9 ms·

Outlaw guns, knives and rocks, and wink them out of existence, and these people are still there. Treat them, and some of them will come back. Outlawing guns d

by antidoh 14y ago

Outlaw guns, knives and rocks, and wink them out of existence, and these people are still there. Treat them, and some of them will come back. Outlawing guns doesn't solve this problem. But outlawing guns is the kind of "solution" we like, because a) there's a clear, specific action to argue over, and b) we can focus on it long enough to get the law through and then fool ourselves into thinking we've done something.

mpweiher 14y ago
Regulating guns ("outlawing" is a straw man) ameliorates the problem of how much damage a mentally disturbed person can do. A knife in the same situation is much less dangerous, as evidenced by the incident in China at the same time where people were hurt, but none so far killed. Degrees matter.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- javajosh 14y ago
  Everyone reaches for answers at a time like this, and a sad majority reach for thoughtless answers like gun control, that ironically embody the very stupidity and carelessness that contributes to this violence. It's such a smug, pat answer that relegates responsibility to some higher authority. It's the same sentiment that makes people feel isolated, alone, unheard, helpless, and eventually, desperate. "Just shut up, get a job, go to church, watch football and pay your mortgage. And if that existence doesn't make you happy, then there's something wrong with you." If you hear this often enough, and if you don't manage to connect with others who are equally appalled by it, then you WILL go mad.
  - jpxxx 14y ago
    Oh what a conformist Hell it must be to live in a world where the severely mentally ill don't have in-home access to six semi-automatic weapons. Unpack your baggage before wading in to this one.
    - confusedNRA 14y ago
      If you live in america, you are more than welcome to leave if the laws bother you that much. It's a fundamental right for an individual to own their own weapon. Instead of sitting on the internet making snarky comments to people, perhaps your time would be better spent researching new countries to move to? And if you already don't live in america, why so much attitude?
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      - dinkumthinkum 14y ago
        You keep talking about people leaving America. Is that you would have told the slaves before being freed? Laws are little more dynamic than you seem to imply. But I don't want to argue gun rights with you. I would like to ask you approximately how old do you think the Earth is?
    - clarky07 14y ago
      So how about we blame the mother with poor decision making skills? Why do you need to ban me from owning a gun for self defense, hunting, or other sporting reasons, not to mention the fact that I like liberty in America better than a totalitarian government that doesn't allow it's citizens to have freedom. "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin
      - jpxxx 14y ago
        You have brought a knife to a gunfight, so to speak. Mellow out. "Fart, poop, I farted." - Dr. Who
        clarky07 14y ago
        http://www.policeone.com/edged-weapons/articles/102828-Edged-Weapon-Defense-Is-or-was-the-21-foot-rule-valid-Part-1/ http://www.policeone.com/edged-weapons/articles/102828-Edged... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill
  - mpweiher 14y ago
    "...and a majority reach for thoughtful answers like gun control" TFTY. :-)
- antidoh 14y ago
  It wasn't meant as a straw man, it was meant as a way to identify a boundary. The most restrictive regulation possible would be a total ban, and only a total and successful ban would prevent people from using guns in massacres. So "regulation" while well intentioned is practically meaningless. Those people would still be mentally ill, and outlawing guns or some lesser regulation would not have addressed the actual problem. And yes, a knife in the situation is less dangerous. But the person is still mentally ill, a danger to themselves and those around them. It's medical treatment that's needed, in the worst cases combined with confinement. Gun regulation is not medical treatment. Gun regulation is a separate issue, admittedly related, just as knives and baseball bats are related.
  - mpweiher 14y ago
    Again, total prevention is a straw man. No-one is claiming that total prevention is an achievable goal. (Massive) reduction is. I am a pilot. It is said the FARs (Federal Aviation Regulations) are written in blood. We still have fatal accidents from time to time, but they have been reduced by an almost incredible amount, especially considering how much air travel has increased. Yeah, you could argue that the fundamental problem is that people want to travel and that the laws of physics are not favorable for the safety of air travel (gravity and all that). However, throwing your hands up in the air and saying we can't do anything without addressing the fundamentals is fundamentally and provably wrong.
    - antidoh 14y ago
      I'm not throwing up my hands and saying do nothing. I'm suggesting that we address the fundamentals, which in this case is mental illness.
      - mpweiher 14y ago
