The Great ILX Gun Control Debate

yes, certain types of guns means all guns ever made, so ban all guns, problem solved

like what is the gun that its not easy to use to kill a lot of people with? wait I found it

http://i.imgur.com/MoKOX.jpg

ban all guns except for this one

ok lemme be really real here

i cdnt give two shits personally if guns were banned or not, altho i tend to find prohibition a bit of an admission of defeat

i am sympathetic to both sides of the debate, altho i find gun-veneration distasteful

i think banning guns would be so momentous and shocking to the us psyche that many people would assume that the paradigm had shifted for good, whereas it really wouldnt have - there wd still be isolation and there wd still be resultant evil

rly cant see how there wouldnt be a booming, extortionate underground market and how it wouldnt be possible to get hold of a piece very, very easily

this shit goes WAY deeper than a legislative banned/not banned dichotomy. maybe after a few generations there'd be an institutionalised lack of attraction to guns, but that wd take WAY longer than a serious, determined mental-health wake-up campaign, which we are as a globe in dire need of right fucking now, and im not sheepling you guys coz i know you agree

how wd a ban be enforced? interested. im open-minded to yr arguments but im unsure how they can be practically manifested. i know its not an either/or but i really dont want to lose the big picture amidst the hypothetical legislative restriction of one type of lethal weapon

p.s. in britain we have a so-called KNIFE CRIMEWAVE. cant ban knives, right? yeah so the campaign is 'what are you packing', showing youths with table-tennis bats n whatnot in their jeans. kinda lame but its positive, hinting in the right direction

I would take a knife crime wave over a gun crime wave any day if the fucking week, twice on Tuesdays

p.s. if i end up bludgeoned to death by a ping-pong-bat-wielding thug you have my permission to posthumously permaban

dont hear of too many multi-victim random knifing sprees

you can think of this better if you visualize a little model

let's say s = social factors that contribute to someone wanting to commit a violent act, p = psychological factors, e = economic

s + p + e ends up being the likelihood of someone wanting to commit a violent act

w is ease of access to tools for violent crime. 'w' is higher in a brazilian ghetto w/ guns everywhere and lower in an indian ghetto w/o guns everywhere.

x is 'prevention' that isn't already factored into previous variables, so like, police/laws. and m is the murder rate.

(S + P + E) * W - X = M

is fixing social problems going to help lower the murder rate? yes, it will lower s.
is trying to fix povery goign to help? yes. it will lower e.
would doubling the police force help? yes (probably.)

but no matter what s+p+e currently add up to, and no matter what other things we're doing at the same time to fight crime there is no reason not to also want to lower w.

guns are highly efficient tools that were ultimately designed to kill. every other discussion we're having about what to do to fix society does not change that fact. anything we can do to make them more difficult to acquire is, in itself, a step in the right direction and is not coming at any real social price beyond 'it's a little harder for milo to play shoot the paper'

but no matter what s+p+e currently add up to, and no matter what other things we're doing at the same time to fight crime there is no reason not to also want to lower w.

you're forgetting that there's a giant NRA logo above the equation that's shitting all over everything

people who are like 'no u see we must attack ~the root~ of the problem, which is s+p+e' are being deceitful. there is no such thing as ~the root~, there are countless contributing factors to someone getting murdered and we should do as much as we can to fight all of them. including, but not limited to making it more difficult for people to acquire tools that were developed to kill people.

