Video games are partly to blame for mass shootings, Donald Trump has said.
Games that "celebrate violence" should be discouraged and made harder to buy, the president suggested.
"We must stop the glorification of violence in our society," he said during a speech in the wake of a spate of shootings. "This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace.
"It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence. We must stop or substantially reduce this, and it has to begin immediately."
[...] No connection has ever been meaningfully established between violent video games and violent behaviour, and the relationship between the two continues to be debated by academics and experts.
Trump to Launch Crackdown on Violent Videogames After Mass Shootings
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @06:48AM (5 children)
Now Solitaire will be banned from Windows installs! Rejoice, my scurvy gallywags! Freedom is ours!!!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 06 2019, @02:00PM (4 children)
I think Minesweeper is much more of a threat to our young people.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @05:52PM
It's Minesweeper not Mineplacer!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @06:34PM (2 children)
Minesweeper is just a terrorist training tool, teaching the invaders how to get through the inevitable mine fields that will be placed on the southern border of the U.S.
For contributing to the terrorist menace, Microsoft must be declared a domestic terrorist group, and eliminated.
(Score: 3, Touché) by kazzie on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:25PM (1 child)
Alternatively, the mine placers could just, you know, stop labelling all the adjacent squares.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 07 2019, @03:09AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:00AM (2 children)
Pew! Pew! Pewpew! Duck, roll. Pew-pew-pew-pew!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @09:06AM (1 child)
Biden! Biden! Biden!
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:26PM
Veni! Vidi! Vici!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by istartedi on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:17AM (138 children)
There are a number of tweets floating around with nice graphs and charts today, showing countries by per-capita video game revenue and gun violence. The USA sticks out as having lower video game revenue than some countries, but much more gun violence. So. This is unscientific bullshit of the highest order, but what do you expect from *any* administration these days? This is by no means unique to the Trump presidency. Anybody else old enough to remember the parental advisory thing on records? How'd that work out?
Aside from the complete lack of science behind this... hello 1st Amendment issues. So unless SCOTUS is well and fully corrupt, this is DOA in any meaningful way as well it should be.
Scream, bitch, swirl that tempest in the teapot. Oh no! Those kids are wearing trench coats. Remember how we discussed that on the green site what seems like eons ago?
Nope. I we need to address the elephant in the room:
REPEAL2.
Yes. I said it. Until we ratify a repeal of 2A with enough states, we can't really fix this problem. No, that doesn't mean "we're coming to take all your guns". It means we'll be able to license them like cars, because the founders didn't conceive of a right to drive tons of steel unless you were qualified, healthy, and sane. The same thing should go for guns, but until we repeal the 2A our hands are somewhat tied.
You think it's bad to trash the Bill of Rights? What do you think we've been doing all along anyway? Repeal 2, and at least we'd be back to some semblance of order instead of pretending that the current regulatory regime is somehow in line with the 2A, which it isn't. So really, we should just repeal that thing and be done with it. Then we can have legislation that makes sense, based on what other saner countries are doing.
Look, I know this is a hard pill to swallow. It took me a long time to come to this conclusion too, but enough is enough. We had a guy go off right here in our very neighborhood just recently. Fortunately he didn't kill anybody and they got him arrested rather than killed which is also amazing, but this isn't even the first time I've heard gunfire. I've literally heard the shot that killed a guy. I'm done. Stick a fork in the 2A. This part of the great American Experiment has enough data for us to draw real scientific conclusions that have nothing to do with video games.
End. rant.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:37AM
Rule 1. The boss is always right
Rule 2. If the boss is wrong read rule 1.
"You're fired"... Pew-pew.
What else do you expect?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @08:22AM (3 children)
They don't really believe that video games are the cause of any of this violence; this is purely a distraction from the issue of gun control. These are not good faith actors. Even though their unscientific nonsense gets debunked every time, they win because they successfully distract the media and public from the issue at hand.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:25PM (1 child)
Obama never tried to blame gun violence on videogames....
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:43PM
Soft on crime!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @01:29AM
The real issue is lack of involuntary psychiatric commitment in this country. Just give them some pills and send them home.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by inertnet on Tuesday August 06 2019, @09:09AM (73 children)
I don't know about 2A (I'm not American), but I was thinking last night that America could create a law, requiring something similar to a driver's licence, but for guns. First prove that you know what you're doing and are mentally stable, before you get to handle guns.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday August 06 2019, @10:15AM (49 children)
But but but muh freedumz! Gubbermintz a-tekkin mah guns! 30-50 feral pigs! No, far better to just have hundreds of innocent people murdered every year for no good reason.
The thing that really makes me laugh is that all those fucking hypocrites who ostensibly oppose gun control to prevent some would-be dictator coming into power and taking away all their rights, are just the kind of people to vote for a would-be dictator who'd happily take away other peoples' rights. Just long as that dictator had a cross, a flag and a big ol' gun they'd march right behind him, stomping all over the constitution as they cheerfully take rights away from immigrants, hispanics, gays, journalists, democrats and anyone else their dear leader / Fox News blamed shit on.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @10:48AM (7 children)
Your post is strawman drivel.
We just want the guns. Cash payments, no background check, no license, no watchlist. Your whining can't stop that. We'll turn to the black market if we need to, or make them ourselves.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:53PM (6 children)
Most gun control proposals are trying to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, terrorists, domestic abusers, idiots, and crazy people. If you're worried about those laws costing you your guns, then which one of those are you?
I just want to drive 100 mph down the highway. I just want to take $10,000 from a bank that's not mine. I just want to skip paying any taxes. But the government hasn't defined its public policy based on what I just want, mostly because there are other considerations besides what I just want.
You seem awfully keen to get your hands on untraceable weapons for somebody who probably believes himself to be "law-abiding".
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @05:43PM (2 children)
I don't care. I hope they do get them.
Prisoner, in a prison state.
It's incredible that in the post-Snowden era, we would trust the government to keep and not abuse this information, and not arbitrarily deny gun purchases.
The amount and type of guns I own doesn't concern you at all.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 06 2019, @06:50PM
No, you aren't a prisoner. I know this because you have no problem accessing the Internet (actual prisoners can't), and you are reasonably confident that your posts won't immediately trigger a bunch of guys with guns showing up right where you are and just starting to kill people to grab the alleged cache of illegal weapons you have (which is exactly what a police state would do right now). Also, unlike prison countries like North Korea or East Germany, your government isn't doing anything to prevent you from leaving.
I don't just trust the government. For instance, if someone is arbitrarily denied a gun purchase in defiance of the rules, I would support lawsuits and oversight to address that problem.
However, I sure as heck trust the government more than I trust you. Cops are bastards, but they're also the people that most frequently end mass shootings, whereas you seem to delight in the possibility of causing them.
For all I know, it does. You're an anonymous coward, and while I generally have a pretty good idea who in my rural neighborhood is armed and know they're mostly decent folks who aren't likely to go after me and mine, I have no idea who you are or who you are targeting.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:28PM
You do? Seriously? No, don't run away! Unpack that for us a little bit. Why do you hope that criminals, terrorists, domestic abusers, idiots, and crazy people get access to guns? I am very curious to see you explain this to a candid world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @01:31AM (1 child)
I am none of those things, tell me why I cannot own a gun in my state of New Jersey? You think once these measures will stop at your magical "goal" then you are a moron, because the goal is not what you say, the goal is total disarmament of the population.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday August 07 2019, @10:18PM
You must be on some kind of negative list (perhaps a convicted felon - you didn't mention that), because plenty of law abiding citizens do own guns in New Jersey. They even hunt and target shoot with them.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday August 07 2019, @06:41AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday August 06 2019, @12:23PM (20 children)
Belittling those who support the Second Amendment, check. Use hyperbole to distort the situation, check. Gloss over several other issues in the same breath, check.
