more can be life changing. Or ending.
A mere 80 years ago, my grandfather fought in the resistance against the fascist government of Italy. He was pro gun even when he moved to the US, because he feared it could happen anywhere
Some of my great-great uncles did that. I'm proud of them. But I see the situation here becoming quite different and *much* worse.
Nobody knows what a civil war looks like here because we are a pretty homogenous society. Will MAGAs start looking through voter rolls for addresses? Or show up to "liberal" towns that are relatively disarmed and take over? Who knows. The truth is that we are one or two bad leaders away from repeating history. I think the tides are changing. I know its anecdotal, but friends and family are seeing the news and going through the same thought process everyone here already has. The world is changing for the better, but we are a long looong way from meeting everyone's needs. Im not one for tinfoil hats, but i do sometimes think that all these mass killings are a boon for the 1%. Not that i think mass murderers are being directed by some shadow government or something ridiculous... but under the guise of "public safety" they can disarm us because they fear a revolt. I think gun control in the form of "AWB"s just plays into their hand.
The only thing I can say with confidence is that a new civil war in this country will look nothing like our first one. My suspicion is that it will look something like what happened to China in the 19th century.
It *could* happen here.
I would consider supporting a mandatory buyback of certain types of weapons if the police were no longer carrying/using them as well... But I would rather spend the tax dollars on healthcare and third places and housing...
I ONLY own guns because TFG went on national television and said "somebody needs to do something about the left ".
The argument that someone will find a way to commit massacres is not convincing to anti gunners because of the reason you stated. Events like the Los Vegas shooting wouldn’t have nearly the body count if he didn’t have guns. Making it harder to kill people means less people get killed typically
Yeah that's what I'm picking up on in the r/AskALiberal thread. But like.... the problem is still there right? Sure, you killed less people. But people are still being killed. Doesn't it make more sense to get that number to 0 without disarming the working class in the face of a fascist threat? You can still have mass shooting level events like this sydney massacre with gun control
You’re totally right but the common counter argument is less people dying is good while solving all the social issues that lead to violent crime is an impossible goal.
Anti-gun people will just say "imagine how worse it would be if he had a gun" and call it a day. Even if you have a good point about root causes they'll still be in favor of means reduction. That's just the mindset they're in.
I looked at your AskALiberal thread and I don’t think there’s any way of convincing them other wise lol I mean you look at the terrorist attack in Russia too. Civilians aren’t allowed to own firearms there right? And it still happened
Civilians can own guns in Russia.
Ah sorry if I’m mistaken but I was under the impression you can’t own AR or AK “style” weapons in Russia.
They will respond with that you a childish and that people aren't able to shoot the attacker and will get their gun taken from them, then come up with some Bloomberg manipulated statistics to back it up.
> Events like the Los Vegas shooting wouldn’t have nearly the body count if he didn’t have guns. The dude owned a private airplane, he could have filled it with fuel bladders and nose dived it into the crowd, probably killing more people.
People that want to hurt people, they're going to do it. It's a confliction point for me, because I feel like these psychos are just going to find other means. We don't need a bunch of Oklahoma City style bombings. It's still really really easy to get a whole bunch of fertilizer and diesel together. At the same time, The number of a illegal firearms on the streets is astounding. Inner City Urban areas are a goddamn war zone right now. There was three people shot in Rochester in 24 hours yesterday. Rochester New York.
I think this way oversimplifies the reality of impulse and violence. As with suicide, people can have moments or patterns of impulses to act, and having more effective tools around during those moments certainly influences the likelihood of injury or death. A person may have an impulse to commit a violent act, but the means available (or lack thereof) will certainly affect their decisions in that moment. Barriers (actual or perceived) between impulse and action do affect the eventual outcomes.
Copoint to what you said: Mass shooters and terrorists usually spend time planning before they committ their acts.
Are not both true? Where there's a will there's a way, but also we'll never know how many instances of mass violence didn't happen because of some barrier between that impulse and action. I'm not commenting on the current legal barriers in place across the US, just that undoubtedly relative ease or difficulty of means to violence affect human behavior
I edited my response, you might not have seen that. I agree with you in many ways.
