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Charleston Shooting

Started by gaggedLouise, June 19, 2015, 01:30:21 PM

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Ephiral

#50
Recently this came up in my news feeds. I think it's a very worthwhile read on this shooting and the context it took place in.




Quote from: Zakharra on June 19, 2015, 08:04:43 PMAs it is though, it is a right of US citizens (we see it as a human right that can't be taken away from the population by the government)and the government would be damned hard pressed to remove it for the majority of the population. It would be a revolt if they did that and I guarantee that most politicians that vote for such a thing would -not- be re-elected and many would likely face impeachment proceedings. The Second Amendment is a big thing here and just because some abuse it, is no reason to restrict it for the vast majority of people who do own and use guns responsibly.
As an outsider, the bolded part genuinely confuses me. Wasn't it only granted by your government in the first place? Isn't it routinely taken away from certain people by the order of your government? (Was that not, in fact, an argument for why guns don't need to be better-regulated, earlier in this very thread?) So... given that context, what does this statement even mean?

As to the actual gun debate itself... LiztesFerenc seems to be handling my side pretty well for the most part, but I feel the need to address a couple points:

Quote from: Zakharra on June 19, 2015, 08:46:28 PM
  I don't know. Maybe because the people there don't think that way? When most people think of killing, it seems to be the gun most think about because it is flashy, noisy and the premiere weapon used in militaries. Guns are the easy 'solution', so most people don't think past that.
That bolded line? That's an argument for gun control. Most murders are crimes of passion. Make it more difficult to murder someone in the heat of the moment, and the murder rate drops.

Quote from: Zakharra on June 19, 2015, 08:46:28 PMI k now someone might bring up on how handguns and rifles can't compare to the military, but they always seem to forget one thing; the military would not necessarily go along with orders to attack their own citizens. Soldiers are not mind numbed robots that always obey unthinkingly. They are people too and will not necessarily obey orders to fire upon their own citizens. I can see large portions of the military openly refusing to do obey such orders if the President and government tried to remove firearms from the population.
Lisztes addressed this, but I think it bears repeating: No version of your scenario is improved by disorganized bands of citizens with civilian weapons. Either they get themselves killed against the military, or the military is better at the job.

Quote from: Zakharra on June 19, 2015, 08:46:28 PMYes they are easy to get. STEAL a car or truck just before a concert or something and drive onto the sidewalk/into a building.
Quick question: Do you know how most guns enter the black market?

Quote from: Zakharra on June 19, 2015, 08:46:28 PMAlso thousands of innocents are killed by vehicles other people are driving -every year- in the US. More people are killed by cars and trucks than by guns, intentionally or accidentally. You can Goggle and made explosives and poison gasses out of some very common household cleaning products. A knife is easy to get. The hand grenade might be harder, but you would be astounded what military hardware is legal for US citizens to own. Everything from military rifles, to machine-guns, prop and jet planes, helicopters to tanks and probably artillery, RPGs and more. The American citizen can get an amazing amount of stuff for private/recreational use.
So... your argument here is "We can get ordnance, therefore it's no harm to be able to get ordnance"? Little circular, isn't it?

gaggedLouise

#51
Quote from: LisztesFerenc on June 19, 2015, 06:44:01 PM
  The point is, if you are serious about taking on the US government, you would be lobbying for the right to research and own affordable civilian anti-air weaponry, anti tank weaponry, the right to own bombs, grenades and bunker buster ammunition. You should lobby for well regulated militia (oh yeah, you also need to stop pretending that isn't a clause in the 2nd amendment) to receive decommissioned military hardware, including heavy vehicle and even fighter jets and battle ships. You would lobby for money to train and maintain disciplined militias, and compensate them for their time spent training, developing and maintaining their skills.

  Or, you can acknowledge that this is a fantasy that will never happen, and real people are dying to keep it alive.

