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ShneekeyTheLost
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Re: More Stuff

Post by ShneekeyTheLost »

AnotherFairportfan wrote:
ShneekeyTheLost wrote:I can respect that a person is self-aware enough that he knows he cannot dispassionately debate a topic.
Let's throw out one thing {though i know i shouldn't be doing this}, regarding one of the Second Amendment absolutists' favourite examples of "Gun laws don't work": Chicago (which has strict gun laws) or Indianapolis (which has very loose gun laws) - which has the higher homicide rate?
Chicago, obviously, but simply because the population density is so very much higher. When you have 10x the population, don't be surprised to find far higher numbers of gun crimes. And really, the analogy is false to begin with, because in either case, criminals are capable of moving around on a local level pretty readily, so guns available in Indianapolis can simply be covertly transported to Chicago in an afternoon, and be available for criminals to use the following day. For 'gun control' to work, it would need to be implemented on a national level, and even then, it would be about as effective as the Prohibition was (i.e. the opposite of effective).

The other problem with Chicago's legendary problems stem from the fact that law enforcement is exponentially more difficult with higher population densities because your law enforcement agency is horribly outnumbered before they ever get started. It's a manpower issue.

So while your example backfires, it does so not because of gun control laws, or lack thereof, it is because of many factors involved in such a population-dense location. If you want to try to make that comparison, try using something like L.A. vs Houston... oh, wait, LA has higher gun crime rates than Houston does despite California having some of the strictest gun control laws of any state and Texas is... well, it's Texas. So I don't see how that comparison would help either. Umm... sorry?
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Post by Typeminer »

My views on firearm ownership are complicated. I grew up in hunting culture, in a Northern Greater Appalachia county with a current population of about 75,000, which is a substantial increase from when I lived there. I did not enjoy hunting myself, and was not good at it, though I was perfectly happy to shoot targets and trap (and have the hearing loss to show for it). So I've been among the few prohunting vegetarians for about 40 years now.

I also grew up knowing a small but significant number of kids who liked to do things like fire small-round birdshot into the attic rafters. During the time I was in college, one of my high-school friends was starting on a long series of mental health breakdowns, and when I'd visit him, he would get drunk and stoned and fire a .22 pistol through the walls of the shack he was renting. This kind of shit led me to think that not just everybody needs to have guns in the house, and that since I was arguably just slightly more stable than this guy, maybe I might be one of them.

College didn't work out, but I stuck around town. My city now has a population of about 50,000, in a county with a population approaching 600,000. People who grew up here tend to think they live in a rural area, because the farmland and sprawl kind of mash together, but I say no county with roughly the population of Wyoming is rural.

Anyhow, to me, it seems obvious to me that gun ownership in places like where I grew up and in places like where I live now are not at all the same thing. I think that too many people in cities who own guns own them because they think they might have to shoot someone, and I don't think that too many of them know how to shoot. I don't think that makes anybody safer; I think it makes it more likely that people are gonna get shot. I don't worry a whole lot about being shot personally, because most shootings here are an overreaction to personal beefs, but people have been caught by stray shots--not many, but when a little kid is shot on the street by a teenager who never fired a pistol before taking a shot at another teenager . . . .

Anyhow, as I said, my views on this are complicated. Gun control laws work in other countries, but other countries aren't the USA, where hardheaded pragmatism and batshit insanity hang out in the same bars--and have been since long before the founding of the Republic. I think the NRA became completely deranged about 30 years ago, and I'd have more respect for them if they were sponsoring widespread gun safety and marksmanship courses in inner-city high schools. The current laws plainly don't work, but I don't see any practical path to better enforcement, until the public demands it.

I know people who own AR-15s, and it doesn't bother me a bit, because they're responsible adults who know how to handle firearms. I've fired one. I can't shoot worth shit anymore, but I liked it. I agree with the folks who say that they're no more intrinsically dangerous than any semiautomatic hunting rifle.

But then, I don't think people like my old buddy in the shack should be playing with semiautomatic rifles. But then again, quite a few of the people arrested locally for possessing a gun in the commission of a crime were already prohibited from owning firearms. The problem of practical enforcement.

I don't intend any of this as an attack on folks who come to different conclusions. It's a deadly complicated problem.
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AnotherFairportfan
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Post by AnotherFairportfan »

I said i wasn't gonna say anything. I'm not gonna.
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ShneekeyTheLost
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Post by ShneekeyTheLost »

AnotherFairportfan wrote: I said "homicide rate" - not "number of homicides".

