Thoughts and Prayers

[UndertheHalo]

11 minutes ago, Jason said:

The way I look at it is what is creating more laws going to do? Will people just start following the law now?

This is such a dumb point.  It's harder to find your local black market gun dealer then it is to go to the gun show or the gun store and buy a gun.  I don't understand then guns = drugs/alcohol analog.  It's ridiculous. 

[Adam]

1 minute ago, UndertheHalo said:

This is such a dumb point.  It's harder to find your local black market gun dealer then it is to go to the gun show or the gun store and buy a gun.  I don't understand then guns = drugs/alcohol analog.  It's ridiculous. 

Completely disagree with this. The internet makes finding anything easy, especially if you're motivated.

[Jason]

Just now, UndertheHalo said:

This is such a dumb point.  It's harder to find your local black market gun dealer then it is to go to the gun show or the gun store and buy a gun.  I don't understand then guns = drugs/alcohol analog.  It's ridiculous. 

What? Drugs? So you believe people will start following the laws if we create more?

[UndertheHalo]

5 hours ago, Jason said:

What? Drugs? So you believe people will start following the laws if we create more?

See this is the thing.  If it's not 100% effective you seem to think there's no point.  You really think laws have zero preventative impact ? I'm going to bet this paddock guy would have had no fucking clue about where to go to find the black market gun shop.  What's he going to do ? Ask around ?  Give me a break man. 

I mean fuck, what's the point of having laws against underage drinking.  15 year olds still get wasted.  Such government oppression.  What a waste of time !

Edited October 4, 2017 by UndertheHalo

[Adam]

2 minutes ago, UndertheHalo said:

 

I mean fuck, what's the point of having laws against underage drinking.  15 year olds are still gonna get wasted.  Such government oppression.  What a waste of time !

I agree

[Make Angels Great Again]

 

[UndertheHalo]

Ben Shapiro is gigantic piece of shit.  He's a glorified YouTube commentator. 

Edited October 4, 2017 by UndertheHalo

[red321]

13 minutes ago, UndertheHalo said:

This is such a dumb point.  It's harder to find your local black market gun dealer then it is to go to the gun show or the gun store and buy a gun.  I don't understand then guns = drugs/alcohol analog.  It's ridiculous. 

It's a whattabout distraction...it's not designed to further the conversation but rather distract and muddy the waters, as if somehow underage drinking is analogous to weapons designed for the sole purpose of killing and mass carnage.

 

[Spirit]

"My colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States," Leah Libresco, a statistician who used to work for the data journalism site, writes in The Washington Post. "We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I'd lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence." 

Interesting

 

 

[UndertheHalo]

24 minutes ago, Geoff said:

"My colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States," Leah Libresco, a statistician who used to work for the data journalism site, writes in The Washington Post. "We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I'd lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence." 

Interesting

 

 

I appreciate Ms. Librescos numbers. That said, I fail to understand the equivalency in the debate between gun deaths via suicide and events like Las Vegas or Sandy Hook.  Which is what she appears to have done.

The objective of gun control should be to make access more difficult.  I've never seen anyone argue that it's a cure all for our woes as a society.  Obviously, someone who really really wants to kill themselves is going to figure it out with or without a gun.  Maybe if it's a more sudden impulse it would be tougher to satisfy that urge if it wasn't so easy to go out and buy a gun. 

Edited October 4, 2017 by UndertheHalo

[floplag]

31 minutes ago, UndertheHalo said:

This is such a dumb point.  It's harder to find your local black market gun dealer then it is to go to the gun show or the gun store and buy a gun.  I don't understand then guns = drugs/alcohol analog.  It's ridiculous. 

I think you underestimate how "hard" that may be... if a person sets their mind to kill, they will find a way.  

Currently, the following have access to guns and/or assault rifles:
cops
military
criminals
citizens
black market/illegal arms sales

Even if you you ban them entirely the list will look like this:
cops
military
criminals
black market / illegal arms sales

Now ask yourself, when a person sets out to kill, which list do they fall under?  

As for the analogy, its really not absurd at all.  Alcohol was illegal for a period in our nation, it stopped nothing but legal establishments and drove people to illegal nightclubs.  Pot was up till recently illegal, and absurdly plentiful.  Driving drunk is illegal, but happens every night everywhere.  You could list a dozen other things off the top of your head that are "illegal" but still done.  The point of the analogy is really very simply, making something illegal, doesn't stop it, save for those few who follow the laws.  Those who want to do such things will still do them.    This is an absolute un-arguable fact of life.  

I'm not pro NRA, i see no reason why someone wants to own an assault rifle, but, having fired many rifles myself from friends collections i could see how it might be kinda cool or fun to feel  how it works.  But, that is not my decision to make for someone else.  I also know that as a nation we own nearly half the worlds gun so if they were all so terrible we would literally be re-living the old west and half of us would already BE dead from it.  And yet, here we sit.  The 2 things simply dont add up to anything logical.  Its the person that sets their mind to kill... thats the problem. 

Not to mention the whole "where does it end when we start carving away parts of the constitution" argument, but ill save that for another thread.   

Also not to mention the whole "we only care when it fits certain dialogs" conversation which ill also save for later except to say the area i was born and grew up in (south central LA) has been a warzone for decades with more guns than the old west ever dreamed of but i dont see anyone caring about that as it doesnt fit the agenda. 

Part of me wishes they would outright ban them, completely, so we could see how absurd it is as it will stop nothing.   Until we address the root causes, we dont stop the disease.  

[Make Angels Great Again]

53 minutes ago, UndertheHalo said:

Ben Shapiro is gigantic piece of shit.  He's a glorified YouTube commentator. 