        What I am saying is that mental illness is not the fundamental issue of the case. Somebody going mental with a nerf gun just isn't the same sort of problem. At all. Not that mental illness isn't also a problem.
      - 14y ago
- smsm42 14y ago
  Outlawing - at least if you are not police officer or soldier - is not a straw man at all. Only recently we got a SCOTUS decision that proclaimed US citizens have right to own guns, and that was a close one too. Before that, many places existed where private ownership of guns was essentially banned, and many still exist now, even though with the new decision they will be eventually phased out. However, people that instituted these bans are still in power in those places, and they very well intend to put a good fight and make obtaining legal guns as difficult as is could be without running afoul of the law, and probably more difficult just to see if they can get away with it. Regulation of guns would absolutely help nothing unless you ban possession of guns by healthy individuals without criminal record or any other problems - because you can not predict people going crazy, and you can not eliminate all sources of obtaining weapons by somebody very smart, very determined and having absolutely no moral problem to lie or commit any unethical or criminal behavior. In fact, even completely removing all guns from law-abiding citizens would not change that - criminals will still have guns. Only coordinated campaign of terror and totalitarian control from the state - something of Soviet or North Korean measures - can make guns relatively unavaliable to common person. If you doubt that, think about how much successful were governmental efforts to make illegal drugs unavailable. Given that, I would rather live with relatively small threat of psychos than in a totalitarian state needed to get rid of the threat of psychos.
  - mpweiher 14y ago
    Outlawing is a straw man in that it is not the only option for regulation that would help. These things are not booleans! Countries with much tighter gun regulations than the US don't outlaw guns. They also don't prevent 100% gun violence. They just have less of it. A LOT less. So "Regulation of guns would absolutely help nothing" is just plain false. It would help some, as the numbers clearly state. It would not prevent everything, but that's not the same as it would "help nothing".
    - tjaerv 14y ago
      Correlation doesn't imply causation.
- Daniel_Newby 14y ago
  > Regulating guns ... ameliorates the problem of how much damage a mentally disturbed person can do. No, it makes it much worse. We want the violent lunatics to have guns, because guns are not particularly fast or efficient at killing people. A lone gunman can kill at most a few hundred people before he is stopped. You know those nightclub fires that kill hundreds of people in ten minutes? We want our nutjobs to have guns so they will not be forced to recreate a nightclub fire on a stadium scale, followed by decades of copycats.
  - Joeri 14y ago
    So, i'm sure any minute now you'll post the statistics on how countries with tighter gun laws have huge numbers of stadium fires... We don't need to talk hypotheticals here. There are many countries with tighter gun laws. Any "but regulation will make it worse" argument can be vetted based on real world observations.
    - Daniel_Newby 14y ago
      It is not a matter of statistics. You can smugly measure water for 10 years and learn nothing about ice. No amount of data on Swiss shootings has any bearing on whether Joe Gun-Controlled will back a gasoline tanker up to a high school basketball stadium. To predict unknown unknowns, you have to do RAND Corporation-style operations research and hypothetical projections. This has been done, and it turns out that mass killing is easy. Really easy. As in, the 9-11 attackers were a bunch of pikers. That's why after 9-11 security for prominent targets shifted to a strange combination of bollards and guard patrols. Metal detectors and gun screening do not affect safety much. Intercepting truck size weapons does. I'm flabbergasted that my comment was voted down and justified by "what matters is the past, not your ridiculous hypotheticals". It reads like the Microsoft buffer overflow manual circa 1998.
      - Joeri 14y ago
        What matters is what is likely, and what is likely is largely what is observed. People don't blow up schools with tanker trucks. They could, and if they had the intent to kill they should, but they don't. But that's not my point. My point is that the best source for wise decisions is hands-on experience. Many countries have a better handle on the gun situation than the U.S. What's wrong with learning from their experience?
- MartinCron 14y ago
  "outlawing" is a straw man I'm so glad that someone said this. So many otherwise reasonable people get seriously worried that someone with a badge is going to come to their home and pry their guns from their hands (which may or may not be cold and dead at the time) The reality of gun control is far less dramatic, and make for far less compelling soundbites. "You can close the gun show loophole which allows people to sell handguns without background checks over my cold, dead, body" doesn't have the same ring.