Second paragraph of your first post there just highlights that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about when it comes to guns and "capabilities." Not only are you implacable for reasons you've set in stone, you may simply be too dim to even consider things on a factual basis if you wished to.

you're an ass, fuck off

you're apparently not bright enough to get the basic fact that guns are killing machines, and therefore they freak people out more than involuntary homicides from DUIs or even murders by other means. you have argued that they are not inherently dangerous, and they weren't designed to kill things. these things are asinine, absurd, moronic. you're dispassion, you're mocking and contempt of others fears on this subject, your clinging to "the numbers" (1 death is a tragedy, 1000 is a statistic) is disturbing. fuck your "factual basis", only fact is "guns=killing machines", a fact which you are too dim to grasp apparently.

http://www.lohud.com/interactive/article/20121223/NEWS01/121221011/Map-Where-gun-permits-your-neighborhood-?nclick_check=1

this is a good start, as gun owners should be treated like people w/ a history of sex crime

milo's clinging to 'the numbers' isn't disturbing it just suggests he sucks at math

Gun violence may be a complex, multifactorial issue, but some aspects (e.g., background checks, or the lack of them in many instances) are pretty straightforward. Sensible improvement in such areas would save lives, and forgive me for being so boring, but that would be a good thing.

Jerry Nunziato, former ATF special agent and head of the National Tracing Center at ATF, on the gun show loophole:

http://www.fixgunchecks.org/detail/jerry-nunziato

Nunziato again, on the extent to which the ATF has allowed itself to be controlled by the gun lobby:

http://www.thetakeaway.org/2012/dec/27/shortcomings-prevent-tf-curbing-gun-violence/

you're apparently not bright enough to get the basic fact that guns are killing machines, and therefore they freak people out more than involuntary homicides from DUIs or even murders by other means. you have argued that they are not inherently dangerous, and they weren't designed to kill things. these things are asinine, absurd, moronic. you're dispassion, you're mocking and contempt of others fears on this subject, your clinging to "the numbers" (1 death is a tragedy, 1000 is a statistic) is disturbing. fuck your "factual basis", only fact is "guns=killing machines", a fact which you are too dim to grasp apparently.

I certainly didn't suggest that guns are "not inherently dangerous," you twit.

You do that to ensure they're not dangerous, Z S. Obviously guns are dangerous - they fire a metal projectile at high speeds that can wound or kill - but that doesn't mean they're inherently dangerous or malicious.
You also follow those rules to ingrain proper handling - you don't point the gun at your friend even when you know beyond belief that it's not loaded so that you don't accidentally do that when it is loaded.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Wednesday, December 19, 2012 4:26 PM (1 week ago)

no I agree with milo, guns are not inherently dangerous, in fact they're not dangerous at all.

for me to poop on

^^^the great ilx gun control debate ;)

You forgot the other part, Z_S.
"by inherently dangerous, I mean that without something in the chamber a gun is just a block of steel in an odd shape"

You didn't mention murders by other means, I did. You did mention reckless homicide by DUI and equate it to murder by firearm about a zillion times.
I'm against all guns, shotguns, assault rifles, cap guns, all of them. The only reason I am making differentiations among them (it's idiocy to argue that they are all equally dangerous...this is not about statistics, the number of deaths attributed to them, it's about design of the weapon. an atom bomb is more lethal and destructive than a slingshot. everything that shoots a metal projectile isn't magically equal to every other thing that does so) is because that seems to be a good place to start restricting gun "rights" because no civilian needs to kill lots of moving targets quickly.

and a lightbulb without electricity is just glass in an odd shape, the fuck is even your point

xp - in the specific context of a gun I know to be unloaded, there is no inherent danger to them.

But that's why the first safety rule is to check - until you are absolutely sure that it is unloaded, every gun is assumed to be loaded and thus dangerous.

the fuck is your point

cars don't go til you put gas in them, great insight

milo's clinging to 'the numbers' isn't disturbing it just suggests he sucks at math

― iatee, Thursday, December 27, 2012 11:41 AM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah. he's sort of like the geir of guns, or like one of those libertarians who just repeats "that's bad econ"

not to be picky, but i brought that up because you just said "I certainly didn't suggest that guns are 'not inherently dangerous,'", when in fact you have said "Obviously guns are dangerous - they fire a metal projectile at high speeds that can wound or kill - but that doesn't mean they're inherently dangerous or malicious." later you further defined your definition of 'inherently dangerous', but that doesn't matter here. you didn't just suggest or imply that guns were not inherently dangerous, you actually typed out the words "that doesn't mean they're inherently dangerous".

anyway.

i'm kinda surprised you're still resorting to this argument that there is no inherent danger to a gun, and that's why the first safety rule is to assume the gun is loaded and dangerous. you know, a shipping container full of raving insane lions that haven't been fed in 2 weeks isn't inherently dangerous - that's why you take safety precautions to make sure that they don't claw their way out of the container and eat everyone.

