The Great ILX Gun Control Debate

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Oh, if I really wanted to get a gun, given enough time, nothing could stop me -- or anyone else, for that matter. But the more easily I can come by the means to act on such impulses, the more likely I am to actually carry them out. Carrying the flame of righteous indignation for a few hours is easy; for two weeks, not so much. And I don't see that as unusual at all -- in fact, I think it's human nature.

So if nothing else, gun control is an excellent means of maximizing two intervals: the interval between when you want to kill someone, and when you have the means; and the interval between when you begin to act on the impulse to kill someone, and when they're actually dead. With a gun, that interval can be near-instantaneous, but many a murder has been forestalled when, after the first strike with knife or club or hatchet or fist, something has happened to prevent the fatal blow.

(xpost)

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 05:52 (seventeen years ago) link

But how does "Ban guns" follow from "I might be tempted in the heat of the moment"? Tempted to drive aggressively = Ban cars? Tempted to abuse alcohol = prohibition? I can't control myself = lock me up now?

Besides, if you'd draw a gun on someone for making fun of people or being mean in general, then there's something much more wrong with you than the potential for a heat-of-passion crime.

― Kerm, Thursday, 19 April 2007 05:58 (seventeen years ago) link

I'll let someone else field the first half of that.

Besides, if you'd draw a gun on someone for making fun of people or being mean in general, then there's something much more wrong with you than the potential for a heat-of-passion crime.

Really? What if I told you that she was [insert race here] and they were yelling racial epithets at her -- would it be OK then? Because it's definitely very important to me, you see, that I be indignant for the right reasons. I'll wait expectantly while you tell me what those are.

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 06:09 (seventeen years ago) link

("I'll let someone else field the first half of that" -- that is, someone who doesn't mind answering the same clichéd argument every time it's trotted out)

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 06:12 (seventeen years ago) link

(Oh, great, I love it when I'm foiled when trying to do special characters properly.)

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 06:13 (seventeen years ago) link

dear lurker #2421 - did you call me out on another thread for identifying with the aggressor?

― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 19 April 2007 06:31 (seventeen years ago) link

Dude, if your portrayal of your psychology in that incident is anything other than a half-assed attempt to invent a controversial "surprising/shocking" way to prove your eventual conclusion, you shouldn't be allowed near blunt instruments, let alone firearms. Seriously.

Also, racial relations don't shore up your point, so stop using them as a cheap argumentative tool.

xpost to lurker.

― John Justen, Thursday, 19 April 2007 06:42 (seventeen years ago) link

So basically, if I have the urge to do harm to people who are torturing my friends, I'm fucked up? I think I'm pretty OK with being fucked up in that particular way, thanks.

MJTB, I called you out for (1) behaving with total insensitivity and callousness towards Remy, which you apologized for, and (2) claiming some kind of equivalence between the violence-implied bullying of "scary kids stomping down the hallway" and the snickering of nerds at slow learners. If anything, yes, you seemed like an apologist for physical bullying and the marginalization/mistreatment of social misfits.

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 06:46 (seventeen years ago) link

Frankly, I'm not sure I trust anyone who doesn't have the urge to hurt people who are torturing the vulnerable.

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 06:47 (seventeen years ago) link

("have the urge" = feel the impulse, at the time)

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 06:47 (seventeen years ago) link

"do harm" is a long fucking way from "Make them grovel on the floor, call me "sir", beg for their lives. To turn their arrogance upside-down, to make it so that -- despite the fact that there were three of them, one of me, and any one of them could've beaten the shit out of me -- they were powerless, and I could force them to confront their own folly, to be a hair's breadth away from a death caused solely by their own arrogance and cruelty, and to be spared from it only by an act of mercy that exceeded anything of which they themselves were capable."

So lets not mince words, huh?

― John Justen, Thursday, 19 April 2007 06:51 (seventeen years ago) link

Wait wait, I think lurker's point is pretty explicitly that he considers himself a normal person, and since he's experienced situations in which he'd be tempted to do something stupid with a gun, he worries about what other people might do with them, as well. As a personal statement, that's pretty simple and straightforward; you can say that's not a valid reason for legislating gun control, but you don't have to circle around it looking for holes, I don't think. Let's not make lurker out like a freak, either -- I'm sure a lot of normal people have felt that way at some point. Besides, the issue isn't whether people do stupid things with guns or not -- some do, some don't, and we're probably not going to get far arguing the proportions without some magical statistics -- but rather at what point of people doing stupid things we feel like it's reasonable for government to take certain actions. (And that's a role-of-government issue that's only incidentally related to facts about reality.)

P.S.: As a separate issue, what Lurker's laying out about "maximizing two intervals" is obviously one reason for existing waiting-period laws -- trying to prevent people from purchasing guns in the heat of a "shoot XX" impulse. I'm curious what everyone thinks of those? (And I mean apart from arguments over gun-show objections, which'd seem to be as much about logistics and economics as anything else.) But dudes like John Lott tend to think this is the worst thing ever, and will always point to some recent case of a woman being stalked who -- if she'd only been able to get a gun right then -- would have been able to defend herself against murder / rape / harrassment / whatever: a moving and sensible argument, really, but hard to balance the incidence of that situation versus crimes theoretically prevented.