Congratulations, you have earned your reflexive tribal badge for the day, and have avoided critical thinking for yourself and diminished the practice of critical thinking for everyone collectively.
Gun violence is not about guns, because America has had guns since the beginning. So what's different now? London has a problem with knife attacks. Is that about the possession of knives, which should be taken away, or about something else? In France attacks have been committed with cars and trucks. Should those be taken away, or is it about something else?
I would argue that the upwelling of violence has nothing to do with the means to express the violence, but about general social stress that builds up before ruptures occur. Anyone who can look at what's happening in the US, Britain, France, Hong Kong, and other places around the world and not see that something much broader and systemic is happening is in willful denial.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by arulatas on Tuesday August 06 2019, @01:25PM (17 children)
How about we fund meaningful mental health care? We used to have it then fiscal "responsibility" removed it.
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @01:34PM (12 children)
Meaningful mental health care equals asylums and starts with forced detention of those that pose a threat to themselves and/or others.
(Score: 2) by arulatas on Tuesday August 06 2019, @02:04PM (1 child)
It used to be that way before the cutbacks in the 80s and 90s.
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 4, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:39PM
Actually it was the 1960s, specifically the process which became known as Deinstitutionalization [wikipedia.org] that started the train that people with mental illness do not by virtue of the illness alone have to be institutionalized. The 80s saw the cuts to mental healthcare for the homeless and defunding of public mental health care.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:48PM (9 children)
No, it does not. Most mental healthcare both in the United States and in the world is done in community settings, and it does not need to be more than that. It does need greater funding since insurance coverage for mental healthcare is pathetic and then some.
First of all, a person who poses a clear threat to themselves or others, right now and today, is someone who is indeed still locked up until such time as they are judged to not pose an immediate threat to themselves. The process is involved, but still in an emergency situation it is done and then ratified by a court at the next available opportunity. There are examples of courts that come to mental health units (judge, stenographer, counsel) on weekly bases to hear cases as to whether the emergency committal should proceed. And there must be evidence to continue to hold a person.
The true problem is that it is *very* hard to tell that a person is a threat based on behavior alone. If someone is honest about what they're thinking (and what may be a surprising number of people with both psychosis and schizophrenia are perfectly honest about their thoughts because they don't perceive their experience as 'wrong'), or if there is clear evidence found of such intent, that forms a ground to do something about it. But when a person defends, say, a journal as fiction and not fact, or will not share what is one their mind, at what point does one take action?
Screw "warning signs" - what was the *evidence* that a person is about to do something wrong. Otherwise you're locking up people without cause.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday August 07 2019, @06:51AM (8 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday August 07 2019, @01:56PM (7 children)
Because it's a "sign."
A sign indicates the probability of something. (Or could be the representation of something if it is also a symbol). Evidence is the something.
For example, from here [ccohs.ca], which looks like a commonplace list:
Are any of those definitive indicators that violence will happen? Nope. Shall we assume that anyone who disrespects authority should be violent and be locked up? I hope your answer is no. Yet when events like this happen often times people blather on about how there were all sorts of signs available. But no evidence that would have allowed action to be taken.
But if a person writes a note or says, "I am going to take my gun, buy an extra five hundred rounds ammunition, and go and kill everyone at location X." ... That's evidence of violent intent - it establishes facts which proves the truth of a proposition. Not just probability.
Maybe a better way to put it would be that if one intends to take actions to confine someone else one had better have deductive, and not inductive, reasoning as the justification for why that should occur.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday August 07 2019, @03:22PM (6 children)
Now reread my prior post again.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday August 07 2019, @03:58PM (5 children)
OK.
done.
>signs are evidence
Now reread my prior post again.
You do realize we're talking about the conditions by which people are institutionalized, or did you fail to read the grandparent? Yeah, I'll take something "definitive" before we involuntarily hold people. Which signs are not.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:22PM (4 children)
A sign informs your view on the probability of something, permitting you to change that probability.
In contrast to evidence.
Evidence is something which permits you to change your view of the probability of something, thus informing your view on that probability.
Completely different, you're right, black and white.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday August 07 2019, @05:23PM (3 children)
You're truly right that there needs to be signs to point to before something is evidence; 100% probability is still probability.
Not really apropos, but in these examples (violent behavior) the actual acting out is also a sign.
Evidence, however, requires conclusion that the sign is proof of something else. One might believe that because an individual separately is disrespectful of authority, or is displaying inappropriate anger, or has clenched fists or is speaking rapidly without respecting to others (the signs) that there is violent intent. But that does not mean the person is going to be violent, or must become violent, either. To call these signs evidence... well, it would be false evidence. There can be signs that do not constitute proof and signs can form an opinion which is not held as truth. Yet one might build a conclusion that the combination of all the signs I just listed above constitute a proof that a person is about to become violent. But before one labels something as evidence there has to be a belief in the truth or conclusion that one is claiming the evidence represents. Evidence is a representation that the signs are representing something factual and therefore requires a conclusion.
The difference matters only because people conflate indicator with the conclusion.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday August 08 2019, @07:21AM (2 children)
I also have the not-enormously-common view that science should be predictive. Many scientists claim that's not a property of science (I think they are trying to cover their backs), but for me I see it as an essential part of what science is - it should inform expectations, and expectations, even if probabilistic, are predictions. "The next 1000 coin tosses will likely be 500+/-67 heads, but 2% of the time it won't be" is a prediction to me. "More than likely to be an instigator of violence against the person to [predictalbe/arbitrary] targets" are also prediction - how you deal with those prediction is of course the difficulty. We all agree that Dickian "precrime" treatment is wrong, but many would agree that increased vigilance is perfectly sensible. Unless this deduction (actually an induction) is presented as "profiling", in which case it's obviously bad, or something. It's tricky, and it requires open and honest discussion amongst people from many disciplines (and the politicians should just shut the fuck up and listen, as should anyone (else) who can't tell correlation from causation).
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday August 08 2019, @02:37PM (1 child)
Without application what good does science achieve?
Profiling is only bad to the degree it is uncertain / false to the way the world is. The key element in Minority Report was that people could potentially have alternate futures (at all) and thus their liberty was unfairly removed. If that were changed, and the precogs were 100% accurate, the treatment of the precogs themselves notwithstanding would there have been a problem? What about the cases where all three precogs agreed, although philosophically if one opens the door to potential different futures than how many precogs would you need to avoid any false positives? If it were, "all three agree and metaphysically the crime would absolutely occur," then again there is not a problem and the program might have been wrongly shut down by knee-jerk reaction - though proving that might be impossible. And perhaps the greatest sin of the movie: They have definite and absolute proof that the future can in fact be predicted in some cases, and instead the whole program is shut down and we're left with the notion that they just stopped all research into predictivity. That's a crime against science.
I'm not trying to establish that one should pay no attention to signs or that collectively signs can't become evidence. To the very contrary, if one is noticing signs like the one above one ought to do something helpful. Asking someone if they are upset, or what their plans are and then taking further action on the response, is not wrong. There was a story in the last couple of days about a grandma who found out what was going on and intervened by getting her grandson help is a prime example. What I'm upset with is the notion that what is currently being done with evaluation and involuntary admissions is ignored, and I'm afraid of some black-and-white profiling method becoming employed instead. The failures are eclipsing all the successes that do occur, every single day, that you never hear about because patient privacy. The grandma's story was interesting to me because it is not unique, yet it is being heralded as something new and extraordinary.
