4 ms·

> Please weigh your own personal hobby against our society's clear dysfunction when it comes to gun violence. What do you think about prohibiting drugs and alc

> Please weigh your own personal hobby against our society's clear dysfunction when it comes to gun violence. What do you think about prohibiting drugs and alcohol? Like another commenter was a victim of gun violence in his family, I'm a victim of alcohol abuse in mine. Yet, many people enjoy these substances recreationally without problem. It's hard to weigh a purely "for fun" activity against something with dire consequences. It feels selfish to say, "my hobby is more important than your life" but that's ultimately what the 21st amendment repealing Prohibition said. And it's not an entirely unfair argument when the people safely enjoying the activity are in the tens or hundreds of millions, and the ones harmed by it are a tiny fraction. I like guns. I don't love them. But it's a fun activity like darts, but with "cooler" machines. I could be persuaded that my hobby is net-negative for society, but it's hard to give up a clearly safe, fun, activity because of an abstract notion that somewhere else in this country of 100s of millions of people, someone is using it for evil, especially when it's fairly rare. And liberals aren't totally blameless when it comes to the "coolness" factor of guns, either, if you look at essentially any modern movie or TV show, in which they're fairly well glorified. If the solution is to make people not want to have this hobby - and I think that's probably best bang-for-your-buck (heh) solution - then maybe Hollywood should self-censor like YouTube here and not have guns in their movies (or blur them out like in Korean dramas).

aaron-lebo 9y ago
For me the difference is that drugs and alcohol usually predominately affect the user. This obviously isn't always the case... Guns aren't toys. Yes, they can be used for hunting or just shooting stuff, and most guns aren't especially more effective at killing people than a variety of other household items, but assault rifles were actually designed to kill people, to assault entrenched positions (the stg-44 in WW2). It's not made for hunting or anything else, it's made to kill people. The consumer ar-15 is just a variant of the m-16. With a bump stock it becomes fully automatic, easily getting around any laws. I posted this in another comment, but the Vegas shooter had 14 of those modded up. 14! Why does anyone need one of those killing machines for fun, much less 14? It's easy to see how he killed fifty people in a crowd. I don't understand the justification for that. When your ability to have fun with a "toy" which is actually a killing machine makes it easy for dozens of people to get murdered while they are out having a good time, it's an issue. Seems like a warped sense of priorities. Yet you'll find people (many here) who believe that even limiting them to one (or god forbid anyone even suggest it) is some kind of assault on their liberties. That's not reasonable. The Bill of Rights wasn't written with anything beyond the notion of hunting rifles and muskets. It doesn't say "all citizens should have the right to fire 90 rounds per 10 seconds to defend themselves or have a good time". Should attacks like that continue to occur, it's going to be that complete lack of moderation by gun users themselves which is going to get their rights taken away. I don't say that as wanting that to happen, but it seems obvious.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

aaron-lebo 9y ago

For me the difference is that drugs and alcohol usually predominately affect the user. This obviously isn't always the case... Guns aren't toys. Yes, they can be used for hunting or just shooting stuff, and most guns aren't especially more effective at killing people than a variety of other household items, but assault rifles were actually designed to kill people, to assault entrenched positions (the stg-44 in WW2). It's not made for hunting or anything else, it's made to kill people. The consumer ar-15 is just a variant of the m-16. With a bump stock it becomes fully automatic, easily getting around any laws. I posted this in another comment, but the Vegas shooter had 14 of those modded up. 14! Why does anyone need one of those killing machines for fun, much less 14? It's easy to see how he killed fifty people in a crowd. I don't understand the justification for that. When your ability to have fun with a "toy" which is actually a killing machine makes it easy for dozens of people to get murdered while they are out having a good time, it's an issue. Seems like a warped sense of priorities. Yet you'll find people (many here) who believe that even limiting them to one (or god forbid anyone even suggest it) is some kind of assault on their liberties. That's not reasonable. The Bill of Rights wasn't written with anything beyond the notion of hunting rifles and muskets. It doesn't say "all citizens should have the right to fire 90 rounds per 10 seconds to defend themselves or have a good time". Should attacks like that continue to occur, it's going to be that complete lack of moderation by gun users themselves which is going to get their rights taken away. I don't say that as wanting that to happen, but it seems obvious.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]