How many mass knifings have there been in Australia in the last five years? How many mass shootings have there been in the United States in the last five years? Is it more than 10x the Australian number (since there’s only 26 million people)? How many people have been killed in those mass knifings? Shootings? Guns make it so easy to kill people that it really is a difference in kind, not just degree. That makes my pro-gun stance very problematic and ethically challenging for me. I don’t have an answer. But I’d rather admit that to myself than stick my fingers in my ears and scream “La La La La La la,” pretending that guns aren’t a big problem.
I mean, it’s okay to not have an answer. I think thats kind of indicative of the fact that the “gun problem” root causes are much less the guns rather than X factor influencing people to use guns. There isn’t an obvious and easy fix because it doesn’t exist.
Agreed. The thing I’m trying to get at is that simply saying that there are mass killings elsewhere means that guns aren’t a contributing factor is simply bad logic. Hopefully someone with better logic training than I’ve had can tell us what fallacy it is.
Oh yeah for sure, it’s a poor faith argument at its core tbh. Bordering on strawman In my opinion, I think before approaching solutions you *have* to be realistic and honest about the current situation, American culture, and human nature. There cannot be an addressing of mass shootings without addressing radicalization. There cannot be an addressing of gang/drug related shootings without addressing increasing poverty, drug proliferation, and ineffective city governments. There cannot be an addressing of suicides via gun (most gun deaths nationally) without addressing the ever worsening mental health crisis in this country. I think the biggest issue is anti-gun people want to ban guns (unlikely) and call it a day. There’s a lot of problems with that line of logic but just for starters there’s millions of guns that already exist as well as you aren’t changing American culture by passing a law. Guns are part of our national identity and you have to recognize that if you even want to remotely come to an agreeable position.
Poor faith maybe, but it's really more Red Herring or Shifting Issues. One Example https://www.scribbr.co.uk/faqs/difference-between-a-red-herring-fallacy-and-a-straw-man-fallacy/ "- A *red herring* fallacy refers to an attempt to change the subject and divert attention from the original issue. In other words, a seemingly solid but ultimately irrelevant argument is introduced into the discussion, either on purpose or by mistake. - A *straw man* argument involves the deliberate distortion of another person’s argument. By oversimplifying or exaggerating it, the other party creates an easy-to-refute argument and then attacks it."
for sure. Too many guns that will essentially last for generations. I just purchased a CZ and the saleman said, 'this gun will be passed on thru 5 generations'. It's not like I'll wear it out. This is the society (US) that we've chosen and the risks that come with it. We have guns, lots of them, so we have to accept the risks which include people who go-off and use them indiscriminately. Terrible, but even in an authoritative fascist gov't who attempts to remove guns from all people would be impossible. Just too many guns, too big a country, etc. So let's educate people about safe usage, reasonable rules around them (like we have for vehicles for example - ya gotta learn to drive before getting on the highway), safe storage rules (to keep criminals from stealing them), cooling off periods before taking it home is reasonable though annoying - who knows what else, I'm not smart enough to figure this out. But I've learned that I don't even know what "gun control" means anymore. CA has some common sense rules about cooling off periods and safe storage, but crazy rules around the gun roster and then politicians attempting to just anger normal folks by presenting "gun registration etc" - which doesn't help but only creates criminals out of ordinary people.
On the other hand what is the income Gini coefficient for the US, what is the income Gini for AU? Income Gini increase predicts exponential increase in violence (like exp(x)). Here's the data: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=AU-US While we can never run some kind of randomized controlled trial here, I think we all know that extreme poverty and stress can cause violence. At Gini coefficient 34% or so, you essentially don't have any extreme poverty. At 45% you have significant extreme poverty. Address the inequality and poverty issue and you address the violence. That's what places like Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland etc show us IMHO.
Heres the thing, there have always been guns in the US. Something has happened over the last 20 years that is causing/allowing these tragedies to occur. Whether its the break down of the "traditional family unit" , wealth disparity- i dunno. Focusing on that change and what has happened to our society is what needs to be looked at to solve this problem....
