The Great ILX Gun Control Debate

A friend of mine is in construction, and works some pretty bad neighborhoods. Last night he mentioned considering carrying a gun at times, so I brought up the gun fallacy: if you feel so threatened you need to carry a gun, let alone possibly need to use your gun, the person or persons threatening you will likely kill you before you have a chance to use it. The hero with a concealed gun only seems to have an advantage where either few have guns or gun violence is rare. Dabble in packing where people get shot all the time and you're asking for trouble, unless you're some on the prowl draw-first vigilante. And those stories rarely end with medal ceremonies, and mostly exist in the movies.

I liked his compromise, though, of carrying a dramatically extendable police stick. Those things look scary.

I wonder how many motherfuckers who wore those Metallica throwing star shirts actually went out and bought throwing stars? I hadn't thought about it before, but they probably had a huge boost on the throwing star industry!

This is such a massive thread that I haven't been able to read everything, so I'm not sure what you think about concealed carry laws. What do you think about extending concealed carry rights to all able-bodied adults without violent criminal convictions?

Well, I kinda go two ways on this. Prohibitions on concealed carry doesn't stop crime; licensed concealed carriers are much less likely to commit crimes than the population at large - but concerns about giving everyone carte blanche to walk around strapped without oversight is justifiably worrisome to a lot of people.

I think there's probably some merit to two-tiered carry laws - unlicensed open carry is legal but to carry concealed you need a license/background check; or unlicensed concealed carry is legal but going through a background check/licensing process gets you certain privileges that are still restricted for the unlicensed.

So I've read a lot from pro gun, anti gun control people about how much they value responsibility, guns are not toys, you never leave a loaded gun lying around, etc, etc.

I suppose it leaves me wondering a) how responsible, in this practical sense, is American gun culture and b) if there isn't another kind of responsibility that's being missed here, as in, the responsibility of not being 'proud' of guns or emotionally attached to them, and just seeing them as items you own? Because you could follow all the gun safety rules but if you're still getting excited by your guns, as a culture, then that might be as much of a source of trouble as any technical lapses in safety.

Not an American and don't own a gun, so apologies if this comes across as ignorant. Am trying to understand this more.

i like the idea of a litmus test that refuses permits to people who are a little too excited about having a gun, but japanese gun fetish magazines really put the american ones to shame, so it's certainly possible to divorce an unseemly enthusiasm from practical violence.

horrifying ebay motors link

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/School-Bus-Yellow-Riddled-over-6000-bullets-/271160830619?pt=Buses&hash=item3f2271ea9b

Not everyone enjoyed their elementary or secondary educational opportunity. Some less than others.

Django, you say that since criminal convictions are not fairly racially distributed, "we should just legalize everything," obviously sarcastically. But isn't that kind of the exact direction that thoughtful modern societies are heading in? In the US, certainly we've eased if not eliminated restrictions on birth control, cohabitation, drug possession and certain sex acts--in part because these laws were widely seen as disproportionately affecting women, homosexuals or minorities (obviously talking about broader historical trends, not the last few election cycles). In addition, this is the exact reason given for eliminating the death penalty. So why doesn't it apply to the gun control issue?

Josh, I sympathize with your friend and any others who have to live or work in exceedingly violent neighborhoods. Maybe it's propaganda, but I've read convincing arguments that heavy restrictions on gun ownership/carrying rights lead to more dangerous neighborhoods. If your threatened construction worker friend and enough of his co-workers packed, it seems to me that the threateners would quickly learn about the new status quo and they would avoid construction sites and workers at all costs.

I simply don't believe that most dangerous criminals actively look for firefights. Most of them are grown-up playground bullies who want money and credibility but they're not brave. The few unbalanced types who don't have that self-preservation instinct may go out in a blaze of "glory" and make it into the headlines, but I think that most criminals are looking for easy marks - to prey on the weak. Maybe I'm misremembering the sensationalistic "scary gangs are out to get us" news stories, but it seems like they're constantly bemoaning about how most of the victims of gang violence aren't gang-affiliated.

Just musing here, but does a lot of the disagreement on this issue stem from geographical cultural differences? Despite how some like to say that the U.S is homogenous, but in the non-urban West I grew up in, the word "gun culture" doesn't really register. I've known so many gun owners with completely variant attitudes and beliefs that I can't figure out what that term really means - never mind the fact that it seems to mean different things depending on who is using it. Sometimes the "gun culture" is the pistol owners who make the decent rifle owners look bad, sometimes "gun culture" is the mean semi-automatic rifle owners who make the hunters look bad, and sometimes "gun culture" means all private gun owners. If "gun culture" is bad I'm against it, but first I have to understand what it even means.