The flip side was the story from a couple days ago with the arduino pegged to the mortarboard being pre-emptively destroyed. That is a beautiful example where the isolated signs were not evidence but they were used incorrectly as such.
I completely agree that what we do need is to open up dialog about how these events develop and progress and try to find out answers of both what can predict them and what can be done about them before someone dies.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Friday August 09 2019, @06:59AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @02:04PM
As another AC says before me, mental health often requires infringing upon the freedoms of the mentally ill, and consigning sane people to the loony bin for nefarious reasons was not unheard of. The police problem would have to be resolved first, and that's still just the icing on top of the authoritarian tumor that has been growing in American government since it was created.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @06:15PM
How many people are you willing to round up in Chicago? Racist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @09:07PM
How about we end the drug war? That would greatly decrease the prevalence of a dangerous black market and violence in general.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:00PM
I agree on principle, but recent reports on the state of mental health care in the United States and the propensity of prescribed medications like xanax to cause psychotic breaks gives me pause. In other words, I have come to strongly doubt that the mental health practitioners know what the fuck they are doing.
As a trained social scientist, I look for trends at a societal level. We have had a well-documented, sharp increase in wealth inequality in the last 30 years, along with other serious economic dislocations caused by trade agreements that imploded entire industries overnight. That tells in the stress people feel. Meanwhile, we have had a triumph of identitarian themes at the discursive level that have pathologized and systematically destroyed men, whites, and all those who do not subscribe to the identitarian philosophy. That tells in the stress those targeted groups feel. All the while, we have power elites who have been working in concert with proxies in media, entertainment, industry, and government to undermine the nation-state in favor of an over-arching global government that operates, unassailable and unaccountable, for "everyone's good." That tells in the stress patriots of every stripe and every nation-state feel. Any one of those can reasonable correlate with increases in mass killings by itself, but we have all of them happening at once.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:52PM (1 child)
"general social stress"
Well let's look at the causes of this "general social stress" that according to you is the real cause.
Unions declawed.
Social net stripped away.
Government led by the minority.
Blatant right-wing propaganda on TV.
You are under attack. Who will stand up and fight?
Hmm let me think where gun violence comes from...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:06PM
Corporations completing total regulatory capture.
Mainstream media making shit up whole cloth.
Entire industries outsourced.
Entire classes of workers replaced through H1-B insourcing.
Entertainment, advertising, and corporate interests sabotaging popular culture itself to push their monied agenda.
Blatant identitarian left-wing propaganda on TV.
Schools teaching kids they're gender confused.
Anti-vaxxers pushing their creed.
Antifa violently attacking people in the streets.
We are under attack. But here's the big reveal: the ones who are really attacking us are the power elites who are only using us as their cat's paws.
So, yeah, people are gonna flip out. Here's another big reveal: it's going to get much, much worse as the power elites feel their effective control slipping away.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday August 06 2019, @12:34PM (19 children)
As opposed to taking away the rights of hundreds of millions of people? What's the "good reason" for that again?
How much success have they had? Maybe we should be worrying about real threats rather than making ourselves into even greater threats?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @01:53PM (15 children)
Huh? The good reason is that the right to life is more important than the right to have a gun to shoot squirrels and make you feel like a man. You can get your self-confidence somewhere else, it's much harder to get another life once you're shot dead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @02:06PM (8 children)
Many more people die to cars than guns, let's ban them first.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:55PM (1 child)
Whattabout... cancer?! OMG! OLD AGE!!! OMG!! Stop bothering with cholera/sanitation/enviroment, people are dying in CAR ACCIDENTS!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 07 2019, @03:25AM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @06:16PM (3 children)
You are right. Cars are dangerous. We should treat them like guns: requiring licenses, track ownership, require insurance for injuries to others, and have additional training and background checks for the extra large, extra dangerous ones. Oh wait.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:10AM (2 children)
The interesting thing about requiring licenses is that it has resulted in states handing over license photos to the FBI, who then put those photos into facial recognition databases to further enable them to conduct mass surveillance on the country. And many people actually defend this, because they're authoritarian pieces of trash. The idea of a license isn't terrible in and of itself, but not allowing the government to use them to further spy on the populace (as they do with license plate readers) is a must.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @06:28AM (1 child)
But am also pro guns.
You know why? Because when those crazy redneck motherfuckers decide to come try and cleanse us, I want to show them us suburban motherfuckers can roll like some inner city niggaz. Actually i wouldn't might seeing a redneck vs inner city gang war. Maybe it would help put some mutual respect into each side.
You can come to an understanding through words, but the only real impact is when those words come after both sides tire of bloodshed.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:12PM
Good, we all should be pro guns.
But when SHTF it won't be the rednecks coming to cleanse you in the suburbs, it will be the "inner city niggaz" coming for you, because thanks to just-in-time supply chains cities don't have more than a few days of food inventory. People get crazy when they're starving. The rural folk, on the contrary, have all the food (because they make it) and guns (because they have expected for 40 years that the cities are gonna explode and have prepared) they'll ever need.
In short, your better bet by far is to run to the hills and close ranks with your fellow Americans.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:37PM
Even better, ban cars and guns. Ban Grand Theft Auto!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday August 07 2019, @06:57AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @09:14PM (5 children)
The difference is that the right to bear arms and the right to life are not in direct conflict. The only time there is a conflict is when someone decides to misuse their guns. Therefore, this isn't about two competing rights, but about safety at the expense of liberty vs liberty at the expense of safety. I would rather have liberty, even if you could demonstrate that gun control would increase safety. Likewise, even if the NSA could absolutely demonstrate that their unconstitutional mass surveillance sharply decreased the number of terrorist attacks and saved countless lives, I would remain absolutely opposed to it. That is what it means to value freedom.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:40AM (4 children)
When you paint it in black and white sure, liberty over safety. But you're forgetting you already live in a society where there's a ton of laws that put safety first against liberty. I can't walk down the street and pull our my dick and pee in public cause other pedestrians won't "feel" safe. So we have indecent exposure laws.
You say you want to live in a society where liberty over safety first and foremost, but you're deluding yourself. What makes guns so special that it defines your liberty and all the other constraints that already have in place doesn't? Serious question..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @06:45AM
The solution to injustice is not yet more injustice. I support repealing all unjust laws, though if the courts were doing their jobs, most of them would have been found unconstitutional anyway. For example, obscenity laws and the ridiculous Miller Test that isn't mentioned anywhere in the first amendment. Protest permits are another example; you shouldn't need permission from the government to exercise your right to assemble and speak, and the Constitution indeed makes no mention of the government being allowed to require such permits.
Guns aren't special. Let's get rid of all those unjust laws, rather than adding new ones.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 07 2019, @12:21PM (2 children)
Let's put that in the right context. I don't respect those laws or that scared part of society merely because that fraction is numerous enough to get nanny laws to placate it. Scared people will find something to be scared of.
Some of these laws won't even help make us safer. Something to consider there.
It'd be one thing to note that there's reason for laws that improve our safety while respectful of our liberty. But when you defend safety over liberty, while ignoring that such laws often sacrifice both safety and liberty, we should ask who is deluded here.
Well, how many of those other constraints should be in place too? There's all sorts of crazy law and regulation out there concerning safety. Is the gropefest at US airports really doing the job, or merely to placate the scared people? I believe the latter, thus it's a pointless sacrifice of our liberty. Is the enormous bureaucracy surrounding nuclear plants actually making us safer? One of the neglected reasons Fukushima happened is because Japan scuttled an entire next generation of nuclear plants - despite the old, operating plants being less safe than the generation that would have replaced them. Is the US-directed War on Drugs making anyone safer? I doubt the citizens of Mexico feel safer now with the conflict between drug cartels still going on and the US has the highest incarceration rate in the developed world.