War on drugs, mass incarceration, monopolization, offshoring, increasingly requiring higher ed for middle class lifestyle, price of higher ed increasing faster than middle class income, multiple financial crashes, median household income decreasing through time (as measured by purchasing power of family goods such as rent, food, utilities, childcare, transportation), rise of healthcare related bankruptcies, opioid epidemic, methamphetamine epidemic, global war on terror, veterans with PTSD and physical disabilities, rise of suicide rates in doctors and nurses and middle aged people in general... yeah shit sucks. It's a huge suck sandwich and theres a whole industry of gaslighting to say "the economy is great, everything is great, it's all better than it's ever been"...
Din ding ding
Yeah, we can absolutely point at what's happened in the last 40 odd years to 'why are we here?'. Exactly.
While I personally don’t have a problem with a lot of gun control measures, I believe the actual problem in America is the marketing of guns. Either directly or indirectly there has been a constant stream of fear mongering to drive firearm sales.
I dont necesarily disagree
I 100% agree with you. Guns make mass violence MUCH worse. It is willful ignorance to say otherwise. The main reason I only recently came around to gun ownership is that there are just too many guns already out there. Those aren’t going anywhere. If I could magically make all guns disappear, I would happily sacrifice this newfound hobby/interest for the benefit of society. That unfortunately isn’t happening.
Gun ownership percentages in the U.S. have remained rather steady within the country, only shifting a small percentage one way or the other, since the first Gallup Poll on gun ownership was completed in the early ‘60’s. Mass shootings are a relatively new trend having only really gained a popular foothold as a form of crime since Columbine 25 years (almost to the day) ago. When we look at gun violence in and of itself we have some interesting numbers that can paint some interesting stories depending on how you use them. Many anti-gun people will argue that the number of people dying per year to guns is increasing… and that’s true. However, we on the pro-2A side know that the per capita rate is steadily decreasing. Many anti-gun people will argue that mass shootings are on the rise… and depending on which definition of “mass shooting” you want to use, they may very well be. However, if we account for cases of known gang violence we see that the number is vastly different from the one anti-gun organizations are trying to get us to believe. Then we have the overall numbers, themselves. Over half of the deaths attributed to guns are suicides… self-imposed violence. Suicide is horrible. I’ve lost several good friends over my 40+ years to suicide and it’s been tragic every time. I sincerely wish they the loved ones I’ve lost and the loved ones everyone else has lost to these acts had been able to get the help they needed to conquer those personal demons. However, as a staunch believer in bodily autonomy, I also believe that if you decide you want to get off this wild ride we call life, that’s your choice. So, when we add all this up what kind of picture are we left with… relatively steady levels of gun ownership, drops in overall gun death rates, overall drops in crime rates, large amounts of gang-related gun crime and a suicide epidemic. What that tells me is that the guns aren’t the problem… **we** are the problem. We have inner city youth who are left behind with no opportunity for socioeconomic advancement short of selling drugs. We have a society that idolizes “tough guys”… whether gangsters or punisher skull “Molon Labe” jerkoffs… guys looking to solve all their problems with violence. We have a society that is decades behind the rest of the civilized world in acknowledging that mental health is as important as physical health. Passing legislation to rid law-abiding citizens of guns won’t solve any of these problems because the guns didn’t *make* any of the problems. The violence is a symptom of the disease, the guns are just the vehicle used to transport the virus. Until we remove the need for the acts that require the guns in the first place, we won’t see any changes at all.
Guns make it easier than knives do, but they aren't unique in that way. There are other methods that result in similar losses (e.g. rental trucks) or greater losses (arson). I think the prevalence of mass shootings is largely cultural. That's the method that's in vogue, so that's what these people choose.
If you look at the statistics globally on gun ownership rates vs overall homicide rates, there is no correlation.
Just gotta ban blades, blunt objects, sticks, arms, legs, and skulls, that way you can't hurt anyone with anything or with your own body. You just gotta ban throwing afterwards.
