Another week, another school shooting

[marshallnoise]

Personally, I feel strongly that we need universal background checks.

When I sold my AR15 about a year ago, I had plenty of interest from buyers but you'd be amazed how many people refused to prove to me that they were legally able to buy it by proving they had a current concealed carry license (which isn't a foolproof method but is better than nothing).

What an absurd requirement to require a CCW to purchase a rifle or carbine. You should have just used an FFL for the transaction.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

[BraveUlysses]

Curious Brave, what is your proposal for rectifying this issue and controlling the nearly 1 gun for every single person in America?

Personally, I feel strongly that we need universal background checks.

When I sold my AR15 about a year ago, I had plenty of interest from buyers but you'd be amazed how many people refused to prove to me that they were legally able to buy it by proving they had a current concealed carry license (which isn't a foolproof method but is better than nothing).

[smooth]

Curious Brave, what is your proposal for rectifying this issue and controlling the nearly 1 gun for every single person in America?

Routine activities theory for criminal behavior is based on three principles: motivated offenders, suitable targets, and lack of capable guardians.

When all three of those elements are present at the same time, then crime occurs.

In this context, everyone is assumed to be a motivated offender, suitable targets are unregulated guns, and capable guardianship is contingent on people refusing to sell them to prohibited persons.

The weak link among those three principles is capable guardianship (there is always a motivated offender somewhere and an unregulated gun will always be the preferred type of gun for a motivated offender) so we need to make it so that sellers are strictly liable for selling their firearms to prohibited offenders. That's the main way to enforce compliance.


If we used thieves as an analogy, we'd have motivated offenders (thieves), suitable targets (things thieves want), and capable guardianship (people at home or locks). We know that people still steal when we lock our doors, but we don't refuse to install locks for that reason. We know that a certain percentage of thieves will be deterred simply by the presence of the lock.

A certain percentage of people are going to be deterred from purchasing their weapons when they know a background check is going to be conducted. Some of them might be planning a crime, some might be planning a suicide, and some may be completely lawful citizens. You can weigh the percentage of each group you think is going to be deterred by universal background check policies. Admittedly, some criminals are going to go through the black market and obtain firearms anyway, but that doesn't mean we want to make it easier for them by not even requiring background checks for private sales.

[cale]

Curious Brave, what is your proposal for rectifying this issue and controlling the nearly 1 gun for every single person in America?

[BraveUlysses]

I guess it's okay guys, we've only had 7 shootings since Newtown! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

http://www.theguardian.com/news/oliver-burkeman-s-blog/2014/jun/12/gun-lobby-tactic-redefining-school-shootings

The drumbeat of news about gun violence in the United States is so steady and rhythmic these days that it’s starting to fade into the background. Another week, another school shooting. One of the biggest risks now is of a population-wide numbness, eroding the will to tackle the crisis. So perhaps we should be grimly grateful whenever the gun lobby demonstrates that it retains the power to horrify.

Case in point: this sequence of tweets by the conservative journalist Charles C Johnson, featured on Glenn Beck’s website The Blaze and on Hot Air, and being forwarded enthusiastically everywhere among pro-gun tweeters and bloggers. (I found it via Quinn Norton.)

Johnson takes it upon himself to debunk the claim, made by the gun reform group Everytown for Gun Safety, backed by Michael Bloomberg, that there have been 74 school shootings since Adam Lanza killed 20 children, six adults and himself at Sandy Hook elementary School 18 months ago. In fact, Johnson concludes, there have only been seven. How does he manage this feat of mathematical magic? Simple: by narrowing the definition of “school shooting” so far that almost none of them count.

Let’s be fastidiously fair to Johnson and his supporters by acknowledging that a handful of the incidents he identifies do seem misclassified. Most people, for example, would surely agree that a shooting that doesn't happen on a school campus isn’t a school shooting. But the rest of his alleged debunkings offer a truly depressing glimpse of how pro-gun argumentation works these days.

It doesn’t count, for example, if you’re a student shot at school by a gunman who wasn’t originally planning to shoot up a school that day

In short – as far as I can follow the logic – the message to parents concerned that there are loaded weapons going off on school property, and that their sons and daughters are at risk of being hit by bullets from those weapons, is this: it doesn't really count unless the shooter is a pupil, not involved in a gang, who made a pre-meditated plan to massacre a large number of students.

