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There are _so_ many ways to make a leathel weapon I can't begin... If I take my car (a Jeep Grand Cherokee) and ram it into a crowd - I'm confident that can ta

There are _so_ many ways to make a leathel weapon I can't begin... If I take my car (a Jeep Grand Cherokee) and ram it into a crowd - I'm confident that can take out more people than I can with a gun, knife, probably even bomb. Point being, I understand not facilitating trade, but for the love of god, videos? You really want to push the right over the edge? We need guns. Legally, in the U.S. it's our right - one of the first and most protected rights. The ability to defend yourself and country in the face of tyrany. Look at what happened in Ukraine, Syria, etc. A government doesn't fuck with a populace that has guns, so it increases stability. When you don't have the ability to defend your rights, you don't have rights anymore. Further, violence isn't associated with guns - it's associated with people being suppressed or by mental issues. The weather is more associated with murder than guns... I even understand trying to reduce ways to kill massive amounts of people easily. But again, I have a car, I know how to make chlorine gas, so on and so forth. Address the actual problem and stop making this political. We know you're afraid of guns - that's fine. I'm affraid of dogs, but I'm not going to support banning them (look at them, they are built to kill things human size). Stop talking about mass murders and start talking about tragedies, do a black out on mass murders names. That'd probably fix the issue in time. Then teach everyone about gun safety, how to use them, the dangers, etc. I'm telling you right now, by removing these videos you're arming people, and exhasborating the problem. In fact, they just pushed me to buy a weapon. \flip table and walk out

