The Great ILX Gun Control Debate

see that's not a very convincing approach to take when confronted with people who disagree with or don't understand you.

Hey do you want to have an actual conversation or just be dicks to each other?

haha wtf is hard to comprehend about my sentence?

are you in favor of the Patriot Act? cuz that seems to run on a lot of the same kind of justification.

In every totalitarian state that has ever existed the value of human life has decreased, not increased. If anything there would be more 9 year old girls getting shot, or gassed, or sterilized, or vivisected...

I can also not understand someone who actually pines for a police state but I think iatee was making a (hyberbolic) point not saying he actually wished to live in Stalinist Russia.

He's saying that the sentiment is hard to comprehend, not the sentence.

I personally would prefer to live in the authoritarian world where people's guns are taken away than the world where it's really easy to shoot a 9 year old girl. pretty straightforward!

That you think innocent people of any age are somehow safer under the boot of tyrant than everyday law-abiding people have access to guns because what they *could* do with them.

i think some of us are saying that there are a lot of hidden costs in that world as well.

xp

you see I don't think that the countries that currently ban guns are all tyrannies, is the thing, in fact they seem pretty nice

Bro, you said "scary authoritarian world," so sorry if you meant "Japan" or whatever.

i prefer to live in a world where i can coldly and calmly double-tap commie homos like you with my CCW

i think he meant ""scary authoritarian world""

hey look everyone cankles is back

hah you gun nuts are so fuckin sensitive

"the boot of tyranny"

theyre just guns yall

no one is putting you in leg shackles

Bro, you said "scary authoritarian world," so sorry if you meant "Japan" or whatever.

― Kerm, Sunday, January 9, 2011 1:17 PM

Kind of the point though, isn't it? Places where there are handgun bans are hardly scary and authoritarian. What makes America different that suddenly not being able to go grocery shopping with a glock at your side is basically the same thing as living in a police state?

thats how i feel when people start whining about phone tapping and shit - nooo my calls to grandma might be overheard ;_;

seriously, can we take this back over here?

― sleeve, Sunday, 9 January 2011 19:04 (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah come on y'all let's take our country BACK

I wrote an article about Tennessee gun owners a few months ago, just as a way to try to get more of a handle on their view of the world. I didn't come away from it wanting a gun, but I did come away more convinced than ever (and I was already pretty convinced) that in America we mostly just have to live with widespread gun ownership. And the good news is that, statistically, a very, very, very tiny percentage of legally-owned guns are ever used violently (or accidentally -- as horrible as kids shooting themselves or each other is, it actually happens incredibly rarely, we just tend to hear about it when it does).

Obviously widespread gun availability contributes to our relatively high homicide rate, and there's some evidence it makes our suicide rate higher, too. But those also are probably things we just have to live with. I'm not saying we shouldn't regulate it right up to wherever the Supreme Court will allow, and it's not like I think widespread gun ownership is a social good. But it's there, and starting fight after fight or fantasizing about banning guns outright is just not going to get anyone anywhere.

y do ppl want guns so bad if theyr not gonna use them idk it just seems like ppl are all "its my right!" but i mean u gave up yr right to a democracy p easily

from the other thread:

The whole point of having guns in America, according to the framers of the constitution, is so we don't end up with a scary totalitarian government. All other sidepoints are distractions because that is the point of the 2nd amendment. And, in this modern day, its bullshit to think a handgun is going to be helpful in an insurgency against a rogue regime. Handguns are bullshit.

If the time comes where citizens need to stand up and fight some oppressive fascist state we're gonna want machine guns and surface-to-surface rockets and grenades and heavy artillery... in any field of battle a fucking pistol is a weapon of last resort. A militia with just glocks is certainly not a well-armed one.

Ban handguns now and forever. That's my last contribution to this gun-control derail.

