Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo — Page 471

DominicCobb said:

The hope would be to get to a place down the line where people don’t really care about whether they have the right or not.

I know that brings about thoughts like “the government is going to trick you into getting rid of your guns then they’re going to fuck you over!” But I don’t think protecting yourself from the government is really feasible at this point, arsenal or not.

The best hope would be that the military would be unwilling to kill a large amount of Americans and would turn on the hypothetical dictator.

dahmage said:

Guns shouldn’t be a right.

but part of what Tyr and Jeebus seem to be advocating is that it is just to hard to force a fix that too many people fundamentally diagree with (but guns are my American RIGHT). It is true in a very pragmatic sense, but it is also very frustrating to me.

Part of what i do is software development, so i certainly tend to think in terms of ‘that old software is fundamentally wrong, lets replace it!’, and so part of me just screams against the idea of accepting something is guaranteed to yield bad outcomes. it is like keeping on using that buggy product, even though every now and then it corrupts the data. (deleted a way too long and drug out analogy that doesn’t even make sense)

All i can say is, i really do think that guns are the problem, but sure, we can also try some other solutions. But solving peoples desire to murder is even harder than just getting rid of some of the murder weapons…

I mean… you can say they shouldn’t be a right, but you’d be wrong (tee hee). It serves a symbolic and practical purpose by saying that we as a people will not be ruled by tyrants, and giving us the means to defend ourselves against that eventuality. A huge part of American identity is the Revolution and throwing off the mantle of oppression, which wouldn’t have been possible without the average American citizen being able to pick up their rifle to fight for what’s right. I like the idea of that, and considering we’re not yet at the point that we don’t elect dangerously insane senile old white men into the highest office in the land, I’d kinda like to hold onto that kind of right, personally.

Guns and gun ownership are parts of an issue, sure, but a much much smaller part than the overall issue in my mind (we have more guns in the country than people, but we’ve not all been murdered yet). Tackling that issue is going to be difficult and hard, like you said, but I’d rather go after that than ban guns… and then ban knives… and then ban sticks and rocks… and then ban karate lessons… and then tackle the root cause. Let’s get the hard part done first and I think we’ll find that the smaller problems solve themselves to an extent.

The frontier was in the DNA of our country for a long time, and to a certain extent still is judging by the number of TV shows about Alaska. The problem is that the rest of the country is well and truly domesticated, so guns are not necessary for the vast majority of the populace to remain safe - gun ownership is now technically a hobby for most of the US population.

And I would disagree that rights can only be won through violence - see Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the women’s suffrage movement, etc. Anything won through violence can be lost through violence. And there are rights other than the right to bear arms - the right to life among them. If one right infringes on another, which one should be honored? Do we accept the deaths of thousands of people each year as fair sacrifice for our right to own weapons?

Tyrphanax said:

considering we’re not yet at the point that we don’t elect dangerously insane senile old white men into the highest office in the land, I’d kinda like to hold onto that kind of right, personally.

I find this extremely convenient reasoning, seeing as how the right wing was responsible for electing this ‘dangerously insane senile’ old white man.

moviefreakedmind said:

DominicCobb said:

The hope would be to get to a place down the line where people don’t really care about whether they have the right or not.

I know that brings about thoughts like “the government is going to trick you into getting rid of your guns then they’re going to fuck you over!” But I don’t think protecting yourself from the government is really feasible at this point, arsenal or not.

The best hope would be that the military would be unwilling to kill a large amount of Americans and would turn on the hypothetical dictator.

I don’t like getting too deep into these conversations because I don’t like dreaming up hypothetical situations about the end times, but yes to MFM, and to address Dom’s point, Afghanistan and Vietnam both held off modern, advanced militaries using ships, planes, and tanks with basically armed and mostly untrained farmers.

DominicCobb said:

The hope would be to get to a place down the line where people don’t really care about whether they have the right or not.

