Tyr, you are reasonable.
Guns are not.
I don’t care if I’m being unreasonable. I am not the one who supports the right to guns, a position I find completely unreasonable in any manner.
So be it.
No love lost, man. I do understand your position, to be clear.
There’s a ton of people who claim they have a right to recreation with a killing machine. Dunno why, but they do.
I think there’s something about a document or something that guarantees rights like that. I dunno. It’s pretty obscure.
You know very well that lots of people talk about their God given right to have a gun, which is utter nonsense.
The Constitution is a different story, but you also know very well that there’s two arguments to what that actually means, and the Founding Fathers certainly weren’t referring to guns that can kill 100 people in a minute or two, which didn’t exist at the time.
I don’t subscribe to the “god-given” notion (the language is “endowed by our creator,” be that nature or evolution or god or whatever), but I do agree that the right to defense of self and property if threatened is important. Rights are an intangible notion we’ve made tangible in words in order to guarantee that they are not infringed by the government or other parties. The right to speak freely is very important, the right to be able to worship whatever deity you want is very important, the right to defend yourself and your country is very important. It’s all very important.
I know there are many ways people have interpreted the second amendment, but to me the language is clear and and any other interpretation has been foisted upon it in order to justify certain agendas. Of course, I’m also aware that the exact same argument is applied to my interpretation, so it ultimately all cancels out. That’s why moderation is important.
You say certainly, but the only certainty is its vague language, and that’s the beauty of the amendment in my opinion: It’s future proofed. It doesn’t give specifics. It doesn’t say “a man shall be allowed one (1) .50 caliber ball musket with a maximum of fifty (50) loads and one (1) cannon with a maximum of ten (10) but no less than five (5) round shot,” it just says arms, be they what they are at the time of reading.
Of course, you will patently and fiercely disagree with this, and that’s fine. The middle ground is where we need to be here, between you and me. Or really, I’m pretty middle ground I guess so between you and the NRA.
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.
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?”
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.
Let’s be honest here: your mind is made up on the issue (and mine for that matter), so nothing I say matters. I can say that entertainment is valid for both. I can say that hunting is a pastime for many people. I can say that defense of self and property is important. I can say the right is guaranteed. I can say that guns (and military-grade guns for that matter) in the hands of the everyman has been an incredibly crucial part of American history. But it’s kinda wasted breath because we just talk in circles every time.
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 think what annoys me the most, and I’m super guilty of this as well, is how we just entrench in our sides harder and harder in response to any debate or discussion regarding the issue and every debate or discussion just devolves into screaming “you want people to be able to kill children” versus “you want to infringe my rights” at each other and no minds are ever changed and nobody is enlightened.
There’s a ton of people who claim they have a right to recreation with a killing machine. Dunno why, but they do.
I think there’s something about a document or something that guarantees rights like that. I dunno. It’s pretty obscure.
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.
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?”
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.
I’m amazed at how few questions I see about the WHY behind all this. TM2YC seems to think that humans simply kill each other because that’s what we do, so if we ban the tools we use to kill, the killings will stop; I suppose banning delivery trucks is next. But why are we seeing so many mass killings, and why didn’t we see them when guns were even more readily available? Has anyone considered we’ve started behaving in ways that imply a deeper and more troubling issue? How do we prevent people from ending up in such a painful and hopeless place that they think murdering a bunch of people is the way to deal with those feelings?
Nobody I ever talk to is interested in this. It’s just about putting band-aids on the issue or slowly making things harder and harder to get while side-stepping any actual causes.
It makes me super sad when people clamor to give up rights.
Ask Londoners if they feel safe with people getting stabbed every night
Broadly speaking the answer would be yes. London is one of the most populous cities in the world. One murder is statistically tiny and no danger to the majority but one is still far too many. The UK politicians, police etc are all working together to reduce it again by further restricting access to knives. That’s how you tackle a problem caused by dangerous weapons. Action, not inaction and prayer.
But what’s being done to address why people want to stab other people to death? I doubt that access to knives is the reason people stab one another.
Banning scary looking rifles can’t hurt.
If I can buy a hunting rifle that’s functionally the same as the scary rifle, it’s a useless gesture.
Do we need a useless gesture that panders to angry voters and doesn’t solve the problem?
The lack of gun control is the only reason that these school shootings happen so often in America.
Or society is sick. Machine guns were readily available many years ago — actual machine guns, not black plastic rifles that look like something out of a movie, but are functionally the same as a hunting rifle. Where were all the mass shootings back then?
