Another do nothing, offer nothing far right answer - unimpressed.Originally Posted by TheDemonLord
Kiwibiker
Another do nothing, offer nothing far right answer - unimpressed.
The Majestic Metal Wizard
It's not a far right answer - Suppose you ban Guns - do you think it will stop evil people from committing mass acts of Terror?
That's the question that's really being asked here. You might say 'Well, it will remove one option and that might dissuade someone" - to which I get to reply 'Might is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting there'.
But let's suppose I accept your premise - that banning something can stop people from dying...
Why can I not use that same premise to say that banning the promulgation of LGBT activism can stop people from committing suicide?
And if we accept (which I do not - FYI) that both of these are equally valid - 175 in 20 years vs 700 a year - which is the greater threat to Children's lives?
But since you want an actual solution - here's one:
Suppose you accept that there's a group of people who, if they feel rejected by society, will attempt to destroy society. Let's call them 'Angry, Young Men'.
And suppose you say that regardless of what tools or devices you ban, they will always find a way, if they are rejected by society.
It seems to me that the solution is obvious: Make society embrace those angry young men so that they no longer feel the need to tear society down.
There's a number of things off hand that I think could help here - first and foremost would be accepting that Angry Young Men need a constructive outlet for that Anger and they need a Tribe to call their own. They need to pass a test of sorts to gain acceptance within that Tribe so that said acceptance has meaning. That Tribe needs to give them a purpose and a sense of self and belonging.
It could be an actual Tribe such as in NZ, it could be the Boy Scouts, it could be a Sports Team, It could be Heavy Metal, it could be PC gaming.
But that's difficult to solve and hard to put into a 20 second news soundbite. So let's just ban everything.
Physics; Thou art a cruel, heartless Bitch-of-a-Mistress
Kiwibiker
Or just do what the gop do - absolutely nothing.
The fact you do not address the abject hypocrisy of the gop going all out to protect children in the womb and doing essentially jack shit to stop them getting massacred in schools is very revealing.
If your aim is to come across as a calous uncaring gop apologist by reducing murdered children down to mere numbers - congratulations, you get a gold star.
Since you love numbers so much, look at this report showing a quantifiable sharp drop in gun violence when they did ban a fairly limited amount of gun types in the USA for a 10 year period.
https://theconversation.com/did-the-...ells-us-184430
How many children's deaths will it take for predominantly right wing people like yourself to stop lying that gun control would have no effect?
No doubt this post will generate yet another wailing wall of text containing a mealy mouthed selfish self justification of why people such as yourself should be allowed to own instruments of destruction pretty much designed to just kill humans.
A native American Hopi Indian elder once told me that self justification is mental masturbation - and around the subject of gun control, there is a whole lot of wanking going on in the USA, and as it turns out - right here in the hallowed pages of this forum.
Forum whore
These haven't been hallowed pages for a very long time.
Hardcore Biker
And that is the Classic Far Right / NRA response. Well...Nobody is proposing to BAN EVERYTHING...Not Boy Scouts, Sports Teams, Heavy Metal or PC Gaming.
Banning Military Style assault weapons for general sale to every Nutbag 'Bubba' that wants one, might partially satisfy the USA's 2nd Ammendment 'necessary' requirment for a Well Regulated Militia.
US Congress has the constitutional responsibility to draft Regulations. Not holding my breath!
The Majestic Metal Wizard
I mean, I gave you an Answer, a Real Answer that I think deep down you know would have a far greater effect - but ignoring it because you have an ulterior motive is fine too I guess...
Except I'm Pro-Choice - see, you invited the Comparison - so I simply gave you the numbers - Turns out one is a significantly greater threat than the other. The argument rests on the premise which is unproven at best (as per your article - I'll get to that). Shall we ban Cars? More children are killed in or by Cars than Guns - so why not ban them too?
Of course the answer is that Cars are useful - and if you make that argument, then I get to point to the 4,000,000 crimes a year prevented (including a few mass shootings) by armed Citizen intervention - and say that Guns are clearly useful too.
Let's turn that argument on reverse shall we - What does it say about the Democrats screeching for Gun Control whilst saying 'Abortion is Health Care'?
