That’s all good, I’m not the type to judge you for having a life outside of this discussion.

In all honesty, I’m clearly not as creative as your daughter and have don’t really have a clue.

Ban guns, go ahead, I assure you the bad dudes will find another form to kill lots of people, the 911 hijackers used our own planes, not too long ago some asshole drove a vehicle through a crowd, you can't stop mass murder, however if someone has a gun....they can stop the perp, but that doesn't get reported because it doesn't stirr up fluff and its not flashy.

Lol, let’s move the goal posts again then shall we? We’ve already gone from “Illegal gun sales are the problem” to “Baseball bats are as deadly weapons as guns” to now the good old “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun!”

This is clearly going well for you.

How long did it take the good guys with guns to neutralise the Dayton shooter? 30 seconds? How many people do you think he could have killed if he’d replaced his legally purchased .223 rifle with 100 round magazines for your deadly, deadly baseball bat? Or a knife?

How many more people would he have killed if nobody stopped him, is the real question.

One more thing, gun free zone is a gun ban, how's that working out?

Lol, let's move the goalposts again? Field goals will now be taken out in the parking lot. BYO binoculars.

How many people would he have killed if no one stopped him? I dunno. If he can kill 9 people immediately within 30 seconds, I imagine (even including lunch and nap breaks) he could probably wipe out a small town in a day. Unless remorse or fatigue set in first. Maybe he'd have a heart attack before the day is out, or perhaps an incapacitating fall from a ladder whilst trying to get an elevated vantage point. Who knows? It's such a deflective question that has no reasonable answer on purpose. If you know that, then you're intentionally arguing in bad faith.

Now you want to make the argument that gun free zones are pointless because bad guys with guns simply break the law and shoot people inside them? Essentially, you're saying that there should be no gun free zones and that we should probably just arm everyone in the US because you never know when some random with a gun is going to pop off.

That's the sort of world you want to live in?

I assume that means that people who aren't about that "Be armed at all times, be surrounded by people armed at all times" life should simply move elsewhere where gun control is tighter?

The problem with that is, as has already been pointed out, the research indicates that states with strong gun laws are often undermined by the weak and lax laws of other states. Significant numbers of guns used in crimes in California are bought in Nevada, and near enough 60% of illegal guns recovered by police in Chicago come from other states, with Indiana supplying 20% alone (IN has a D- score by Giffords).

Maybe they should just leave the US? If so, they should move further afield than Canada or Mexico. Canada who historically saw at least an estimated half (or more) of it's illegal firearms sourced from the US. Mexico still reportedly finds 70% of its firearms seized in crimes originating from the US. And those refugees from Honduras and Guatemala that Trump's got an erection about stopping via a border wall? They're fleeing violence fueled by firearms trafficked into Central America from (no points for correct answers, it should be fairly obvious).. the good ol' US of A. Ain't that just a funny fluffing dilemma - US guns have a hand in creating the refugee/migrant problem you have on your southern border.

https://www.latimes.com/...nevada-border-gun-control
https://www.chicago.gov/.../2017/October/GTR2017.pdf
https://lawcenter.giffords.org/scorecard/#IN
http://factscan.ca/bill-blair-crime-guns/
https://www.pbs.org/...lost-in-the-border-debate
https://www.insightcrime.org/...very-two-hours-guatemala/
https://www.insightcrime.org/...g-firearms-into-honduras/

That's why I love Oregon, open carry baby, the only persons that feel threatened are the yous of the world, ironically....

I'm not threatened by American gun laws, just baffled by the stupidity of some of them. And the people that defend them.

I suppose 9 deaths in Dayton are just more numbers in the unfortunate collateral of the American right to bear arms.

Here's to a bright future of a fully armed America with guns for all its people; black, hispanic and Muslim too. I'm sure white America will hold to its anti-gun control values when that happens.

MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN

I'm not white you racist prick ,,!,, (-_-) ,,!,, didn't take long for you to bring race into the conversation SMH

Calm your snowflake outrage farm, no one even called you white.

If you're this triggered by words you don't understand, I don't imagine you're the most rational of gun owners.

Maybe you should sit this one out.

LMFAO you're such a libtard and you showed it by bringing up race, why? What's got you so pissed off at the so called "whites" ? Did the big media and far left succeed in making you see people and judge them based on groups and/or ethnicity? So sad, go along now sheep...

Now you're projecting. The only one losing their rag here is you.

No one called you white. No one has claimed anger at white people. You're apparently not white but you're so angered on their behalf?

You should definitely sit this one out. It looks like you're done here.

I didnt say you called me white, I just pointed out how you racially divide like big media taught you to, have a good night! 🐑

Short of memory too, it seems. A cup of tea and a lie down might do you some good, mate. Sweet dreams.

I forgot the sarcasm font, my bad LOL

I think "your bad" is actually not understanding how sarcasm works.