Are we collectively safer because the US invaded Iraq almost two decades ago? Maybe, but it was remarkably poorly justified with only the bare minimum of effort (and probably lying) to get enough parties to go along with the invasion. Are we safer because a number of colleges have created "safe spaces" for people to cower away from beliefs that they don't like as well as suppression or obstruction of speech that hypothetically is "insensitive"?
Or the lawyer-fest that product liability has devolved into. Ladders, fire extinguishers, and other products with nontrivial risks are substantially more expensive because idiots can get ahold of them and the subsequent mayhem end up in court.
At some point we need to recognize that our quest for a way too perfect safety is ludicrous and harmful in itself. The terrorists won't win and the children will survive, if we elevate liberty above safety.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Thursday August 08 2019, @01:04AM (1 child)
Umm liberty won't mean dick squat if your children are dead due to mass shootings. I personally don't think prohibition will solve the underlying problem, unfortunately until society is serious about addressing the underlying problems, prohibition is an ugly monkey patch that does work somewhat - at least outside the US. I don't live in the US and as I understand it there's more than just safety at stake with the historical precedents, culture and the amendment on bearing arms, so there's probably more things to consider than just physical safety.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 08 2019, @04:46AM
Won't mean dick squat, if they're killed by a police state either. Given the extremely low probability of a mass shooting now even in the US, I'm comfortable with the balance between freedom and safety.
Of course there is. Liberty is one of those things.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:04PM (2 children)
This AMERICAN CITIZEN was imprisoned by ICE for TWO YEARS without a trial. [pix11.com]
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:39PM
But immigrants are scurrrry!!
We have some simple rules here.
1. If a liberal makes a good point it is a propaganda attack on freedom
2. If a conservative makes a good point it is discussed instead of rejected out of hand
3. Trump, a fascist, can do no wrong that isn't excused away as some 13D chess move
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 07 2019, @01:52PM
In other words, continuing past abuses, rights which were already taken away by a previous administration. Sure, the slow destruction of US rights is a terrible thing, but let's not pretend that Trump is taking it to eleven when it's been an ongoing thing for generations.
Here, there's this spurious claim that Trump is taking rights from various groups ("immigrants, hispanics, gays, journalists, democrats and anyone else their dear leader / Fox News blamed shit on") when the taking isn't actually happening. That's part of the slow erosion of freedom in the US, blaming the opposition for imaginary evils in order to justify taking yet more freedom away.
At some point, I hope you'll realize that there's far greater threats out there than your favorite bogeymen. Maybe we'll pull back from the edge.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday August 06 2019, @10:41AM (9 children)
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Tuesday August 06 2019, @12:19PM (8 children)
Precisely the problem with weapons this powerful and with this many bullets in the magazine - a completely untrained inexperienced new purchaser could do more harm, firing more bullets (and higher-velocity higher-power bullets), in a minute than an entire company of Revolutionary-era soldiers.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Immerman on Tuesday August 06 2019, @01:29PM (2 children)
The problem of course is that there's a wildly popular gun designed specifically for shooting people in urban environments: the hand gun. Much more effective in close quarters than any of the scary-looking (pseudo-)assault rifles, and nobody talks about banning them. Yes, they're slower to reload than a rifle with an extended magazine, but for the same weight and price you can carry several fully loaded ones and never be caught without a loaded weapon. And a large number of handguns offer removable magazines, making reloading quick and easy, as well as making it easy to replace them with much larger expanded magazines.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:57PM (1 child)
And then.... there's video games. You can carry literally hundreds of them. IN A SHOPPING MALL!
(Score: 2) by Acabatag on Tuesday August 06 2019, @05:05PM
I have every gameboy, gameboy color and gameboy advance game ever produced on the SD card in my phone.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @01:30PM (3 children)
That's technological progress for you.
Precisely the problem with publishing facilities this powerful and this far-reaching - a completely inexperienced new blogger can do more harm, publishing more fake news / propaganda (and reaching far more eyes and ears) in a minute than an entire Revolutionary-era print shop.
Repeal 1st Amendment now, amirite?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:10PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:35PM (1 child)
Aww khallow has been having a rough time of it, wonder if he realizes that "sick burn" didn't land on anyone here?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 07 2019, @03:34AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @02:12PM
Never heard of this eh? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_air_rifle [wikipedia.org] ?
For the quick of it 20 round magazine and could be fully unloaded in less than a minute.
So tell us again how civilian arm can fire more round downrange than an entire company of Revolutionary-era soldiers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Tuesday August 06 2019, @11:18AM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday August 06 2019, @01:10PM (1 child)
Historically we had a lot of trouble in the South with election poll testing; looking at the crazy high murder stats for some races if the test is accurate there's no way there will not be an unequal racial impact on various sanctified minorities. If drug gang members in Baltimore are not "passing the test" at the same or higher rate than suburban white college grads, the test will be struck down for racial reasons, and if the test passes groups regardless of crazy high differences in rates of violence it'll be a useless test that accomplishes nothing. Therefore there's no point in a test.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:44PM
Fuck off racist twat, your drivel is un-American and it taints this site. Thanks for increasing the likelihood that users here are put on domestic terrorism watchlists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @02:10PM
Because it has been considered a right the general notion is that you are presumed competent until proven otherwise.
That said, I live in a state where it is required that you obtain a card from the State Police which proves that you have undergone a background check, and whenever the police run a person's ID they do state whether that person has such a card and it is then assumed that the person is a gun owner. That card has to be presented at gun dealers and ammo sellers to obtain weapons and ammunition. It is not precisely a license, but in some ways it acts like it.
I have no problem with all legal gun sales (including used) go through a gun dealer which has been an exception to the rule. And I have no problem that training would be required to get the card (it isn't, but training is required for a Concealed Carry Permit). I do have a little bit of a problem with anything that would require mental testing to prove one is responsible to carry a gun - this should be assumed unless otherwise proven.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:16PM (5 children)
Demonstrating competency with a firearm is one thing, but you can bet your ass that sooner or later somebody will abuse the "prove you're not insane" clause to somehow define insanity as e.g. voting Republican.
Oops! Suddenly half the country is mentally incompetent and can't own firearms anymore. So much for that inalienable right.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @05:05PM (4 children)
You say this as if it were a bad thing. Seriously, what is your point? Frankly, I'm currently of the opinion that somewhere around 95% of the US population is not competent to handle a firearm. I would like to see all gun owners in America required to pass written and field tests demonstrating basic competence in the safe handling of firearms; I would also like to see regular mental health checkups for these same gun owners. It really is the rational thing to do at this point.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday August 06 2019, @06:03PM (3 children)
If you want to repeal the 2nd Amendment, go ahead and try. Go on; I'll wait.
If that's what you really want to do, don't support other nonsense like this because "oh, it's the next best thing."
Personally, I still believe the Constitution was (and is) a good idea, and don't want to throw it out, like a lot of people apparently do. Half the country being denied an enumerated right in the Constitution, yes obviously is "a bad thing."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @06:27PM
That's right! The Second Amendment is unlimited. Now, stand aside as I go buy some MANPADs, MRLSes, M134s, and a tactical nuke.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:06PM (1 child)
Just to note: the Constitution has a built-in amendment process. It is NOT "throwing out the Constitution" to use it in a way to clarify or alter something in the Constitution that doesn't seem to be working. We did it with Prohibition -- lots of people thought it would be a good idea, so we ended up with it in the Constitution. Then people realized it was a bad idea, so we changed it.
We did it with Presidential elections. In fact, we've been through a couple different iterations in amendments clarifying and shifting things about how those work and how the President assumes office, because the original plan didn't work out as intended. (Somehow we still have an Electoral College though, even though it's effectively been useless since 1828.)