themihai 9y ago
>> There are _so_ many ways to make a leathel weapon I can't begin... Yeah but guns are "cool" while ramming a car into a crowd it's not that cool. I believe people should be allowed to bear arms but that doesn't mean the guns should be sold and advertised as lollipops.
- lettergram 9y ago
  I think we should be given one in school, trained, and make it normal. The problem is you're right, they are being advertised. Although, what I will say is I don't know a single person who treats them as toys (I live in a pretty rural area, so pretty much everyone has one). Every gun is taken care of and very well managed. It always amazes me, because I'm one of the few people who refuse to have a gun in my house (might change). People in the bay area (where I lived for two years, before leaving) have absolutely no idea how common and really safe guns are. I think it leads to a lot of fear mongering.
  - whyever 9y ago
    How can you say guns are safe when so many get killed by them in the U.S.?
    - TheCoreh 9y ago
      To be fair, in the U.S. about the same number of people are killed by cars every year. Most people would generally consider cars to be safe. (About 60% of gun deaths are suicides, 30% are homicides, and only 10% are accidental. Unlike with car deaths, where almost 100% are accidental.)
      - 282883392 9y ago
        Only ~30% of Americans own guns [1]. Almost all Americans use cars. And most people do not consider cars to be safe. The regulation and training to receive a drivers license is also much more extensive than buying a gun. [1] http://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx
        TheCoreh 9y ago
        These are excellent points. I come from a different cultural background than the US (from Brazil), so in principle I wouldn't be opposed to implementing roughly the same criteria currently applied to obtaining a driver's license to obtaining and carrying a gun. Here, however, guns have been severely restricted for several years, to the point where I believe it has been counter productive. We did see a decrease in accidental gun deaths, but violent crime and murder rates have increased significantly. Unfortunately, from my observation, the potential threat of deadly force is still a necessary deterrent sometimes.
      - whyever 9y ago
        You make a good point, but car use is orders of magnitude higher than gun use, and I would expect accidents to be proportional to use. If guns kill as many as cars with so much less use, it's very scary! If you compare it to other nations, the statistics are also worrisome: "Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the U.S. gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher. Although it has half the population of the other 22 nations combined, the U.S. had 82 percent of all gun deaths, 90 percent of all women killed with guns, 91 percent of children under 14 and 92 percent of young people between ages 15 and 24 killed with guns." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...
- flounders 9y ago
  Guns are glorified in TV shows, movies and video games which is what has made them cool. I doubt guns would be viewed as cool if it weren't for those things. Growing up I felt they were cool too, until I had some responsible adults teach me that firearms are not toys, they can be fun to shoot, but they are very lethal and should be treated with the appropriate care and respect to ensure no one is killed or injured while handling. Sadly I think a lot of people haven't had the benefit of responsible adults, but I think a good many of us have.
birksherty 9y ago
General population don't practice ramming car into crowd. Those are not hobbies. So, when mentally ill people want to cause harm they don't use those methods. It does not normally comes to mind. But, shooting is common. It's a hobby. A killing machine is normalized and it becomes a culture. So, those mentally ill men feels completely normal to shoot people when they go crazy. Consider this: ramming car into objects becomes a hobby and people starts to do that and take pride in it. They practice it every week. Then, those mentally ills will start using those methods. And then government will ban riding a car. But, this is not happening, just a hypothesis. You can replace car with other objects you can think of here. That's why countries where gun are banned for general population, does not have mass murder by "common people" like USA. There are mentally ill people everywhere, not just in USA. This is the point gun lovers don't understand.
- lettergram 9y ago
  > That's why countries where gun are banned for general population, does not have mass murder by "common people" like USA. First I beg to differ- compare the EU to the U.S. or the U.S. to India, or to China for that matter or the U.S. to Brazil. Not just "countries". The US is one of the largest countries on Earth (by population and landmass), with one of the most diverse sets of population... It's really hard to even find a comparison. And I can tell you've never used a gun, it's not really something you go - "yeah let's kill people for fun today". Most of the cases (literally all the ones I know of) do it for revenge, or how they feel about themselves, don't really think a hobby is playing into it - more likely it's that when guns are used we plaster their names all over every media outlet.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    Confused with your statement. Do you mean to suggest that India and Brazil aren't large countries with diverse and large populations? The same with the EU (though not a single country). The comparison isn't favorable to the US.
    - lettergram 9y ago
aaron-lebo 9y ago
The populaces of Syria and Ukraine have lots of guns (supplied from outside, but there), that didn't stop civil war, in fact, in may have caused it. The Syrian government just uses barrel bombs on civilians and rebels, anyway. It's hardly a preventive measure. If the US gets to a Syria situation, there's going to be tens of thousands dead. But yay, when the world ends for those people, at least we've got firearms and can reenact The Patriot.