Think again.
Wouldn't a comparison between gun-related crimes be a better metric? After all, not every homicide is performed with a firearm (and you'd be surprised just how few actually are), and guns are involved in many crimes in which homicide is not involved (stick-ups and the like).
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AnotherFairportfan
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Post by AnotherFairportfan »

I said i wasn't gonna say anything. I'm not gonna.
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jwhouk
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Post by jwhouk »

The only thing I have to say is, why are youth doing stuff like this - whether or not it's "blaze of glory" suicide takeout or it's pure hatred?
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ShneekeyTheLost
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Post by ShneekeyTheLost »

AnotherFairportfan wrote:
ShneekeyTheLost wrote:
AnotherFairportfan wrote: I said "homicide rate" - not "number of homicides".

Think again.
Wouldn't a comparison between gun-related crimes be a better metric? After all, not every homicide is performed with a firearm (and you'd be surprised just how few actually are), and guns are involved in many crimes in which homicide is not involved (stick-ups and the like).
The Second Amendment absolutists always quote homicides {particularly in Chicago} in attempts to discredit gun laws.

But they quote numbers, not rates.

And the answer to the question is that Indianapolis has a higher homicide rate than Chicago ... bu Chicago is three times the size of Indianapolis
1) Not anymore. Chicago's has decreased while Indianapolis's has increased in the year 2017. Hell, Gary, IN hit #3.

2) As I said previously, unlike the strawman you are setting up and subtly trying to compare me to, there's a reason I stated 'crime related activities' not simply 'homicide rate'.

3) Unlike aforementioned strawman you are trying to compare me to, I never even MENTIONED homicide or gun crime rates. You were the one who brought it up, not me.

I can understand your frustration by people trying to bring up irrelevant statistics. I feel it right now, in fact.
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AnotherFairportfan
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Post by AnotherFairportfan »

I said i wasn't gonna say anything. I'm not gonna.
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DinkyInky
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Post by DinkyInky »

This is what I know. Gun training and safety should be part and parcel of gun control. If you can't pass a safety course, you can't legally own the gun. Period. Training for each standard type(pistol, rifle, semi-auto, fully auto). Background checks are well and good, but how about learning to shoot and clean it first before we go there.

Gary has some pretty tight Gun control laws...almost as bad as Chicago, and I still got shot at working in both places...a lot.
My ex kept his .45 in four boxes per the law, and I still managed to put it together in less than two minutes and had it aimed at the idiot who thought robbing a maintenance man while fixing a fuel pump was "easy money".

I was once told by a wise instructor: Close quarters are the worst place to use a gun, double that if you have no training.
While I do have training, and multiple CCW, I don't carry. Have never needed to. I don't own a firearm, and see no need to keep them in my home. It's far more dangerous for a gunman to enter my home and try anything. I have home advantage.

The idiot that tried to break into my home when my son was little learned that the hard way, and his gun never saw action(idiot didn't even know the safety was still on).

So I have a rather unique thought process on "gun control".

I've never gotten shot at working in Indy, not even in the questionable parts of town. They also have many military schools nearby...at least, they did, so the rules I think are looser there because more folks have training than not. I think you'll find that the actual firearm homicide numbers are far lower than the sum total of homicides there as opposed to other areas.

Also, the gun control nuts and NRA both use inflated numbers, as well as a blanket "homicide rate is higher here". What burns me up is they add in all deaths, including ones that aren't even homicides. The issue is when they use numbers and don't factor in non-firearm related deaths, and especially deaths that aren't even crimes. I mean this from both sides, and not just one. It's a scare tactic that they try to use to push agenda. It's why things have gotten so out of control. The lion's share has to do with the mainstream media becoming tabloidesque. Fix the media, and you fix a nice chunk of these issues. Add mandatory safety and training before you can own a firearm, and just watch a lot of the nonsense decrease.

That's just my 2cp.
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Alkarii
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Post by Alkarii »

Yeah, earlier I was gonna make a post earlier about how less than a third of shooting deaths are from homicides, most of those being from gang violence, but the post got a bit long winded, and I lost interest (sleepy) less than halfway through cutting it down.