Anyhow, again, the Constitution has an amendment process built-in. The Second Amendment is, in fact, PART of that amendment process (hence the name). If enough people think the Second Amendment is poorly written or should be clarified to deal with technological developments since the 1700s or whatever, then they can use the Constitutional process to change it. That would be using the Constitution as intended.
(By the way, personally, I sincerely doubt the 2nd will be repealed anytime soon. Moreover, while I do think the Amendment was intending in part to protect individual rights, I also don't think such rights were ever meant to be absolute -- as the rights to free speech or the press or whatever are not absolute either. So, personally, if we had reasonable SCOTUS justices, we could probably have reasonable gun regulation while still recognizing a general right to ownership... but most people don't seem to want to be reasonable about these issues. It's all extremist positions that don't even listen to the other side.)
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:17PM
Yes, I'm well aware of how the Amendment process works. I'm just referring to the feeling I get that many politicians feel the Constitution is a troublesome document to be avoided and worked around rather than obeyed.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @05:57PM
the whole point of the bill of rights and the 2A is that free people have certain rights, given to them by the universe/God/whatever, not selectively granted by government overlords. In a free society the individual and The People collectively are above the government. that is why we don't have to beg permission via licenses to own a means to feed ourselves, protect ourselves from thieves, government tyrants or domestic subversives/terrorists. That being said, the founders made exceptions for the insane and career criminals. this does not mean, oppositional defiance disorder or b/c you said mean things on twitter or b/c you got "caught" with a bag of plant material. actually insane and career/dangerous criminal.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday August 06 2019, @08:31PM (1 child)
Should one also be required to get a license to write and post on the internet? 1A
There is a difference between rights and privileges. The poster above is correct that the only way to address guns, is to address the constitution. I fear though that what happened in the UK after the English right to bear arms was destroyed in the 1920s will happen here, and that is that assaults rose dramatically: http://economics.wm.edu/wp/cwm_wp158.pdf [wm.edu] In 1920, the assault rate was 2.39/100k, in 1999 the assault rate 419.29/100k. It may well be that guns have made society so safe, that they are now viewed as a problem rather than a solution, and that at some point in the future, we'll wish we had them back. But once the government has a monopoly on violence, good luck with getting 2A back.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:49AM
Not sure population density alone is the right stat. Should temper by density. Probably does not change your arguement a lot, but many other factors like local density, peoples expectaitions, wealth distribution, definitions of crime, police capacity and so on can affect assault rates.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday August 06 2019, @12:01PM (23 children)
No. There will be no repeal of the Second Amendment. That is the bedrock right without which the others are meaningless. The government has to fear the people.
The gun violence is not about the guns, it's about the violence. In London, they have not gun violence, but with knife violence. The knife violence there is not about knives, but about violence. In France they have not gun violence, but car violence. The car violence there is not about cars, but about violence. The violence is a natural expression of a society under stress. That stress, I maintain, has been caused by self-serving elites who have spent a long time and a lot of money short-circuiting democracy such that what the government does, where it spends its money, and its entire raison d'etre no longer map to what the polity wants but rather to what those self-serving elites want. We discuss that situation in America ad nauseum, but we have also been watching it play out in Britain through the lens of Brexit; the people there voted for it, but the elites there are doing everything they can to void it. The yellow vest protests in France against Macron demonstrate the same thing is happening there.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Tuesday August 06 2019, @01:00PM (19 children)
Mostly the violence is about demographic replacement and cultural issues, with a side dish of "medication side effects".
There are racial reasons that almost no mass shootings are done by white males but the media coverage is extensive for the very few white male shootings. Gunning people down is a normal weekend in Chicago or Baltimore or Detroit. Likewise, "white male videogames" are violent and should be actively hated and cracked down upon because the users are white males; everyone knows black rap music is pure nonviolence and pacifism so that will never be cracked down upon. If a white guy shoots someone we need to ban guns, whites, and males. If a black guy shoots someone that's an hourly thing in Chicago and its a vibrant and diverse part of their culture and how dare anyone criticize them or even imply that's bad. If you divide the "national" statistics by race or culture, the white segment is about as pacifistic as white euros aka its pretty nice and the other races are staggeringly higher. You can't import Somalia and replace the local culture without creating a new local Somalia. Or Syria, etc.
For "follow the money" reasons the link between medication and killings will never be followed up in the advertising supported media, but the toxicology screens of mass shooters indicates most of them are on various psychoactive prescriptions, which seem to have mass killing as a side effect. It seems pills are a lot more likely to kill innocent bystanders than guns are. Runs into a lot of moral and ethical issues; say mass distribution of pill X prevents 1000 suicide deaths but causes 10 extra mass shooting deaths... is pill X a good or bad pill on average? I guess as a society we've decided 10 extra mass shootings are the lesser of two evils.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday August 06 2019, @01:31PM (3 children)
>There are racial reasons that almost no mass shootings are done by white males
Hahahahahahahaha
*stops for breath and to double check the actual racial statistics for mass-shootings*
hahahahahahahaha
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @01:40PM
What are you laughing at? There are mass shootings every weekend in Chicago. How about linking to whatever flawed stats you are using?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @02:11PM (1 child)
It's true though -- almost no mass shootings are done by anyone. They remain a statistically tiny problem blown way out of proportion for political reasons.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @05:01PM
So suck it up whiners.
Same goes for murder. It's rare and shit just happens sometimes. No need to do anything about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @03:32PM (2 children)
Racist dipshit being stupid and racist. I hope your children see you for what you are and reject such nonsense.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @05:59PM (1 child)
The term "Racist" is Jew propaganda. Look it up, Goyim.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:12PM
Lol, back to the daily stormer you racist xenophobic stupid ass.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:08PM (10 children)
White males commit the MAJORITY of mass shootings you LIAR!
Why are white men carrying out more mass shootings? [sky.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by slinches on Tuesday August 06 2019, @05:08PM (9 children)
Whether that's true or not depends on the definition of "mass shooting" you choose. But looking a bit closer at the numbers based on the US Congress definition, a majority of shooters were white, but they are still under-represented relative to racial demographics of the general population (64/114=56% shooters were white, while the US in general is 72% white). I'm not saying that there's no racial component. It's true there have been shootings with a definite racial component involved, but that isn't the only issue at hand and blaming racially motivated white men exclusively is not going to solve the problem.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 06 2019, @05:35PM (8 children)
Yep, that's why I included the definition in my post.
That's why I used the word "majority, " and not the word "exclusively."
Do you have anything to say that isn't a willful miss-representation of what I actually wrote?
(Score: 3, Informative) by slinches on Tuesday August 06 2019, @06:22PM (7 children)
Your post adds nothing constructive to the conversation. It just perpetuates stereotypes that do nothing to help understand the problem.
Saying that the majority is white men implies that it's the qualities of being white and male that are the unique characteristics that stand out statistically. That's only true for the latter and there's way too much emphasis on the racial factors that aren't that significant statistically (though, very emotionally impactful). What we should be looking into is why it's so heavily skewed towards males and looking to other sorts of mass killings (e.g. those that involve other weapons and include incidents where the victims are family) to help broaden our understanding of the issue.
Articles like the one you linked that place the blame squarely on white men regardless of what the statistics say are a big part of the problem with reporting on the subject. And looking into the statistics on mass murders as a lay person is not a simple task. Heck, google even redirects a search for "mass killing statistics" to "mass shooting statistics". Even when you can find other data, they include different populations or use incompatible definitions which makes it very difficult to compare them and make any useful conclusions.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 06 2019, @06:36PM (5 children)
The purpose is to perpetuate the stereotype that VLM is a fucking liar. Did I succeed?