by antidoh 14y ago

mpweiher 14y ago

Regulating guns ("outlawing" is a straw man) ameliorates the problem of how much damage a mentally disturbed person can do. A knife in the same situation is much less dangerous, as evidenced by the incident in China at the same time where people were hurt, but none so far killed. Degrees matter.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
javajosh 14y ago
Everyone reaches for answers at a time like this, and a sad majority reach for thoughtless answers like gun control, that ironically embody the very stupidity and carelessness that contributes to this violence. It's such a smug, pat answer that relegates responsibility to some higher authority. It's the same sentiment that makes people feel isolated, alone, unheard, helpless, and eventually, desperate. "Just shut up, get a job, go to church, watch football and pay your mortgage. And if that existence doesn't make you happy, then there's something wrong with you." If you hear this often enough, and if you don't manage to connect with others who are equally appalled by it, then you WILL go mad.
- jpxxx 14y ago
  Oh what a conformist Hell it must be to live in a world where the severely mentally ill don't have in-home access to six semi-automatic weapons. Unpack your baggage before wading in to this one.
  - confusedNRA 14y ago
    If you live in america, you are more than welcome to leave if the laws bother you that much. It's a fundamental right for an individual to own their own weapon. Instead of sitting on the internet making snarky comments to people, perhaps your time would be better spent researching new countries to move to? And if you already don't live in america, why so much attitude?
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - dinkumthinkum 14y ago
      You keep talking about people leaving America. Is that you would have told the slaves before being freed? Laws are little more dynamic than you seem to imply. But I don't want to argue gun rights with you. I would like to ask you approximately how old do you think the Earth is?
  - clarky07 14y ago
    So how about we blame the mother with poor decision making skills? Why do you need to ban me from owning a gun for self defense, hunting, or other sporting reasons, not to mention the fact that I like liberty in America better than a totalitarian government that doesn't allow it's citizens to have freedom. "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin
    - jpxxx 14y ago
      You have brought a knife to a gunfight, so to speak. Mellow out. "Fart, poop, I farted." - Dr. Who
      - clarky07 14y ago
        http://www.policeone.com/edged-weapons/articles/102828-Edged-Weapon-Defense-Is-or-was-the-21-foot-rule-valid-Part-1/ http://www.policeone.com/edged-weapons/articles/102828-Edged... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill
- mpweiher 14y ago
  "...and a majority reach for thoughtful answers like gun control" TFTY. :-)
antidoh 14y ago
It wasn't meant as a straw man, it was meant as a way to identify a boundary. The most restrictive regulation possible would be a total ban, and only a total and successful ban would prevent people from using guns in massacres. So "regulation" while well intentioned is practically meaningless. Those people would still be mentally ill, and outlawing guns or some lesser regulation would not have addressed the actual problem. And yes, a knife in the situation is less dangerous. But the person is still mentally ill, a danger to themselves and those around them. It's medical treatment that's needed, in the worst cases combined with confinement. Gun regulation is not medical treatment. Gun regulation is a separate issue, admittedly related, just as knives and baseball bats are related.
- mpweiher 14y ago
  Again, total prevention is a straw man. No-one is claiming that total prevention is an achievable goal. (Massive) reduction is. I am a pilot. It is said the FARs (Federal Aviation Regulations) are written in blood. We still have fatal accidents from time to time, but they have been reduced by an almost incredible amount, especially considering how much air travel has increased. Yeah, you could argue that the fundamental problem is that people want to travel and that the laws of physics are not favorable for the safety of air travel (gravity and all that). However, throwing your hands up in the air and saying we can't do anything without addressing the fundamentals is fundamentally and provably wrong.
  - antidoh 14y ago
    I'm not throwing up my hands and saying do nothing. I'm suggesting that we address the fundamentals, which in this case is mental illness.
    - mpweiher 14y ago
      What I am saying is that mental illness is not the fundamental issue of the case. Somebody going mental with a nerf gun just isn't the same sort of problem. At all. Not that mental illness isn't also a problem.
    - 14y ago
smsm42 14y ago