Yes, I'd have to agree. If the country's been taken over by a military junta or some kind of autocratic government determined to torture, kill and strike fear into many of the common people, as in Chile 1973, South Africa under the apartheid regime or Burma from around 1990 - and irrespective of what kind of constitutional or Newspeak excuses they managed to find for taking over -  and they have really secured firm control of the state, then a Robin Hood or Mel Gibson-style rebellion with guys setting up ambushes for a few government units, robbing banks and putting up small resistance posters at midnight armed with a handgun or an assault rifle (?) for their personal protection isn't in itself what it takes to get rid of such a government, such a rule by violence. Not by a mile, really. The days when Robin Hood or a small "armed militia" working from the mountains or at some farms and cities could topple the well-armed tyrant, who has fully modern equipment plus control of the courts, the media, most schools...and who may be able to cut off access to food, electricity, jobs and money for some of its enemies/resistance folks (even people's own hard-earned money) if it decide those people are being unruly and starting to resist for real - those days are long since over. Neither in Chile, in South Africa, in Poland or Hungary (foreign-supported autocracy), nor in Francoist Spain did that kind of small-arms resistance have any meaningful impact, and we all know it won't mean anything in Syria and had no relevance in Afghanistan, even though both of those last two are countries where lots of people had some kinds of guns even before the current wars broke out.

If you're going to topple Big Brother in the modern world by means of violent resistance and armed rebellion, you do need serious military equipment and a trained army, not sparetime civilian fighters training on a network of farms. Small-scale armed resistance and sabotage actions like in France during WW2 or in Libya when Qaddafi was in power are more about breaking through the sheen of legitimacy that the thug government will always try to put up for its own violence and suppression, about keeping people aware that this is not a real, democratic or "good" government, than about overhrowing it just by the means of the small "underground militia" itself. That and sonnecting to the bigger picture, offering a legitimate partner for some foreign power that might want to help in some effective way, and making your case to the outside world, telling them "We are the People, not them! even though they are able to send ambassadors, nice gifts and fighter jets! and even though they control school and courtrooms". Partners such as the US in Afghanistan in the 80s and in 2001, or a growing number of nearby black regimes in southern Africa, Cuba and the Soviet Union (and in a smaller way, Sweden, who also helped make the ANC get seen as legitimate over time by diplomatic means), all of whom helped keep up military pressure on apartheid South Africa in the 1980s with their own troops and instructors and arm the ANC. By themelves and with the kind of weapons you use for hunting in the wild, or even a small stockpile of grenades and machine guns, the militias of Libya, South Africa or Chile wouldn't have got close to toppling their executioners.

Besides, if you want to fracture the legitimacy of a bad regime, then non-violent resistance such as spreading unwanted information, dissenting points of view, questioning what the autocrats and their henchmen will say in their own defence, bringing to light their acts of violence, killing and suppression and removing their own fake reasons - in all, breaking through their wall of silence and lies - are just as essential as questioning their right to use the army, and often more effective than ambushing some infantry platoon or firing on military police in an alley.

Quote from: Ephiral on June 19, 2015, 07:35:01 PM
This. All of this. In the modern environment, it is not an armed populace that keeps a military junta at bay - it's the desire of governments to maintain an air of legitimacy in the eyes of their people and their peers. In this context, a strong constitution and a strong, adversarial judiciary are far more useful than a gun in the hands of every citizen - and certainly more useful than an active decision to avoid even the slightest pretense of tracking weapons. (Pop quiz: How many legal guns are there in the US?)

*nods* To keep down the people in a modern country, to make them obey you and accept wht you're doing even when it means hanging a few people without an open and fair trial, squandering state money on a regular basis on more guards for the regime and luxury items for the dear leader and his family and cronies, or muzzling the newspapers and the radio and tv, you need more than just troops and ships, or even high-powered missiles. The tyrant (or occupying power, or "Save the Nation Council" or whatever it might be called) has to cement its version of events in schools, in the courts, in the mass media and to the outside world. Pinochet knew that was what he needed, despite torturing and murdering thousands of people anyway in his own native Chile, Assad knows it, Stalin knew it, even ISIS know it.

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Blythe

What did I just read?

I am horrified that anyone would place any amount of blame for the tragedy on one of those who died in the shooting.

Cassandra LeMay

Quote from: Blythe on June 20, 2015, 03:37:16 AM
What did I just read?

I am horrified that anyone would place any amount of blame for the tragedy on one of those who died in the shooting.
Sadly I am not surprised. The CBC's Neil Macdonald predicted pretty much that two days ago:

QuoteBut if the NRA's post-Newtown declaration was any guide, let me predict what it will say about South Carolina.

