Another week, another school shooting

[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.

[smooth]

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

Pigeon chess

[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.

[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.

[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!

[cale]

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

[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.

[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).

[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.

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[mrsleeve]

^^
Yup and the NICS is fool proof as well, when you have guys that have High level Govt Military Clearances getting flagged for civilian firearms purchases


A CCW permit is one of the best ways. Hell in my state if you have a valid CCW your FFL does not have to call your 4473 in to the feds. The reasoning, is that you have undergone a more stringent B/G from the FBI, to obtain that permit, if you have it and its valid then then there is no reason you will be flagged by the NICS.

Also about a year ago there was real possibilities that the AR would be come a federally prohibited item, many people (who wear a much larger and heavier tin foil hat than I do) were trying to obtain them 3rd party to cache them out in the woods somewhere in a vault about 2 feet underground. No 4473 with your name on it from a FFL for a AR and no paper trail leading to you in this instance.

Most guys that sell in P/P transactions do something like that and at the least have a name and phone number for the guy they are selling too. Most guys know each other or at least have a mutual friend.

[BraveUlysses]

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

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How else am I to verify that I'm not selling to a criminal? Ask him or her? Just assume? Don't ask, don't tell?

Actually I offered both options, but showing a CCL is free while a background check is not. My point was that people contacted me and gave up immediately when I told them I wouldn't transfer without some sort of proof they are legally allowed to make the purchase. Some tried to plead with me, no dice.

But you've done a nice job with this post proving my point and smooth's as well--you tell me I should have just gone to an FFL (which I'm not opposed to) but you would balk if that was a legal requirement.

You dipshits want it both ways--you practically vilify me for doing my due diligence but at the same time you're unwilling to codify basic laws requiring verification that a party is eligible to make the purchase.

^^
Yup and the NICS is fool proof as well, when you have guys that have High level Govt Military Clearances getting flagged for civilian firearms purchases

Derp. Rejection rate is extremely low, getthefuckout with your shitty anecdotal evidence.

http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2011/09/foghorn/some-statistics-about-nics-background-checks-for-firearms-ownership/

[marshallnoise]

How else am I to verify that I'm not selling to a criminal? Ask him or her? Just assume? Don't ask, don't tell?

Actually I offered both options, but showing a CCL is free while a background check is not. My point was that people contacted me and gave up immediately when I told them I wouldn't transfer without some sort of proof they are legally allowed to make the purchase. Some tried to plead with me, no dice.

But you've done a nice job with this post proving my point and smooth's as well--you tell me I should have just gone to an FFL (which I'm not opposed to) but you would balk if that was a legal requirement.

You dipshits want it both ways--you practically vilify me for doing my due diligence but at the same time you're unwilling to codify basic laws requiring verification that a party is eligible to make the purchase.



Derp. Rejection rate is extremely low, getthefuckout with your shitty anecdotal evidence.

http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/201...rms-ownership/

Your personal preference does not translate into the need for a law to be passed. There are no double standards here, just the standard you imposed on your own transaction.

Some people want to sell their cars to someone they think will take care of it, but it is irrational to place that limitation on the buyer. If you want to limit your base of purchasers, that is your prerogative.

Not only is it not required and my belief it shouldn't be required to have private party background checks when selling guns, your desire to do so in your transaction should have no bearing on legislation. You just made it very difficult on both yourself and the buyer for no real reason.

It is fairly clear you experienced the burden of making someone or you pay to have a background check done to buy your gun. what does that say? Do you wish it was law so you wouldn't have to ask someone to do it? Make you uncomfortable? Feels like you are being unnecessarily burdensome?

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[ParsedOut]

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.

I'm going to assume this gem was directed at me, so I feel obliged to respond even if you have elevated yourself...
Subjected to a lifetime of gun lobby propaganda? Hardly, I'm not an NRA member and I don't sit around reading only pro-gun articles. I am aware of both sides of the argument as much as you like to pretend that I'm just a brainwashed gun nut zombie.
I don't recall saying it was stupid to think crime can be prevented, I said putting another law on the books that cannot be enforced (without a national gun registry) is a waste of time. We do however need to put laws on the books that help the root cause of crime instead of useless regulations that simply "ask nicely" since there is no way to audit or track if it's being done.
I'll say it again, I think universal background checks in THEORY make sense, but when you break down the logistics and the political agendas at play here, the potential harm done to our constitutional liberties are a much greater threat. The time and effort needs to be put into addressing the disfunction and culture that causes people to go to guns for malicious intentions in the first place.

I don't expect a response from you, but it's very apparent that if someone has a fundamentally different point of view from you then all they are doing is trying to "kill a thread". Your attempts at an easy solution are full of holes you conveniently avoided and decided to get high and mighty instead of actually addressing. I never said a mass confiscation will happen, you're putting words in my mouth. There is no easy (or effective) solution that does not pave the way for future administrations to gradually carve away what we're allowed to own to only a double barrel shotgun. The Second Amendment will not save us from bans and subsequent confiscation in "seems reasonable" chunks.

[marshallnoise]

I'm going to assume this gem was directed at me, so I feel obliged to respond even if you have elevated yourself...
Subjected to a lifetime of gun lobby propaganda? Hardly, I'm not an NRA member and I don't sit around reading only pro-gun articles. I am aware of both sides of the argument as much as you like to pretend that I'm just a brainwashed gun nut zombie.
I don't recall saying it was stupid to think crime can be prevented, I said putting another law on the books that cannot be enforced (without a national gun registry) is a waste of time. We do however need to put laws on the books that help the root cause of crime instead of useless regulations that simply "ask nicely" since there is no way to audit or track if it's being done.
I'll say it again, I think universal background checks in THEORY make sense, but when you break down the logistics and the political agendas at play here, the potential harm done to our constitutional liberties are a much greater threat. The time and effort needs to be put into addressing the disfunction and culture that causes people to go to guns for malicious intentions in the first place.

I don't expect a response from you, but it's very apparent that if someone has a fundamentally different point of view from you then all they are doing is trying to "kill a thread". Your attempts at an easy solution are full of holes you conveniently avoided and decided to get high and mighty instead of actually addressing. I never said a mass confiscation will happen, you're putting words in my mouth. There is no easy (or effective) solution that does not pave the way for future administrations to gradually carve away what we're allowed to own to only a double barrel shotgun. The Second Amendment will not save us from bans and subsequent confiscation in "seems reasonable" chunks.

But...The childrenz!

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[mrsleeve]

Derp. Rejection rate is extremely low, getthefuckout with your shitty anecdotal evidence.

http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/201...rms-ownership/

Still happens right????? there have been instance of people on this forum that were getting a red flagged transaction out of the blue, and were green the week before.

Getting a CCW IS NOT FREE, Nor would going to the FFL and having them do a 4473 for the transaction, they charge for that service you know that right. Now unless you were going to force a business to provide a service for free.............. Like I tried to explain earlier if there is no free and way to avoid the NICS all together then it makes the NICS unconstitutional. Something about those pesky rights and all that jazz..........

Its your property your free to sell or not sell it to anyone you wish, and put what ever conditions you want on to that sale. That dose not mean you get to put those same conditions on everyone else's property because it makes you feel better...