Let's talk about Lying.
First things first on your graph - excellent Correlation is Causation fallacy.
Second thing - without any additional rebuttal, it disproves the claim it's trying to make on it's own merits: The Assault Weapons Ban did not reduce the number of AR-style rifles in circulation in America - because people got to keep their existing Firearms.
Therefore if the number of supposedly dangerous firearms in existence stayed the same (it didn't - it went up... I'll get to that) but Mass shootings went down:
By your own standards of proof, the restriction was not the cause of the change then
Third thing - What's the difference between a Ruger Mini-14 and an AR-15? Well, they both shoot a .223/5.56 round, they are both box magazine fed, they are both Semi-automatic, they both can accept 'high capacity magazines' - one was banned in 1994, the other was not. Functionally, they are identical. Here is an article talking about it - Oh - and the Mini-14 has been used in shootings too.
Lastly - and this is why I led with 'lets talk about lying' - see, those peaks on those graphs, based on the number and the year, some of them look familiar.., like the big spike in 2007 - that would be Virginnia Tech. Yet... this was not carried out using a Firearm that was banned in the Assault Weapons Ban? Do you mean to say that the graph is dishonestly including shootings that would not have been prevented if the AWB had continued in their Stats?
So they are outright lying then. Cool.
Here's my point - If you Ban guns (say like in Europe) - Evil people will find other means of committing mass acts of terror - Trucks, Knives, double barrel shotguns, Homemade Explosives - the list goes on and on.
Even if you Ban Guns - people can build their own (See PA Luty as a reference).
All you will do by banning them is, just like NZ, not get the guns off the street (less than 30% handed in), alienate an entire section of the Community (who you want to be on your side), increase the Gang Violence etc.
They were pretty much designed to defend against the very Evil that you are complaining about. The AK-47 was designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov after the horror of WW2 in Russia.
Also - have you had a look at how the Wallaby population of NZ is doing? I hear it's thriving - I guess something about banning the most effective tool of pest control might have an impact on pests.
Perhaps, perhaps not. I'm kinda big on natural rights. And every time people try to infringe on them, I'm opposed to it.
Physics; Thou art a cruel, heartless Bitch-of-a-Mistress
The Majestic Metal Wizard
Perhaps if they stopped trying to Ban everything (Metal and Gaming have had many attempts to Ban FYI) - then maybe we'd stop saying they are trying to Ban Everything.
No, we've been through this. The Federalist Papers and the Supreme Court have shown that the Militia refers to the Individual and 'Well Regulated' does not mean Government Legislation, it means willing and able to do their duty. Well Regulated in the 2A context is extremely similar to the NZ's 'Fit and proper person' requirement.
No, it doesn't.
'Shall not be infringed'.
The only way they could would be an amendment to the constitution - how many Democrats have you seen openly advocate for that? Virtually none because it would be political suicide.
Physics; Thou art a cruel, heartless Bitch-of-a-Mistress
Kiwibiker
I'm curious, did anyone here read TDL's latest wall of wail?
Forum whore
I did. I like to fully understand where opposing sides are coming from.
The Majestic Metal Wizard
There are a number of people who say they don't read what I write, but when they make snide comments - they seem remarkably up-to-date on what I've written...
Plus I know there's a few that just can't help themselves.
Physics; Thou art a cruel, heartless Bitch-of-a-Mistress
Kiwibiker
OK, that is one so far. The problem I have with him reducing it down to numbers is it marginalizes the pain and heart ache involved - and no matter what he says, the GOP is essentially doing nothing. Look at how much effort they put into their anti abortion measures vs the "crickets", or even worse "thoughts and prayers" response/efforts they put into combating gun violence. No amount of "stats" is going to convince me the gop give a shit and are doing their jobs to protect people.
I mean, just a day or so later, this is what Bobert wanted to talk about, public urination laws - incorrectly as it turns out.
In other news, right where this reporter is standing, is as the crow flies about 1 km from where I lived in Arkansas for 1.5 years.
Another area of Wynne.