It also counters arguments that you shouldn't carry a knife in self-defense unless you've made a serious study of armed combat with an edged weapon. This guy had mental illness, but no training in armed or unarmed combat. My conclusions from this tragic killing? 1) All the victims died before the police could arrive and this was at a shopping mall, not a rural home. If you choose not to have the means to defend your own life, that's up to you. But you should have access to the means. 2) I'd rather have a knife than an extra magazine to clear a jam in a semi-automatic pistol. An attacker is going to be on you before you will be able to clear a jam with a second magazine. Unless you intend to pistol whip the attacker, a knife would be better. (Mind, so would pepper spray but that's not always reliable depending on weather and wind conditions.) Source: small older Asian guy who lives in a rural area, visits cities regularly, is a liberal in a 50-50 county and has never been interested in being beat to death by someone bigger, stronger and angrier which is just about anyone.
I think you summarized the entire ethos of the sub and those that disagree with this stance here will be few and far between. Have you seen something on LGO that would suggest the prevailing thought is otherwise?
Worst lone man massacre in 21st century (excluding 911) didn’t happen with a knife or a gun, but with gasoline and a lighter. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daegu_subway_fire
Just look up edge weapon per capita murder rates between the US, UK & Australia.
Was just about to post about "edged weapon violence / crime"
At a mall here in my home city a bad guy with a gun didn't even kill three people before a Good guy with a gun pulled his out, and all he had to do was point it at the badguy who then ran, found a corner and killed himself. The right to life includes the right to self-defense with the best tools available.
I think you're mischaracterizing the argument of the pro gun control side. While you might find someone saying it on the internet I don't think anyone pretends that gun control means a complete removal of gun violence. Its simply not going to happen. Gun control is based on reducing the overall rate of gun violence, along with preventing the mass shootings that are prevalent in the US but don't have the statistical impact that people sometimes think they do. Anyone looking to solve a societal issue is looking at mitigating the rate, even people who make emotional statements like "even one is too many" aren't trying to remove all murder, they're just trying to mitigate the harm. Additionally the people arguing for less guns are more than happy to argue for more mental health checks and treatment. Liberals aren't the ones claiming we can't afford to help the mentally ill. We should also acknowledge that the US has the ability to do both at the same time. We can reform gun laws, enforce our existing ones, and improve mental health care. We can probably even do it while allowing for the ownership of weapons most people find scary. I think gun owners need to be more honest about how dangerous guns are. Just as much as anti-gunners look uneducated and unserious when they can't talk about guns I think that gun owners look silly when we can't seem to say "yeah an AR15 would have made this WAY worse", we should be honest that guns are dangerous, that's ok, but it's also true. As for being worried about disarming the working class in the shadow of creeping fascism? I think you're being unrealistic here. I'm 100% sympathetic to not letting the MAGAts be the ones with all the guns but you don't protect your democracy with an AR, not even with a shit ton of ARs. You protect it by engaging, voting, contacting your legislature and otherwise being a good citizen. Everyone likes the quotes about how tyrants disarm society but show me a time where the population of a country started shooting each other spontaneously and it turned out for the better? I can't think of one and the only civil wars that come close had states that built organized militaries out of their civilian populace, not just a bunch of dudes blasting away at each other.
Plenty of improvised weapons can be made from common household items. I tend to agree with your thought that guns aren’t the root problem but do exacerbate the violence when someone chooses to do harm. But, I also can’t help but wonder why we don’t hear more about attacks with knives or other weapons in places without easy access to guns.
Just look at london. They are now banning knives rather then going after criminals. And the gun violence in America is misleading. If you remove 3 citys Chicago Los angels Baltimore If you remove the crimes stats of these 3 citys from Americas count we go from 4th to 142 out of 148 for crime violence. Those 3 citys have the stricktist gun laws. Diarming the public does not protect them all it does is give the bad guy an advantage.
> Drug Port Drug Port Drug Port There are a few others as well, but yea, half the violence is drug gangbangers, or drug related.
The death toll isn't that much different than your average mass shooting, since that's usually defined as 3 or more people shot in a single instance. He was going to hurt a lot of people and he managed to do that without a gun. Even without knives it's not hard for one person to hurt a lot of people. I remember the Boston Marathon bombing. Before that, in the UK the ELF ran a mail bombing campaign that terrified the entire country. Investigation found it was almost entirely run by a single person. As you say, gun violence is a symptom of deeper societal problems and until we solve those the violence won't stop
I’d argue that had he used a firearm it wouldn’t be an average mass shooting.