(Score: 2) by slinches on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:13PM (3 children)
No, but you successfully made yourself look foolish.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:19PM
I guess you don't pay much attention to users on SN. VLM is a lying racist. Maybe not intentionally a liar and just an idiot, hard to say.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 06 2019, @08:19PM (1 child)
I love it when liars tell me I shouldn't post the truth.
Nothing convinces me I'm on the right path more than that!
(Score: 2) by slinches on Tuesday August 06 2019, @08:29PM
Where did I lie? And your posts may have been factual, but misleading people with facts doesn't lead to the truth. Though, you likely know that already.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:14PM
Fucking racist liar. Never forget that bit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:28PM
Also, save some of that outrage for the race-baiting trolls. Why are you more upset at DM than VLM? Seems like an important distinction to understand.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:20PM
There definitely is a clear double standard in the mainstream media. We have had really excellent recent examples in the form of the Jussie Smollett hoax and the libel/slander the mainstream media perpetrated against the Covington kids.
It's a double standard that has been imprinted into the minds of people on the identitarian left; there's a clip making the rounds now about what Trump recently said about Baltimore. The vlogger asks leftist protesters what they think about comments made about "rat-infested" and "drug-infested" Baltimore, and are then completely at a loss when told the comments were actually made by the female black mayor of Baltimore, and Elijah Cummings, the black Congressman from Baltimore.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Informative) by istartedi on Tuesday August 06 2019, @05:34PM
This is a very common argument for the 2A and it also doesn't hold up well to evidence. The Eastern Block had a popular revolution away from communism, and the population that did it had much more severe gun control than we do. I always think of this guy when the topic comes up. [wikipedia.org] It was his own military's guns that ultimately did him in. This is no fluke. There are many examples of popular uprisings with few guns in the hands of the people. There are also many examples of civil wars being fueled by outside arms dealers, so if you want guns during your civil war you can get them because that's when laws don't matter anyway.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @02:54AM (1 child)
That's odd. There are plenty of democratic governments around the world with much stricter gun control than the USA. They seem to function just fine. Why do you have this belief that the government must "fear the people"? Is fear and loathing the only way for a free people to govern themselves? Does your political ideology not allow for mutual trust between elected representatives and their constituents? And before you reach to put fingers to keyboard, yes, I am aware that our elected representatives frequently misbehave. The way to handle that in a free, civilized society is to vote them out of office, not to threaten them with your guns.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:25AM
Do they? They're corrupt, just not necessarily in the same ways as the US. Many of these countries have insane prohibitions on speech that is deemed offensive, hateful, etc. The UK, for example, has restrictions on porn that would be thrown out as unconstitutional even by the insane Supreme Court in the US were it to be tried here. The vast majority have draconian copyright laws, just like the US. The vast majority have prohibitions on drugs, much like the US. Many conduct mass surveillance on their people to varying degrees. If a country violates people's basic liberties, then they can never be considered to be functioning "just fine."
Rather than pretending that those countries function just fine (they don't), the real counterpoint is that the US government is not functioning fine, despite having the second amendment. TSA thugs molest people at airports; the NSA conducts mass surveillance on the populace; the government violates your right to control your own body via the drug war; the government is waging 7+ wars against countries that didn't attack us, many of which are unconstitutional because they were not declared by Congress; police routinely murder people in cold blood; police steal people's property without due process via asset forfeiture; and so on and so forth. So, what are these brave second amendment supporters who always talk about revolution doing about any of that? Fucking nothing. No, that's not quite true; many of them actively support the corrupt authoritarian scumbags that make this all possible, like Trump. So, rather than merely doing nothing, they're actively doing the wrong thing. Some freedom fighters!
(Score: 3, Informative) by curunir_wolf on Tuesday August 06 2019, @12:26PM (2 children)
I agree, we should license them like cars.
Go to the dealer, sign on the dotted line, and walk out with your gun.
You license is good everywhere in the country, so you can take your gun with you in the same manner you carry it into any state and any city.
All of your gun equipment you had when you bought it is grandfathered in. So just like there is no rule requiring retro-fit of airbags into old cars, that old AK you bought with 50-round clips is still good to go!
Caught in a minor infraction? Cops will just write you a ticket and send you on your way. No confiscation or taking you to jail. After all, you have a valid license.
So, yea, I agree.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TheFool on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:11PM
And let's not forget the most important part - it's not illegal to purchase or operate a car without a license. It's only illegal to drive one on public roads. You can do donuts around your own property as much as you like, or if you live far enough from the cities that land is cheap, you might have a small road system to get around.
So what I'm saying is that you should definitely be able to buy a gun, bring it home, and shoot targets in the back yard. And you should be able to do it whenever your parents think it's safe for you to do so. I started target shooting with my parents before I could ride a bike, and I get that that makes no sense in the city, but it's a perfectly reasonable, fun, and wholesome thing to do in the country.
(Score: 1, Troll) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:15PM
Impound lots and vehicular manslaughter/homicide don't exist in this dude's universe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @02:03PM (22 children)
Which is exactly why the gun owners support the NRA. Congratulations, you just validated every single ad they've ever run and just made every single supporter of the NRA willing to fork over a bit more money to fight such an action. You've just put the lie to every person wanting to find an otherwise reasonable solution which allows lawfully abiding people to possess a gun who've said, "no, be calm, we do not want to take away the guns of lawful people."
You also might just precipitate a civil war in the action, and that is no joke. Laugh at Heston all you want, but there are MILLIONS of Americans who are otherwise law abiding who would follow, "give me liberty or give me death." They're out there, and you just decided to throw a rock at the hornet's nest. Good job!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 06 2019, @02:18PM (21 children)
If there are so many gun owners who are such good people, then they shouldn't have a problem with background checks, preventing insane people and criminals from obtaining guns, licensing, training an a minimum marksmanship requirement. We require licenses for fishing, hunting and driving. And a minimum level of required competency for driving (although you wouldn't believe it when observing BMW's).
After all, preventing bad people from having guns is the best way to ensure that good people can keep their guns.
As you say, it may come down to a war. You point out the strong feelings of gun owners. But utterly fail to recognize that there are other good people who have equally strong feelings about their own personal safety and do not wish to need to be armed. Even being armed doesn't necessarily protect you from a crazy person with an automatic or semi automatic weapon.
Failing to see the other side's POV. But expecting them to just bow down without a fight over gun ownership. No willingness to have any kind of reasonable controls. And apparently this unwillingness is very widespread -- which makes me question that maybe there are not so many "good people" who own guns.
Other people have a differing POV.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @02:51PM (12 children)
Exactly. But the comment I responded to above doesn't propose what you're saying here.
The line for over forty years from the NRA has been something along the lines of, "NO! NO RESTRICTIONS! The second you start letting firearm ownership be restricted is the first step along the line of confiscating our guns. THEY'LL TAKE OUR GUNS AWAY!"
And there are all sorts of reasonable voices saying, "No, we won't take your guns away. We only want reasonable measures."
Now, let's ignore for a minute that right now, this minute, there are background checks for gun ownership. In most states (I am tempted to say all) if you even have a background of domestic violence you're not allowed gun ownership whether a felon or not. Those adjudicated mentally incompetent cannot have guns sold to them. Those who are felons cannot have guns sold to them. So part of what you're talking about already exists. Should there be a training and competency requirement as far as safely handling guns? I can even go along with that. (Though these mass shootings have nothing to do with gun safety if you think about it. Telling someone, "no, mustn't go on a rampage, dear!" won't fix the problem). And I live in a state that requires a state-level ID for gun possession, purchase, or ammo purchasing.