Outlawing - at least if you are not police officer or soldier - is not a straw man at all. Only recently we got a SCOTUS decision that proclaimed US citizens have right to own guns, and that was a close one too. Before that, many places existed where private ownership of guns was essentially banned, and many still exist now, even though with the new decision they will be eventually phased out. However, people that instituted these bans are still in power in those places, and they very well intend to put a good fight and make obtaining legal guns as difficult as is could be without running afoul of the law, and probably more difficult just to see if they can get away with it. Regulation of guns would absolutely help nothing unless you ban possession of guns by healthy individuals without criminal record or any other problems - because you can not predict people going crazy, and you can not eliminate all sources of obtaining weapons by somebody very smart, very determined and having absolutely no moral problem to lie or commit any unethical or criminal behavior. In fact, even completely removing all guns from law-abiding citizens would not change that - criminals will still have guns. Only coordinated campaign of terror and totalitarian control from the state - something of Soviet or North Korean measures - can make guns relatively unavaliable to common person. If you doubt that, think about how much successful were governmental efforts to make illegal drugs unavailable. Given that, I would rather live with relatively small threat of psychos than in a totalitarian state needed to get rid of the threat of psychos.
- mpweiher 14y ago
  Outlawing is a straw man in that it is not the only option for regulation that would help. These things are not booleans! Countries with much tighter gun regulations than the US don't outlaw guns. They also don't prevent 100% gun violence. They just have less of it. A LOT less. So "Regulation of guns would absolutely help nothing" is just plain false. It would help some, as the numbers clearly state. It would not prevent everything, but that's not the same as it would "help nothing".
  - tjaerv 14y ago
    Correlation doesn't imply causation.
Daniel_Newby 14y ago
> Regulating guns ... ameliorates the problem of how much damage a mentally disturbed person can do. No, it makes it much worse. We want the violent lunatics to have guns, because guns are not particularly fast or efficient at killing people. A lone gunman can kill at most a few hundred people before he is stopped. You know those nightclub fires that kill hundreds of people in ten minutes? We want our nutjobs to have guns so they will not be forced to recreate a nightclub fire on a stadium scale, followed by decades of copycats.
- Joeri 14y ago
  So, i'm sure any minute now you'll post the statistics on how countries with tighter gun laws have huge numbers of stadium fires... We don't need to talk hypotheticals here. There are many countries with tighter gun laws. Any "but regulation will make it worse" argument can be vetted based on real world observations.
  - Daniel_Newby 14y ago
    It is not a matter of statistics. You can smugly measure water for 10 years and learn nothing about ice. No amount of data on Swiss shootings has any bearing on whether Joe Gun-Controlled will back a gasoline tanker up to a high school basketball stadium. To predict unknown unknowns, you have to do RAND Corporation-style operations research and hypothetical projections. This has been done, and it turns out that mass killing is easy. Really easy. As in, the 9-11 attackers were a bunch of pikers. That's why after 9-11 security for prominent targets shifted to a strange combination of bollards and guard patrols. Metal detectors and gun screening do not affect safety much. Intercepting truck size weapons does. I'm flabbergasted that my comment was voted down and justified by "what matters is the past, not your ridiculous hypotheticals". It reads like the Microsoft buffer overflow manual circa 1998.
    - Joeri 14y ago
      What matters is what is likely, and what is likely is largely what is observed. People don't blow up schools with tanker trucks. They could, and if they had the intent to kill they should, but they don't. But that's not my point. My point is that the best source for wise decisions is hands-on experience. Many countries have a better handle on the gun situation than the U.S. What's wrong with learning from their experience?
MartinCron 14y ago
"outlawing" is a straw man I'm so glad that someone said this. So many otherwise reasonable people get seriously worried that someone with a badge is going to come to their home and pry their guns from their hands (which may or may not be cold and dead at the time) The reality of gun control is far less dramatic, and make for far less compelling soundbites. "You can close the gun show loophole which allows people to sell handguns without background checks over my cold, dead, body" doesn't have the same ring.