To go back for a second: I really don’t like this wording because it worryingly reflects the attitude of the world right now. Complacency is scary, and we’ve given up so many rights as it is because of it. Nobody would say this about freedom of press or any of our other rights, but because some people don’t like guns, it’s okay to give that one up. I’m not down with that.

dahmage said:

Tyrphanax said:

dahmage said:

Guns shouldn’t be a right.

but part of what Tyr and Jeebus seem to be advocating is that it is just to hard to force a fix that too many people fundamentally diagree with (but guns are my American RIGHT). It is true in a very pragmatic sense, but it is also very frustrating to me.

Part of what i do is software development, so i certainly tend to think in terms of ‘that old software is fundamentally wrong, lets replace it!’, and so part of me just screams against the idea of accepting something is guaranteed to yield bad outcomes. it is like keeping on using that buggy product, even though every now and then it corrupts the data. (deleted a way too long and drug out analogy that doesn’t even make sense)

All i can say is, i really do think that guns are the problem, but sure, we can also try some other solutions. But solving peoples desire to murder is even harder than just getting rid of some of the murder weapons…

I mean… you can say they shouldn’t be a right, but you’d be wrong (tee hee). It serves a symbolic and practical purpose by saying that we as a people will not be ruled by tyrants, and giving us the means to defend ourselves against that eventuality. A huge part of American identity is the Revolution and throwing off the mantle of oppression, which wouldn’t have been possible without the average American citizen being able to pick up their rifle to fight for what’s right. I like the idea of that, and considering we’re not yet at the point that we don’t elect dangerously insane senile old white men into the highest office in the land, I’d kinda like to hold onto that kind of right, personally.

sure, lots of great reasons for it historically, but even if we still elect dangerously insane senile old white men, guns won’t help us against that.

I kinda addressed this with Dom earlier, and again I don’t like going into this realm very deep, but I really don’t like the idea of just throwing my hands up in this incredibly hypothetical situation and saying “Well, nothing I can do” as their gestapo or whatever does whatever it wants.

knife bans would never happen. that sippery slope argument doesn’t make sense. The argument is all about weapons that allow for easy mass murder. i can take the argument to the other extreme, we absolutely would not let a citizen own a nuclear weapon, becuase of how easy it would be completely wipe out the country / world. so, how dangerously do we want to live? Cars can be used to kill lots of people, and frankly, i would be fine if we solved transportation in such a way that i didn’t need a car.

Sorry, it wasn’t really meant as an argument, just kind of shining a light on how goofy I think a gun ban is. My point was that all bans of that nature are just ignoring the actual issues (which are admittedly tough to tackle) and applying band-aids rather than actually doing the hard work of curing the disease.

So can we solve the perceived need for guns in a way that you don’t need the damn gun, but can still feel safe / kill animals?

I don’t need the gun (I’m not even a hunter) like I don’t specifically need a car or a bottle of whiskey or a bag of chips or a can of coke… but as a free person, I have the right to have all or none of those things at my leisure (but I’d never mix the first three, haha).

Tyrphanax said:

dahmage said:

Guns shouldn’t be a right.

but part of what Tyr and Jeebus seem to be advocating is that it is just to hard to force a fix that too many people fundamentally diagree with (but guns are my American RIGHT). It is true in a very pragmatic sense, but it is also very frustrating to me.

Part of what i do is software development, so i certainly tend to think in terms of ‘that old software is fundamentally wrong, lets replace it!’, and so part of me just screams against the idea of accepting something is guaranteed to yield bad outcomes. it is like keeping on using that buggy product, even though every now and then it corrupts the data. (deleted a way too long and drug out analogy that doesn’t even make sense)

All i can say is, i really do think that guns are the problem, but sure, we can also try some other solutions. But solving peoples desire to murder is even harder than just getting rid of some of the murder weapons…

I mean… you can say they shouldn’t be a right, but you’d be wrong (tee hee). It serves a symbolic and practical purpose by saying that we as a people will not be ruled by tyrants, and giving us the means to defend ourselves against that eventuality. A huge part of American identity is the Revolution and throwing off the mantle of oppression, which wouldn’t have been possible without the average American citizen being able to pick up their rifle to fight for what’s right. I like the idea of that, and considering we’re not yet at the point that we don’t elect dangerously insane senile old white men into the highest office in the land, I’d kinda like to hold onto that kind of right, personally.