kerkeslager 9y ago
EDIT: The fact that I actually support the second amendment seems to be lost on some readers who didn't take the time to read a nuanced opinion. :) Okay, I don't support the restrictions YouTube and Reddit are putting on free speech, but I think we need to keep things rational here: > We need guns. Legally, in the U.S. it's our right - one of the first and most protected rights. The ability to defend yourself and country in the face of tyrany. Look at what happened in Ukraine, Syria, etc. A government doesn't fuck with a populace that has guns, so it increases stability. When you don't have the ability to defend your rights, you don't have rights anymore. Guns as they are allowed now don't allow you to protect yourself from tyranny. Look at the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. Whether or not you believe they had illegal guns, they had guns, and they died. Guns lose to tanks every time. When the second amendment was drafted, guns made sense as a way to defend your rights from the government, but in the modern day, it's been probably half a century since civilians lost the arms race. Civilian gun ownership has lost its relevance as a means of defending our rights in the face of increasingly militarized law enforcement. > Further, violence isn't associated with guns - it's associated with people being suppressed or by mental issues. The weather is more associated with murder than guns... There's a case to be made that the culture around guns increases violence, but that's ambiguous. What isn't ambiguous, is that a mentally ill person with a gun is more dangerous than a mentally ill person without a gun. > I even understand trying to reduce ways to kill massive amounts of people easily. But again, I have a car, I know how to make chlorine gas, so on and so forth. You can argue that a mentally ill person could build a fertilizer bomb or drive a car into a group of people, but I'll point out that we have laws restricting those things too--let's not assume that people who support restricting gun rights don't also support restricting fertilizer and car rights. > Stop talking about mass murders and start talking about tragedies, do a black out on mass murders names. That'd probably fix the issue in time. I think that this is part of the issue: that won't "fix" the issue. It might help, but people will still want more gun control, because the magnitude of the issue isn't relevant to how people feel about it. More people die every year in car accidents than die from civilian-owned guns in 10. By all statistics, we should be much more worried about why we let drive than who we let own guns. But again, the magnitude of the problem isn't what people are reacting to. Guns are just much scarier to the average person than cars. So people are always going to push for more and more gun control as long as gun violence exists at all, and gun violence will always exist, because it's impossible to control it completely. You aren't going to "fix" gun violence, so unfortunately we need to accept that that isn't an option on the table, even though everyone wants it to be. And once we accept that we can't "fix" gun violence, then it's easier to stomach that gun rights might have some validity worth weighing against restrictions of questionable efficacy. > I'm telling you right now, by removing these videos you're arming people, and exhasborating the problem. This is absolutely true, and I think it's one of the biggest problems with the left right now. Too many of us don't seem to understand that by restricting free speech we create martyrs.
matwood 9y ago
I understand your points and agree that it is our right currently as an American to own a gun. I'm not afraid of guns and grew up around them, although I do not own any today. The problem I have is equating guns to cars or any other weapon. Just owning a gun means you are more likely to be injured or killed in a gun related incident[1]. Guns are an immediate force multiplier that can cause a lot of injury with little planning. Guns make it easy for someone who has a brief thought of suicide, anger, or stupidity to act on that thought with irreversible consequences. While in high school, one friend committed suicide with their family's gun. Another person I know was shot because their friend was playing around with a gun. I think only when both sides can agree that a) guns will likely never be banned and b) yes, guns are dangerous and require more regulation that we currently have, will we get anywhere. Until then people will just talk past each other. [1] This is based on older studies at this point because the NRA has made it impossible to get funding to study gun violence.
- DINKDINK 9y ago
  >Just owning a gun means you are more likely to be injured or killed in a gun related incident[1]. Correlation does not equal causation. Wet streets do not cause rain. Until you provide a study that shows a baseline population and another who are given a treatment (say "here's a free gun that you weren't going to buy on your own") and compare the results, the null hypothesis is not broken.
  - matwood 9y ago
    I would love to provide more studies. As I said in my original comment, the NRA has made it nearly impossible to fund gun violence studies. Plus giving people guns who do not want them is bordering on unethical since if the study shows as is already implied it means that person may be hurt or killed.
    - DINKDINK 9y ago
      >impossible to fund gun violence studies. How is the NRA stopping anyone from funding studies? >study shows as is already implied it means that person may be hurt or killed Your arguments are epistemologically broken. Would giving, low-blood-pressure people, blood-pressure regulating medication suddenly make them have high blood pressure? No. Wet streets do not cause rain