Banning scary-looking rifles won’t solve the problem. I went shooting with family and friends a few weeks back for my dad’s birthday. I can tell you that someone packing a couple semi-automatic handguns and a few magazines can do a tremendous amount of damage in a short period of time.
Background checks and mental health checks would probably help. There’s something going on out there that goes beyond availability of firearms.
There were more people incarcerated in mental institutions decades ago, which is why I think there were less shootings then.
We still put many people with mental issues in jail. In fact, I’d guess we put more mentally ill people in jail today than we did back then. It’s easier to throw them away in prison than to tackle something as complex as mental illness.
Also, who said anything about rifles? I don’t even know if this shooter used rifles. I want almost all guns to be nearly inaccessible.
Never happen.
Well said.
For the record, what I’ve seen is that it was a shotgun and a .38 revolver.
Weird little story about Paul Ryan trying to get rid of the chaplain of the House. The chaplain claims that Ryan’s chief of staff said, “maybe it’s time that we had a Chaplain that wasn’t Catholic.”
Violation of free exercise of religion?
There shouldn’t be any government employed Chaplain.
Ding ding ding.
The fact that there is even such a position is bad form in my opinion.
spoil
I was spared by Thanos. Were you?
didthanoskill.me
I LIVED!Me too! 😄
Kilroy was here.
I have also survived.
BRING IT ON THEN
I just want to take a moment to talk about what an utterly bullshit waste of tax dollars this stupid RealID act is.
By 2020 if you plan to do any air travel or entering of federal buildings, you need to get a new ID card (which can also be a driver’s license) which serves the exact same purpose as your current state ID card/driver’s license. But it’s federal.
Another fantastic quasi-dystopian power grab by our federal government on the heels of 9/11 that is costing millions in tax dollars that will have literally no effect on our security or the betterment of the nation, but I am sure is heavily lining the pockets of some already-rich white dude.
Canada, I’m sorry, but fup ur.
It’s a great idea for people to be cracking off dozens of rounds in public at a moving target with a ton of background. This can only be a good thing.
If I lived where Ray lived, I would go in to get my flow chopped.
But I’d tell him to cut it weird and the come here to pretend like he butchered me so we could have some nice forum drama.
Yeah, that’s just it. Taking a well-designed, modern nuclear carrier and parking it offshore to power a remote town doesn’t actually sound like a half-bad idea, at least as some sort of stopgap. But this thing? They just launched it and it looks like a Soviet-era museum piece.
I hate to judge a book by its cover, but come on.
At least put some new paint on it.
Seriously, everything in Russia looks post-apocalyptic.
I’ve kinda fallen off the wagon the last week or so. Nothing too bad, usually just literally one or two drinks a day, which isn’t really a problem and is practically nothing compared to the past of having 3 or 4 drinks before even going to work. But I should still probably get back on or at least force myself to start limiting it to a couple times a week. But the thing is I don’t want to. I’m miserable, it’s the only thing that helps, and I don’t care about myself anyway.
Here are the ways to help yourself: get therapy, ask a friend or family member for advice, get a dog or something so you will have to take care of something besides yourself and go to aa.
Nice post.
Nothing but about to be some chocolate milk.
UPDATE: I have temporarily forgone the chocolate milk for a Deschutes Black Butte Porter.
I mean look at Anakin Skywalker.
Don’t do this.
LOOK I SAID!
OH LOOK AT MR. COOL “I DON’T DO POPULAR THINGS AND I WANT EVERYONE TO KNOW” OVER HERE WHAT A BADASS
A girl I was dating once had a kid with some other guy a few years after we broke up and that was a weird feeling at the time.
Trying not to get too optimistic about Korea. On one hand, this would be great for all parties concerned and the world. On the other hand, we had basically the exact same fanfares and promises in 2000 which turned out to just be cover for a half-billion dollar bribe. Hope is appealing, but cynicism is maintaining a slight lead in my head right now.
Yeah, let us not forget Kim Jong Un is the guy who has had multiple people assassinated (that we know about).
Everyone go see Infinity War.
Maybe I’ll make a Caesar.
Thanks, Canada.
I was going to say something long and winded but Trident pretty much nailed it. Don’t worry so much. Just enjoy what you have and be yourself. If you do end up losing her, it’s actually won’t the end of the world, even if it might feel like it. Let whatever happens happen.
Also, if it means that much, tell her exactly how you feel. Awkward but important.
Word. Overthinking will always lead you to disaster.
I mean look at Anakin Skywalker. Just chill, live life, enjoy.
