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The Gun Control Thread

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  • Are those guns specifically designed for that purpose or is it that a type of gun designed for a different purpose also happens to be very well suited for that use?
  • edited May 2014
    Belliger, I am taking issue with you because you're making a distinction without actually giving any justification as to how you tell the difference between which questions of right and wrong you think are subjective, and which you think are objective. The reason I bring up these examples you're calling "ludicrous" is that you haven't given me any way of telling the difference. In fact, as far as I can tell, you're simply deciding all of these questions based on your own opinion.

    As I have already told you, my position on gun control is not one that comes down to something like "owning this gun is wrong to me, so you cannot have it either". I think that's a gross misrepresentation of the position expressed by those in this thread.
    Belliger said:

    It's not necessarily that everyone is in agreement. As people can all be in agreement that women should not have the right to vote. However most people saying that will be aware internally that women SHOULD have the right to vote, and that they just don't WANT to them to have the right. There is a difference.

    There is a difference, but if it comes down to whether or not people will be "aware internally" the distinction is still very weak indeed. There was, in fact, a time when people were not "aware internally" that women should have the right to vote, but at that time women should still have had the right to vote.
    Belliger said:

    My point is that there are times when right and wrong are based on where you are in life. Lets say you are poor and you think the capital gains tax is “right”. Then one day you make a ton money in the stock market, now you see the tax as “wrong”. But it is the same tax the entire time - it did not change, only you did. So when were you wrong – when you were poor or rich? Someone has to decide if the law itself on a absolute level is right or wrong and should stay on the books, should that person be poor or rich? Which is right and which is wrong?

    You and I both know that the opinions you mention are not about right and wrong, but rather about self-interest. You're admitting that yourself when you put "right" and "wrong" in scare quotes. However, in this matter there is, in fact, a question of right and wrong that is distinct from the question of "does this benefit me". Otherwise, what could possibly be going on when a rich person argues that the capital gains tax should, in fact, be higher, against their own interests?
    Belliger said:

    It's interesting you brought up climate change. I say the predictions are subjective based on what model you choose, as there are a lot of choices.

    Regardless of your model, the predictions are either objectively right or wrong depending on the actual real world. Also, there is a clear objective judgement of how good your model is when you compare it against the evidence.
    Belliger said:

    I would like to know what circumstances theft is okay to the person having their property stolen. Or when it is good for society in general to say “this kind of theft is acceptable”.

    Whether or not something is "okay to the person having their property stolen" is a wholly different question to whether it is right or wrong. As for the societal question, a society can agree that theft is morally acceptable in cases of dire need, but it can do so without the need to make legal exceptions for such cases. The question of what is right and what is wrong is a different question to that of what the law should be.
    Belliger said:

    Don't legislate that I must or cannot own another human being as a slave...

    If we followed your line of reasoning, it would have been unacceptable to ban slavery.

    My line of reasoning does not even come close to that. And the suggestion that it does is frankly ludicrous and ignores that I made myself clear that some things are wrong regardless of a persons opinion. The only reason I can think of that you would say that is to use it as a red herring because you think there is a right and wrong sexual orientation or religion and you think the government should regulate which one is allowed.
    If that isn't it, then explain what your line of reasoning is! You're making a distinction, but you haven't even come close to justifying the basis for that distinction.
    Belliger said:

    Here is why my point is relevant. You say “the only measure that might be taken is a all-out ban” [sic] but you have to keep in mind that the officials charged with making laws in the US say things like “If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them . . . Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in, I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren't here.”

    You're implying that that person is simply making a subjective judgement along the lines of "I don't like guns", but you can't do this without knowing the reasons why they hold the position that they do. Besides that, even if there are people who support gun control purely for "subjective" reasons, that doesn't mean that the same position cannot be objectively justified.
    Belliger said:

    This is ones persons opinion. And right now they are in the minority. However I think it is important to look at what happened with the prohibition of alcohol in the 20's. It was done for the good of Americans because a small party of people gained enough influence to get the law passed. And once it was passed the US government started poisoning the alcohol used in manufacturing so it could not be consumed. By some estimated the US government killed 10,000 people trying to “protect” them from alcohol, because some deemed alcohol to be “bad”.

    Alcohol has an overall negative impact on society in that the negative effects outweigh the positive ones; that alone doesn't mean it should be illegal, though. This question is not, however, a subjective one. As a society, we decide whether to ban alcohol by comparing the two alternatives. In this case, we choose not to ban alcohol because it doesn't work; the question is not a subjective one.

    Also, the poisoning example does absolutely nothing to serve your argument. Even if it were true that banning alcohol is the right thing to do, that doesn't make it OK to poison people to achieve it...
    Post edited by lackofcheese on
  • edited May 2014
    Belliger said:

    Is alcohol bad? According to the CDC there are 88,000 alcohol related deaths in the US every year, and that may or may not include the 12,000+ drunk driving fatalities. If it is good and it kills so many people then why are firearms bad when they kill so many fewer? How do you decide what is good and what is bad and what needs to be taken away from the public and what does not? My opinion is that neither is good or bad in itself. But as you stated we do not share the same opinions on good or bad. So tell me why one is bad and one is good. Why there needs to be more regulations on one and not the other.

