If someone wants to kill not having a gun will not stop them. However access to guns does allow a single person to carry out a lot more violence in a single incident than they can without a gun. There are exceptions (pipe bombs, cars in crowds, etc.)
Oh my fucking god. 27 people are dead, some of them children.
Can we just have about a day to grieve before we start in on gun control? Please?
While I agree that you don't want to rush into over reaction during a crisis. The will to actually fix a problem in the world dissipates really quickly, sometimes you have to make your point quick while you have people's attention.
Oh my fucking god. 27 people are dead, some of them children.
Can we just have about a day to grieve before we start in on gun control? Please?
I'd much rather retreat into an old familiar argument than have to think squarely about what happened. I'm pretty sure that many other people feel the same way. Don't be too hard on them.
I'm not saying shirk away from it. It's just fucking me up a little bit that they're interviewing little kids about this RIGHT NOW. People need a psychological buffer in an event like this, especially little kids.
Have the talk; we need to have the talk. That said, people are probably handling this irresponsibly w/r/t the well-being of all the other children who aren't dead.
No. Saying we can't talk about gun control when a mass shooting happens is a political statement, and a bullshit one at that.
Like I said before - I find it rather distasteful to be using bodies to prop up agendas before they've even had a chance to cool.
Let's face it, there's no fucking "We need to talk about this", except in the small few cases like Rym where this changed their opinion. It's the anti-gun side screaming "WE NEED TO BAN ALL THE GUNS!", the only difference being the relative increase in loudness and shrillness to any other day of the year that they might "Talk" about it, and it's the pro-gun side screaming "IF WE HAD MORE GUNS, THEN THIS WOULDN'T HAPPEN!" with greater loudness and shrillness than usual.
There's no talking that is going on, that hasn't already been discussed every day of every year for the last ten to fifteen years, at least. The "talk" that people are demanding - the anti-gun people more than pro-gun, I've noted, but it's not by a large margin - pre-dates the bloody children that are being used as an excuse to fucking well "talk" about it.
The only difference to any other day is that now we have a few more bodies to throw on the scale to weight our agendas, but this time, they're small bodies, so people might care a little bit more for a few weeks, till we all forget about it and get back to screaming at each other at the regular volume.
I'd agree with you, sure - if anybody was actually talking about it, but all anybody is doing is repeating the same old, tired talking points about why they're just oh so damned right and the other side is just oh so stupid and inferior, with a fresh set of victims to make it topical.
I'm generally in favor of the right to gun ownership.
But, like Rym, my opinion here is shifting.
We can talk about causation left and right, but something is fundamentally fucked the fuck up in this country. It's not just gun violence - we have more violent crimes of many types than any other Western nation.
We have ready access to lots of guns, many of which are well beyond the capabilities of anything that was even thought possible when the Constitution was first written.
We have nonexistent health care and - as a result - no handling of mental illness.
There are lots of approaches we could try, but arguing isn't fixing it. Pick something and try. At this point, I don't care about the right to own guns - I care about innocent peoole not getting shot.
Edit: And yeah, holy fucking shit, let people grieve a bit you media douchebags.
We have ready access to lots of guns, many of which are well beyond the capabilities of anything that was even thought possible when the Constitution was first written.
I think that's a very long bow to draw, considering we're talking about a group of people who were absolutely thinking of the future being a very different place to the time they were living, and all of whom saw great change even within their own lifetimes, both technologically and politically.
You can't tell me that the founding fathers thought that weapons technology would simply stagnate at muskets and flint-locks while everything else progressed, I'm afraid that's a bit big of a claim to swallow without any proof.
Mental healthcare systems. Put them in place. For fuck's sake. Why is this even a discussion.
It is ALWAYS a crazy person. Someone who is unstable and has issues. If we had a readily available, free, non-stigmatic mental health system we could remove 99% of these instances without laying a fucking finger on the gun control debate.
Now I do agree that there should be a check into someone's mental state with a background check because if this guy was diagnosed with depression before he bought the gun he'd have been stopped possibly.
We have ready access to lots of guns, many of which are well beyond the capabilities of anything that was even thought possible when the Constitution was first written.
I think that's a very long bow to draw, considering we're talking about a group of people who were absolutely thinking of the future being a very different place to the time they were living, and all of whom saw great change even within their own lifetimes, both technologically and politically. You can't tell me that the founding fathers thought that weapons technology would simply stagnate at muskets and flint-locks while everything else progressed, I'm afraid that's a bit big of a claim to swallow without any proof.