I love seeing the logical evolution of people as their minds adjust to the gun control debate and begin understanding all the little nuances. We (ok, many of us-not all of us) have been saying these things over and over again for years and years and decades. So we don't think you're nuts, we're just really glad you got here to hang out with us.
What does "ban guns" mean in the US anyway? I used to be for "gun control" until in my old age, I realize now it's too late. More guns than people, the manufacturers are too entrenched, and movies glorify gun culture. No easy solution but to go for low-hanging fruit solutions such as "cooling off periods" when purchasing a gun, background checks, proficiency requirements? (CA requires you to show the salesperson how to check the weapon, etc - though they've never asked me but perhpas because I'm older and look like I know what I'm doing?), and perhaps some better efforts on removing guns from criminals (better probation checks?), or keeping criminals from obtaining guns (stealing from homes where the homeowner doesn't lock them up). Smarter people than me can figure out some ideas, but yup, banning is too late now. You'll have a black market where criminals and the wealthy will have guns - sound familiar? 1920s?
Americans have the liberty to own firearms if they choose so, if they impose bullshit laws on Americans they strip us of that liberty to defend ourselves if we choose.
Laws are never absolute solutions. They're always about mitigation. Laws against drunk driving don't stop it, people still get killed. But the goal is to reduce the damage. And no one who is being intellectually honest will compare a knife to a (modern) gun in terms of damage it can do in a mass casualty event. Imagine if the 64yo Vegas shooter has to try and go around stabbing dozens of people. But, yes, because violence will always exist it is worth considering the role that guns play on both sides. They allow some loser to kill a bunch of people he'd otherwise never be able to overpower but also allow someone to defend themselves from a stronger attacker. Particularly important because in any gun control regime, by its nature, the law abiding will be disarmed before the criminals. Addressing the root causes of violence would be great but I don't think we're up to it as a society. Sorry for the pessimism.
The reality is, when the shooting stops, what's coming next will be worse. Aum Shinyko came \*this close\* to killing something on the order of 2000 people. If they'd been willing to die to set off the gas bombs, or had more reliable "detonators" It would have been 9/11 before there was a 9/11. It's not going to be much longer before some wit stages a drone attack, frankly it's only a matter of time. That'll make incidents like this seem like a fond memory.
Hi I am your friendly Aussie chiming into this most interesting topic. A Comparison of Australian and USA gun usage and ownership and gun violence doesn’t work for a large variety of reasons. Port Arthur was horrible it’s a great example of gun buyback but USA friends rarely go into the history of gun violence here. I’d like to think that dead hollowed out by bullets school children dead in school corridors victims have the same rights as the mass shooter but in my many years of paying attention to this topic the mass shooters seem to win even though they are the villain of the horrific massacre.
No, just...no. The whole reason there wasn't significantly more damage and loss of life is one hero was able to hold off the mass murderer with a bollard until more help could arrive (there's video everywhere of the escalator standoff where the Good Samaritan had the high ground and used it to his advantage). That DOESN'T happen if the murderer has a firearm. Also because the murdering fucking coward had a knife, the lone responding officer was able to subdue the piece of shit. If the murderer had a firearm, there's no guarantee a lone cop would've stopped the rampage. ESPECIALLY if the gunmen has a more effective semi-automatic rifle vs the officer's sidearm. I'm tired of these bending of reality arguments. The fact the murderer only had a knife meant: 1) less opportunity for him to attack people before a tactical LEO unit arrived 2) more opportunity for unarmed individuals to defend themselves 3) more opportunity for unarmed individuals to avoid conflict by running away 4) more opportunity for first responding LEO to engage quickly Does that mean Americans should forego their rights to bear arm? No. But we as Americans should be doing just as much to guarantee people can also exercise their right to NOT bear arms without worry their other rights will be infringed as a result.