Mao Zedong said "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." It's one of those "too iconic to be true" quotes but I just checked it and I guess it's from Chapter 5 of the the Little Red Book. The quote really resonates with me, for some reason. Our civil institutions are great, but sometimes I wonder if the threat of violent retribution isn't the only thing keeping everything from falling apart.

Oops, I guess I was responding to "Sufjan" not "Django," forgive me, it's late.

In addition, this is the exact reason given for eliminating the death penalty

there are other strong reasons for eliminating the death penalty asides from its disproportionate use against minorities.

my reasons for being anti gun and anti death penalty are pretty much the same. the death penalty is too expensive, doesn't actually work, and there's too much risk of wrongfully killing an innocent person. the cost of legal guns to society is too high in terms of the number of lives lost, guns don't actually work for their stated purpose of protecting us from tyranny or arguably even self defense, and too many innocent people are killed by guns either intentionally or accidentally.

Just another law-abiding gun another, ndb, move along: http://gawker.com/5992400/caught-on-camera-angry-driver-starts-fight-with-teens-who-cut-him-off-pulls-out-a-gun-after-getting-beat-up

"going armed to the terror of the people"

cool charge

"The most ardent advocate of gun rights, the National Rifle Association, casts the link between guns and suicide as something of a virtue. 'Gun owners are notably self-reliant and exhibit a willingness to take definitive action when they believe it to be in their own self-interest,' the NRA wrote in a fact sheet, called 'Suicide and Firearms,' on the website for the group's lobbying arm. 'Such action may include ending their own life when the time is deemed appropriate.'"

holy shit, tbh.

Gun store nixes Mark Kelly's AR-15 purchase

"MacKinlay said he sent a full refund to Kelly and nixed the transaction because Kelly made statements in the media that the rifle purchase was "for reasons other then (sic) for his personal use.""

Because no one would ever buy a gun to make a political point

The city council in a small north Georgia town voted Monday night to make gun ownership mandatory – unless you object.

Things that are not an Onion article...

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-18-2013/gun-control-whoop-de-doo

for some reason i feel like i've had a similar conversation

cool that milo z agreed to be interviewed on tv

i did like the whoop dee doo ending

sadly due to the nature of internet message boards, such closure is not possible here

In a city still reeling from a shooting rampage that killed six and severely injured a congresswoman, contrasting giveaways are being proposed for a handful of its working-class neighborhoods.

One would dole out free shotguns to poor adults. Another would hand out free school supplies to needy children.

Talk of the gun giveaway has divided residents in the Tucson neighborhoods of Midvale Park, Pueblo Gardens and the Grant-Campbell area. These communities now find themselves thrust in the middle of a nationwide conversation about gun ownership after they were singled out by a fellow Tucson resident as high-crime neighborhoods that he believed could benefit from free firearms.

Shaun McClusky, a real estate agent who lives in the Tucson area, said he heard about the Armed Citizen Project and contacted the group's leader, Kyle Coplen, a post-graduate student in Houston. Coplen's initiative has raised about $13,000 to purchase shotguns that would be distributed in seven cities, perhaps more.

Recipients will have to pass a background check and will be given special training before receiving a free shotgun.

"It's about home protection," McClusky said. "If you are a single mom or dad and can't afford a shotgun, we'll give one to you."

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/13/nation/la-na-ff-hometown-tucson-shotguns-20130414

They should give the people a choice, a free shotgun or $500.

Why wouldn't you just take the shotgun and rob the other guys?

once you become a gun owner you're always responsible is my understanding

i can never remember which thread i use to post updates to the unfolding 3D printer gun debacle, so i guess i'll just use this one.

Eight months ago, Cody Wilson set out to create the world’s first entirely 3D-printable handgun.

Now he has.

Early next week, Wilson, a 25-year-old University of Texas law student and founder of the non-profit group Defense Distributed, plans to release the 3D-printable CAD files for a gun he calls “the Liberator,” pictured in its initial form above. He’s agreed to let me document the process of the gun’s creation, so long as I don’t publish details of its mechanics or its testing until it’s been proven to work reliably and the file has been uploaded to Defense Distributed’s online collection of printable gun blueprints at Defcad.org.