The accuracy of a modern firearm would have been inconceivable to people who grew up with muskets. And our stopping power, reload speed, magazine capacity? Madness.
Maybe they figured weapons would change, but the pace of development was far lower than what we've experienced.
It's definitely pure conjecture on my part, but I don't think it's that long of a draw. Dramatic? I'll give you that.
But we do need to consider the reality of technological progress with our discussions of rights.
Well, they also made it clear that the constitution was to be amended as needed, something we basically stopped doing.
Guns weren't even in there at first. We added them. ;^)
Well, yeah, but I don't see how that changes the fact that the whole "Oh yeah, well the second amendment was written when there were only muskets and flintlocks, so that's all that they intended you to have" argument is pretty fuckin' shaky.
In fact, it gives more credence to the idea that they were a bunch of forward thinking dudes who wouldn't have assumed that weapons tech would stagnate at precisely where they were when the document was written.
I'm not arguing against you or Pete, Rym, I'm just saying that the "Well, this was unimaginable technology at the time" argument is really pretty weak.
I would note that this was all written at the same time Black people were counted as 5/8 of a person and women couldn't vote as well as non-property owners, and I'm pretty sure Black people were not allowed to own guns.... just an FYI. The constitution was ahead of it's time in some respects but wasn't "ahead of the times" in others.
To think that they were already thinking about automatic weapons and other highly precise weapons, you'd have to go into the writings on the subject and I highly doubt they were concerned that much about future inventions.
Now I do agree that there should be a check into someone's mental state with a background check because if this guy was diagnosed with depression before he bought the gun he'd have been stopped possibly.
Do you have any idea how many people are diagnosed with depression? Depression doesn't mean you're gonna go out and mow down a classroom. Plenty of people who have that diagnosis are actively getting treatment and have it under control.
There is very little chance of preventing the sale of a weapon to someone who will develop a serious future mental instability. It's difficult to predict and identify the future. Background checks are good, but using something as broad as depression as a disqualifier is ridiculous.
It would be a lot more useful to get people treated as soon as they start having problems, whether they own guns or not. Oh, you are developing schizophrenia? Let's get you to a doctor who can help treat that, and then it won't matter if you own guns or not!
The accuracy of a modern firearm would have been inconceivable to people who grew up with muskets. And our stopping power, reload speed, magazine capacity? Madness.
Don't take the piss, Pete, that's not what I meant, and you know it. Just because they didn't know what an AR-15 is, doesn't mean that they didn't think it would advance to points far beyond where they could imagine.
Maybe they figured weapons would change, but the pace of development was far lower than what we've experienced.
Irrelevant, because we can't travel through time and read minds. For all we know, Washington would have taken one look at an AK-47 and said "That's fucking bad ass, old chap, I rather think I want one for christmas." We can't know precisely what they'd think regarding modern technology, because they've been a little too dead for the last few hundred years.
It's definitely pure conjecture on my part, but I don't think it's that long of a draw. Dramatic? I'll give you that.
Of course it's a long bow to draw, because there are really only two ways you can go with it, in the broadest sense. Either "The second amendment only covers weaponry they had at the time, like muskets and flintlocks"(which I just spoke about, which would require them to assume technological and societal stagnation, which they clearly didn't), or "The founding fathers never intended us to have the weapons technology that we have now"(which requires you to either essentially be a time-traveling mind-reader, or have discovered some so-far unseen and undiscovered documents in which the Founding Fathers recorded their thoughts on the issue to be anything but irrelevant speculation.)
But we do need to consider the reality of technological progress with our discussions of rights.
Yes, absolutely. Invoking the founding fathers in that way is still a bad way to make that argument.
There is a third argument you're missing: the founders may have written the amendment differently in light of our current state of technology. They wrote the Constitution 1) to address their current situation and 2) to allow for future flexibility. If their "current situation" involved a highly-developed national military and our firearms proliferation, it may not have had the same urgency.
They could want us to have our modern technology, but not freely available to just anyone. It's a subtle but important difference from the other two arguments.
But honestly, I don't care what the Founders thought. This is our country, and we need to figure out what's best for it. The opinions of men who have been dead for 200 years don't carry a lot of weight with me.
Real talk: I lived in the UK for a year. I never once saw a gun other than break-action shotguns in shop windows. I never felt unsafe, I never worried about strays or mass shootings.
Maybe it's time we stop equating "the ability to murder anyone who seems suspect" with "safety."