It will call it a "terrible tragedy," and it will say the whole thing could have been averted had the worshippers only been armed with sufficiently powerful weapons themselves.

It will probably also urge church leaderships across America to, at the very least, to arm and train pastors and deacons, and it will offer any advice or facilities needed for that.

Granted, it may not be the official NRA stance (yet), but I am fairly sure they will eventually fall in behind this attitude, even if perhaps worded somewhat differently.
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kylie

#54
Quote
"Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead," Cotton wrote.
I'm not a fan of the NRA at all.  But reading this, I think what Cotton would say is something like he's simply arguing that more people with guns means more chance at self-defense. 

      Is it always bad taste to ask if the dead in an incident could have done something differently before the incident, politically or personally?  I dunno.  This happened so recently that it's raw and I suspect a lot of people would say yes.  Would we always say that?  Maybe not, if we happened to disagree enough with the dead person's politics? 

      I suppose to Cotton, if he's true to just this line above (and I don't know anything else about him myself)...  Then, I think he might say something like, 'It's the same as: we say, if those people on the highway had worn seatbelts, then more of them might still be alive.'  If that is the end of the logic, I don't know if he'd be so comfortable with the term "blame" -- or not as it's seen as a sort of unnecessary personal attack in the 'this must be eroneous' response anyway.  To him, I bet, it's more equivalent to saying Chamberlain bears some of the "blame" for Germany getting off to a strong start in WW2.  Now speaking for myself, I don't feel comfortable with the idea of guns in every sort of establishment.  But what he is saying there is not really much of a change from the line the NRA uses the rest of the time -- with or without an actual incident.     

     Separately, I did wonder a little whether the shooter knew that the senator might be there, and if the shooter might also have such a taste for taking jabs -- or in his case, even shots -- at someone in office with a record of speaking in favor of gun control.  I haven't seen anything really mentioning whether he did or didn't indicate anything about it somewhere yet.  Maybe it's too early, or maybe if yes he just wasn't so obvious/fired up at the time, as he was about racial comments.
     

gaggedLouise

#55
I do think it's very bad taste to try to throw it back at the Reverend who was killed, saying basically "he was for tighter gun control, against concealed-carry rights for everyone, against the free right to bring your handgun into most public places where you'd want it" (a movie theatre, a church, an airport or a school, for instance) "but if he had understood what gun rights are really for and sided with us, then he would have wisely protected his congregation". The point is, unqualified "gun rights" also offers a fast route for any kind of gun you want, even assault rifles, heavy and fast-loading revolvers or machine-guns. Concealed carry does save civilian lives, yes, but it also feeds into a wider gun culture, and gives more possibilities for criminals and killers in some circumstances. And the private persons most likely to bring a heavy-duty weapon into a church or a school (without any orders or duty to do so) are, frankly, the firearm nutters, the persons with a fixation about arms or some seriously paranoid or racist ideas.

The reverend and senator did not base his stance in this question simply on what might possibly happen at his church, or to people he knew personally. He was stating what he wanted on principle.  Suppose some of the guests in a church or customers and salesmen at an open-air market had pistols in their handbags or under the table, a few of them even under their coats, and out of nowhere a man with a machine gun starts firing with deadly expertise and speed - how big are the chances that any of them would be able to take the madcap killer down before he has gunned down twenty people or more in less than two minutes? Exactly the same thing could have happened in the church at Charleston, or in Newtown. Some of these paranoid shooters even have more than one big gun with them when they enter, and get away with it! The killer is vastly likely to have a much better gun, more bullets and better training.

Oh wait, then you have to tell ordinary people to train their shooting skills before they can safely go to school, pray, go to an electioneering rally in their town or drive their kids to school... ::)

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Ephiral

The NRA's answer to any shooting will always be more guns, because the NRA gets a very significant and rapidly-rising chunk of its income from gun-company contributions.

And I suppose I should have expected this, but I didn't. In the latest round of "It totally wasn't racism!", Fox found the real cause: It's because y'all accept trans people.

kylie

#57
     Erickson...  Wtf.  Because anyone who does anything or comes up with any perspective you don't approve of, "obviously" and must be simply stone crazy?  Ahem. 