While I was there, we did have a tornado come down in the distance. It was about 2am and I could hear it. I'm not too proud to admit I was shitting myself not having any idea if it was coming straight for us or not. The sound was terrifying.
Forum whore
Two things I try to hold myself to are the following, to do my best not to talk in absolutes (there's good and bad on both sides of the political spectrum) and to not believe a word that comes out of any politicians mouth. I should also add that I believe no one is always bad or always good, Trump did some good stuff and some bad stuff, just like Jacinda did here, just like everyone.
Last edited by onearmedbandit; 1st April 2023 at 13:36.
Kiwibiker
Yes, I was going to talk about "absolutes" a few days ago, but just ran out of time. If course I agree about both sides having shitty aspects. I know I come across at times as giving dems a break, but I'm almost always sparring with tdl who leans a hell of a lot more to the right than he constantly likes to makes out, so yes I end up talking about the gop a lot as a result of that. With regards to gun violence in the USA, I do hold the gop largely responsible for both blocking and avoiding taking any kind of action at all. So many laws are put into being that everyone readily accepts as protecting humanity from itself, but when it comes to guns in the USA, there is a very large and in my opinion massively selfish disconnect.
Forum whore
I try to stay out of the US gun debate, not like I don't hold an opinion (of course I want to see an end to the senseless loss of life we so regularly see) but I don't have the knowledge or skills to suggest a workable solution. I don't for a moment doubt that there are many advocates for less gun control whose reasons are purely selfish, and that group of people extends from the very 'bottom' to the very 'top' of society. Once again I don''t possess the skills to promote a workable solution to that. But one thing I'm sure of, as long as there is a 'them and us' mentality, as long as divisions exist and we refuse to work together, we'll never find a workable solution because we simply won't arrive at that juncture.
Too often our emotions cloud subjects, our pride gets in the way of backing down from our position and giving thought to compromise. While I'm not enamored with where AI is going, I sometimes wonder whether better decision making could be made if we removed emotion, ie human pride, selfishness and greed from the equation. Of course we would also lose that beautiful human emotion, empathy. I guess I'd rather hold onto that and accept that greed and pride etc are just part of the deal.
The Majestic Metal Wizard
Sugi - you invited the comparison. Not me.
Again, I'm pro-choice, always have - and until there is a means to artificially grow a human outside of a Womb, I always will be.
The problem is that if you want to make the comparison between Abortion and School Shootings - then I absolutely get to pull up the numbers. 900,000 per year vs 175 in 20.
If you agree with the Christian Conservative position, then yes - it makes absolute sense to focus on the issue that is literally 100,000 times worse.
On the Gun Control issue - I'm going to use the most recent link you posted - it took about 10 seconds to spot the dishonesty in the argument. Now, I don't know whether you spotted it or not - I'm going to presume you didn't (cause I don't believe you'd intentionally post something that was that misleading):
Let's presume you are approaching this issue genuinely (I'll clarify what I mean by that in a min) - then you'd say 'Huh, the link I posted is deliberately misleading - if the evidence for Gun Control is so strong, why would they have to be deceptive?' - it's not like you linked to just some random's WordPress blog, that website looked professional.
But you don't. You could admit that it's you simply don't like them and don't think people should have them - it's fine to have a prejudicial opinion. It's not fine to try and use dodgy stats as a post-hoc justification for that opinion.
And just so we are clear - You and my Mum hold the exact same position, I love my Mum, so don't think that there's any malice here towards you - there isn't.
In the NZ context - I said elsewhere that if there is a mass shooting in less than 30 years after Chch - we will know that the new laws didn't have any effect. At the rate of increasing Gang Violence, I'd be surprised if I have to wait that long.
If you look at the UK (as an Example) the most recent mass shooting was done with a Bolt action and a double barrell shotgun - and had a death toll the same as the Hungerford massacre. Both of which paled in comparison to what happened in 2005, using fertilizer. Malicious people will always find a way to commit evil - the only vanguard against that is Good people, well armed.
Don't believe me? let me ask you one question then...
Why do you call the Police when there is a Crime? Because you know the Police are good people, well armed.
Physics; Thou art a cruel, heartless Bitch-of-a-Mistress
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