― no pop, no style -- all simply (Viceroy), Sunday, January 9, 2011 11:09 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

see, I really think this gets somewhere... lotta the pro-ban people on these threads aren't making any distinctions between weapon types (which is just making y'all look clueless and big-city elitist tbh), but if you wanna talk about handguns specifically I can totally get behind that. Just leave my mom the varmint rifles, the damn groundhog ate almost all the tomatoes this year before my brother-in-law got it with a .22.

Seriously, I can't imagine anybody except like an elk hunter needing more than a 22. I'm cool w/everything else getting legalized into oblivion.

I have no problem with hunting rifles as long as they are being used to hunt.

y do ppl want guns so bad if theyr not gonna use them

ever been to the range, it's really fun

people like doing fun things

tams do u own any guns

guns should be designed to blow up if they're pointed at anything other than a deer like motorbikes should be designed to blow up if they make more than a certain level of noise which is already too loud to be honest

yah but guns used for farming dont need to be "carried" if gun restrictions included clauses to do w/ using guns on yr own land for eg. i get that, my only experience of guns is like my uncle borrowing a gun to kill a fox that was getting the chickens (he didnt get the fox btw) and that seems like fine, but guns as a *weapon* is a diff thing and that is whats at issue yr just clouding it.

I dunno, a single handgun did a pretty damn good job of shooting a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats yesterday...

Just in case people think being anti-handgun is in some way reserved for 'big city elites,' I direct you to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Special_%28song%29

p sure this is the first time anyones ever called me a "big city elite" also

what plax said.

xpost

jeez Viceroy I was agreeing w/you! like I am glad you were making that distinction.

not sure how that came across wrong, was more referring to iatee and kevin k there.

also agree that overthrowing some hypothetical future tyranny with handguns is fantasy-land.

yeah it's such bullshit that our soldiers and marines waste time with handguns.

tams do u own any guns

― deejeuner sur l'herb (nakhchivan), Sunday, January 9, 2011 2:32 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

nah but my friend does and ive gone shootin w/him b4 its p kewl

tbh i do think marginalized groups like homos and mexicans should embrace gun ownership, cuz the cops aint savin ur ass from shit

xp I wasn't directing that at you sleeve, just trying to drive my point home about how I think there is more potential for a populist anti-handgun sentiment than some people may think...

Personally, my only experience with guns is with BB-guns and .22 rifles with sniper scopes my friends and I used for marksmanship competitions amongst ourselves. I'm not going to argue that shooting a gun isn't fun, or can't be a perfectly harmless sport/pastime -- cause it can be.

When I hear an asshole like Rand Paul bring up the hoary ol "guns don't kill people; people do" adage, I want to ask him what this guy would have used to injure or kill all these people without a gun.

was talking about 2nd amendment private militia nutball types, not actual military ops. (xp to Kerm)

xp gallon of gasoline, bunch of match heads.

that might b a little less subtle to carry in w/ u tho

yup just got my protected 2nd amendment barrel of petrol

dont mind me

how do u feel abt *concealed* tanks of gasoline?

sleeve: if the actual military sees a use for handguns, that kinda pokes a hole in the argument that they're useless in an insurgency against a tyrannical government's actual military.

in America we mostly just have to live with widespread gun ownership

I agree with this, tipsy.

Instead of yearning for ways to make handguns illegal, which is not going to happen in my lifetime no matter how many horrific crimes are committed, it seems much better to follow a strategy similar to that pursued by anti-abortion groups, where you shave away at gun ownership by imposing requirements that taken individually strike the public as being sensible, and which tend to winnow out the more irresponsible or casual gun owners.

Foremost among these new requirements should be increasing the training a person must have before acquiring a gun. The NRA should welcome this one, as it provides most of the gun safety training classes for the general public. They would see it as an opportunity to harvest more members and to increase their revenue stream. The trick is to keep tightening the requirements, adding more incrementally, until the burden of them dissuades the casual owner from even trying to buy a gun.

lol kerm do u really think ur handgun is going to help u overthrow the boot of tyranny

glwt