Sure, whatever you say, going back to work now, good night, bro :-)

That's basic, but it's better. Good.

hope you do not mind but will take snippets to reply to vs, quoting the entire message:



no it is actually more of a statistical numbers game. Similar to 911, while our intelligence agency for the most part do an incredible job in keeping numerous and repeated threats at bay. It only took one vs. thousands of attempts to get through and create a tragedy on a masive scale. More people died in the 911 attack than all rampage killings combined. It wasn't the first nor the last time. They attacked the Towers in 1993, Oklahoma city was pretty bad too.

your question is akin to asking so why did they fail in stopping those attacks. You can analyze it til the cows come home. Go ahead and create all the policy, procedural, and legislative changes you want. One guarantee is you cannot stop every determined low profile human being from creating a massive killing field if this is what they have decided to do. They will find a method with or without guns. Not a single gun was used to carry out 911 or even oklahoma city. Not to mention many other atrocities on this planet, which had no gun requirements to carry out. Yet there lay hundreds of bodies in a matter of minutes.

What I'm pointing to here is mass murder on any scale does not set a gun requirment as a precondition to successfully execute a desired outcome of death on a massive scale.

Besides and on a side note governments, multi-nationals, and big pharma kill more people on daily basis than even your worst possible example of a shooting spree. actualy their death toll numbers come close to if not exceeds 911 on a daily basis. but this of course is the invisible killing field, ignored, and unseen.



I like how you recognize how small the percentages are for Mass shootings, yet choose to concentrate on guns vs, every other method. the percentages just get smaller and smaller when we begin to be inclusive vs, exclusive in how our fellow men choose to kill one another.

why concentrate on mass shootings, when rampage killing has such a wide spectrum of proven examles to chose from?

https://en.wikipedia.org/...i/List_of_rampage_killers

you are making your case and points thru ommission and narrowing down what is to be considered admissable. only look at cases involving guns we can ignore any other method. Are we to truly believe cases where vehicle, explosives, even arson are used to kill in some cases many more people in a single incident to be irrelevant simply because no firearm was used. Your argument is a bit biased, your slip is showing...

In the words of Archie bunker "Would it make you feel better if they were simply pushed off of a tall building.

as for private sales Americans also value their privacy, fully understanding that once their name is in a database, Should the day arrive and police start going door to door, they would have no choice but to turn over any weapons they informed the government about. Perhaps some would prefer not having a standoff Waco style, when the knock comes on the door to confiscate guns ???

the Fisking is strong with that one.

If you want to get technical: the number one killer of people in the united states is heart disease:P
The number one non "natural" cause of death is automobile accidents.

Since 1998 there have been 320,524,675 firearms background checks performed by the FBI. Please, someone tell me what you can extrapolate from that number. So, Guess what.... Guns aren't going anywhere. Might as well get used to it. Law abiding American citizens will NEVER let their firearms be confiscated by degenerate fascist vampires like Elizabeth Warren and Beto O'Rourke. It will never happen. Period. No use arguing the point. It will never happen. Our Founding Father's made sure that we were well prepared for any political tyranny that would threaten the very right the protects all of our other rights. What has changed over the last 30 years? Mental exposure to "entertainment" that has cheapened life. A lascivious and ultra-violent Hollywood that has pervaded our homes. The Ultra Violent First Person Shooter Games - something like 830 since 1995- that have shaped the cognitive mindset of millions of young adults. And then the NRA is blamed. Phuck me raw what a load of horseshyt. I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

Not at all, it makes it easier to read and follow. Thank you.

I'm going to re-order what you've said a bit as you make your point about "rampage killings" in the second half of your post, while mentioning them in your first.



Firstly, I didn't strictly hold to discussion about mass shootings. I explicitly admitted that mass shootings are a tiny, tiny percentage of gun related deaths, with suicides being the highest type of incident, then homicides being next. CDC data suggests that, between 1999 and 2014, there were:

- 313,641 suicides using a firearm
- 198,760 homicides using a firearm

https://webappa.cdc.gov/.../ncipc/mortrate10_us.html

The problem of your "rampage killing" substitution is that the US still comes out looking far worse that most, if not all, other countries. In terms of number of rampage killings, you and China are claimed to be tied at 102 incidents each; though Asia's total is 201 while the total for the Americas is 144. That means that China accounts for 50% of rampage killings in their region and the US accounts for 70% of rampage killings in yours. Never mind the fact that having China, a country known for human rights violations and poor freedoms/liberties, as your closest example is less than ideal.

And those figures are just the basic "rampage killings" listed, they don't include the other categories of school shootings, workplace killings, familicide and hate crimes. I don't have the patience to go through and count them all up but a quick CTRL+F to find "United States" and "China" shows American mentions on the page of "rampage killings" winning 44 to 38.

Regardless, "rampage killings" are just as statistically minuscule as "mass shootings" are, and we're supposedly discussing gun crime, gun laws, and gun control. You seem to agree that looking at mass shootings is pointless as they're not even as common as the media make them out to be. True.

