The Guns thread

[regwec]

Just to shift the debate- do any of you think your opinions on this subject will be altered in any way by the next American gun massacre? Will it make a difference if it is in your town or if people you know are among the victims?

 

[DeadPresident]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/shots-fired-dallas-amid-protest-recent-police-killings/story?id=40422456

"11 Officers shot, 4 Fatally, by Snipers Amid Dallas Protest Against Police Killings".

What does that headline tell us about American society?

 

[Supernova]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/shots-fired-dallas-amid-protest-recent-police-killings/story?id=40422456

"11 Officers shot, 4 Fatally, by Snipers Amid Dallas Protest Against Police Killings".

What does that headline tell us about American society?

That too many idiots have acess to guns. Im all for guns rights but its clear there is a large part of this country clearly not fit to handle these instruments.

 

[DeadPresident]

That too many idiots have acess to guns. Im all for guns rights but its clear there is a large part of this country clearly not fit to handle these instruments.

Here's the paradox for American society; they want absolute liberty and simultaneously want complete safety. Having an almost 1:1 ratio of person:gun in a country isn't conducive to that kind of safety they supposedly desire. It's past the point of no return IMO, there are too many guns in circulation and there's a disturbing fetish and cultural attachment to guns in the States. This isn't going anywhere, reasonable Americans are going to keep dealing with these kinds of incidents because the stubborn few would give up their firstborns before they regulate firearm access.

Liberty > Innocent lives, fact.

 

[Handsome Rob]

However, over a lifetime if we take it at 6.1% prevalence of gun incidents, not counting however many failed suicides, unreported incidents and other miscellaneous gun-related events that could have potentially resulted in a death or injury, isn't that already alarmingly high? On the conservative side let's add 2% and make it a flat 8% incident rate related to firearms, isn't that high?

If this was a disease, traffic danger, flight danger, food toxicity, or any other incident where a fatality/injury is a possibility, wouldn't an 8% margin of error be obscenely high? I'd be highly concerned if across the space of my lifetime there's an 8% chance I'd be involved in (or the perpetrator?) of a serious gun incident, especially at the rate they're occurring.

Except that's not the percentage of a person being involved in a gun incident over the course of their lifetime--that's the percentage of a gun-owner being involved in an incident. So, your 8% has to be cut down by at least a third, since only 1/3 of adults own a firearm. And, since that 8% includes suicides and accidents, the percentage would drop even more if you never choose to own a gun.

Last year, there were approximately 13,000 gun homicides and 11,000 drunk driving deaths (I tried to find injury stats to paint a more complete picture of drunk driving incidents but couldn't find any). This would lead to a statistically small difference in the chances of you being murdered by a person with a gun and killed in a drunk-driving accident: out of a 320 million population, that's 0.26% for drunk driving and 0.30% for gun homicide (70-year calc, again).

Would you support a re-examination of prohibition based on a comparison of these percentages?

Just to shift the debate- do any of you think your opinions on this subject will be altered in any way by the next American gun massacre? Will it make a difference if it is in your town or if people you know are among the victims?

Honestly? No. No more than the next multi-victim drunk-driving incident will make me more likely to ban alcohol consumption, or finding out a loved one is addicted to ____ drug would make me think the War on Drugs is still worth fighting.

Do you think your opinion would be altered by the next story about someone using a gun to successfully defend themselves from an attacker? If your daughter, wife, or sister used a gun to shoot an oncoming, much larger attacker--would you rather she not have had the gun on hand?

That too many idiots have acess to guns. Im all for guns rights but its clear there is a large part of this country clearly not fit to handle these instruments.

Do you have a source for this claim? Please refer to my post on the previous page, because comparing actual gun incidents to gun owners really doesn't result in stats that back up your claim here.

 

[DeadPresident]

Except that's not the percentage of a person being involved in a gun incident over the course of their lifetime--that's the percentage of a gun-owner being involved in an incident. So, your 8% has to be cut down by at least a third, since only 1/3 of adults own a firearm. And, since that 8% includes suicides and accidents, the percentage would drop even more if you never choose to own a gun.

