5 ms·

Guns are not complex devices. Making them illegal does not make them go away. People are not hard to kill and if you want to do a lot of damage it’s hard to bea

by dokem 4y ago

Guns are not complex devices. Making them illegal does not make them go away. People are not hard to kill and if you want to do a lot of damage it’s hard to beat a can of gasoline or a U-haul. Find something else to cry about.

happymellon 4y ago
The article talks about the irrational conversations that gun ownership has in the USA. You can't study it. By banning any observation no one can prove whether the majority of shootings come from the gun owner or someone who stole the gun. As such the negative "making them illegal does not make them go away" also cannot be proved by you.
vlovich123 4y ago
That’s neither here nor there. Legislation certainly can change the amount of guns available. Compare Canada or Australia which too had similar gun cultures prior to legislation. Sure it doesn’t get rid of all guns. No one is claiming that it would but that’s an unreasonable bar that’s only set by critics. Even countries with strict gun control still have guns. However gun deaths are more rare because the penalty associated with even holding a gun illicitly are quite high, so in practice the number of guns floating around is lower and their use is really constrained (mainly because the cost of acquiring a gun is higher). Sure, the US has way more private gun ownership than other countries when they took steps towards effective legislation. It’ll take longer for any meaningful legislation to take effect, and only if it’s a national thing to mitigate cross-border transport. And SCOTUSes current ideological bent and strange 2nd amendment interpretation further complicates things at all levels. For what it’s worth the 2nd amendment seems to only ever have been interpreted about national regulations of formal state militias (eg the state’s National guard, police, etc). The reinterpretation in Heller to mean protection of private ownership is both recent (2008) and quite strange. A significantly worse decision than whatever Roe got wrong in legal theory and one that had strict social harm vs Roe which actually at least had positive social outcomes.
- dokem 4y ago
  You are willfully misinterpreting 2a. Police and national guard are not militias. 'The people' does not mean the state. This is not a recent interpretation. The bill of rights outlines citizen's rights not the state. Obviously the state can have weapons. If you are a US citizen you have some learning to do.
  - technothrasher 4y ago
    > Police and national guard are not militias. Uh, what? The National Guard most definitely IS the militia. Did you miss the Militia Act of 1792? A whole four years after the 2nd became the law of the land, they formalized the militia into what became the National Guard. You can argue about the militia clause in the 2nd being prefatory, but you really have nothing to stand on when you say the National Guard is not the militia.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - ianburrell 4y ago
    Up until recently, the "collective right" interpretation was the law of the land. The "individual right" interpretation was argued about but was less than twenty years since became accepted.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    Please educate me then cause I could be mistaken. Why was Heller so monumental if the 2nd amendment hadn’t traditionally meant that it applied to state’s rights to armed forces separate from that of the federal?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ianburrell 4y ago
Guns are a lot more deadly than other weapons. They are also easy and quick to use. It is pretty common for people to fight and then one pulls out gun and shoots and kills the other. You can kill with knife or improvised weapon but have to mean it. You also have to get close; drive-by shootings are pretty common around here. You don't have to make them go away, just reduce the numbers so they don't get used in everyday murders. Most murders are crimes of passion and the difference between pulling out gun and having to find weapon will stop most of them. Britain still has a few illegal handguns, they get used in crimes, but their murder rate is much lower. A good indication that ease-of-killing matters is that murders with shotguns and long guns are pretty rare.
- torstenvl 4y ago
  Deadliness/volume is a losing policy argument. There are between 4x and 7x as many knife homicides as assault rifle (or rifle of any kind) homicides in any given year. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... The single most-common weapon used is a handgun, around 4x as common as knives. But the Supreme Court has unambiguously ruled on the constitutionality of handgun bans and refusal to grant handgun licenses. And even under the most expansive gun control position that the Second Amendment only protects guns that existed in 1789... well... pistols were invented in the late 1500s.
arghandugh 4y ago
A handgun in the house increases the rate of successful suicide by a factor of nine. Sleep tight!
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  So I, a perfectly adequately fit of mind and body individual, should give up my constitutional rights because some people can't control themselves?
  - arghandugh 4y ago
    Yes. Correct. Also yours is a a bullshit interpretation of a bullshit constitutional amendment that should be amended out. Also you’re not always the best judge of your behavior, which is a natural consequence of the fact that there’s more than one person inhabiting this planet.
    - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
      I never expressed an interpretation of the 2nd amendment. Clearly you jumped to conclusions about that, as you did my ability to judge my mental state. I'd be perfectly happy to form a militia with some of my comrades, and have the right to bear arms restricted to that context, so long as the government likewise recognized that the right to bear arms has nothing at all to do with personal defense, and thus justifications around "civilians don't need X weapon because it's a weapon of war" don't stand muster.
      - arghandugh 4y ago
        Insane, boring, tendentious, or some combination thereof? Who knows! Bye.
- dokem 4y ago
  I'm sure your wife sleeps tight knowing if someone breaks in the only thing protecting her sanctity is your begging. Sounds like you're more concerned with killing yourself than protecting.