Symbolic, yes. Practical, no. Gun ownership would be equally effective against the rule of tyrants in modern America if the guns in questions were made out of cardboard and depended on the owner to make banging sounds with their mouths to signal that the other people should fall down.

Guns and gun ownership are parts of an issue, sure, but a much much smaller part than the overall issue in my mind (we have more guns in the country than people, but we’ve not all been murdered yet). Tackling that issue is going to be difficult and hard, like you said, but I’d rather go after that than ban guns… and then ban knives… and then ban sticks and rocks… and then ban karate lessons… and then tackle the root cause. Let’s get the hard part done first and I think we’ll find that the smaller problems solve themselves to an extent.

Once the world rids itself of crime, hatred, and violence – sure, that’ll solve the problem. But in the meantime Australia banned and destroyed guns and their homicides have dropped significantly without having to wait nearly that long. Australia still has violence, mental illness, hatred, domestic violence, and even terrorism. It’s quite possible not a single crime was stopped by their gun ban. But the crimes that did happen had fewer victims, which is the entire point of gun bans. Frankly I’d have been much happier if all of our recent mass shooters were just as deranged and criminal as before, but were using one of those cardboard cutout guns instead of real ones. Failing to tackle the root cause never seemed so good.

DominicCobb said:

I just don’t think the need to defend against the government is a realistic hypothetical. To be honest, it seems to me anyway like a fantasy that gun enthusiasts like to float out to justify their enthusiasm.

I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with gun enthusiasm. I just don’t think the right to bear arms is all that important a right.

That’s pretty much where I’m at. I don’t hate guns, I personally think they’re fun. Sometimes they’re even useful. People hunt – mostly for entertainment but sometimes for practical purposes. People need to keep coyotes away from their chickens, that’s fine too. But everything else is just entertainment or you telling yourself a story about how it’s not just entertainment (and that story, ironically, is just another form of entertainment).

Pest control is important, but it just doesn’t rate on the same scale as free speech as far as I’m concerned, that’s all.

CatBus said:

Tyrphanax said:

dahmage said:

Guns shouldn’t be a right.

but part of what Tyr and Jeebus seem to be advocating is that it is just to hard to force a fix that too many people fundamentally diagree with (but guns are my American RIGHT). It is true in a very pragmatic sense, but it is also very frustrating to me.

Part of what i do is software development, so i certainly tend to think in terms of ‘that old software is fundamentally wrong, lets replace it!’, and so part of me just screams against the idea of accepting something is guaranteed to yield bad outcomes. it is like keeping on using that buggy product, even though every now and then it corrupts the data. (deleted a way too long and drug out analogy that doesn’t even make sense)

All i can say is, i really do think that guns are the problem, but sure, we can also try some other solutions. But solving peoples desire to murder is even harder than just getting rid of some of the murder weapons…

I mean… you can say they shouldn’t be a right, but you’d be wrong (tee hee). It serves a symbolic and practical purpose by saying that we as a people will not be ruled by tyrants, and giving us the means to defend ourselves against that eventuality. A huge part of American identity is the Revolution and throwing off the mantle of oppression, which wouldn’t have been possible without the average American citizen being able to pick up their rifle to fight for what’s right. I like the idea of that, and considering we’re not yet at the point that we don’t elect dangerously insane senile old white men into the highest office in the land, I’d kinda like to hold onto that kind of right, personally.

Symbolic, yes. Practical, no. Gun ownership would be equally effective against the rule of tyrants in modern America if the guns in questions were made out of cardboard and depended on the owner to make banging sounds with their mouths to signal that the other people should fall down.

Again, I disagree with this. See Afghanistan in the 1980s and Vietnam in the 1960s.

Guns and gun ownership are parts of an issue, sure, but a much much smaller part than the overall issue in my mind (we have more guns in the country than people, but we’ve not all been murdered yet). Tackling that issue is going to be difficult and hard, like you said, but I’d rather go after that than ban guns… and then ban knives… and then ban sticks and rocks… and then ban karate lessons… and then tackle the root cause. Let’s get the hard part done first and I think we’ll find that the smaller problems solve themselves to an extent.