Of course it is, if it's not a suicide then a gun owner will be affecting other people in an incident like that, won't they? That's the point I'm arguing from, is while it statistically matches something like drunk driving the psychology around people having to wonder if they're as likely to be massacred in a night club or out on the street as they are to die in a car accident, that's a little problematic when there could be laws implemented to circumvent some of those stats. And as you rightly compared it to drunk driving deaths, there are many instances every day where everyone is rolling the dice on becoming a statistic, my point of view on guns specifically is that legislation can cut down on how bad that dice roll is remarkably.

Last year, there were approximately 13,000 gun homicides and 11,000 drunk driving deaths (I tried to find injury stats to paint a more complete picture of drunk driving incidents but couldn't find any). This would lead to a statistically small difference in the chances of you being murdered by a person with a gun and killed in a drunk-driving accident: out of a 320 million population, that's 0.26% for drunk driving and 0.30% for gun homicide (70-year calc, again).

Would you support a re-examination of prohibition based on a comparison of these percentages?

Yeah, I would actually, but that's just my personal opinion. I also don't think the States is a good example because you guys don't quite have the maladaptive drinking culture like other countries like the UK do. I'd say the UK and some other commonwealth countries have the same obsession with alcohol that the USA has with guns.

The main reason I'm kind of draconian on this kind of stuff is I find all these deaths (the gun deaths and drunk driving) extremely preventable, I don't understand what the logical reason is for people wanting to protect those activities as vehemently as they do. I think alcohol is a waste of money and generally a blight on society (coming from a country with an exceptionally unhealthy drinking culture, I should add) and I feel the same about firearms. My main question to people arguing for things staying exactly as they are is: Why? People should be able to make a reasonable argument for it, while the percentages don't seem that bad, they're preventable, that's the tragic part.

Usually when people have to answer the why question the response is "because I want to" - personal liberty isn't enough of a justification on issues like these.

 

[Supernova]

Do you have a source for this claim? Please refer to my post on the previous page, because comparing actual gun incidents to gun owners really doesn't result in stats that back up your claim here.

Yeah turn on your tv. Theres a difference between idiots yes idiots with guns and gunowners who have there heads on right and have respect for the guns they collect. What Im seeing is idiots who have no respect for guns and want to use them to create chaos.

This isnt some attack on all gun owners this is an attack on the idiots who use them in a way they were not created for.

 

[The Overlord]

Now here is an interesting article from a Libertarian blog:

http://reason.com/blog/2016/07/07/black-lives-matter-and-so-do-their-gun-r

Why doesn't the NRA speak up in cases like the police shooting Philando Castile?

It seems like there is a huge contradiction in the modern conservative movement in the US, where conservatives want almost everyone to have a gun, but when the cops kill an African American for dubious reasons, the first thing conservatives ask is, did the African American who got shot have a gun?

The NRA being silent on this issue, makes it seem like they are giving tacit consent to idea that the Second Amendment is a privilege for white people, rather then a right for everyone.

The article also points out another contradiction, that conservatives are only skeptical of the government until the police or the military get involved, then they promote obedience to authority, which makes that ideology pretty useless, IMO. If you can't criticize the government's enforcement tools, then what's the point of their totally arbitrary skepticism.

 

[DeadPresident]

That the NRA is a vehicle for institutionally racist policy is in no doubt.

 

[TheComicbookKid]

NRA is about selling guns.

Plus every incident is win win for them. They stoke fear about some shapeless killer or authority so when anything bad happens it feeds their ideology.

 

[Webfoot Hero]

That the NRA is a vehicle for institutionally racist policy is in no doubt.