by dokem 4y ago

happymellon 4y ago

The article talks about the irrational conversations that gun ownership has in the USA. You can't study it. By banning any observation no one can prove whether the majority of shootings come from the gun owner or someone who stole the gun. As such the negative "making them illegal does not make them go away" also cannot be proved by you.

vlovich123 4y ago

That’s neither here nor there. Legislation certainly can change the amount of guns available. Compare Canada or Australia which too had similar gun cultures prior to legislation. Sure it doesn’t get rid of all guns. No one is claiming that it would but that’s an unreasonable bar that’s only set by critics. Even countries with strict gun control still have guns. However gun deaths are more rare because the penalty associated with even holding a gun illicitly are quite high, so in practice the number of guns floating around is lower and their use is really constrained (mainly because the cost of acquiring a gun is higher). Sure, the US has way more private gun ownership than other countries when they took steps towards effective legislation. It’ll take longer for any meaningful legislation to take effect, and only if it’s a national thing to mitigate cross-border transport. And SCOTUSes current ideological bent and strange 2nd amendment interpretation further complicates things at all levels. For what it’s worth the 2nd amendment seems to only ever have been interpreted about national regulations of formal state militias (eg the state’s National guard, police, etc). The reinterpretation in Heller to mean protection of private ownership is both recent (2008) and quite strange. A significantly worse decision than whatever Roe got wrong in legal theory and one that had strict social harm vs Roe which actually at least had positive social outcomes.

dokem 4y ago
You are willfully misinterpreting 2a. Police and national guard are not militias. 'The people' does not mean the state. This is not a recent interpretation. The bill of rights outlines citizen's rights not the state. Obviously the state can have weapons. If you are a US citizen you have some learning to do.
- technothrasher 4y ago
  > Police and national guard are not militias. Uh, what? The National Guard most definitely IS the militia. Did you miss the Militia Act of 1792? A whole four years after the 2nd became the law of the land, they formalized the militia into what became the National Guard. You can argue about the militia clause in the 2nd being prefatory, but you really have nothing to stand on when you say the National Guard is not the militia.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- ianburrell 4y ago
  Up until recently, the "collective right" interpretation was the law of the land. The "individual right" interpretation was argued about but was less than twenty years since became accepted.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  Please educate me then cause I could be mistaken. Why was Heller so monumental if the 2nd amendment hadn’t traditionally meant that it applied to state’s rights to armed forces separate from that of the federal?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ianburrell 4y ago

Guns are a lot more deadly than other weapons. They are also easy and quick to use. It is pretty common for people to fight and then one pulls out gun and shoots and kills the other. You can kill with knife or improvised weapon but have to mean it. You also have to get close; drive-by shootings are pretty common around here. You don't have to make them go away, just reduce the numbers so they don't get used in everyday murders. Most murders are crimes of passion and the difference between pulling out gun and having to find weapon will stop most of them. Britain still has a few illegal handguns, they get used in crimes, but their murder rate is much lower. A good indication that ease-of-killing matters is that murders with shotguns and long guns are pretty rare.

torstenvl 4y ago
Deadliness/volume is a losing policy argument. There are between 4x and 7x as many knife homicides as assault rifle (or rifle of any kind) homicides in any given year. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... The single most-common weapon used is a handgun, around 4x as common as knives. But the Supreme Court has unambiguously ruled on the constitutionality of handgun bans and refusal to grant handgun licenses. And even under the most expansive gun control position that the Second Amendment only protects guns that existed in 1789... well... pistols were invented in the late 1500s.

arghandugh 4y ago

A handgun in the house increases the rate of successful suicide by a factor of nine. Sleep tight!

OkayPhysicist 4y ago
So I, a perfectly adequately fit of mind and body individual, should give up my constitutional rights because some people can't control themselves?
- arghandugh 4y ago
  Yes. Correct. Also yours is a a bullshit interpretation of a bullshit constitutional amendment that should be amended out. Also you’re not always the best judge of your behavior, which is a natural consequence of the fact that there’s more than one person inhabiting this planet.
  - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
    I never expressed an interpretation of the 2nd amendment. Clearly you jumped to conclusions about that, as you did my ability to judge my mental state. I'd be perfectly happy to form a militia with some of my comrades, and have the right to bear arms restricted to that context, so long as the government likewise recognized that the right to bear arms has nothing at all to do with personal defense, and thus justifications around "civilians don't need X weapon because it's a weapon of war" don't stand muster.
    - arghandugh 4y ago
      Insane, boring, tendentious, or some combination thereof? Who knows! Bye.
dokem 4y ago
I'm sure your wife sleeps tight knowing if someone breaks in the only thing protecting her sanctity is your begging. Sounds like you're more concerned with killing yourself than protecting.