But 198,760 homicides using a firearm over 15 years works out to be around 13,000 a year. If that still seems paltry to you and unworthy of such overblown policy attention, then consider the total number of American deaths due to terrorism from 1995 to 2014:

- Total number of attacks: 510
- Total fatalities on US soil: 3264
- Total American fatalities outside the US: 3503

https://www.start.umd.edu/...ths_FactSheet_Oct2015.pdf

So over 20 years, the number of deaths falls well short of the figures gun homicides produce - and it's especially telling that if you remove the 9/11 deaths as being a freak anomaly in terrorist attacks, then you're removing 2902 deaths from the fatalities on US soil (making it 362 deaths over 20 years).

Deaths related to gun violence far dwarfs those as a result of terrorism, yet terrorism policy changes far outweigh those related to dealing with gun violence.



The point I'm making is that America seems to work far harder at trying to keep terrorism at bay while ignoring that firearm related deaths (suicides and homicides) are a far more serious threat to the personal safety of its people.

Like, apparently America can't multitask and simultaneously crack down on gun violence because it means that they'll have to stop arresting domestic criminals and thwarting terrorist plots.



The question is exactly as you've interpreted it. It might just surprise you that the data seems to suggest that there actually is an answer, and it's one that you won't like: lax laws regulating who can buy a gun makes it easier for those "determined low profile human beings" to carry out attacks. Fact. No moral judgment, no hidden agenda. That's what happens when you make something, anything, easy to obtain (e.g. cannabis).

That's why I asked you the "bomb, knife, gun" question. We're talking about what's the most efficient and convenient method for killing as many people as possible with a minimal risk of harm to yourself as possible? It's not the bomb because you'd have to figure out how to source parts and build it. It's not the knife because the close proximity required for harming others puts you within distance of harm. The gun wins hands down.

How is this relevant? Read the Harvard link I sent regarding suicide and firearms. The quickness and lethality of using a firearm to commit suicide leaves very little room for contemplation of whether or not the person attempting suicide truly wants to end their life. The longer someone has to think about the way they'll commit suicide, the less likely they are to go through with it. Literally, ever second counts and when you're walking to the roof of a building or trying to figure out which support bar in your garage will hold your body weight while hanging from some rope, that's plenty of time to talk yourself out of suicide. Far longer than it might take to load a gun and pull the trigger.

The same exists for those deciding to commit murder. Time might not stop everyone but it's clear that it does stop some people. For very little legislative pain, you could reduce a bunch of needless deaths.



No, it doesn't. But guns make things deadlier. You can't reload a bomb. Car attacks are one-hit wonders. If you take your Oklahoma bombing and 9/11 plane attack examples, bombings have been an irregular but not non-existent threat in America dating back to before WWI. That said, the Oklahoma bombings were the worst in US history, and the next deadliest bombings in the US after that incident happened in 1920 and 1910. The Boston Marathon bombings had a high number of terrible injuries, but only 3 deaths. As for the 9/11 plane attacks, there's been nothing of that magnitude since.

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/wrjp255us.html



I'm attempting to keep the discussion within the bounds of actual gun violence; I'm not the one suggesting alternative causes of homicide like baseball bats, vehicles and bombs as a way to deflect from discussing gun violence statistics. I'm not pointing to other countries as a way of watering down any suggestion that America has a problem with gun violence (and when I do speak to other countries, it's in response to you bringing them up, e.g. UK and knife crime, and I'll always bring it back to the topic of guns). I'm not just focusing on mass shootings, I'm talking about suicides and homicide deaths. Perhaps the one area I haven't discussed is accidental deaths caused by firearms, so here are some statistics on that:

- Between 2006 and 2016, there were 6,885 deaths from unintentional shootings
- Most accidental gun deaths happen to those under 25 years old
- Those killed in accidental shootings were three times more likely to have had a firearm in their home
- A 2001 study suggests that people are nine times more likely to die from an unintentional firearm injury in states with more gun ownership

https://www.aftermath.com/...ooting-deaths-statistics/

So if you're happy to talk about guns causing suicide, homicide or accidental deaths, we can chat about that. You want to bring up knife crime in the UK, bombs in the Middle East, government wars, arsons etc etc? That's fine but this discussion is supposed to be about guns, the issue of gun violence in the US, whether or not regulation can work to keep Americans safer. What you see as a "narrowing of what's admissible" is me trying to keep us on topic.



That's the joy of living in a democratic nation. If the people elect a government who, through the mandate and will of the people, introduce laws that ban certain types of weapons, or enforce certain actions be taken when exercising certain freedoms, then to act contrary to those laws is not only illegal, but undemocratic and, ultimately, selfish.

The question of privacy is also easily solved; you want to keep your life private, don't buy a gun. Owning a firearm should be a privilege and, with that privilege, comes certain expectations and responsibilities. Having that firearm registered to you and you being responsible for the appropriate transferal of that firearm to another responsible individual is not an unfair ask. When the aim is to reduce the illegal firearms market and, therefore, reduce the stream of guns available to criminals, everybody wins. Legal, responsible owners can still own firearms, while criminals will find it harder.