    Who gets to decide that this thing is good and that thing is bad? Are they deciding from their own biases or are they looking at what is (in my words) objectively good or bad? The former bans women from voting, the later does not. I think there are things that are nether right nor wrong on a universal level. You say there is always a right and wrong. Do you want the government regulating every single right or wrong? That seems to be what you are saying. If so I take issue with that.

    Whenever you make a decision, there is indeed a right choice, and hence every other choice is wrong (although some are more wrong than others). Sometimes it can be difficult or impossible to find the right thing to do, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

    However, the question of whether it's right or wrong to do X is a completely different question to whether or not the government should make a law against X. I don't know how that "seems to be what I'm saying" when I've never said anything of the sort.

    I do, in fact, agree with you on the idea that we should make laws based on an objective evaluation of the consequences of those laws. However, I don't see why you think gun control cannot be evaluated in this way - it's simply a matter of weighing the lives that could be saved against the costs to liberty.

    The underlying principles for deciding how guns should be regulated are the same principles we use when deciding how alcohol should be regulated, or deciding how biological weapons should be regulated. The difference lies in the fact that the consequences are different in each case.

    As for who gets to decide, that's an easy question - the decision is made through the democratic process, as with any other decision. More specifically, it's a matter of public opinion, as expressed through the conduit of elected officials and mediated by the judiciary.
    Post edited by lackofcheese on
  • HMTKSteve said:

    Are those guns specifically designed for that purpose or is it that a type of gun designed for a different purpose also happens to be very well suited for that use?

    The first option. That is exactly my point. A kitchen knife is an example of the second, but it turns out that the overwhelming majority of successful uses of kitchen knives doesn't end up with someone dead. The same with cars. The same with computers. The same with pressure cookers. The same with demolition explosives.

    Which is why I think the argument that guns should be regulated the same as these other things, or that these other thing even enter the conversation, is totally disingenuous.
  • Makes one wonder if the people bringing long guns into restaurants are stupid pro gunner's or brilliant anti gun folks.
  • The people against guns are so against guns that they are willing to buy guns and work for the pro gun agenda. Not saying it's far fetched, but so far their MO has been similar to the actions of most of the open arms groups.
  • ThatGent said:

    The people against guns are so against guns that they are willing to buy guns and work for the pro gun agenda. Not saying it's far fetched, but so far their MO has been similar to the actions of most of the open arms groups.

    I think the open long rifle carrier folks are doing far more damage to the cause than any other open carry group. It is not too hard to see historical examples of such things happening.

    However, the fact that the long rifle carriers look like the stereotypical crazy gun nut idiots and not satirical versions there of makes me believe they are legit idiots.

  • I read an interesting blog post today about the original known meaning of the term "state regulated militia" in the second amendment:

    "In the beginning, there were the militias. In the South, they were also called the “slave patrols,” and they were regulated by the states."

    "The law defined which counties had which armed militias and even required armed militia members to keep a keen eye out for slaves who may be planning uprisings…."

    "The Second Amendment was born out of the need to maintain slavery. It had nothing to do with a supposed right to own your own Polaris missile. That was the ‘original intent’ of the Second Amendment. It is as odious as it is lethal."

  • Huh, I always thought the primary purpose of the militia was to defend against invasion. In history class they always referred to the forces that fought against the British in the revolutionary war as militias.
  • Turns out the southern states wanted the militias to be state-run and their actions state-approved so they could keep the slaves in check. And it seems everyone at the time understood this.
  • Turns out the southern states wanted the militias to be state-run and their actions state-approved so they could keep the slaves in check. And it seems everyone at the time understood this.

    So federalism? Sounds like the southerns states wanted articles of confederation 2.0 with a weak federal government.

  • The point that article makes is that the southern states didn't want congress to be able to order around their own militias, in particular to order the militias not to keep rounding up slaves or putting down slave uprisings. Any particular political system was good, as long as it kept in place the option to keep the slaves in check.
  • HMTKSteve said:

    Turns out the southern states wanted the militias to be state-run and their actions state-approved so they could keep the slaves in check. And it seems everyone at the time understood this.

    So federalism? Sounds like the southerns states wanted articles of confederation 2.0 with a weak federal government.

    What they GOT was a mostly 100% copied version of the US Constitution, but with "and slavery" added everywhere.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_Constitution

    Even better, they immediately had internal problems with basically libertarians complaining that the "federal" government was too strong, and that Jefferson Davis was a tyrant. There was a real movement to secede FROM the seceded states "for freedom."
  • The article is talking about 1789, not about the Civil War.
  • Guns're Bad
  • The article is talking about 1789, not about the Civil War.