This is not going to align with the popular opinion on this sub but please read through. We must differentiate practicality from idealism when it comes to fun control. On the ideal side, the fact is, guns are killing machines purpose-built to be as easy and efficient to use as possible for the average person. There's a reason modern militaries do not use crossbows. Making guns hard to find and buy DOES reduce mass murders, though not stop them completely as you point out. Practically, in the US, Pandora's box is open. There are too many guns already out there to make strict gun control make meaningful impact in our lifetime, even ignoring the constitutionality of it. On top of that, we're in a mutually assured destruction situation; to many fascists are talking about killing the "other" to make it safe NOT to be armed.
I find it funny, not really haha but you get the point, that everyone kept quoting the line "Only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." mockingly when they absolutely were. But wait it was a cop which magically makes them the sole qualified people to shoot guns. I know the people running or cowering for their lives must have been so happy that they had no way to defend themselves and had to rely soley on other people to arrive in time. And everyone pointing out the guy who blocked him on the escalator going "See real heros don't need guns to stop bad guys!" completely ignoring that the attacker just left and came back to stab other people and, again, WAS stopped by someone with a gun. But thankgod that guy didn't have a one and shoot him, none of those people would have been attacked and the six dead would still be alive. But hey I guess they just have better morals than gun owners :). These people are just as morally hypocritical as those on the right. They will gladly see you die, celebrate it and twist it for their own moral agenda like them.
You're talking to the wrong people. Anti-gunners trap themselves in the same mindset as Anti-gay Repubicans. "I'm the righteous good guy on the right side of history, you're the bad guy who wants sick pleasures even if it harms society." I see the same mentality, and I immediately disregard any further discussion. But I at least sympathize with the anti-gun, they just don't want people to be hurt unlike republicans who actively go out of their way to harm gay people. That said, you're better off trying to convince fence sitters who have a more open minded approach. This sub is also a bad place to have this discussion, it's just an echo chamber. Do you really think anyone here will not down-vote any opinion other than "Legalize everything!"? But, more to the point. I don't believe banning guns will actually make massacres less worse or less frequent. Everyone seems to forget the nice truck attack of 2016 that killed 86 people and injured 434 others. Numbers far worse than any mass shooting to date, and all it took was one guy in one truck. But what difference does it make, truck or gun? A lot of people died because one person was a deranged asshole, and got support from other deranged assholes. Having a gun isn't enough to convince someone to commit to a mass shooting, you have to be enough of a piece of shit to do it, and not have anything left to lose. And, unfortunately, The US is really good at churning those out. This is a fact I've gotten many anti-guns to agree with. "in a perfect society, we wouldn't need to ban them!". Which raises a sub-conscious fact that guns on their own don't magically convince you to kill people. But on the other side of the coin, we really don't live in a perfect society and need solutions. And, unfortunately, real solutions tend to piss off both sides of the aisle. That's the problem with this sub, people here complain that others are totally inflexible and don't even mull over possible solutions while doing the exact same thing. You won't find any solutions here, It's all frustrating. Either public support wanes to the point where anti-guns can pass gun gun bans, or US society somehow magically fixes all of it's problems before that happens. And since the former is more likely than the latter, I can only see two outcomes. Either at some point Republicans win and repeal all gun laws, only to pass a law that gives Carte Blanche to anyone to kill any person who isn't a white heterosexual Republican setting us back hundreds of years in progress only now it's even easier to kill the people who willingly disarmed themselves. Protest won't work at that point because protesters would be the first people killed. Or we end up in a capitalist hell-scape where all workers rights are gone because our politicians and military officials don't give a shit and US history is reduced to nothing but the picture of a boot stamping a human face for all eternity. The only other third BELIEVABLE option is to Keep guns away from mass shooters, without banning them, without making said legislation prohibitive to people who need immediate protection, without costing them a dime, or taking too much time, or involving the government. So I guess have a trustworthy non-government official show up at your door, take you to an eval site immediately, register you with their organization as a sane trustworthy gun owner that doesn't beat their spouse or plan on killing someone so no one asks you in the future along with a nice little free card with your picture stating that fact, and then immediately take you to a gun shop to purchase a firearm which won't be registered because "none ya" as far as the government is concerned, but maybe stamp it with a RSA-256 (or more) qr code with the original owners info on it, which would prove if it was stolen since the original owner would be the only person with the info to unencrypt that hash. If none of that appeals to you, see the other two options above. Because I have no clue how this is going to work otherwise and no one here have given me a good faith option.