That might not solve random, one-off gun homicides by legal owners, but it'll reduce the number of guns ending up in criminal hands. Registering firearms and performing background checks in private sales is a small price to pay for that.

But owning a gun is a right my friend, not a privilege.

One I believe it says shall not be infringed.

So that means keep your grubby paws away from my fluff.

[quote poster=Buch; 47627; 912331]But owning a gun is a right my friend, not a privilege.

One I believe it says shall not be infringed.

So that means keep your grubby paws away from my fluff.



Exactly. Keep your stinking paws off my guns you damn dirty apes.

Well, I won’t argue with you on that - owning a gun in America is a right, rather than a privilege.

My paws are quite clean, however. I’m a stickler for good hygiene.

@BROmanceNZ

It's nice that you slice and dice the numbers, I have been doing data analysis for over 20 year and recognize a snow job when I see it.

i.e.


I have done similar things with data when it comes to dog and pony shows for executive review board meetings and everything had to look just right. Sales are up in 70% of the territories lets not mention the other 30% that are costing the company millions of dollars. Sales are up great job everyone... so on and so forth. However when dealing with operational managers they want the raw truth of what the data says. You try to pull what you just did there on an ops manager and they would hand you your ass and a swift kick out the door. While factually true your statement is shoehorned to fit the narrative you want to project. It is simply categorized and reshaped to fit the perception of a larger problem.

the raw data states it.. "you and China are claimed to be tied at 102 incidents each; though Asia's total is 201 while the total for the Americas is 144"

other points of data you are omitting
Arson and vehicles kill much larger numbers per incident.
Melee weapons has also yielded a higher death toll then the biggest shooting spree on record.
Explosive, can be used as a ranged weapon, i.e make a phone call from across town heck you can call it in from New Zealand two weeks later. the Uni-bomber went almost 20 years mailing bombs at random.

guns are a fairly recent invention, would you care to point out any point in history prior to the gun's invention where due to no guns being available men and women were not killing each other?

What i'm saying is the root cause has zilch/nada to do with guns. those who choose to kill whether its one person or millions of people will do so with whatever resources the have. pragmatism...try it !!!

The USA from its inception has had guns as a part of its culture, children were taught to respect firearms and how to take care of them just like a carpenter would take care of his tools. The gun was seen as a tool, and a part of daily life. All the way up til the mid-80s schools in some parts of the country allowed kids to bring their rifle to school. The kids would put the rifle on back wall of the classroom, or turn it in to the office. When school was out they would get their rifle, and go hunting with their friends before going home.

Question here is what changed? how did we go from openly allowing a kid to bring their rifle to school and feeling completely safe about this. To what we are seeing over the past 30 years or so. for over 200 years with guns in the hands of children using the firearm as it was intended to be used to kids now shooting up classrooms. It sure as hell is not the gun that changed, unless you want to argue oh the guns look meaner, and shoot faster and farther than they did many years ago. Perhaps it is a technological leap in firearms causing these kids to just lose their minds.

before saying it is guns and loopholes in the gun laws... please explain why it was not occurring for the 200 years prior to our current highly regulated era where every type of policy and legislation being thrown out there, does squat in curbing this issue. oh if we just had one more gun law it would slow this epidemic down. yet we already agreed this is but a sliver of the true overall problem. So, when do we get serious and really look at the overall problem and walk away from this minuscule sliver to truly deal with the underlying causes. There is a fairly clear delineation mark pre-columbine/post-columbine -- What changed???


I see you want to talk suicide, let's start with suffocation as the number one method, followed by firearms. I would venture, drugs is probably the real number one killer, but so many are ruled as accidental overdose. Perhaps its just easier overall to say it was an accident than to call it a suicide, especially if there is the slightest chance of a doubt on calling it suicide.

then again who the F**k cares how, the question is why? are you getting a feeling of the theme here. how is irrelevant the why is what actually matters regardless of how it was done the end result remains the same. if you can figure out the why then you are much closer to solving the issue. How is just an historical record of what factually occurred. It cannot be changed or taken back. All we can do with how is accept it for what it is. Asking why however and being honest about it yields answer like there was depression, a sense of isolation, mental issues, etc. you talk to the parents or first responder the do not ask how they can care less about how, what they want to know is why. they want answers that will solve the root causes of the issue.

https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/138/1/e20161420

^^ Derrick (long winded) multi :P ^^










;

We closed the asylums where we kept the crazies and instead started dosing them with psychotropic drugs that we didn't -- and still don't -- fully understand the effects of...and allowed them to continue to interact with society while under the influence.

Back to my original idea. It's a big city problem. And would be easy to solve.

We here out in the sticks is fine

lol I gotta join y'all out in the sticks;)

this actually is very close to what I was thinking... looking at pictures of the shooters who were caught vs. killed and it can clear be seen in their eyes they have something wrong with them.