themihai 9y ago

>> There are _so_ many ways to make a leathel weapon I can't begin... Yeah but guns are "cool" while ramming a car into a crowd it's not that cool. I believe people should be allowed to bear arms but that doesn't mean the guns should be sold and advertised as lollipops.

lettergram 9y ago
I think we should be given one in school, trained, and make it normal. The problem is you're right, they are being advertised. Although, what I will say is I don't know a single person who treats them as toys (I live in a pretty rural area, so pretty much everyone has one). Every gun is taken care of and very well managed. It always amazes me, because I'm one of the few people who refuse to have a gun in my house (might change). People in the bay area (where I lived for two years, before leaving) have absolutely no idea how common and really safe guns are. I think it leads to a lot of fear mongering.
- whyever 9y ago
  How can you say guns are safe when so many get killed by them in the U.S.?
  - TheCoreh 9y ago
    To be fair, in the U.S. about the same number of people are killed by cars every year. Most people would generally consider cars to be safe. (About 60% of gun deaths are suicides, 30% are homicides, and only 10% are accidental. Unlike with car deaths, where almost 100% are accidental.)
    - 282883392 9y ago
      Only ~30% of Americans own guns [1]. Almost all Americans use cars. And most people do not consider cars to be safe. The regulation and training to receive a drivers license is also much more extensive than buying a gun. [1] http://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx
      - TheCoreh 9y ago
        These are excellent points. I come from a different cultural background than the US (from Brazil), so in principle I wouldn't be opposed to implementing roughly the same criteria currently applied to obtaining a driver's license to obtaining and carrying a gun. Here, however, guns have been severely restricted for several years, to the point where I believe it has been counter productive. We did see a decrease in accidental gun deaths, but violent crime and murder rates have increased significantly. Unfortunately, from my observation, the potential threat of deadly force is still a necessary deterrent sometimes.
    - whyever 9y ago
      You make a good point, but car use is orders of magnitude higher than gun use, and I would expect accidents to be proportional to use. If guns kill as many as cars with so much less use, it's very scary! If you compare it to other nations, the statistics are also worrisome: "Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the U.S. gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher. Although it has half the population of the other 22 nations combined, the U.S. had 82 percent of all gun deaths, 90 percent of all women killed with guns, 91 percent of children under 14 and 92 percent of young people between ages 15 and 24 killed with guns." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...
flounders 9y ago
Guns are glorified in TV shows, movies and video games which is what has made them cool. I doubt guns would be viewed as cool if it weren't for those things. Growing up I felt they were cool too, until I had some responsible adults teach me that firearms are not toys, they can be fun to shoot, but they are very lethal and should be treated with the appropriate care and respect to ensure no one is killed or injured while handling. Sadly I think a lot of people haven't had the benefit of responsible adults, but I think a good many of us have.

birksherty 9y ago

General population don't practice ramming car into crowd. Those are not hobbies. So, when mentally ill people want to cause harm they don't use those methods. It does not normally comes to mind. But, shooting is common. It's a hobby. A killing machine is normalized and it becomes a culture. So, those mentally ill men feels completely normal to shoot people when they go crazy. Consider this: ramming car into objects becomes a hobby and people starts to do that and take pride in it. They practice it every week. Then, those mentally ills will start using those methods. And then government will ban riding a car. But, this is not happening, just a hypothesis. You can replace car with other objects you can think of here. That's why countries where gun are banned for general population, does not have mass murder by "common people" like USA. There are mentally ill people everywhere, not just in USA. This is the point gun lovers don't understand.

lettergram 9y ago
> That's why countries where gun are banned for general population, does not have mass murder by "common people" like USA. First I beg to differ- compare the EU to the U.S. or the U.S. to India, or to China for that matter or the U.S. to Brazil. Not just "countries". The US is one of the largest countries on Earth (by population and landmass), with one of the most diverse sets of population... It's really hard to even find a comparison. And I can tell you've never used a gun, it's not really something you go - "yeah let's kill people for fun today". Most of the cases (literally all the ones I know of) do it for revenge, or how they feel about themselves, don't really think a hobby is playing into it - more likely it's that when guns are used we plaster their names all over every media outlet.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  Confused with your statement. Do you mean to suggest that India and Brazil aren't large countries with diverse and large populations? The same with the EU (though not a single country). The comparison isn't favorable to the US.
  - lettergram 9y ago

aaron-lebo 9y ago

The populaces of Syria and Ukraine have lots of guns (supplied from outside, but there), that didn't stop civil war, in fact, in may have caused it. The Syrian government just uses barrel bombs on civilians and rebels, anyway. It's hardly a preventive measure. If the US gets to a Syria situation, there's going to be tens of thousands dead. But yay, when the world ends for those people, at least we've got firearms and can reenact The Patriot.