But then along comes somebody, "REPEAL THE SECOND! REPEAL THE SECOND!" And all of a sudden the fears that the NRA have been promoting for forty years aren't rhetoric. They're true. So all of a sudden the issue is in fact polarized. And all of us who felt like the NRA was overboard (and not members - I ceased my membership because I felt they were going off the deep end) suddenly feel like they'd better sign up.
There's a world of grey when it comes to the subject, and this is true. Is there room for reasonable discourse? Yep. Do gun owners want criminals and those who have been adjudicated with mental problems to possess guns? No, but we're not willing to have measures employed that take them out of our hands as well. But the second someone says, "yeah, we'll just take your guns away," that is a declaration of war on what I've always understood my civil rights to be. And that is when I, who consider myself reasonable and willing to listen to meaningful steps to promote a safer society, will say the first person who tries to do that (lawman, soldier, or civilian) will be shot at. And if it is lawman or soldier, I have no doubt I would die in that attempt. But I've pledged my life to other things before as well and still believe that the oath I took to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, most specifically covers such an event as this.
"But hey, wait, we're talking about using the processes embedded in the constitution to modify the constitution by the legally ratified way to do so." Yep. Does that matter to me? No. (And adding to the paranoid fears from decades ago... the far right warned decades ago that lists of licensees could also become lists of whom to visit to confiscate guns from. Wonder if that one is true or not.)
Reasonable discourse? Absolutely. End gun ownership? You have a war.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:11PM (9 children)
"Reasonable discourse? Absolutely. End gun ownership? You have a war."
You say reasonable discourse then raise up a false flag only supported by an insignificant number of people. I wouldn't sit too high on that seat of superiority.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @04:55PM (8 children)
Then come try and take my gun from me. And I wouldn't call 98,160,000 people insignificant if I were you. Will all of them fight? Nope. But I'd guess even 10 million would probably be enough. You might (might...) have a majority of people. We have the guns. Shall we roll those dice?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @05:54PM (5 children)
It's kind of hard to give much validity to your statements if you need to argue by sticking a gun to people's heads. "Agree with me about gun ownership or I will shoot you with my gun" sort of argues against any point you're trying to make.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @06:29PM (4 children)
Not really. I keep my gun. That's the point. And if (if) it is a binary choice of keep it or have it taken away then there we are and there is nothing more to discuss.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:16PM (1 child)
And no one ever said so.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:44PM
If [franciscanmedia.org] you [newrepublic.com] say [washingtonexaminer.com] so [pollingreport.com], pilgrim [debate.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @03:10AM (1 child)
Ah, so now we come to the heart of your "argument". So, you are going with argumentum ad baculum, [wikipedia.org] are you? I wish I could say I was surprised but, unfortunately, considering the fetid cesspool that SN has turned into I'm not. I hope you enjoy the hell on Earth you are turning America into because, frankly, I'm not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @03:27PM
Yep. Sad that it works, but there you are. I'm sorry that you're not stoked about the general vibe of where America is. I can't say I am, either. But you don't get to feel better by taking my gun away, no. I'd rather find other solutions for addressing those who shouldn't be in possession of guns.
"My mother said violence never solves anything."
"So?" Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. "I'm sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that."
" … I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea — a practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue and thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never settles anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms."
He sighed. "Another year, another class — and for me another failure. One can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him think." Suddenly he pointed his stump at me. "You. What is the moral difference, if any, between the soldier and the civilian?"
[Different student] "The difference, I said carefully, "lies in the field of civic virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not."
"The exact words of the book," he said scornfully. "But do you understand it? Do you believe it?"
Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers, p. 25.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 07 2019, @02:03PM (1 child)
> Then come try and take my gun from me.
What I find interesting:
My POV: don't let crazy people have guns. It's the best way for non-crazy people to keep their guns. Reasonable restrictions. You want your guns. I want my personal safety from crazy people without the need to be armed.
Gun owners: If you try to take my gun I'll kill you / start a war.
My conclusion: *those* gun owners are crazy. They don't even see my POV. Incapable.
It's like talking to a brick wall.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @03:17PM
Nope. I said nothing about not agreeing to reasonable methods to keep crazy people from getting guns. Reasonable restrictions are fine. Now: DEFINE REASONABLE. But let's say we agree that there are reasonable restrictions which lower gun violence while permitting gun ownership. I have no trouble with training and licensing all firearm owners in the United States. I have no problem with the fact that those judged mentally ill or incompetent cannot legally possess firearms (they already can't by law, or didn't you know that?) Still OK. You have every right to want to live in a way that you should not live in fear from a crazy person having a gun. So, do I not see your POV?
I'll just lightly touch on the observation that "personal safety from crazy people" is not guaranteed by taking a gun out of their hands. Such a person will be almost certainly be violent with or without a gun. Doesn't mean that you shouldn't take the gun out of their hands - you should. Just that taking the gun out does not guarantee your safety and maybe you should think about that.
But as pointed out by several: The Second Amendment has one purpose, which is to guarantee that individuals have the right to own a firearm if they desire. We already have legal restrictions on what that means - you don't get a military M-4 carbine just because you want one. Repealing it says one thing, "People do not deserve the right to own firearms." Repealing that is what the Ur-Parent wants. I could make an equal case that there are so many people who propose solutions and yet my POV isn't understood either.
And yes, what I am saying is that if my method for defending myself is attempted to be taken away then it will be used against that threat. Whether legislatively or literally. So if you do not want to die then don't try to do that. Don't try to do that and you and I have no quarrel.
In conclusion: Taking away the Second Amendment is equal to taking away the right of an individual to "keep and bear" firearms. The only reason to do so is to say otherwise lawful people should not have the right to be armed. Force that binary choice and you do indeed get the concept that I don't give a shit what your POV is, my liberty to keep my gun will be defended to the point of death. Taking some other course of action, like spending my tax money on better understanding why the mentally ill choose mass killing and trying to stop that, requiring that all handgun owners understand safety and are trained and licensed, etc. is fine. Isn't that a better course?
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Wednesday August 07 2019, @11:56PM (1 child)
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @02:27AM
Except https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/state-gun-policies/?noredirect=on [washingtonpost.com]
The infamous gun show and private sale loophole.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday August 06 2019, @08:41PM (3 children)
Show me your license for exercising your 1A right to spout an opinion. You would totally support such a system right? Getting trained, BG checked, no pseudonyms - real name only.
armed vs. unarmed. That's not a war.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 06 2019, @08:58PM (2 children)
Spouting opinions, even by crazy people, do not kill large numbers of people.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday August 07 2019, @01:39AM
...said 8Chan.
(Yes, I know that no 1A violation occurred here - private business etc).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:30AM
Just like owning a gun does not in and of itself kill large numbers of people.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday August 07 2019, @01:34AM (3 children)
Repealing the Second Amendment does not mean that all guns will be taken away any more than repealing Prohibition meant kids could sell alcohol by the sidewalk. What it does mean is that the 2nd can be replaced with a more nuanced set of rules that can still allow the vast majority of Americans to own guns.
Everyone points to Australia as the case where either personal liberty was destroyed or gun laws saved lives after Port Arthur. You could be forgiven for thinking that there are practically no guns in Australia, but you'd be wrong [gunpolicy.org] (the dip at 1997 was the gun buyback after Port Arthur). So, it's possible to improve the safety of the general public while simultaneously allowing guns - through reasonable limits.
(Score: 1) by Sally_G on Wednesday August 07 2019, @03:27AM (1 child)
That sounds good. Except, the "nuanced" replacement will be written by whom, exactly?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Mykl on Wednesday August 07 2019, @05:06AM
Why, those representatives that are elected by the people to represent their opinions, of course!