And not in the parking lot.

(If you think this kind of absurdity is confined to the fringe, see this only slightly less mendacious CNN piece, which brings the figure down from 74 to 15 by excluding, among others, shootings motivated by "personal arguments, accidents [or] alleged gang activities and drug deals". Johnson says the cable channel stole his work.)

What’s especially dispiriting about this flat denial of reality is how little prospect it offers for rational discussion or compromise. Even if you're a supporter of gun control, you can still hold a reasoned discussion with somebody who believes that the benefits of widespread firearms ownership outweigh the harms. You can discuss international comparisons; and how no comparable country experiences anything like this level of gun violence; the other person can seek to establish why those comparisons aren't relevant; or that, yes, violent deaths are actually in decline in the US, and so on. But when the pro-gun side of the argument consists of simply insisting that the gun violence that people are so distraught about isn't real gun violence? Then there's no clear way forward at all.

And let’s not forget the bigger point here. A pro-gun journalist applies the most stringent imaginable criteria to the term 'school shooting'; he rejects every instance he possibly can, for reasons many might regard as spurious, and then triumphantly declares that there have only been … seven bona fide school shootings in America since December 2012!

Only seven school shootings since December 2012.

I hope I never to get to the point at which the word "only" in that sentence makes even the slightest bit of sense.

I feel safer already!

[The Dark Side of Will]

Yet they don't.

Yet they don't. Why not?

They do, actually. The Isla Vista shooter did.

There are laws on various books to deal with aggravated assault with a vehicle... They wouldn't be there if it never happened.

[marshallnoise]

They're aware of what you're saying intuitively because all the facts and their experiences demonstrate what you're saying. But they've been subjected to a lifetime of propaganda from the gun lobby, which spends how many hundreds of millions of dollars per year? That's why, I assume, people post contradictory positions. You have someone post that it's stupid to think one can prevent crime, then later post we need to look at the root causes of crime. We need to have universal background checks, then later post that we can't because the government will embark on mass confiscation and that we shouldn't be focused on keeping firearms out of the hands of people adjudicated to be dangers to themselves or others.

We have seen these guys argue that gun murders have gone down in the last few decades, while incidents have increased, yet conclude that the laws that have become stricter during those same decades don't work. We have seen them argue that high violence areas with strict gun regulations must be doing something wrong while seemingly unaware that a few miles from those places guns are readily available. They argue that people shouldn't sell to dangerous felons and mentally ill people, but they're not willing to check. They even argue that the reason they carry is to reduce crime, but call people who respond to crimes in progress stupid and that the smartest thing to do is run away from danger.

Seems like arguing with people who are just trying to confuse the situation to kill the thread by arguing against every single comment regardless, they're confused themselves over what their actual beliefs are, and/or they can't square reality with the propaganda that has been polluting our policy discussions.

If you read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in the context of what was going on in the Colonies at that point in time, the principle of an Armed Citizenry standing up against a potential tyrannical government is the only conclusion to be reached.

That is the filter by which defenders of personal liberty see this whole discussion.

You will dismiss the Constitution as dated, erroneous and ill-conceived and therefore my view in this whole discussion is flawed. Well, that's what I said about the sloppy article you cited that grossly interpreted a statistic as the basis for more gun control.

The contradictions you try to draw up are just convenient for your side of the debate but are not contradictions in our side of the issue. It is serious fucking business drawing a gun in an active shooter situation. Our reluctance to be vigilantes is out of the seriousness of the situation. You cast it off as a reason to not allow more CCWs.

Same goes for universal background checks which is a form of registration. Given the climate of the gun debate as well as your complete disregard of a specifically enumerated right as well as history ancient and recent, why wouldn't we believe that confiscation is the inevitable conclusion?

You see, for principled men on this side of the debate, liberty trumps your feelings of personal safety. Extreme caution MUST be used, liberally I might add, when trying to carve out solutions to problems like school shootings. Unintended consequences are planned by legislators. Naturally we'd be leery of measures that restrict 2nd Amendment rights in the pursuit of safety.

In a state of tranquillity, wealth, and luxury, our descendants would forget the arts of war and the noble activity and zeal which made their ancestors invincible. Every art of corruption would be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our resistance formidable. When the spirit of liberty, which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms, is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin and render us easier victims to tyranny. If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom—go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

[smooth]

This thread is a perfect example of dunning kruger run wild.