kerkeslager 9y ago

EDIT: The fact that I actually support the second amendment seems to be lost on some readers who didn't take the time to read a nuanced opinion. :) Okay, I don't support the restrictions YouTube and Reddit are putting on free speech, but I think we need to keep things rational here: > We need guns. Legally, in the U.S. it's our right - one of the first and most protected rights. The ability to defend yourself and country in the face of tyrany. Look at what happened in Ukraine, Syria, etc. A government doesn't fuck with a populace that has guns, so it increases stability. When you don't have the ability to defend your rights, you don't have rights anymore. Guns as they are allowed now don't allow you to protect yourself from tyranny. Look at the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. Whether or not you believe they had illegal guns, they had guns, and they died. Guns lose to tanks every time. When the second amendment was drafted, guns made sense as a way to defend your rights from the government, but in the modern day, it's been probably half a century since civilians lost the arms race. Civilian gun ownership has lost its relevance as a means of defending our rights in the face of increasingly militarized law enforcement. > Further, violence isn't associated with guns - it's associated with people being suppressed or by mental issues. The weather is more associated with murder than guns... There's a case to be made that the culture around guns increases violence, but that's ambiguous. What isn't ambiguous, is that a mentally ill person with a gun is more dangerous than a mentally ill person without a gun. > I even understand trying to reduce ways to kill massive amounts of people easily. But again, I have a car, I know how to make chlorine gas, so on and so forth. You can argue that a mentally ill person could build a fertilizer bomb or drive a car into a group of people, but I'll point out that we have laws restricting those things too--let's not assume that people who support restricting gun rights don't also support restricting fertilizer and car rights. > Stop talking about mass murders and start talking about tragedies, do a black out on mass murders names. That'd probably fix the issue in time. I think that this is part of the issue: that won't "fix" the issue. It might help, but people will still want more gun control, because the magnitude of the issue isn't relevant to how people feel about it. More people die every year in car accidents than die from civilian-owned guns in 10. By all statistics, we should be much more worried about why we let drive than who we let own guns. But again, the magnitude of the problem isn't what people are reacting to. Guns are just much scarier to the average person than cars. So people are always going to push for more and more gun control as long as gun violence exists at all, and gun violence will always exist, because it's impossible to control it completely. You aren't going to "fix" gun violence, so unfortunately we need to accept that that isn't an option on the table, even though everyone wants it to be. And once we accept that we can't "fix" gun violence, then it's easier to stomach that gun rights might have some validity worth weighing against restrictions of questionable efficacy. > I'm telling you right now, by removing these videos you're arming people, and exhasborating the problem. This is absolutely true, and I think it's one of the biggest problems with the left right now. Too many of us don't seem to understand that by restricting free speech we create martyrs.

matwood 9y ago

I understand your points and agree that it is our right currently as an American to own a gun. I'm not afraid of guns and grew up around them, although I do not own any today. The problem I have is equating guns to cars or any other weapon. Just owning a gun means you are more likely to be injured or killed in a gun related incident[1]. Guns are an immediate force multiplier that can cause a lot of injury with little planning. Guns make it easy for someone who has a brief thought of suicide, anger, or stupidity to act on that thought with irreversible consequences. While in high school, one friend committed suicide with their family's gun. Another person I know was shot because their friend was playing around with a gun. I think only when both sides can agree that a) guns will likely never be banned and b) yes, guns are dangerous and require more regulation that we currently have, will we get anywhere. Until then people will just talk past each other. [1] This is based on older studies at this point because the NRA has made it impossible to get funding to study gun violence.

DINKDINK 9y ago
>Just owning a gun means you are more likely to be injured or killed in a gun related incident[1]. Correlation does not equal causation. Wet streets do not cause rain. Until you provide a study that shows a baseline population and another who are given a treatment (say "here's a free gun that you weren't going to buy on your own") and compare the results, the null hypothesis is not broken.
- matwood 9y ago
  I would love to provide more studies. As I said in my original comment, the NRA has made it nearly impossible to fund gun violence studies. Plus giving people guns who do not want them is bordering on unethical since if the study shows as is already implied it means that person may be hurt or killed.
  - DINKDINK 9y ago
    >impossible to fund gun violence studies. How is the NRA stopping anyone from funding studies? >study shows as is already implied it means that person may be hurt or killed Your arguments are epistemologically broken. Would giving, low-blood-pressure people, blood-pressure regulating medication suddenly make them have high blood pressure? No. Wet streets do not cause rain