The Great ILX Gun Control Debate

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

without life, there are no danger guns

with life guns, there is danger

guns danger, life without

if life is dangerous and guns are dangerous...is life really a gun?

we should pass a law requiring that the name of guns be changed to 'life gun,' to show how important and indispensable life guns are to living

life guns, giver of life

REMINDER: in the history of man, a life gun has never ever senselessly taken away a human being's life.

Yes it's bad policy, because the good policy would never become law because of gun dipshits. The less guns the better, and restricting access to certain guns on ANY basis that would make it through the barricades the gun lobby has put up is Step #1. I don't care what harm they actually do, and that other things cause more harm. It's a symbolic ("guns are bad, this law shows many people think this") and pragmatic ("you nuts won't give much ground on this, so this is the weak half-measure we're left with") act. I don't know why this is so hard for you to understand. Fuck stats, fuck "bad policy". It's the Obamacare of gun laws.

It's the Obamacare of gun laws.

My sentiment exactly. Or, the anti-La Pierre of gun thinking. Yes, whatever strengthened gun control legislation could possibly be enacted will undoubtedly be imperfect, but start somewhere. Now.

The less guns the better, and restricting access to certain guns on ANY basis that would make it through the barricades the gun lobby has put up is Step #1.

it's also worth pointing out that because of this, Goal #1 of the NRA et al. is to oppose any action that could possibly lead to restrictions on any gun, no matter what the situation or context. that's why you get ridiculous situations like the leader of NRA blaming Newtown on absolutely everything EXCEPT guns, and in fact trying to play offense by suggesting that we put more guns in public schools (in the hands of police officers). that's how big industry lobbies work, guns and otherwise. on environmental issues, the polluting lobbies are omnipresent, no matter how small the matter at hand. they will not give an inch on anything, even if it's some innocuous suggestion for a slight improvement to a bureaucratic process to make things easier for everyone. the core message is We Are Everywhere, Watching You and the result is that no one can possibly imagine taking significant action on anything because hell, if they're fighting this hard on this tiny issue, how could we possibly beat them on the most important stuff?

rambling, but all of which is to say that one of the reasons people get pissed here, milo, is that for all intents and purposes your positions end up sounding a lot like the NRA.

reminds me of bjorn lomborg. he gets publicity by trying to portray himself as a "skeptical environmentalist", and he takes a different approach than Big Oil, but in the end, he's fighting for the exact same outcomes that the big polluters desire

Milo do you even recognize the catch-22 you've constructed? Only a full ban and confiscation of guns would be effective (though you've said you wouldn't even support this...presumably because alcohol also kills people so it would be unfair??), would be "good policy". But that won't happen, therefore, anything you propose as an compromise I get to shoot down as being "stupid" "bad policy" "emotional" "ineffective".

One thing that seems to come up a lot is the idea that these aren't 'assault' weapons, or that they are functionally equivalent to smaller, less threatening weapons - they just happen to look like military weapons.

Which misses the point: how these guns look is very important to the issue. Manufacturers spend huge amounts of money advertising their products, depicting them as sexy, powerful objects, associating them with wider ideas like self-reliance, patriotism etc.

I would imagine that the cultural content of a specific gun type would affect how it is used. Given that there is no reason to make guns look like more powerful versions of themselves that certainly could be something to look at restricting. I don't know how the USA deals with tobacco advertising, but it's banned here, and I would think that a ban on gun adverts would be a (admittedly small) part of whatever changes come out of these considerations. Perhaps the 1st amendment creates problems with that, I don't know.

I would imagine that the cultural content of a specific gun type would affect how it is used.

Um, I suppose I mean that the ideas or associations that are attached to the gun would alter people's behaviour with it. Just like ideas advertised around cars effect how people use them. I'll give it some thought and see if I can come up with a better way to express myself.

i think someone should take a survey of a few select survivalist compounds in montana to see what type of guns they prefer. I guess you could list out different uses for guns and see what each person prefers.

potential uses for guns:

[ ] protect against the tyranny of the federal government and that damn judge
[ ] fighting off waves of blacks and poor people who want to mooch off my hard labor when the obamapocalypse comes
[ ] shooting pieces of paper/flying discs/animals with poor fuzzy animal families who will likely mourn their deaths
[ ] giving a sense of personal power and purpose in an atomized, disconnected society
[ ] violent crimes
[ ] war
[ ] killing lots of people for some crazy ass reason
[ ] assassinating that damned n****** obama who wants to take away my freedoms
[ ] protect me and my loved ones from crimes that only exist in my paranoid brain. whoops, my son just shot his face off.

oh yeah, forgot to include suicide/murder suicide (bonus points for murdering pregnant girlfriend).

Basically the most benign and responsible cultural narratives surrounding and shaped by guns are still not that awesome. animal culling. I think that's it?

had an awful conversation with my [beloved family member] about gun violence and control on christmas eve eve. wound up with him angrily accusing me of being a lying idiot for advocating an aggressively anti-gun stance. the following night, after family christmas dinner, he argued that white people are the only ones who really suffer from racism in america today, which i mostly left alone, cuz where do you even go?

family: they fuck you up

note: i didn't bring either of these topics up

Um, I suppose I mean that the ideas or associations that are attached to the gun would alter people's behaviour with it. Just like ideas advertised around cars effect how people use them. I'll give it some thought and see if I can come up with a better way to express myself.

― the so-called socialista (dowd), Thursday, December 27, 2012 12:27 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you mean culture creates reality? get outta town

the best way out of a tense gun control debate with family, I've found, is "Look, regardless about how you feel about citizens having guns, I think we can all agree that we'll need some sort of weapons for the upcoming *wave your hands in the air* Zombie Apocalypse" and then while everyone's laughing try to sneak away,