 

Haha, why? Because he destroys your bullshit arguments? I bet you think he's a white supremacist too.

[Thomas]

53 minutes ago, red321 said:

It's a whattabout distraction...it's not designed to further the conversation but rather distract and muddy the waters, as if somehow underage drinking is analogous to weapons designed for the sole purpose of killing and mass carnage.

Both alcohol and firearms when used as intended will kill. One just takes longer on average. If one enjoys one but not the other it's not unpredictable for them to fail to see the similarities.

[Thomas]

30 minutes ago, UndertheHalo said:

  Maybe if it's a more sudden impulse it would be tougher to satisfy that urge if it wasn't so easy to go out and buy a gun. 

I take it you've never been suicidal.

[red321]

4 minute mark...full gun confiscation (and Hillary Clinton!)...so he's basing his argument on a position the other side has not taken 

And  I'm guessing he probably would have gotten to that sooner but most of the first 4 minutes were Kimmel speaking.

[Taylor]

2 hours ago, Jason said:

What? Drugs? So you believe people will start following the laws if we create more?

Let's just get rid of all laws, since people will break them anyway.

[Tank]

some interesting comments on this page about how poorly people follow the law. i think we've all probably done illegal things because we wanted to and because it was reasonably easy to do. call it a morality problem or whatever else you want, but it's an integral part of the entire gun problem here.

i've long felt that part of gun ownership should require some kind of licensing aspect so that people who own them know how to use them, how to store them, and how to responsibly care for them to avoid accidents and the like. i still feel that way. i'm not suggesting this would curb the number of shootings. 

i also feel very strongly about the need to round up and remove the staggering number of illegally obtained guns out there. i have no idea how to do this, but i'm guessing a fair discussion about it could generate some reasonable ideas. this should be on gov't to do. maybe connecting it to the licensing idea is a starting point. 

i'm not sure how effective any of this will be, but i know that maintaining the status quo right now won't do anything to reduce the insane number of shootings that are going on here on a daily basis. we're playing our fiddles while rome burns. something reasonable needs to be done. 

[mtangelsfan]

1 hour ago, Taylor said:

Let's just get rid of all laws, since people will break them anyway.

Taylor, how do you think the war on drugs has been going?

Edited October 4, 2017 by mtangelsfan

[Taylor]

1 hour ago, mtangelsfan said:

Taylor, how do you think the war on drugs has been going?

Not great. But the argument that, "We shouldn't pass gun laws because criminals will still get guns" falls apart unless you think all laws are pointless because people will still break them.

[UndertheHalo]

4 hours ago, Thomas said:

I take it you've never been suicidal.

I have never attempted suicide.  So no, I don't know exactly what goes through ones mind when one is suicidal.  I do know that impulsive suicides occur though.

Edited October 4, 2017 by UndertheHalo

[mtangelsfan]

31 minutes ago, Taylor said:

Not great. But the argument that, "We shouldn't pass gun laws because criminals will still get guns" falls apart unless you think all laws are pointless because people will still break them.

Not great?  It has been a complete failure, almost better if they never started it.  Pretty much made a lot of people want to legalize them.

[UndertheHalo]

4 hours ago, Make Angels Great Again said:

 

Haha, why? Because he destroys your bullshit arguments? I bet you think he's a white supremacist too.

He doesn't destroy anything.  He makes ad hominem attacks on college kids and he's made an entire career out of it.  He's a typical right wing grievance politics purveyor.  And I could care less what you think of my positions.  Believe me.  I don't think much of yours. 

Edited October 4, 2017 by UndertheHalo

[Adam]

I like Ben Shapiro. He almost gives me hope for the Republican party. He seems a little too interventionist for my taste though. 

[Mark68]

42 minutes ago, Taylor said:

Not great. But the argument that, "We shouldn't pass gun laws because criminals will still get guns" falls apart unless you think all laws are pointless because people will still break them.

There's also the idea that you should still pass laws as it will become more difficult for criminals to obtain them (I'd like to think that fewer gun stores means fewer possibilities for criminals to break into one and steal its guns).

Plus, whenever I see the "People of Wal-Mart" website I cringe. They sell guns to these people.

[floplag]

41 minutes ago, Taylor said:

Not great. But the argument that, "We shouldn't pass gun laws because criminals will still get guns" falls apart unless you think all laws are pointless because people will still break them.

I've seen people make a lot of well thought out coherent non emotional suggestions in this thread... most of which by the way are already on the books in some form or another. 

The main reason i dont buy any of it or have any expectation that it would actually do anything is that CA has some of the most restrictive laws on the books.  Going so far even as to making previously legal guns as being now illegal.   Especially focusing now on ammo with the idea being if they cant get that it partially negates having the gun.   Let me ask one simple question... Has it changed anything?

Tell me what law you can pass that would stop the gang violence in our rough inner cities?   Those guns being used are already illegal in this state and they damned sure are passing any background checks to get them yet they are still better armed than the damned police.  Now please, tell me what laws you can pass to change that then ill give any credence to gun control as any kind of effective anti crime or even anti insane idiot measure.  Even an outright ban would have virtually no affect on this, the guns are already out there and it would be literally impossible to determine how many, or where, or even a token effort to recover them.  

We need laws for many things, most notably to set guidelines for acceptable behavior, but the assumption that people dont or wont break them is ostrich syndrome at its most ignorant.  history has absolutely proven people will do stupid things whenever it suits them.

Either way it doesnt address the root cause, which is what is truly needed.  WHY did this man decide to do what he did?  Any of them... bombs made from fertilizer handguns, rifles.. why does noone seem to care about the why as much as the how?