    The founding, the post-founding politics, and basically everything right up until 1865 was constantly orbiting around slavery as an issue. Almost everything came down to it in some fashion. It was the core of American politics until the war.

    Now the post-war legacy of racism hangs out there... I dare to say that if a group of non-white people engaged in the same sort of mass open carry, a lot of people would have a problem with it suddenly.

  • edited May 2014
    Rym said:

    Now the post-war legacy of racism hangs out there... I dare to say that if a group of non-white people engaged in the same sort of mass open carry, a lot of people would have a problem with it suddenly.

    I would love to see that in some blood red state like Mississippi or Texas, just to see the reactions of the local yokels.

    Oh, and if you want to make their heads spin, talk about performing immigration status checks before allowing people to buy guns so that illegal aliens can't buy guns.

    Post edited by Dragonmaster Lou on
  • edited May 2014
    Post edited by HMTKSteve on
  • I stopped reading at "Elliot Rodger didn’t become a killer because he was a misogynist; he became a misogynist because he was a killer."
  • edited May 2014

    I stopped reading at "Elliot Rodger didn’t become a killer because he was a misogynist; he became a misogynist because he was a killer."

    I hope you didn't miss the part that even in an article about the reasons behind mass shootings, he still found time to plug his creepy-ass dating self help book in a largely irrelevant paragraph about Elliot Rodger being a member of dating advice sites, that has literally nothing to do with the rest of the article, and goes absolutely nowhere. Other than a nice "Add to Cart" link for his dating self help book.
    Post edited by Churba on
  • Elliot Rodger was a psychotic who shouldn't have had access to guns (or cars for that matter), but nothing had been done that would get him on any kind of watch list.

    So, my question becomes, when this sort of thing -could- have been prevented if some ancillary action had been performed (I.E. getting the person in question committed to a mental health institute, if even just briefly, so that showed up on a background check), what can we do, as a society and nation, to alert the powers that be that maybe someone shouldn't have access to tools specifically designed for killing? I stand by the idea that this psychopath would have gone on a spree regardless, as he did successfully kill people with a knife and a car, but yes, he might have had fewer kills and maybe not even successfully killed himself (that way we could lock him up and pick his brain to see what made him tick), had he not possessed firearms.
  • It could be something as simple as calling someone for a reference. As in, call the next of kin and ask "This person wants to buy a gun. Yes or no? Good idea or not? History of mental illness or no problems?" This could flag up a deeper check.

    And before anyone says "But that's an invasion of privacy" this is a very, very minor "sacrifice" compared to the many people's lives that have been ended or ruined.
  • I'd also like to point out that even Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the most uber-conservative members of the Supreme Court, has stated on the record that the Founding Fathers never intended for the Second Amendment to protect the right of the mentally insane to own firearms.
  • Damn University assignments made me miss out on a discussion about stupid American laws. However I did have a hilarious conversation with someone on "intelligent design" vs evolution. (1st year arts students are so entertaining).

    I could sense some people's frustration reading through the comments of the past few days as we went through this extensively, earlier in the thread.

    My personal opinion on the matter is that if someone states that technology is hampering the use of their utility, they are most likely having difficulty in understanding that technology and have made their mind up without investigating the matter.
  • Rym said:

    Now the post-war legacy of racism hangs out there... I dare to say that if a group of non-white people engaged in the same sort of mass open carry, a lot of people would have a problem with it suddenly.

    I would love to see that in some blood red state like Mississippi or Texas, just to see the reactions of the local yokels.

    Oh, and if you want to make their heads spin, talk about performing immigration status checks before allowing people to buy guns so that illegal aliens can't buy guns.

    A number of the California gun restrictions placed in the late 60's were a direct result of Black Panthers members legally exercising their rights to openly carry rifles and shotguns at California Government installations. This so shocked many people that they put in many restrictions as a result.

    Gun restrictions in the US have often had very racist or classicist origins. The ban on "Saturday night specials" a made up term describing cheap handguns, was aimed directly at poor iner city blacks. The 200 dollar tax stamp required on NFA firearms was an exhorbitant price at a time when the gun in question would cost 5 or 10 dollars. it was aimed at poor white and black folk.



  • AaronC said:

    A number of the California gun restrictions placed in the late 60's were a direct result of Black Panthers members legally exercising their rights to openly carry rifles and shotguns at California Government installations. This so shocked many people that they put in many restrictions as a result.

    Gun restrictions in the US have often had very racist or classicist origins. The ban on "Saturday night specials" a made up term describing cheap handguns, was aimed directly at poor iner city blacks. The 200 dollar tax stamp required on NFA firearms was an exhorbitant price at a time when the gun in question would cost 5 or 10 dollars. it was aimed at poor white and black folk.

    Somehow, I am not surprised...

    I still say we should probably get a bunch of minorities (take your pick, I guess it doesn't matter which group in this case) to openly carry firearms in places that the over-the-top gun rights activists want to allow open carry.

  • Also that fuck head is not practicing good muzzle awareness.
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