     (I dunno if he has noticed what a convenient defense story that might make in court, too -- is it partly a hint toward insanity pleas and what not.  Although then again maybe not, cause religion seems to be such a big force in the region.  IF the courts are somehow less umm, publicly forgiving than the families at least.  But I don't quite get the logic where it's necessary for people to turn it into a showcase of potentially condescending religious rhetoric, either.) 
     

gaggedLouise

#58
Quote from: Erick Erickson"as a nation, when these things happen, we never have the conversation about real evil"

*buries her face on her crossed arms, clenching her fists* Man, that was almost funny!

Okay, just saying:

A clubbed down or shot black woman, unarmed or unwilling to bring a firearm ín advance, remains an attacked/clubbed down/ gunned down black woman no matter what reasons somebody gave for doing it to her. No amount of excuses, verbal tricks or cheap fear-mongering can make her less clubbed down, less attacked, at the worst: less dead. And the same goes for if she's a black transwoman.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

la dame en noir

Are people seriously trying to make excuses for a murderer?
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kylie

#60
     I'd imagine that it's also pretty hard to shake the conclusion that Roof made a racially motivated attack.  He may or may not have had some other motivations too, I really don't know and it may be too early to tell.  (Not going to assume that it's only worthwhile ever talking about some "biggest" one.) 

     But when he says on the scene it's racial, I'd be pretty shocked if he shakes that concern away in court.  It wouldn't be the first shocking thing in the world, but it would be awfully disturbing.  Again though, I worry a little bit that it might somehow get lost or distorted a bit much with the local influence of religion (e.g. how many of these regional churches are leaning/strongly White-funded and/or "ears locked to the Fox commentary" sort of conservative?) and circling of wagons under that banner in various, sometimes insular/parochial ways too.
     

Ephiral

Quote from: la dame en noir on June 20, 2015, 10:43:11 AM
Are people seriously trying to make excuses for a murderer?
Of course they are, because the motivation was blatantly racism. If they can't find some excuse, anything at all, then they have to admit that racism still exists.

Quote from: kylie on June 20, 2015, 10:43:58 AM
     I'd imagine that it's also pretty hard to shake the conclusion that Roof made a racially motivated attack.  He may or may not have had some other motivations too, I really don't know and it may be too early to tell.  (Not going to assume that it's only worthwhile ever talking about some "biggest" one.) 

     But when he says on the scene it's racial, I'd be pretty shocked if he shakes that concern away in court.  It wouldn't be the first shocking thing in the world, but it would be awfully disturbing.  Again though, I worry a little bit that it might somehow get lost or distorted a bit much with the local influence of religion (e.g. how many of these regional churches are leaning/strongly White-funded and/or "ears locked to the Fox commentary" sort of conservative?) and circling of wagons under that banner in various, sometimes insular/parochial ways too.
Of note: Fox's first and favourite distraction attempt is "It's an attack on Christians!"

kylie

     Oh, but there are always excuses.  If awful ones.

     Rick Perry is calling it a drug-induced "accident," focusing on Roof's possessing (without a prescription) -- if I can transmit this right --  Rehab drugs of a narcotic variety.  Well, there's the far right for you.  If you are gay and you have some drug problems (and worse, catch AIDS with a social/party life anywhere in sight), then it's a "lifestyle choice" and God has dropped "consequences" on you, tough luck and don't expect any support from your government.  But if you murder others, even multiple others, and you happen to have righter-than "right" politics, it must be all an "accident."   ::) ::)

     And then there's Santorum for that, Ephiral.  Picking up on the 'Zomg' [pun intended, sorry!], "Another example of assaults on religious freedom" thingama--messy.

Quote
“It’s obviously a crime of hate,” he noted. “We don’t know the rationale, but what other rationale could there be. You’re sort of lost that someone would walk into a Bible study at a church and indiscriminately kill people.”

“This is one of those situation where you have to take a step a back and say — you talk about the importance of prayer at this time, and we’re now seeing assaults on religious liberty we’ve never seen before,” the candidate noted. “So, it’s a time for deeper reflection even beyond this horrible situation.”