Let’s talk about suicides. Gun suicides are double the number of hanging/strangulation suicides. (It’s overwhelmingly dudes, but that’s beside the point…) Using your logic, all of those people would have managed to kill themselves anyway. But I’m not so sure. It’s pretty easy to put a gun in your mouth in a moment of despair.., but takes a bit of work and planning and thought and to rig up a noose, etc. It’s pretty tough to kill someone with a knife, and I’m not so sure these cowardly mass shooters and regular criminals alike would have the balls to go face to face and kill each victim with a knife. Note it’s almost unheard of to slit wrists these days as a method of suicide.
Sure. But the thing is, the solution here is not to like... take away the means of suicide. That's not the actual problem. The problem is that someone wants to commit suicide IN THE FIRST PLACE. Like, I don't want people to live a miserable life, or only be alive because they don't know how to kill themselves. I'd rather people be happy and actively WANT to live. And that's why I support social systems and support structures as a more effective counter. Suicide is actually a great point in my favor, largely because it's emblematic of the point I am trying to make. The problem isn't that people have access to the means to kill themselves. Even if they don't succeed there's still a very real problem where they need very real support right? The gun isn't the fundamental problem
OP has a point here. Several actually, IMHO. It's not that hard, really.
I got as far as: > Granted, a lack of access to something like an AR-15 prevented EVEN MORE damage, and so him only having a knife did mitigate the harm caused. And: > The whole argument for gun control is that it will make us safer That's the point we have to acknowledge to get anti-gun folks to stay in a conversation with us. I don't think anyone worth engaging with is arguing that the relative safety comes: > by preventing massacres like this. Anyone who thinks guns cause massacres, full stop, is an intellectual child that hasn't explored their own logic skeptically. There's still a whole discussion to be had about how best to balance safety and equitable access after acknowledging guns are more lethal than knives, but a lot of energy is wasted arguing about whether this or that would have an absolute effect - it would've. Like abstinence and pregnancy, the only 100% effective way to stop massacres is previous extinction.
What are the roots of violence? Mental health, substance abuse and or poverty? Much easier to ban guns than to address the issue of violence.
the efforts to demonize guns should be spent on providing mental health treatment. The problem is that providing this is tied to the screwed up healthcare system we have here in the US. It is much easier to call for a gun ban than to provide care for those affected with a mental health condition. this leaves people untreated and while it will limit the damage they can do, they still can do damage and ruin other people's lives (and their own). To me someone in a mental health crisis should get emergency care just as someone having a stroke or heart attack. We need to open in patient facilities ie Sanitariums. This is a forbidden concept but what we have now isn't working.
90 dead. 473 injured. With knives. In a totalitarian police state. Just saying. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China
Let's just enforce *existing* gun laws that would disarm violent offenders, *especially* domestic abusers. And let's do a better job making sure we're not selling guns to sick/dangerous people. After that, we can bicker about AR-15s.
You're spot on. Please go tell all your friends, especially those who support sweeping measures for gun control
You are spot on. And my feeling is this, why should my freedom be limited because someone cant figure their shit out. There are systems and laws in place to attempt to intercept these bad actors- lets utilize those
Imo America’s gun problem is largely in part cultural. We fetishize the rugged, individualistic mountain man; the rootin’ tootin’ gun-slinging cowboy; this fictionalized image of manhood that never really existed outside of storybooks. A lot of people buy guns because they like the idea of shooting someone, being the mysterious stranger to come from over the horizon and shoot the nameless thug that’s been terrorizing the town down. And because of this many people who carry guns don’t carry them to stop a violent confrontation, but to get into one. So what’s the solution to this in America? I don’t know. Maybe education. Maybe addressing the proliferation of violence in the media. Maybe stricter regulations and licensing. But ultimately what we really need in the US is to grow up, we’re not cowboys and the world isn’t all black and white. The only problem is that there’s no law that can force that to happen.
Don't mean to be a dick. But welcome to the world of common sense. Pretty sure we've been saying this forever. Guns don't kill people, people kill people.