Also, I was just reminded of the fact that "mass shooting" has a different definition here than in Australia. In Australia, a mass shooting is one in which five or more are killed, not counting the shooter, and injuries aren't counted. Meanwhile, a mass shooting in the US is four or more shot, including the shooter. Note that I did not say "killed" in the US definition. The exact definitions were a bit more wordy than that, something about the shootings being in a short time frame.

So, like that, you're going to have a harder time finding mass shootings in Australia, because they are defined differently, and require more victims.

Also, as far as shootings in Australia go, I invite you to read this, as it actually tells you what American media will not, due to it not helping their narrative.

As well, the AR-15 was designed back in 1956, and due to financial trouble, Armalite sold the rights to Colt in 1959, and they were available for civilian use, with a select fire version being adopted by the military as the M16 a few years later. That weapon has been around for almost sixty years, yet mass shootings have only recently been a big issue.

Yet there's ridiculous number of prescriptions for mental disorders, some of which have side effects mentioned during the television ads that they may increase increase suicidal/homicidal thoughts in children and young adults.

Also, of the "18 school shootings" ABC reported on, their source included incidents such as a guy going onto the parking lot of a school and committing suicide, one where a criminal justice student thought a gun was a training gun and accidentally fired it, hitting nothing but a wall, and even one where a cop was sitting on a bench and a third grader pulled the trigger of his holstered weapon.

Only three of them were actual shootings. In fact, in many of them, there weren't any injuries at all. Here's a link to a video, and an article to illustrate this.
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Warrl
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Post by Warrl »

AnotherFairportfan wrote:
ShneekeyTheLost wrote:
AnotherFairportfan wrote: I said "homicide rate" - not "number of homicides".

Think again.
Wouldn't a comparison between gun-related crimes be a better metric? After all, not every homicide is performed with a firearm (and you'd be surprised just how few actually are), and guns are involved in many crimes in which homicide is not involved (stick-ups and the like).
The Second Amendment absolutists always quote homicides {particularly in Chicago} in attempts to discredit gun laws.

But they quote numbers, not rates.
That's pretty much the opposite of my observation on the subject.
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TazManiac
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Post by TazManiac »

I'm pretty impressed by our level of discussion of a not-so-easy subject and a noticeable lack of threats & general ugliness towards each other.
Alkarii
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Post by Alkarii »

I'm not sure if I'd mentioned it before, but the people here tend to be a bit more mature (at least, in regards to serious matters) than some communities I'd visited, so I'm not surprised.

As an example, I used to consider myself a liberal-leaning moderate, until I made the mistake of saying "Genetically, there's no such thing as race, so I see no reason to see a difference between black people and white people."

This was in a really liberal community, and saying that got one of the moderators pissed off at me, saying that I'm racist for saying that, saying that it means there's nothing special about other cultures, which wasn't what I said. (Further, the word he was looking for was "jingoist," not racist.). It took a while to get people to understand what racism actually is, and that what I said wasn't racist.

See, the thing is, if you attack someone in any way because they disagree with you, anyone who could have been convinced to agree and saw that might get turned off to the idea of agreeing with you. Hence why, even though I'm not fond of abortion, I had decided I'm not going to ever stand with those people protesting in front of the pregnancy resource center next to one of the branches of my bank, just because of how they acted towards people who went there.

News flash: They do more than abortions there, and I hear it's cheaper for a woman to get care there than at a hospital. What if she wanted to have the baby, but had a miscarriage? Or, better yet, a potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy? Is it really better to deny the woman an abortion that could save her life so she could have a baby later?

So, seeing the way people behave like that towards someone who isn't so lucky as to never wind up in a situation where the only viable options are choices their critics wouldn't make themselves kind of made me stop and think for a bit, and I later learned how complex the situation could be for someone who has to visit such a clinic.

But then when the folks in that liberal community attacked me for agreeing with them on an issue, and later said they didn't care that I had training in gun safety (from multiple drill sergeants, no less), and that on more than one occasion I'd seen that I truly can't rely on the police to do anything when I need them, much less in a timely fashion. Not only that, but because I don't live in the city limits, I'd have to wait half an hour (at least) for someone from the sheriff's department to show up, even though there's an LRPD station maybe seven or eight miles away. Not only that, but police are actually not required by law to help you in an emergency.

Which is why I bought a gun while on convalescent leave from basic training. If I had the means to get my family to move further away from the city (and, consequently, further from their respective jobs), I would.