Pigeon chess

[smooth]

I am seriously beginning to believe that you don't comprehend any of this.

They're aware of what you're saying intuitively because all the facts and their experiences demonstrate what you're saying. But they've been subjected to a lifetime of propaganda from the gun lobby, which spends how many hundreds of millions of dollars per year? That's why, I assume, people post contradictory positions. You have someone post that it's stupid to think one can prevent crime, then later post we need to look at the root causes of crime. We need to have universal background checks, then later post that we can't because the government will embark on mass confiscation and that we shouldn't be focused on keeping firearms out of the hands of people adjudicated to be dangers to themselves or others.

We have seen these guys argue that gun murders have gone down in the last few decades, while incidents have increased, yet conclude that the laws that have become stricter during those same decades don't work. We have seen them argue that high violence areas with strict gun regulations must be doing something wrong while seemingly unaware that a few miles from those places guns are readily available. They argue that people shouldn't sell to dangerous felons and mentally ill people, but they're not willing to check. They even argue that the reason they carry is to reduce crime, but call people who respond to crimes in progress stupid and that the smartest thing to do is run away from danger.

Seems like arguing with people who are just trying to confuse the situation to kill the thread by arguing against every single comment regardless, they're confused themselves over what their actual beliefs are, and/or they can't square reality with the propaganda that has been polluting our policy discussions.

[mrsleeve]

I dont think you know how long this argument has been in place and how long this debate has actually been going on. Much smarter and resoundingly greater men than you and I have been debating this very concept for centuries

Trust me I know what anecdotal means.

[BraveUlysses]

then its been anecdotal for the best part of the last 250+ years in this debate. If its so anecdotal then why has it not gone away and proven to be such in a definitive manner, that even us shithead peasants can understand????

You're so dumb you don't even know what anecdotal means, great job keep posting stupid shit.

[mrsleeve]

You're arguing with shitheads who are using anecdotal evidence as if it's meaningful in any way.

This thread is a perfect example of dunning kruger run wild.

then its been anecdotal for the best part of the last 250+ years in this debate. If its so anecdotal then why has it not gone away and proven to be such in a definitive manner, that even us shithead peasants can understand????

[marshallnoise]

You're arguing with shitheads who are using anecdotal evidence as if it's meaningful in any way.

This thread is a perfect example of dunning kruger run wild.

As opposed to pointing out the obvious like, people who own guns are likely to be injured by a gun. If anecdotal evidence is stupid so are statistics that are so broad and generalized they add nothing to the conversation.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

[ParsedOut]

I am seriously beginning to believe that you don't comprehend any of this.

I'm going to regret this... but you fail to understand that if you take the gun out of the equation (which you don't want to discuss HOW you take guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them, instead "stop giving them to the mentally ill" is your standard response) then you still have people who wish to cause harm to others. They will make pipe bombs, they will use knives, they will use baseball bats, they will use big rocks. This will shift the "gun violence" but the overall violence (which you also don't want to discuss) will remain, it's like pouring water from one bucket to another, you still have the same amount. You solve this violence problem by attacking the cause (which you also don't want to discuss) to lower overall violence and the evil gun violence will drop with it. There is proof that the overall violence rate has been dropping year over year (too lazy to dig up the article, but it's been posted and you've seen it) but that doesn't matter to you for some reason. Also, the percentage of mass shooting deaths to overall gun homicide rate is incredibly low (once again, it's been posted and I'm not going to try to dig it up for you to ignore), we're trying to solve this "epidemic" of mass shootings while ignoring all the other people killed each day by gang bangers with handguns. Rifles and big magazines are not the bad guy here, it's the fucked up people that buy a cheap $200 gun with a serial number scratched out and use it to go kill another 18 year old because he called his "boo" a bitch.

Anyway, this is a continued waste of time because your agenda and lack of understanding of the big picture is evident.

[BraveUlysses]

Oh come on.

The chart was saying gun owners are more likely to be involved in a gun-related incident.

Much like if you drive a car (instead of say walking to work) you are more likely to be in an accident involving a car.

You're arguing with shitheads who are using anecdotal evidence as if it's meaningful in any way.

This thread is a perfect example of dunning kruger run wild.