But I've not been coy or elusive with the data; stating that the US is responsible for 70% of the Rampage Killings listed by Wikipedia itself doesn't hide the fact that there are still 30% that take place outside of the US in the same region. Just because you don't like the statistic doesn't justify the story that data tells. Especially when it's "evidence" you put forward yourself.

While I appreciate that you have two decades worth of experience in what appears to be sales data analysis, analysing data related to public policy and social issues is a much different kettle of fish. Data is data, sure, but my career has been built around providing public policy advice to both governments, corporates and non-profits. Unlike you, I can't answer a demand for a policy that "Seeks to reduce the harm caused by firearms" by saying "Well, if you look at rampage killings, gun violence isn't so bad. Vehicle and arson are waaaay worse." and then give stakeholders a Wikipedia link. The people I work for wouldn't throw you out; they'd spend the next hour or so in a meeting ripping you to shreds in front of a committee for wasting their time. Then they'd walk out on you and you'd never work for anyone again.

That's way worse than being fired.

But let's look at your points then, all of which seem to suggest that gun deaths are not worth worrying about because other things kill people too - and, allegedly, in larger numbers, more frequently, and that humans have been killing each other since the beginning of time (lol).



The problem with trying to compare arson rampage killings with mass shootings is that not all arsonists intend to commit murder.

If you look at the top three US examples of arson incidents included in the rampage killings list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_rampage_killers_(other_incidents), you get:

1. The Hartford Circus fire 1944 where a suspect confessed to causing the fire but later recanted; no express confession to commit murder
2. Our Lady of the Angels School fire 1958 where a fifth-grade suspect confessed but also recanted; again, no express confession to commit murder
3. Happy Land fire 1990 where the offender was found guilty of arson and murder after admitting to starting the blaze

So we're looking at two out of three arson incidents not clearly showing an intent to commit murder, the deadlier two occurring more than 50 years ago, and the one murder conviction of the three was for a convicted who was said to have been fired from their job earlier, had just broken up with their girlfriend, had been drunk and then thrown out of the bar in which he later returned to and set on fire.

According to this Cummings Law page (https://www.cummingslawfirm.com/...operty-Crimes/Arson.shtml), whether a death occurs as a result of arson intentionally or unintentionally, a life sentence is always a possibility when a death occurs.

In any case, rampage killings (other incidents) only accounts for 112 cases, and those cases are worldwide incidents. If you really want to single out arson as a cause to compare it with shooting incidents, arson accounts for 51 of "other incidents" and US-based arson account for 12 of those 51.

Vehicular rampage killings total 50 worldwide, the US accounting for 8 of those. The highest death count was 11 for the US (21 in China), and the total number of vehicular rampage killings in the US is 45 - from 1980 until now.

The only statistics out of these categories that comes close to beating statistics related to gun violence is "total deaths", which arson ties with the Oklahoma bombing.



Which incident are you referring to? The 109 deaths by Jin Ruchao in China are mostly bombing deaths. The 67 killed in Sinasa, Philippines are also listed as Poison due to the incident being committed by a cult leader in a Jonestown style murder. Even the deadliest school massacre, by Andrew Philip Kehoe, used bombs and firearms as well as melee weapons.

Not entirely sure where you're pulling this claim from.



Granted, America has had a significant number of bombing incidents in the past century, however if you look at accounts of terrorism since 2000 (only because I can't find a list of straight bomb threats/attacks in the US), most attacks are committed as shootings now.

Think about right now; if you made your mind up that you were going to go and bomb some place to kill a large group of people, just how well prepared are you now to both source the materials and create that bomb? How technical would it be? Could you rig up a cellphone-linked detonator to it?

If your answer is to say "I'd Google it" then lol. It would be far easier and faster to obtain a firearm without so much as alerting anyone to your intentions.

Bombings are a danger of course, but they're not as easy and as quick to make as you seem to suggest they are (unless you're some hillbilly taping a bunch of dynamite sticks together or whatever).



The "People have been killing people since time immemorial" excuse is a lazy cop out; you're essentially saying that people killed by firearms were just destined to die and that there's nothing you or anyone could have done to stop them.

Actual bullfluff.



I've literally been asking you to think pragmatically for ages now. Remember:

"What's more practical for successfully murdering the most people you can: a bomb, a knife or a gun?"

What you're missing in your logic is that guns are of absolute equal availability, ease of use, risk of interference, and practicality as all other causes of death. That you haven't considered that a knife is too risky to use because of the close proximity you have to have with your targets (as well as the risk of being overpowered by someone bigger, stronger or more technically adept at physical combat than you are), that a bomb has far more steps than just "Buy gun, load gun, shoot people", or that a car attack literally has instantly diminishing returns as most don't turn out like Carmageddon where you can keep mowing people down as you drive from one end of a state to the other, all indicates that while you might understand how to read numbers, you don't really understand how to compare complex data sets with varying impacts and assumptions to be made.

You are right, however, in jumping to the conclusion: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" - but that doesn't mean that people don't use guns to kill people and that, as far as the statistics we can see here, guns are killing people more frequently and in much larger average numbers than any of your other causes of death (that don't include death by natural causes, or accidental deaths e.g. car accidents).