Once the world rids itself of crime, hatred, and violence – sure, that’ll solve the problem. But in the meantime Australia banned and destroyed guns and their homicides have dropped significantly without having to wait nearly that long. Australia still has violence, mental illness, hatred, domestic violence, and even terrorism. It’s quite possible not a single crime was stopped by their gun ban. But the crimes that did happen had fewer victims, which is the entire point of gun bans. Frankly I’d have been much happier if all of our recent mass shooters were just as deranged and criminal as before, but were using one of those cardboard cutout guns instead of real ones. Failing to tackle the root cause never seemed so good.

So here’s the thing about Australia because it’s the new hot thing to bring up here (like when people point to Democratic Socialism working really well in tiny Scandinavian countries so why don’t we just do that?)… Australia had almost no mass shootings until the one that prompted their ban. Australia already had much less crime/homicide than the US, even before the ban. Australia had no Second Amendment or much of a gun culture as compared to the US. Australia has fewer people and far far fewer guns than the US and the main impact was on suicide rates. Australia is a continent surrounded by water, whereas America has two massive mostly-open borders to the north and south (and if you think the central/south American cartels are making a [literal] killing on drugs right now, just imagine if you just took all the guns from a country with a gun culture like the US has). In the end, like Scandinavia, Australia is a totally different country/culture/environment than the US, and what is good for the goose is not always good for the gander (though much like in Australia, homicides and gun crime in the US is the lowest in 50 years as well).

dahmage said:

Tyrphanax said:

DominicCobb said:

The hope would be to get to a place down the line where people don’t really care about whether they have the right or not.

To go back for a second: I really don’t like this wording because it worryingly reflects the attitude of the world right now. Complacency is scary, and we’ve given up so many rights as it is because of it. Nobody would say this about freedom of press or any of our other rights, but because some people don’t like guns, it’s okay to give that one up. I’m not down with that.

just continuing with this part. I completely agree with your concern about giving up something for perceived short term gain. I just really disagree that giving up guns will ever be something that we regret. I think this is probably the only real part we fundamentally have different takes on.

Yeah, and that’s alright haha. I’d hate to just agree with everyone all the time!

DominicCobb said:

I just don’t think the need to defend against the government is a realistic hypothetical (for a lot of reasons). To be honest, it seems (to me anyway) like a fantasy that gun enthusiasts like to float out to justify their enthusiasm.

I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with gun enthusiasm. I just don’t think the right to bear arms is all that important a right.

Yeah that’s why I don’t like to get into it: it’s just a fantasy (though not in a good way. Not something I ever want to happen at least). Though I honestly do think that it’s still important for that reason, fantasy or no.

TV’s Frink said:

I guess this is good news but I’ll believe it when it actually happens.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/top-house-republicans-open-to-legislation-regulating-bump-stocks/2017/10/05/4580cb54-a9dc-11e7-b3aa-c0e2e1d41e38_story.html?utm_term=.6e5240aa96bc

The National Rifle Association has joined an effort to restrict a device that was used to accelerate gunfire in the Las Vegas massacre, after the White House and top Republicans signaled a willingness to debate the issue in response to the tragedy.

“In Las Vegas, reports indicate that certain devices were used to modify the firearms involved. . . . The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations,” the NRA’s executive vice president and chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, said in a joint statement with Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action.

The statement from the NRA — its first since Sunday’s shooting — was expected to galvanize the effort to further regulate bump fire stocks, or bump stocks.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said Thursday that lawmakers will consider further rules for the devices, which allow legal semiautomatic rifles to fire as rapidly as more heavily restricted automatic weapons.

“Clearly that’s something we need to look into,” Ryan said on MSNBC. He said he did not know what bump stocks were before Sunday’s shooting, which left at least 58 dead and hundreds injured.

Yeah this is a smart move for them. This is a fight they can’t win and supporting something that was already in a pretty grey area legally would be really stupid.

I’m not sad to see them go myself. Fun, sure, but like I’ve said before, I don’t dig bending rules around something this important (in my opinion and supposedly many of those who are bending the rules) and especially this contentious. I want to keep my guns, not do stupid shit that will be fun and win a battle or two but end up losing me the war in the long run.