In fact, witnesses to the shooting and other reports have indicated that the shooter was a white supremacist who chose the historically black church because he wanted to kill black people.

     
     

Cassandra LeMay

#63
Quote from: la dame en noir on June 20, 2015, 10:43:11 AM
Are people seriously trying to make excuses for a murderer?

No. They are trying to alert the country to the fact that there is something fundamentally wrong with an America that elects a Kenyan communist as president.

Welcome to the land of limited impossibilities (only that I am no longer sure about the 'limited' part).
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Oniya

Just in from my FB feed - a reverse DNS lookup has found that Dylann Roof registered a domain name and put up a manifesto before the shooting.  As this article asks:  'Any questions now?
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Cycle

Quote from: Ephiral on June 20, 2015, 10:04:42 AM
Fox found the real cause: It's because y'all accept trans people.

*laughs way too hard at Fox*

Are they going to blame Jenner for ISIS too?  How about Ebola?  I know, I know!  Jenner's behind the climate change "conspiracy!"


Dashenka

Quote from: Zakharra on June 19, 2015, 08:04:43 PM
To be able to hunt, in the country, this is very popular. Also home/personal defense, as collectors items (collecting pistols and rifles, from both hunting and obsolete military weaponry), or just target/practice/recreational shooting. There are many other reasons (and far more prevalent reasons) than just besides shooting people because you're upset/homicidal or depressed/suicidal.

To hunt animals is cruel.

If you want personal defense, buy a battleship or a nuke, not a gun, there is always somebody with a bigger gun.

A collectors item could be make so that it doesn't work and recreational shooting? That's almost as insane as recreational speeding on the motorways.


There really is no excuse to keep that idiotic law (or freedom) in place. None.
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Oniya

Quote from: Dashenka on June 20, 2015, 03:41:39 PM
To hunt animals is cruel.

Back in Ohio, many of my neighbors hunted in order to supplement their diet, as the amount of meat that one could get for the cost of a few bullets and a hunting license was vastly more than what they could get for the same amount of income/food stamps.  In addition, since many of the natural predators have been eliminated (to protect livestock), culling the deer herds actually helps the species by eliminating weaker animals and preventing over-crowding and starvation.

I'm assuming your second point is pure sarcasm.
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Ephiral

#68
Irony of ironies: Three weeks ago, a pastor was gunned down in front of his church in Hartford, CT. The only known motive (police mentioned "some language used in the incident") was his Christian beliefs. Fox and the other usual suspects still haven't said a word about this blatant attack on religious liberty. Which I'm certain has nothing to do with the fact that the beliefs in question boiled down to "LGBT people are our equals and we should welcome them", or the fact that he was black.

Meanwhile, someone shoots nine black people for being black, as he has personally said in repeated statements? Must be an attack on Christianity, right?




UPDATE: Just in case there was any lingering doubt whatsoever, here's the suspect himself on how he became a racist and decided to go shoot people, and how he selected his target.

Lustful Bride

#69
Im just tossing my two cents out here but while im pro gun I would be alright with a tax on bullets.  :P

Ive only ever used a gun at the range and its not like I go every other day. I will only ever plan to use it if someone breaks into my home and tries to break into my room or if the world suddenly goes Mad Max on us.

Id totally be willing for compromises (hell id even give up semi-auto pistols) if both sides of the political theatre would pull their thumbs out of their asses and actually try to negotiate. But since when have politicians ever cared about making sense?  ::) Its all about how much money they can stuff into their pockets and how many voters they can get.

All I ever see from either party are the absolute extremes and the classic "Youre bad and should feel bad for X, Y, Z" instead of "Lets talk it out and parley, lets work out a compromise."  :P

Plus you never hear about a person who stops a rape or saves themselves by using a gun. Cause that doesn't sell newspapers.

Oniya

For truth.  I like to think I'm one of those who advocate 'sane gun control'.  Not 'All guns are bad, WTFBBQ!' but rather seeing licensing akin to car licensing (certain behaviors/conditions could exclude ownership, safety classes required before ownership, and regular re-certification required to maintain ownership).