If you want to talk about change over time, consider that the 2nd Amendment was written in a time where its authors didn't have the knowledge and experience that we do now. Slavery was still near enough 100 years from being abolished. Women a century and a half from getting the vote.

These days, most nations have grown up. In law, we no longer keep slaves, we don't allow discrimination on the basis of sex, gender, or sexual orientation, we hold on to our religious beliefs but (with the exception of a tiny minority of extremists across the world) without resorting to the mass murder and torture of those who don't hold the same belief as us, and the quality of our democracy has increased in terms of representation and proportionality (no longer are governments just old, white men who own land).

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/...orlds-oldest-democracies/

The US is one of the worlds oldest modern democracies, often viewed as being *the* oldest depending on your definition. If you can't figure out how to keep your democracy safe without hanging the threat of armed rebellion above the head of your government, are you any better than those Middle Eastern countries struggling to maintain their democracies in the face of rebellious groups seeking to topple the law and order the government is trying to represent?

Let's put this a different way:

Democracy is the rule of the people and if the majority of people vote for countrywide gun bans and tighter gun regulations, are you a patriot minority for denying to comply with the law and putting up armed resistance as the government carries out its policies? Are you a freedom fighter? Or are you now a domestic terrorist?

Would pro-2A people value democracy over the right to bear arms? Or is their right to own a weapon far greater than the value of democracy?



There's no easy answer to this. Of course there's more to it than the sorts of problems that things like gun control laws deal with, but this is the equivalent of being on a boat with four holes that you can see are letting water into your hull - but you'd rather know how those holes were caused before plugging them up, all the while your boat takes on water and slowly gets worse and worse.

Its actually possible to plug the holes up, find out why the happened, and then put the boat on a course that reduces the holes happening again.



You're missing the twice-made point about *guns* and *suicide*. If guns are harder to access, those contemplating suicide are less likely to succeed in killing themselves because they have more time to talk themselves down.

Literally, there is no grey area here. Reduce gun availability = less suicides.

Again, just because you're dealing with gun suicides through policy doesn't mean you can't also address root causes of depression and suicide, or work on reducing the rate of suicides by suffocation.



Ignoring how people kill others in your search for a solution to reducing the number of people killing others is dangerously ignorant. As an opinion it's lazy, it's deflective, and it's devoid of any real value in a debate around reducing the harm that comes from firearms, solely because you know that it's a difficult thing to discuss if your end goal is not about the safety of other humans but to justify not liking gun control measures.

@BROmanceNZ

this is akin to the mouse wanting a piece of cheese and then moving the whole family in for good.

slippery slope and all.

so we close your loopholes and plug up all the holes in the boat. then the boat springs another leak. let's plug that leak, and then the next one and yet the boat is still leaking.

why is the boat leaking???

while you are busy plugging leaks, I'm asking why analyzing for the root cause, discover the reason (the hull is rotted thru and needs to be replaced) what would you say to dry docking this boat and replacing the hull.

if this was two separate boats you would still be busy plugging leaks, while my boat sails away with a new hull.

alternately (how are these leaks occurring?) -- someone is shooting holes into the bottom of the boat
let's take the gun away --- f*k all asking why are they doing this
so next they start using a jack hammer on the hull --- so we take the jack hammer away
again --- f*k all asking why are they doing this
so next they start pouring acid all over the bottom of the boat --- so we take the acid away
again --- f*k all asking why are they doing this
so our perpetrator decides to get creative and begins to use a pickax -- so we take the pickax away and give them a really good scolding
again --- f*k all asking why are they doing this
Oh my god they somehow got their hands on some diesel fuel, oh the dilemma how do you take the diesel fuel away and still have fuel to run the boat -- so we lock up our dearest of friend hell bent on sinking the boat.
again --- f*k all asking why are they doing this
now our friend has decided to make himself a nice harpoon type instrument from the bed springs and metal frame of the bed and is now attacking the side walls of the ship just below the water line. darn it they did it again the boat is leaking.
take all potential harpoon making materials away...again --- f*k all asking why are they doing this.

call the coast guard we need to get this person off the boat... coast guard show up, take this person away.
huge sigh of relief at last the boat is safe

meanwhile the coast guard ask this person why the hell were you trying to sink the boat...
.
.
.
.
.
they were headed for an island filled with cannibals, I am so glad y'all came along and rescued me off of that boat.

.
.
.
.
bon voyage. try not to get eaten by the cannibals.

and please don't comeback at me with oh we can do both, because your solution to the gun problem is to legislate it away one piece at a time, until you can simply point to the futility of the legislation ultimately culminating in the confiscation of firearms. as was the case in Australia, Britain, and New Zealand. Now suddenly Britain has a knife problem, and looking to ban knives.

see story above... yes you can take the guns away but did it get to why it was occurring in tn the first place, obviously not because they are about to repeat the whole damn process again this time with knives. what next, vehicles, rope, forks, tree branches??? we've been plugging leaks long enough, now we want to know why, before we let you take us around the merry go round again and again and again.

the definition of insanity = I'm sure you know this one.