?

The only reason I am making differentiations among them (it's idiocy to argue that they are all equally dangerous...

Tombot was introducing the "well, grandpa's duck shotgun isn't as bad" angle, and that angle is bullshit.

it's cool that all gun owners everywhere all remember to check first, if the gun is loaded, because guns are just these hunks of metal that aren't dangerous, and can't kill people

Let me restate my posisiton then in light of this: I am against the combination of guns and bullets.

no, see, the guns are just pieces of metal that shoot bullets out and can kill people. they're very dangerous! that's why the first rule when you handle these dangerous objects is to assume they're loaded, even if you're almost absolutely sure that they aren't. because they're very dangerous. and that's why guns aren't inherently dangerous.

no, guns are inherently dangerous because they're just these big hunks of metal that just happened to be shaped in this way that is incredibly safe and poses no threat to other human beings at all

i just...i can't even begin to figure out what to do with that. to make sense of it you'd have to get bill and ted to fly you back to aristotle's time and successfully propose a new branch of philosophical semantics or something

I don't know what's so difficult about context, ZS.
In that exchange, you used "inherently dangerous" before me.
"if guns aren't inherently dangerous than why does everyone who uses them follow the sacred code of gun safety (never point a gun at someone else, always assume it's loaded, etc)?"

I was, responding only to your question about how they can be seen as not inherently dangerous - and that is, when you know the gun is unloaded. Guns are dangerous because of the speedy metal projectile, yes? Well, if you know that there is no projectile, no gunpowder and no primer - then there's nothing that can hurt you, yes?

nothing in the world is inherently dangerous even an atomic bomb is not inherently dangerous you need somebody to set it off, you need people to be around it to die

think about it guys milo has a point

what even is 'danger'...do guns even exist? where am I?

Excuse me for speaking for him, but I think Tombot was trying to throw gun people a bone. All guns suck, but ok if you realllly need a firearm, you can have these certain varieties of them as I can somewhat see a legit non-murder use for them.
Milo you're still denying the differing designs of guns and what those designs are intended to do.

this is like if socrates was from texas and was also an idiot

max was actually the first person to talk about "inherent danger" and another poster pointed out how he doesn't see them as inherently dangerous.

xxp bill and ted seem like pretty cool guys, doubt they'd take a trip through time to support gun rights. "no dude ... that's not excellent." "wait ted, there's something ... that's not excellent?" "no bill ... not this time."

guys I just got this stuff in from california ... forgot the name but I think part of it might be 'blueberry...'? anyway ... *passes out*

can inherency be inherent

isn't the only truly dangerous thing...life itself

without life, there is no danger

without danger, there are no guns

and another poster pointed out how he doesn't see them as inherently dangerous

and you agreed

without guns, there is no life

without life, there are no guns

with guns, there is life

Excuse me for speaking for him, but I think Tombot was trying to throw gun people a bone. All guns suck, but ok if you realllly need a firearm, you can have these certain varieties of them as I can somewhat see a legit non-murder use for them.

And that's stupid, and bad policy. Which was my point. You've banned lots of things that cause little harm, but kept other things that cause somewhat more harm - and if you want to get into arguments about barrel length, let me offer you a secret people have known for ~150 years: all it takes to convert a "duck shotgun" to a "hide it under your coat shotgun" is a hacksaw. That's not true of semi-automatic rifles.

with danger, there are no guns