Comments
Can we just have about a day to grieve before we start in on gun control? Please?
If there were a fresh terrorist attack in the US, the debate about how to handle the response should begin that very hour.
If someone wants to kill not having a gun will not stop them. However access to guns does allow a single person to carry out a lot more violence in a single incident than they can without a gun. There are exceptions (pipe bombs, cars in crowds, etc.)
Have the talk; we need to have the talk. That said, people are probably handling this irresponsibly w/r/t the well-being of all the other children who aren't dead.
Let's face it, there's no fucking "We need to talk about this", except in the small few cases like Rym where this changed their opinion. It's the anti-gun side screaming "WE NEED TO BAN ALL THE GUNS!", the only difference being the relative increase in loudness and shrillness to any other day of the year that they might "Talk" about it, and it's the pro-gun side screaming "IF WE HAD MORE GUNS, THEN THIS WOULDN'T HAPPEN!" with greater loudness and shrillness than usual.
There's no talking that is going on, that hasn't already been discussed every day of every year for the last ten to fifteen years, at least. The "talk" that people are demanding - the anti-gun people more than pro-gun, I've noted, but it's not by a large margin - pre-dates the bloody children that are being used as an excuse to fucking well "talk" about it.
The only difference to any other day is that now we have a few more bodies to throw on the scale to weight our agendas, but this time, they're small bodies, so people might care a little bit more for a few weeks, till we all forget about it and get back to screaming at each other at the regular volume.
I'd agree with you, sure - if anybody was actually talking about it, but all anybody is doing is repeating the same old, tired talking points about why they're just oh so damned right and the other side is just oh so stupid and inferior, with a fresh set of victims to make it topical.
But, like Rym, my opinion here is shifting.
We can talk about causation left and right, but something is fundamentally fucked the fuck up in this country. It's not just gun violence - we have more violent crimes of many types than any other Western nation.
We have ready access to lots of guns, many of which are well beyond the capabilities of anything that was even thought possible when the Constitution was first written.
We have nonexistent health care and - as a result - no handling of mental illness.
There are lots of approaches we could try, but arguing isn't fixing it. Pick something and try. At this point, I don't care about the right to own guns - I care about innocent peoole not getting shot.
Edit: And yeah, holy fucking shit, let people grieve a bit you media douchebags.
https://twitter.com/Ryan__Lanza
He was tweeting about his depression right up until the end...
Media was already picking up on that account. He's going to have a fun few days.
You can't tell me that the founding fathers thought that weapons technology would simply stagnate at muskets and flint-locks while everything else progressed, I'm afraid that's a bit big of a claim to swallow without any proof.
It is ALWAYS a crazy person. Someone who is unstable and has issues. If we had a readily available, free, non-stigmatic mental health system we could remove 99% of these instances without laying a fucking finger on the gun control debate.
Guns weren't even in there at first. We added them. ;^)
Maybe they figured weapons would change, but the pace of development was far lower than what we've experienced.
It's definitely pure conjecture on my part, but I don't think it's that long of a draw. Dramatic? I'll give you that.
But we do need to consider the reality of technological progress with our discussions of rights.
In fact, it gives more credence to the idea that they were a bunch of forward thinking dudes who wouldn't have assumed that weapons tech would stagnate at precisely where they were when the document was written.
I'm not arguing against you or Pete, Rym, I'm just saying that the "Well, this was unimaginable technology at the time" argument is really pretty weak.
To think that they were already thinking about automatic weapons and other highly precise weapons, you'd have to go into the writings on the subject and I highly doubt they were concerned that much about future inventions.
There is very little chance of preventing the sale of a weapon to someone who will develop a serious future mental instability. It's difficult to predict and identify the future. Background checks are good, but using something as broad as depression as a disqualifier is ridiculous.
It would be a lot more useful to get people treated as soon as they start having problems, whether they own guns or not. Oh, you are developing schizophrenia? Let's get you to a doctor who can help treat that, and then it won't matter if you own guns or not!
School knife attack in China, at least 22 wounded. Up to 20 people have been killed in recent times in school knife attacks in China.
They could want us to have our modern technology, but not freely available to just anyone. It's a subtle but important difference from the other two arguments.
But honestly, I don't care what the Founders thought. This is our country, and we need to figure out what's best for it. The opinions of men who have been dead for 200 years don't carry a lot of weight with me.
Maybe it's time we stop equating "the ability to murder anyone who seems suspect" with "safety."