Sure, I suppose when you control the narrative you can make the scenario play out anyway you wish. Like:

>> There's a man shooting holes in the boat.
Me: I need to tell him to stop shooting holes in the boat.
You: You can't do that! It's his right to have a gun!
Me: But it's not his right to shoot holes in the boat.
You: Maybe you should ask him why he's shooting holes in the boat.
Me: Can you plug the holes while I ask him?
You: Absolutely not. That doesn't solve the problem of why he's shooting holes in the boat.
Me: But it will help us not sink while I ask him why.
You: You're not listening. That's not important. The why is what's important. You can't fix the holes until we know *why* he's shooting the hull!
>> We approach the man shooting holes in the boat.
Me: Hello mate, can I ask why you're shooting holes in our boat?
Man: Because I hate the government.
Me: Right, well. If you keep shooting the boat we're all going to sink. I'm just going to take that gun from you, if that's okay, and store it somewhere safe until we get things patched up. Sound fair?
You: NO! It is NOT fair! You can't just take his gun away!
Me: But if I do, then he can't shoot any holes anymore.
You: But.. but.. he'll just use something else! Like a jackhammer!
Me: Will you use a jackhammer?
Man: Not really, there are no power outlets here to plug it in. Plus, I don't have one handy.
You: He'll just use a knife!
Me: A knife isn't really going to do as much damage to the hull as a gun would.
Man: Yeah, that's a bit like pissing in the wind.
You: Well, he'll just set the boat on fire!
Man: Oh, that's a good idea.
Me: That's okay because we have most of the flammable stuff locked up safe, and there are anti-fire mechanisms around to protect us too.
You: BUT IF YOU TAKE AWAY HIS GUN THEN YOU'LL TAKE AWAY MINE!
Me: But you're not shooting holes in the hull, are you?
You: No, but taking away someone's gun is taking away an inalienable right!
Me: Rights get taken away all of the time, though. The right of people to vote in their democracy is taken away if you're a felon in the US. The right to freedom is also taken away if you're sentenced to prison. The right to life is taken if you get the death penalty. There are plenty of examples where you take rights away when someone does something wrong.
You: But I haven't done anything wrong!
Me: No, but he has. He's shooting holes in the boat.
Man: Yeah, I have been shooting holes in the boat.
You: This is just the start. The start of the Slippery Slope, you'll see! Don't you dare try and take my gun away. You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands!
Me: Well, they'll be cold, wet hands the way this boat is filling up with water and you've very solidly put your vote behind "Do nothing!" as a response.
Man: She did say you should ask me why as a way of fixing my action of shooting holes in the boat.
Me: And you said you don't like the government. What would make you stop shooting holes in the boat?
Man: If everybody died.
Me: Great, thanks. That's probably enough pew-pew for you. I'm going to take that gun, thank you.
Man: Oh fiddlesticks.
You: YOU CAN'T! THAT'S AN ABUSE OF POWER! YOU'RE A TYRANT!
>> Your voice trails off into the sound of bubbles and muffled ranting because, in this scenario, you're 4'7" and the water levels have risen enough that this was an amusing way of fading you out of this story
Man: What's her problem?
Me: She'd rather have holes in her boat than safe passage to where she's going.

[Cue Curb Your Enthusiasm music]

The solution isn't to legislate gun ownership away one piece at a time, it's to strengthen the processes for ensuring that only "Good Guys" get to own guns. If you're a "Good Guy" then you have nothing to worry about, right?

And, as has already been pointed out, Britain's knife crime problem is only relative to the fact that they have an extremely low gun crime problem (but, then again, every developed country does when compared to the US). And, as has already been pointed out, if you look at knife crime US v UK, the US has a bigger knife crime problem.

And again, as has already been pointed out, there are a range of blade types and categories that are already banned in the UK, like some states in the US ban certain types in their jurisdictions.

The link again because I'm helpful: https://www.euronews.com/...do-the-us-and-uk-compare-



Have you actually been plugging leaks though?

https://www.historyextra.com/...ents-america-law-history/

-------- From the above article:

In most cases, debates about gun control in the US have followed periods of violence. Prohibition and the 1929 St Valentine’s Day Massacre, in particular, led to the first serious attempt by Congress to regulate firearms: the 1934 National Firearms Act, taxing and regulating ownership of certain weapons. The assassinations of John F Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King led to the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the peak of urban violence in American cities in the 1980s provided the backdrop to the 1993 Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act and the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Major debates also occurred after the 1999 school shooting in Columbine, and shootings in Virginia Tech in 2007, Fort Hood in 2009, and Aurora and Sandy Hook in 2012.

