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Post #1208449

Author
Tyrphanax
Parent topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1208449/action/topic#1208449
Date created
20-May-2018, 9:53 PM

CatBus said:

I think that mischaracterization comes from timing. Those in favor of gun regulation (or gun bans, etc) are always in favor of them. Those against them are always against them. But there’s this mass of people in the middle who could potentially be convinced. So every time there’s a massacre, people on both sides try to convince the people in the middle that their policies are best.

The pro-gun side sees this surge of effort from the anti-gun side after every massacre and thinks that the massacre caused the policy view, and it’s a gut response, but of course it’s not. The same thing could easily be said for the pro-gun side, who (usually much more successfully) relaxes gun laws every time there’s a massacre. You could say that’s a gut response too, but it’s not. It’s just pushing policies they’ve always believed, using timing for political leverage, that’s all.

Very much agreed. I can 100% attest to going right into defensive lockdown when something like this happens because I can feel the tide of “ban all guns” coming, and I’m sure it’s the same (but opposite) on the other end.

As a result, nothing conducive happens.

DominicCobb said:

Tyrphanax said:

TV’s Frink said:

Tyrphanax said:

Jay said:

Jeebus said:

TM2YC said:

Jay said:

mass killings… why didn’t we see them when guns were even more readily available?

When were guns less prevalent in the US than today?

Interestingly, the murder rate has been going down for quite a while now. It raised a bit in recent years, but its nowhere near the rate it was in the 80s.

EDIT: That’s just the general murder rate, gun murders are, indeed, going up.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-u-s-murder-rate-is-up-but-still-far-below-its-1980-peak/

Maybe I’m reading it wrong, but it looks like the percentage of murders committed with firearms went up, not the absolute number. But yeah, crime is relatively low, though you’d think it was the purge based on media coverage.

Jeebus said:

Jay said:

TV’s Frink said:

Mrebo said:

I think Jay’s argument is that those arguing for anything approaching a ban on guns don’t account for the fact that so many of the killings will still happen. And I think that’s right.

We can’t stop all the killings, so let’s not try to stop any of the killings.

Sounds great.

How many of the killings will stop if we ban the scary guns? That’s an honest question. I’d like to know how many of the people who would die this year would not die if the scary guns were banned, because those are the only ones that stand a chance of being banned outright.

In 2014, 248 people were killed with rifles. That accounts for 3% of all gun deaths, 4% of all gun deaths excluding non-classified firearms. If we took that 4% figure and applied it to the 1,959 gun deaths caused by non-classified firearms, that would be an additional 78 people killed. So, 326. Assuming that “scary guns” just refers to assault weapons and not all rifles, then the number would be less than 326. The question is “how much less?”

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/expanded-homicide-data/expanded_homicide_data_table_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2010-2014.xls

Disclaimer: There’s a decent chance I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Thanks. This is the core of what I’m arguing. Even banning ALL rifles, including the non-scary ones, would have a minimal impact on overall gun deaths, and that’s assuming that at least some of those rifle users wouldn’t commit the same crime with a handgun. We’d have to be far more restrictive in our application of gun control to have a significant impact on gun deaths.

Yeah, I believe I’ve made a few in depth posts like this before with many facts and figures and statistics that show that gun crime is fractional (but over-reported) and that we see many hundreds more deaths from automobiles and cars every year, but generally they are glossed over and not talked about.

Cars are used every day by just about everyone to provide transportation for a variety of useful reasons.

Beyond the tiny minuscule fraction of times someone actually defends themselves or someone else with a gun (and probably overrun by times there’s an accident, though I admit I’m just guessing), what use is a gun? And I’m not counting entertainment, any more than I count entertainment with a car.

I honestly don’t really know why I engage other than it gets my blood up when people say things like “guns are disgusting and I hate them and because some people use them for bad reasons, they should all be taken away and melted down” because it feels to me like a knee-jerk emotionally-driven reactionary statement that overlooks all the nuance and complexity of the issue.

I’m sorry, but this is a massive mischaracterization of my argument. Guns are inherently disgusting. That isn’t my subjective opinion, that’s my objective observation. They’re killing machines. That’s literally what they are, no nuance necessary.

If I was speaking purely emotionally, I would say that guns are fucking cool as hell. I went to a gun range once and it was super fun. But I don’t think I should be making political arguments based on emotionally-driven reactions, so I put my enjoyment aside, and look at it logically. And the truth is that the entertainment is not worth it. At all.

Thanks for clarifying that, because I see what you’re saying now and you’re right. You kinda addressed this already with Jay, but I feel like “disgusting” is at its core a pretty charged word when describing almost anything. I guess that was my issue with what you said.

I also feel that guns are fucking cool as hell, but setting that emotional bias aside and looking at the issue logically, I still feel the truth is that, even disregarding the Bill of Rights, guns have a great many practical civilian applications that should not be infringed (by and large).