In all seriousness, the fact that politics in the US is rotten to the core and entirely populated by self-interested, soulless wraiths is a serious problem that extends far beyond this issue. The two-party, first-past-the-post system has set the bar too high for any serious alternatives to the R/D duopoly, and the lobbying/campaign funding issues allow interest groups far too much influence. Voluntary voting (on a weekday!) heavily discourages large swathes of the population from participating, further perpetuating the influence of interest groups and the wealthy. Gerrymandering has turned representative democracy into a joke in some parts of the country. All-or-nothing Electoral College votes for each state provide a small proportion of the population far too much influence in the outcome. Hyper-partisanship has destroyed the ability of congress to work together on developing solutions, when it is more important to 'beat' the other side than to come up with solutions to the country's problem (this was most evident in Mitch McConnell's decision to oppose Obama on every single piece of legislation proposed, even traditional Republican positions, just for the sake of it). Worst of all, both Republican and Democrat voters are so baked on to their 'team' that virtually nothing either party does will lose them votes from their core.
It's up to The People to fix this. I'm not holding my breath.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @03:27PM
The Second Amendment does not prohibit reasonable limits on gun ownership. It guarantees that individual persons have a fundamental right to be allowed to "keep and bear" firearms and that this right cannot be infringed upon.
There have been jurisdictions in the United States which have attempted to effectively take away gun ownership through requiring licensure and then denying that license to anyone who asks (or even more perniciously, denying to anyone not politically connected). The Second Amendment has been determined by Supreme Court decision to be the key that said this is not allowed in the United States. The same decision also acknowledged that the Second Amendment does not stand in the way of establishing reasonable restrictions.
It is District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). Look it up.
One problem is that people use the word reasonable restrictions as a virtue signal that they are not out to establish unreasonable restrictions. However, reasonable is subjective at best. That does not mean that common ground cannot be found. But what happens when I find your reasonable idea to be unreasonable?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @03:20PM
Then I guess you can't fix it. Some states are sufficiently dominated by urban/suburban votes to pull this off, but to get the required number, you're going to need a lot of rural votes too, and rural people just aren't going to give away rights they actually use to "fix" a problem that doesn't affect them, and barely affects anyone.
You may not mean that, but you're asking us to simply abandon one of our most powerful lines of defense against those who absolutely do mean that. Not happening.
You can make the same argument for 1A, 4A, and 5A, and sound just as ridiculous. Solving government disregard for the bill of rights by repealing it one amendment at a time is like solving a murder problem by repealing the laws against murder.
So you had an emotional experience which changed your mind? I don't reject the validity of that for you, but be aware your emotional experience is only persuasive to you and those who can identify with you.
If you think rural people are going to hear your story about the terror of hearing gunfire in your neighborhood, and respond by rallying to your cause, you really are clueless.
I hear gunfire at least once a week when the weather is decent.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @06:46PM (1 child)
Only the TV propagandists try to act like that is even possible. There are over 100 million armed people in this country. Pass forced confiscation/buy backs of "assault rifles" and see what happens. This is not New Zealand.
good luck with that.
The founders would have never tolerated driving licenses. "Free and unrestricted travel through these united states" is a far cry from the State Socialist licenses to drive we have now. All Americans would have laughed at the idea of begging permission to drive a carriage. Anyone seriously proposing a law to force it would have been hung from a lamp post.
Also, go read The Federalist Papers. The Founders said "of current military and police use" and that fighting (using those military weapons) against any laws (or their promoters/enforcers) that are contrary to the constitution (even against the spirit of the constitution) is every Americans *duty*, not only right. The 2a is for preserving the constitutional rights of The People against enemies foreign and domestic. Always has been. That being said, dangerous/career criminals (not a trumped up non-crime like drug felonies) and insane people (not seditious red flag laws or dubious complaints or BS psychological diagnosis) were excluded from the right to bear (carry around/hold) arms.
Most state communist/socialists probably know all this, and are just lying subversives that need to be dealt with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:34PM
Yet. There are people who would like it to be so.
Uh, you know there are communists and socialists who have no problem with individual gun ownership?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:32PM (2 children)
Wrong on two counts.
1) Repeal the 2nd Amendment and what takes it's place? You cannot promise "We're not coming to take your guns," as the 2nd is the only thing that stands between many who operate under the delusion that getting rid of the guns is the thing to do. You can promise that you personally might not be in favor of that is the closest you will get.
2) There is nothing to the 2nd Amendment that prohibits requiring a license to own a gun. Many jurisdictions (New York and Illinois are two places that come to mind) that require licensure to purchase a firearm. Unless you can explain what prohibits Congress from enacting a national licensing act (other than individual states which would go ballistic at the notion....) Where licensing has been challenged successfully has been because the laws basically suggest the authorities have the right to deny such a license in a method that is considered to be a 2nd Amendment violation (i.e. the cops can decide if you should have a gun or not when you're an otherwise lawfully abiding citizen).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by istartedi on Tuesday August 06 2019, @11:11PM (1 child)
IANAL, but "That which is no prohibited is permitted", also available in fancy Latin [wikipedia.org] is a fundamental principle of law. Get rid of the 2A, and all the existing gun laws stay in place, but no new gun laws are created at that instant. The 2A is not the only thing standing in the way of total gun prohibition. The political will of the people as a whole would then decide to what degree guns would be prohibited. Most (all other?) Western democracies have no 2A, but they still have some form of gun ownership because the will of the people as expressed through their representatives has decided that some forms of ownership are permissible.
Point 2 taken--"more restrictive licenses than the 2A currently allows" might have been a better turn of phrase.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @02:37PM
Yes, but my question was what specific laws or acts in the United States represent the principle that an individual has the right to possess weapons. Get rid of the 2A and all new gun laws can be created banning them. Wasn't that your point - not to ban, but to change policy? But the 2nd has one basic principle - to ensure that individuals have that right. So eliminating it is, ipso facto, intent to change that.
As to "more restrictive licenses", my point is that the 2nd amendment does that one thing: Guarantees (thanks to the clarification in Heller vs. D.C.) that individuals have the right to be in possession of firearms. And it needs to be there to enshrine that purpose exactly because of Heller and a parallel case in Chicago where local laws were enacted that de facto created a ban against possessing handguns in the city. One needed a license that the police could (and did) refuse to give for no constitutionally justifiable reason. In short, gun ownership advocates have already seen jurisdictions that already attempted to ban firearms (well, handguns) outright. And it was the 2nd Amendment that was pivotal in saying, "No, that is not allowed in this country." But that doesn't mean they can't be licensed, owners trained, etc. At least, I have seen no case law that suggests that the Second Amendment in any way restricts such - gun owners may not like it and the NRA will moan, but the 2nd only prohibits infringement in the sense of eliminating the right to possess and not the right to regulate. Same as any other amendment in the Bill of Rights - there are freedoms but they are not unlimited.
(Score: 1) by Sally_G on Wednesday August 07 2019, @03:22AM (1 child)
You can definitively pronounce that video games have nothing to do with real life violence? Maybe you should simply state that there is little proof that violent video games contribute to real life violence, and stop there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @02:30AM
It is a stupid discussion with all studies showing any influence by video games is insignificant. Even allowing it as a discussion point these days is ridiculous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @05:43AM
Good luck on your wish to have "Then we can have legislation that makes sense,"
When was the last time you saw "legislation that makes sense" in the USA?
Has there ever been "legislation that makes sense" in the USA?
If you repeal the 2nd amendment then govt has total control, so good luck with that approach.
How about gun laws that target the offending persons? Most if not all gun legislation affects
only law abiding persons. That is the real problem.