Except the NRA has advocated for gun ownership for blacks to help protect themselves. Just because they don't single out one group for increased outreach, it doesn't mean they don't welcome any member those groups. The NRA's fight for gun ownership rights is the most visible thing they are known for but it's only one aspect of their numerous other things they do to promote gun ownership and usage.

https://mic.com/articles/23929/10-surprising-facts-about-the-nra-that-you-never-hear#.FeHQkm0Qj

Also, do you know who one of the NRA's most viewed spokesman/supporter is? Colion Noir (which is a stage name he uses), a practicing lawyer who has become very well-known throughout the NRA and gun ownership circles.

https://www.youtube.com/user/MrColionNoir/
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-black-guns-nra-20130723-dto-htmlstory.html

 

[Webfoot Hero]

Now here is an interesting article from a Libertarian blog:

http://reason.com/blog/2016/07/07/black-lives-matter-and-so-do-their-gun-r

Why doesn't the NRA speak up in cases like the police shooting Philando Castile?

It seems like there is a huge contradiction in the modern conservative movement in the US, where conservatives want almost everyone to have a gun, but when the cops kill an African American for dubious reasons, the first thing conservatives ask is, did the African American who got shot have a gun?

The NRA being silent on this issue, makes it seem like they are giving tacit consent to idea that the Second Amendment is a privilege for white people, rather then a right for everyone.

The article also points out another contradiction, that conservatives are only skeptical of the government until the police or the military get involved, then they promote obedience to authority, which makes that ideology pretty useless, IMO. If you can't criticize the government's enforcement tools, then what's the point of their totally arbitrary skepticism.

In Castile's case, it could be that they're waiting for all the facts to come out before taking a side in the case.

 

[DeadPresident]

Except the NRA has advocated for gun ownership for blacks to help protect themselves. Just because they don't single out one group for increased outreach, it doesn't mean they don't welcome any member those groups. The NRA's fight for gun ownership rights is the most visible thing they are known for but it's only one aspect of their numerous other things they do to promote gun ownership and usage.

https://mic.com/articles/23929/10-surprising-facts-about-the-nra-that-you-never-hear#.FeHQkm0Qj

Also, do you know who one of the NRA's most viewed spokesman/supporter is? Colion Noir (which is a stage name he uses), a practicing lawyer who has become very well-known throughout the NRA and gun ownership circles.

https://www.youtube.com/user/MrColionNoir/
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-black-guns-nra-20130723-dto-htmlstory.html

What an organization says/advocates and what its real effects are can be two different things. It would be asinine to suggest that the NRA doesn't benefit from subtly facilitating identity politics tensions because it keeps people suspicious and vigilant, and more likely to buy firearms.

Telling someone the NRA advocates for this and that isn't that far removed from telling them Trump says he'll do this or that - talk is cheap, if they cared they'd invest in outcomes as an organization not random lip service to topics that conveniently maintain a specific business model.

 

[Charlatan]

People who talk about "second amendment solutions" and are simultaneously enraged by the murder of police officers ought to re-examine how they arrived at their worldview.

This is what "second amendment solutions" looks like.

 

[BoredGuy]

In Castile's case, it could be that they're waiting for all the facts to come out before taking a side in the case.

Their silence on Castile and their brief comment on the Dallas shooting, which left out all their beloved talking points like "Good Guy with a Gun" and "Open Carry saves lives" (because those arguments were just utterly destroyed) shows the NRA has no interest in anyone's rights, no concern for freedom (especially for minorities) and that all they are is a money making lobby who profit off every dead American

 

[DeadPresident]

People who talk about "second amendment solutions" and are simultaneously enraged by the murder of police officers ought to re-examine how they arrived at their worldview.

This is what "second amendment solutions" looks like.

It's interesting you mention that, I've seen people say one of the original justifications for the second amendment is the need to be armed "in case the government turns tyrannical and militias need to rise up" or something along those lines. Technically black males in American society could argue that the government has become tyrannical towards them (by not valuing their rights as much as they do the rights of others) and they're exercising their rights by attacking what they see as the offending organization, in this case the police.

 

[The Overlord]

In Castile's case, it could be that they're waiting for all the facts to come out before taking a side in the case.

I have a follow up question, how often have they waited in other cases that didn't involve African Americans? For example how long did they wait with the Zimmerman case? How long does the NRA have to wait for the facts to come in and when can we declare that NRA simply has no interest in this case?

Also if the NRA wants almost everyone to have a gun, why don't they criticize conservatives who's first question is "did he have a gun" when African Americans are shot by the cops for dubious reasons? How many African Americans would comfortable exercising their Second Amendment rights if they think the cops will shoot them for it?