Unfortunately, the lobbyists on both sides are either 'everyone must be able to get a gun!' or 'nobody should have guns!'.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
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Lustful Bride

Quote from: Oniya on June 20, 2015, 04:24:55 PM
For truth.  I like to think I'm one of those who advocate 'sane gun control'.  Not 'All guns are bad, WTFBBQ!' but rather seeing licensing akin to car licensing (certain behaviors/conditions could exclude ownership, safety classes required before ownership, and regular re-certification required to maintain ownership).

Unfortunately, the lobbyists on both sides are either 'everyone must be able to get a gun!' or 'nobody should have guns!'.

Makes me wish that Teddy Roosevelt had succeeded in creating his Bull Moose party, maybe they would have been the middle ground that we need instead of the two that throw their tantrums and hide in their room.

Oh btw. High Five for Sanity.  ;D

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Ephiral

I'm all for sane gun control - but I think we'd disagree on the definition of "sane". Up here, we have two classes of license, each requiring mandatory safety certification. (All handguns, short-barreled longarms, and the AR-15 and a few other specific cases fall under the more restrictive of the two.) Authorization to carry gets tighter scrutiny and requires justification (the common examples are living in wilderness or working as an armed guard; "police protection is insufficient" is a reason but extremely rarely granted under special circumstances only). All restricted weapons (basically anything that isn't a full-length longarm) have to be registered (and sales have to be reported, private or commercial), and stored and transported securely. These all seem like rather reasonable restrictions to me, though I might be willing to flex somewhat on the finer points of prohibited vs restricted vs non-restricted, the definition of "firearm" (our muzzle-velocity rule is bullshit, and possibly the inclusion of replicas (though I do think commission of a crime with a replica should fall under firearm sanctions).

Lustful Bride

If by replica do you mean how toy guns sometimes get painted and used in robberies or like a plastic/ wooden copy of a real gun? Or those ones that are designed to fire only blanks?

Zakharra

Quote from: Dashenka on June 20, 2015, 03:41:39 PM
To hunt animals is cruel.

If you want personal defense, buy a battleship or a nuke, not a gun, there is always somebody with a bigger gun.

A collectors item could be make so that it doesn't work and recreational shooting? That's almost as insane as recreational speeding on the motorways.


There really is no excuse to keep that idiotic law (or freedom) in place. None.

Many in the country hunt to eat. Almost all hunters eat what they shoot. We can't do a shoot and release like a catch and release with fish. It doesn't make sense to shoot an animal and leave the carcass (aside from vermin, they can rot. Bloody gophers..*glare*). Deer, elf, caribou, moose, mountain goats/sheep and such are more often than not, eaten. I don't know about big carnivores like mountain lions, but I know people will eat bears. Birds such as ducks, geese and other fowl are eaten when shot. That's one reason why there is a limit on how many a hunter can shoot. Hunters also pay a lot of money to help maintain the wilderness areas and help promote consciousness of wilderness and wildlife areas.

Quote from: Ephiral on June 19, 2015, 10:32:13 PM



As an outsider, the bolded part genuinely confuses me. Wasn't it only granted by your government in the first place? Isn't it routinely taken away from certain people by the order of your government? (Was that not, in fact, an argument for why guns don't need to be better-regulated, earlier in this very thread?) So... given that context, what does this statement even mean?

No. The US Constitution lists the rights that the government canNOT take away from the population. These are rights that are supposed to be untouchable by government.

QuoteAs to the actual gun debate itself... LiztesFerenc seems to be handling my side pretty well for the most part, but I feel the need to address a couple points:
That bolded line? That's an argument for gun control. Most murders are crimes of passion. Make it more difficult to murder someone in the heat of the moment, and the murder rate drops.

So? If there are no guns, other ways would be used. Just because a very TINY number of people use guns to murder others (or themselves) is no reason to restrict or remove gun ownership from -everyone-.

QuoteLisztes addressed this, but I think it bears repeating: No version of your scenario is improved by disorganized bands of citizens with civilian weapons. Either they get themselves killed against the military, or the military is better at the job.
Quick question: Do you know how most guns enter the black market?
So... your argument here is "We can get ordnance, therefore it's no harm to be able to get ordnance"? Little circular, isn't it?