But as far as I'm concerned, the security of myself and my family is of greater importance than some junkie's need for money to get high.
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Post by Typeminer »

TazManiac wrote:I'm pretty impressed by our level of discussion of a not-so-easy subject and a noticeable lack of threats & general ugliness towards each other.
That's why I like this board so much, though I lurk more than post. Intelligent people, very different life situations and political views, but generally warm and respectful of each other.

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Atomic
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Post by Atomic »

It's always fun to debate someone who's only response is to move the goal posts toward some idiotic direction.

"It's dangerous to eat Tide Pods."

"So, you're saying they're delicious with milk?"

---

"Race is a social construct."

"So, you're saying some people are inherently inferior?"

---

"People are usually better off solving their own problems."

"So, you think starving children is a moral good?"

--

Lather, rinse, repeat.... Ad nauseum....


Alkarii, TazManiac, and Typeminer - yes -- most of us try to aim toward the top of this pyramid:
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GlytchMeister
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Post by GlytchMeister »

I found this. Food for thought.

My initial response is “What this article is requesting is, essentially, for people to show some common decency. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but decency ain’t exactly common, and it never was.” It’s bound to be about as successful as abstinence-focused Sex Ed.

Here’s the thing. There will always be evil people. And they don’t have to be mentally ill to be evil.

When you create a social norm that defines killing kids as extremely evil, and then put all of the kids In a large area into a single, small area, you are creating a perfect target.

Evil people will of course go straight for the schools. The hospitals. The orphanages.

So now you are left with two options, as I see it - de-centralize the targets or defend them. Educate through the Internet. Reform the adoption system into, perhaps, an ad-hoc style network. Offer incentives to entice people to become healthcare professionals, and then restrict hospital admittance to conditions that really need a hospital. Things like a broken finger or something stuck up your kid’s nose seem like something that could be taken care of by a nurse in a van. For what’s left of the hospital, build the structure like a fortress and keep the battlestations manned at all times.

Yeah it’s expensive, but if you really want to keep innocents from getting murdered, it’s going to take something more creative and strategic than messing with ease of gun ownership or trying to get people to be nice to each other. So before one can really complain about the expense without offering an alternative lateral solution (aka something different, because doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result is either stupidity or scientific overkill), one must first assign a dollar value to a child’s life. And that’s really awkward.

At some point, I think the population will either shrug and accept that life has some horrible risks or they’ll get fed up en masse enough to pay through the nose, and run for office, and enact difficult change in the government despite the risk of getting assassinated by the Walton family’s pet hitman.

You can’t make people be nice. But the whole gun debate, to me, is starting to feel like a debate between two different-shaped sledgehammers.
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Catawampus
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Post by Catawampus »

I'm just going to point out one glaring self-contradiction that I often see appear in these sorts of debates.

One of the arguments brought up by those in favour of as few gun regulations as possible is that guns are needed for self-defence, and that we won't be able to defend ourselves as well if we don't have guns. Another argument (often brought up by the exact same individuals) is that if people who want to commit acts of violence can't use guns, then they'll just use knives or hammers or pointy bits of fruit instead.

You can't use both of those arguments. Either guns have special, unique qualities that make them more efficient as weapons (and thus better for self-defence), or else they're easily replaceable by knives and hammers and pointy bits of fruit (in which case guns aren't required for self-defence). It's perfectly fine to make one argument or the other, but they're mutually exclusive.
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GlytchMeister
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Post by GlytchMeister »

I think (and I’m no expert on this, ask Sarge or someone for confirmation) that guns, even pistols, are pretty bad for close quarters. A properly holstered semi-automatic pistol, as far as I know, has a snap closure over it, the safety on, and no cartridge chambered. So, in order to fire, one would have to pop the snap, draw, chamber the first round, turn the safety off, get into stance and aim, and finally pull the trigger.

Unless you’re extremely highly trained, that’s too much to do if someone else is sprinting at you with a knife from 50’ or less, I think.

I think revolvers might be a bit quicker?

Even so. If you want to own a gun for self defense, you shouldn’t use it as a crutch or as an excuse to not train in other forms of self defense (how to handle an attacker with a knife or a baseball bat or whatever, as well as hand-to-hand). Otherwise, you are as liable to hurt yourself or some innocent bystander as you are to hurt the assailant in the ensuing grapple for control of the firearm.
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Post by Alkarii »

Actually, they're not contradictory at all.