I posted a Libertarian article, not a liberal one and they were making the point about conservatives only being skeptical of the government when it doesn't involve the police or the military.

Didn't the NRA make the argument that if the members if the church that Dylann Roof shot up were armed, they could have saved lives? Let me ask you, if one of those Church members did have a concealed weapon and the cops later shot him in circumstances similar to Castile or any the other recent controversial shootings of black men, would Fox News and other conservatives have sided with the police or the Church member?

You can't have it both ways, this one of the huge contradictions in modern Republican ideology.

 

[Webfoot Hero]

The NRA's statement on the Castile case:

 

[The Overlord]

The NRA's statement on the Castile case:

That is a cop out, by the time "all the facts come in" this story will be old news and faded from the public eye. What if they never comment on this, at point should I assume they have no interest in this case? I don't think they have been as timid on other such cases, but when an African American became involved they became bashful suddenly.

The NRA commented on the shootings in Dallas, so why are they not commenting on the Castile case?

 

[Webfoot Hero]

That is a cop out, by the time "all the facts come in" this story will be old news and faded from the public eye. What if they never comment on this, at point should I assume they have no interest in this case? I don't think they have been as timid on other such cases, but when an African American became involved they became bashful suddenly.

The NRA commented on the shootings in Dallas, so why are they not commenting on the Castile case?

Apples and oranges here. In Dallas, they have a good timeline of events and motivations. In Minnesota, there's still an investigation into what happened since there's been no clear-cut chain of events. Sometimes it's best for all the facts to come out before making a statement. Not sure why being cautious is seen as a bad thing now. At this point, I just don't see many here being happy with their response.

 

[The Overlord]

Apples and oranges here. In Dallas, they have a good timeline of events and motivations. In Minnesota, there's still an investigation into what happened since there's been no clear-cut chain of events. Sometimes it's best for all the facts to come out before making a statement. Not sure why being cautious is seen as a bad thing now. At this point, I just don't see many here being happy with their response.

I think you are ignoring my greater point, how often did the NRA use such caution in cases like this that don't involve African Americans? Many NRA members seem upset with the leadership's silence on this case, so I think there something to it.

Let me ask you something, are you as a gun advocate comfortable with Fox News and other conservative commentators justfying these contraversal police shootings of African Americans by asking if the person who was shot had a gun, when the NRA advocates that almost everyone who wants one should have a gun? How is this not a mixed message from conservatives?

 

[BoredGuy]

Not all the facts of Dallas are known, hell they don't even know for sure how many shooters there were

After Orlando, they put out full length articles in news outlets the next day, while accounts were still rolling in and a "clear timeline" had not been determined

but yet, no "It is important for the NRA not to comment while the investigation is ongoing"

And remember, nobody is attacking you here, or any other decent gun owners.
If you're a responsible gun owner, awesome! you should advocate for that level of responsibility!
but there is no reason that you should not be able to acknowledge that the NRA is pretty f****ed up in their response to acts of violence in this country

My step-father, for instance, owns a (disturbing imo) collection of handguns, but even he dropped his NRA membership and blocked all their emails after the Orlando shooting. The NRA has nothing to do with gun ownership, and everything to do with our corrupt, lobbyist controlled Congress and state legislatures.

 

[auditor]

We should have outlawed guns a hundred years ago. How did people not realize it?

 

[auditor]

I would only support banning guns now if the punishment for owning them was sever enough that people would turn in their guns.

Imagine if the punishment was life in prison. I think too many fathers would just cave and turn them in. If the punishment was a slap on the wrist then it's a civil war.

Anybody who thinks they would take up arms against the government belongs on a do not sell list. When you say you would do that, your just another example of why normal people shouldn't have guns.

You don't see me threatening to take up arms against the government because I can't legally possess marijuana, and marijuana is way less dangerous than guns.

 

[Charlatan]

This country needs to heal and the powers that be keep on ripping us apart - pitting us against each other. making sure we're afraid and blame each other ,never the man behind the curtain.