Many hunters, especially the older ones are good, aka sniper materiel here, so they would be good/decent at ambushes. It would not take much for a few patrols to be taken out and better military hardware acquired. You seem to be thinking that the entire, or most of the US military would be going along with oppressing the US citizens. Why? What makes you think that the majority of US military personnel would go along with such orders? In all likelihood, there would be a hell of a lot of soldiers who would refuse to do that. The military would likely split and the government trying to oppress the people would find itself under fire from its own military.
 
Mostly through illegal ways. I highly doubt they are bought legally. Modern military ordinance on the black market is definitely illegal.

Hardly. It's less circular than your argument of; 'a small number of people use guns to murder others, so we should restrict/remove guns from everyone'. Why blame everyone for the actions of a tiny minority of people?


Quote from: LisztesFerenc on June 19, 2015, 08:54:29 PM
  Exactly. Ergo, no guns makes it harder to kill people, so less people are murdered, and "A mass murder happened hear recently" typically means in the last 50 years, not the last 6 months.

  So the constitution can be changed, otherwise the USSC would still be going by the that definition. So why can't it change again?

  That weakens your argument. If the military deserts, you don't need an armed population to defeat the tyrannical government, the army does that better.

  Simple, risk vs. reward. Cars are vital to any modern society. Guns are only common in one, so are logically vital to none. Also automobile accidents typically aren't as traumatic as mass shootings.

  That is no reason to restrict/remove guns from everyone else,l the vast majority of gun owners who ARE responsible users of them. As I told Epherial, you're wanting to restrict/remove all guns based on the actions of a -tiny- minority of people. Just because some people abuse the right is no reason to remove/restrict it for everyone.

Umm.. the Constitution can only be changed by a 2/3 majority vote by both Houses of Congress or 2/3 (or 3/4 vote by the states. That is the -only- way it can be changed legally.  How it is interpreted is another matter, but US jurisprudence takes precedence into account on cases, and for many many decades, the USSC has ruled that the Second Amendment is the individual's right to own a weapon. To go back on this when there are dozen of cases the Court has ruled in favor for individual ownership would have a serious backlash among the population and legal establishment.

Automobile accidents can be extremely traumatic for the survivors. To say they aren't as traumatic is doing them a disservice, I think. What they aren't though is headline grabbing. The US media establishment seems to love blood and gore and the moment something flashy happens, such as a shooting, they jump all over it and splash it on the screen in loving and vivid detail, spewing out, within moments of it happening, all possible theories of who, what, and why. It's seen as a crisis that cannot go to waste and is used to push an agenda (gun control in this case, since a gun was used, ALL guns must be/are bad. :| )

Also many people see guns, usually rifles, as a necessary part of their lives. Usually country folk that use rifles for hunting or pest/varmint control. The local butcher here uses a rifle to put down animals he slaughters (he comes to your place to kill and butcher the animal there, then takes the carcass back to his shop for hanging and processing into taste chops, cuts and sausage/ground meat. Yummy).

Quote from: Lustful Bride on June 20, 2015, 04:20:11 PM
Im just tossing my two cents out here but while im pro gun I would be alright with a tax on bullets.  :P

Ive only ever used a gun at the range and its not like I go every other day. I will only ever plan to use it if someone breaks into my home and tries to break into my room or if the world suddenly goes Mad Max on us.

Id totally be willing for compromises (hell id even give up semi-auto pistols) if both sides of the political theatre would pull their thumbs out of their asses and actually try to negotiate. But since when have politicians ever cared about making sense?  ::) Its all about how much money they can stuff into their pockets and how many voters they can get.

All I ever see from either party are the absolute extremes and the classic "Youre bad and should feel bad for X, Y, Z" instead of "Lets talk it out and parley, lets work out a compromise."  :P

Plus you never hear about a person who stops a rape or saves themselves by using a gun. Cause that doesn't sell newspapers.

I am ambivalent on taxing bullets. I believe the anti-gun people have tried that before and its always been defeated since their aim was to make the ammunition too expensive to buy, let alone own. I'm not convinced a tax on ammunition would not be another way for the gun control people to try and price ammunition out of the hands of average people, or to put limits on how many rounds someone can own.

I agree with you on the political parties though. It's gotten bad and it seems to be more extreme positions now and less statesmanship. A return to the willingness to listen and work with the other party like in the 1980s and early 90s would help a lot.