All sixteen pieces of the Liberator prototype were printed in ABS plastic with a Dimension SST printer from 3D printing company Stratasys, with the exception of a single nail that’s used as a firing pin. The gun is designed to fire standard handgun rounds, using interchangeable barrels for different calibers of ammunition.

...Update: Defense Distributed’s political opponents aren’t waiting around for its printable gun to be finished and uploaded before calling for it to be banned. Congressman Steve Israel issued a press release Friday responding to this story: “Security checkpoints, background checks, and gun regulations will do little good if criminals can print plastic firearms at home and bring those firearms through metal detectors with no one the wiser,” his statement reads. “When I started talking about the issue of plastic firearms months ago, I was told the idea of a plastic gun is science-fiction. Now that this technology is proven, we need to act now to extend the ban on plastic firearms.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/05/03/this-is-the-worlds-first-entirely-3d-printed-gun-photos/

i should have included this paragraph as well: "Technically, Defense Distributed’s gun has one other non-printed component: the group added a six ounce chunk of steel into the body to make it detectable by metal detectors in order to comply with the Undetectable Firearms Act. In March, the group also obtained a federal firearms license, making it a legal gun manufacturer."

i had mainly been dreading 3D-printed guns because it would be another way for criminals to get their hands on a weapon without regulation, but i didn't even think about the fact that you could carry them past metal detectors. ugh

wait idgi ppl can basically make origami guns? they just print them out?

It IS pretty weird that that bit from the end of In The Line of Fire is becoming reality

i remember reading when i was a kid about ppl in prisons making guns from magazines or something, i am very confused as to how all this works but it scares me

I'm not particularly afraid of this. Not yet anyway. There are already so many guns available that a few ppl with the expensive equip to gin up a plastic toy able to shoot a few rounds doesn't seem like a big deal. But the future...

To repeat my hobbyhorse: with a nice steep Pigovian tax on ammo it wouldn't matter what kind of gun was out there.

(what if you could print ammo?)

I'm not particularly afraid of this. Not yet anyway. There are already so many guns available that a few ppl with the expensive equip to gin up a plastic toy able to shoot a few rounds doesn't seem like a big deal. But the future...

yeah I agree, this isn't that alarming

ya there are plenty of metal guns to be banned first, lets keep our eyes on the prize

if we can't even muster political will to ban freakish nu-guns that nobody likes, banning guns that people are used to might be too lofty a goal at the moment.

ppl are already accustomed to getting shot by a wide variety of fine firearms you see,

It's a single-shot zip gun - you can build one out of parts from Home Depot without needing a $25k 3-d printer.

The whole project still looks like libertarian circle-jerking designed in large part to troll liberals, IMO.

sad but true, c.f. the shootout part of boston bombing.

^ feelin this

(xpost to milo)

one day 3d guns will be the issue that unites liberals and conservatives against circle-jerking libertarians.

xp yeah, i kind of agree. they're even somewhat upfront about the design being more for symbolic use than practical

It'll be cool when the 2nd amendment protects a citizen's right to own 'defense' nanobots in the year 2043.

My cousin's wife sent this forward yesterday (names removed):

So today was dress up like a movie character or someone from a story book you like. Typically, he wanted to be a cowboy: he picked Clint Eastwood (the Good, the Bad & the Ugly) but he was not able to use any fake weapons in his holster ... you can't even do a paper rendition (or even draw) of a gun or knife in school these days and no lassos either. While we can all agree weapons don't belong in school, I don't think any of us ever imagined that dressing up like a cowboy for fun would ever be so controversial ..... After some discussion about what to do with his empty holsters, he decided to arm himself with the Constitution -- so that even though he can't go dressed up like the cowboy he wanted, he is still packing! (Thanks to his aunt for the pocket Constitution ... )

Context: the boy's dad -- an obnoxious conservative -- is a hunter and has taught his son to use weapons. I grew up around guns and have endured more than one hunting expedition, but way before the rash of gun catastrophes I was uneasy. Am I wrong in thinking this email is creepy?

the last sentence is pretty creepy

in general tho I would say cowboy costume does not require a gun so wtf

also: the boy's eight years old

I still remember vividly the quiet "why don't you take that home" talk I got from my teacher when I brought my Megatron Transformer to school

That's a different problem: Megatron was a fucking disaster as a robot when transformed.