However, debate has not led to action. This is, in large part, a result of the fact that the politics of gun control have become so tangled, complex and politically toxic that it is now impossible to obtain the consensus needed to pass legislation. It’s also important to remember that gun control is a state issue as well as a federal issue. Lack of action at federal level does not mean inaction at state level, as the current patchwork of US state laws relating to guns testifies.

------

"But the author says that federal inaction doesn't mean inaction at the state level!" I hear you repeat? Of course. And, as has already been pointed out, states with strong gun control laws find those laws ineffective when they're surrounded by states with weak gun control laws.

A link because I'm helpful: https://lawcenter.giffords.org/...ak-laws-and-gun-violence/
Another link, again because I'm helpful: https://www.vox.com/...ival-shooting-gun-control



Yes, I played Far Cry 3.

nice way of missing the entire point of the story...

300 plus relevant gun laws later and what have we achieved???? I won't quote the 20K number, because it would just be used to sidetrack the point of how laws are futile as a preventative measure. If I am willing to pay the price including the loss of my own life then tell me just how relevant your laws are?? Because this is what you are dealing with when it comes to rampage killers.

laws do not prevent crimes, they only (hopefully) punish those who have already committed crimes

did the background check law like the one in California stop the San Bernardino County mass shooting from occurring.
California has your law on the books --- all guns sales private or otherwise must go thru a federal back ground check.

-- loose laws in neighboring states? -- again this is against the law to go across state lines. How would your law prevent this from occurring. Basic answer it doesn't.

and if I'm willing and actually expect to die in a blaze of glory as bullets riddle my body ... then your laws regardless of how well thought out become completely irrelevant to me... how the would you stop me from killing every person you ever loved just for the f***K of it, when I have already expected and deep down hope you will kill me in the process? go ahead and pass all the laws you want to your hearts content. remember when you take a right away from one person you essentially take this same right away from yourself.

BANG -- your first loved one is dead
you don't get to have a gun
go ahead pass a law
BANG -- your second loved one is dead
need to pass more laws?
BANG -- your third Loved one is dead
any more laws you want to pass?
BANG -- your fourth loved one just died
you want to kill me??? what are you going use? A knife nah too close, a bomb too hard, a car too inefficient...
maybe you should pass a death penalty law?
BANG -- your fifth love one is dead
have your laws stopped me yet?
maybe just one more law will do the trick
BANG -- you just lost your sixth loved one.

wanna keep going?

"In most cases, debates about gun control in the US have followed periods of violence. Prohibition and the 1929 St Valentine’s Day Massacre, in particular, led to the first serious attempt by Congress to regulate firearms: the 1934 National Firearms Act, taxing and regulating ownership of certain weapons."

when looking at why all of this violence was occurring the gun laws did nothing to stop it

the underlying reasons and motivation were the great depression and prohibition ... on one side bank robberies, and on the other organized crime protecting a highly lucrative business.

the solution had zilch to do with guns

prohibition was repealed, no more need for violent take over of routes and distribution.
FDR creates massive infrastructure projects putting people back to work, followed up with WWII the whole nation was busy working toward winning multiple wars across the world. no need to be robbing banks with Tommy guns.
-----------------------------------------------------------
so three major overhauls of gun legislation, and the problem just keeps on getting worse

Walls and walls of txt, tl:dr

fluff off my rights!

This thread went from a post on satire to a debate about gun control

YOU ALL NEED MORE fluff

THERE IS NO SATIRE! NOTHING IS FUNNY ANYMORE! 2019 MFER! GET SERIOUS OR GET METOO'D

We need to nuke mars

Lol 😇

" The solution isn't to legislate gun ownership away one piece at a time, it's to strengthen the processes for ensuring that only "Good Guys" get to own guns. If you're a "Good Guy" then you have nothing to worry about, right?"

FALSE - explain Britain and Australia

The "Good Guys" did not get to keep their guns. Even on appeal there were ranchers with compelling reasons to have guns on their ranches who were denied their right from protect their ranches and livestock in Australia.

Seeing and fully understanding this why in the world should any out there trust any of you trying to sell Americans this complete line of horse crap.

Will those governments be returning guns to the "Good Guys" anytime soon? To boot we also pay attention to what our anti-gun politicians say and it's pretty much in line with... Given half the chance they would confiscate all guns, "Good Guy" is irrelevant to them and completely meaningless. So given this l know your statement above is just an attempt to appease to get incremental changes in place, as the larger often spoken about larger goal is slowly and methodically approached.

I'm just gonna put my book order in here, so I can avoid reading whole thread

Open carry is stupid. that is all

I own dozens of guns. I only open carry when hunting or camping. Open carrying in public does nothing other than incite panic from the ignorant, or make you a target for unstable individuals.

In the 20 years I've been here in Oregon I've never met nor encountered a person that is uneasy or panics around people that OC their firearm, in fact I have many very liberal friends that do it, people are used to it up here, I don't myself however, unless I'm out in the woods or streams where cats and bears are common.

Different cultures I suppose. If i ever open carried, I was always terrified of someone grabbing my gun. Even with a 2 stage holster.

Same here and that is why I don't.