See, the argument for stricter controls is based on the assumption that it'll reduce the chances of another shooting spree. Which makes sense, but it won't reduce it as much as one would expect.

Why? Well, consider the possibility that someone manages to pass all of the proposed checks. Hell, he could be a stable guy. He could own that gun for years, and still have a license to own a gun. Suppose his life had been good, but things go downhill so bad he decides he's had enough of society and all it's Grade A Manure. Not exactly sure what makes these people do it, but for some reason he's just sick of it all and decides to go out with a bang, and destroy whatever he can on the way out the door. He still has the gun.

Or, again, there's the possibility that someone bought a gun on the black market (some Australians are using the dark web for that) or stole one, or someone who could have bought one for them when they couldn't do it themselves, either for prior convictions, mental health (and you have to be stupid or crazy yourself to knowingly give someone a gun when you know their mental state isn't up to par), or underage, as was the case with the Columbine boys. A shooting spree is still possible.

Then there's the fact removing guns from the equation to prevent another massacre won't necessarily work, because while it will certainly reduce the risk of a shooting spree, there have been plenty where guns weren't used at all. There was that one incident in China a couple years ago where a group of people with either cleavers or long kitchen knives (the article switched between the two, but hey, a cleaver is a knife, and they can get long) started hacking at people. Some sort of terrorist group, or something. There's also the Bastille Day incident from the year before, with the van being driven into the crowd. Or the bombing in Oklahoma City back in '95. The list goes on.

Now, what we don't (and won't) hear about from the mainstream media are the stories of the regular people who have concealed carry licenses and manage to stop what could become another major killing spree. But it does happen.

Further, the argument for weapons that are a little bit shy of military grade is the reason the 2nd amendment was made in the first place: To give the regular citizens a chance to fight back against their own government should that government become an enemy of the people. There were those who felt that even having a standing army was a bad idea. And, if you think about what these people had just been through, can you blame them? They had just been invaded, by their own military, at the orders of their own king.

Now, people argue that they couldn't have predicted what kind of guns we'd have today, but that doesn't matter. The point is to give the people the ability to revolt if a revolution were to ever become truly necessary. The weapons citizens had back then were virtually identical to what the Continental Army was using. The 2nd Amendment wasn't written with hunting in mind, nor was it for protection from criminals. It was, and still is, for protection from our own government and military.

This right here is another example of why you can't really make a clear comparison between Australia and the United States. The relationships between Britain and both countries had been drastically different, and in the case of Australia it was probably because of what had just happened with the American colonies.

Glytch: I'd seen a drill sergeant illustrate almost that exact point to a private, by showing him how quickly a person can cover a distance of twenty feet, and said that's why they train in hand to hand AND carry some sort of blade.
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Post by Warrl »

Catawampus wrote:I'm just going to point out one glaring self-contradiction that I often see appear in these sorts of debates.

One of the arguments brought up by those in favour of as few gun regulations as possible is that guns are needed for self-defence, and that we won't be able to defend ourselves as well if we don't have guns. Another argument (often brought up by the exact same individuals) is that if people who want to commit acts of violence can't use guns, then they'll just use knives or hammers or pointy bits of fruit instead.

You can't use both of those arguments. Either guns have special, unique qualities that make them more efficient as weapons (and thus better for self-defence), or else they're easily replaceable by knives and hammers and pointy bits of fruit (in which case guns aren't required for self-defence). It's perfectly fine to make one argument or the other, but they're mutually exclusive.
Can't use both at once? Why not?

Guns are much more effective than knives, BUT knives are effective - particularly in the hands of large and strong people. The effectiveness of a gun, on the other hand, is not much affected by the physical size and strength of the user. Guns are an equalizer. Criminals like to attack where they have a physical advantage.

A 200-pound thug can use either a gun or a knife - or, for that matter, fists and feet - to mug a 98-pound female. Disarming this thug is not possible, except by fatal or paralyzing injuries.

The 98-pound female needs a gun to have a truly effective defense against this thug. If they both have guns, they're equally effective. If they both have knives, the thug will be significantly more effective. If they are both restricted to fists and feet, the female is nearly helpless.

Thugs are, typically, larger and stronger than their victims, or have some other perceived and significant advantage. This is because they aren't complete idiots - the 98-pound female thug is not going to mug the 200-pound guy using just her fists and feet.
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