― nabisco, Thursday, 19 April 2007 06:55 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost I mean I think Lurker's intense language there is just an attempt to underline the notion of White Hot Rage, not so much to suggest he was really committed to doing that. Either way, there are plenty of people out there with anger issues, and no matter what we think about gun control, I think they and we both can be happy most of them don't have guns on hand when the anger issues flare up!

― nabisco, Thursday, 19 April 2007 06:59 (seventeen years ago) link

Yes, I'm sure you've never had that impulse in your entire life. I'm also sure that, if someone tortured or persecuted you or someone you loved, you wouldn't have fantasies of getting elaborate vengeance upon them.

In fact, I'm so sure that, by golly, none of the people I've known who have been raped, robbed, tortured, and beaten -- or who have had such things happen to their loved ones -- they've never admitted to having such fantasies. Nope, never: they primly tuck their hands together, speak of wanting "justice to be done" by the proper authorities, and wash their silverware with iodine.

It's so nice that you're above all that. Well done!

(xpost - thanks Nabisco, you've got it exactly)

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 07:00 (seventeen years ago) link

(Also, keep in mind that I'm describing something I felt when I was a teenager, i.e. when the blood runs hot and the moral questions of the world seem rather simpler, or such was my experience. I'm glad, John Justen, that you saw fit to repay my candor with that seductive combination of smug moralizing and failure-to-read that makes the world a better place every time it happens!)

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 07:03 (seventeen years ago) link

Sorry, I just can't get past the fact that the supposed emotion expressed by lurker #xyz that I quoted above is either:

A) gross, unwarranted, invented emotion used to prove a predetermined point
B) actual feelings that are abhorrent and creepy beyond words

either way, whatever topical discussion it might provoke is valid, but unfortunately sullied by the way it was brought to the table.

xposts you know what? fuck you, dude. This conversation has been for the most part (well, maybe not in the beginning) civil, rational, and relatively moderate and related to the actuality of guns and the problematic nature of dealing with their position in society. I'll note that the scary, violent description you just posted isn't being spewed by your teenage self, but by someone who ought to understand that your use of "loaded language" is embarrassing. If you actually have some multitude of "people I've known who have been raped, robbed, tortured, and beaten -- or who have had such things happen to their loved ones", or even known one person who has had such an experience, well, then I apologize for misinterpreting your statements as gross and offensive hyperbole. Otherwise, quit parroting the right-wing nutjob justification as some sort of "I've felt this, and risen above it all" slipshod logical nonsense.

Also, no matter how genuine your feelings may be, drop the "but..but...what if someone use a racial epithet" nonsense. Either they did, or they didn't. Don't use it as a wall of defense unless it is something that ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

― John Justen, Thursday, 19 April 2007 07:21 (seventeen years ago) link

If you actually have some multitude of "people I've known who have been raped, robbed, tortured, and beaten -- or who have had such things happen to their loved ones", or even known one person who has had such an experience, well, then I apologize for misinterpreting your statements as gross and offensive hyperbole.

Apology accepted.

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 07:25 (seventeen years ago) link

(On behalf of the two people I know who have had lit cigarettes put out on their bodies, for starters.)

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 07:25 (seventeen years ago) link

You do realize I'm pro-gun-control, by the way? I ask this because I'm wondering where the "right-wing" reference is coming from, exactly.

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 07:28 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh, I think that your psycho eye-for-a-bullet mentality is plenty right-wing nutjob for all of us.

Also, if you'd bothered to read the thread up until you jumped in without paying attention, you'd probably have figured out that I'm not necessarily for gun control, but jesus christ, I'm willing to change that position if it means that you are generally representative of the populace at large.

― John Justen, Thursday, 19 April 2007 07:41 (seventeen years ago) link

By the way, I'll be much more apt to believe your "cigarette burn" stories as soon as you clarify that your use of "racial epithets" was also factual, instead of some trumped-up argument silencing card.

― John Justen, Thursday, 19 April 2007 07:43 (seventeen years ago) link

Hey, anybody want to lighten the mood and talk about abortion?

― John Justen, Thursday, 19 April 2007 07:47 (seventeen years ago) link

The "racial epithets" thing was pointedly NOT factual. That was the whole point -- to ask the person, "OK, in what situation would YOU feel this white-hot rage? How would it need to escalate so that you would be moved to that same desire for vengeance?"

I mean, the more I reread your posts, the more it seems like you're saying "Ugh, you shouldn't have felt that". To which my reply is:

(1) in some sense, you're right -- my whole point is that my response was out-of-proportion, and I'm really glad I didn't act on it (and that I didn't, for instance, have a handgun on me);

(2) but I think those feelings in general are normal, that most people have, at some point, the desire to kill/destroy/humiliate another human being, for reasons ranging from "road rage" to, say, rape, or racially-motivated violence;

(3) and that, if you think that those feelings, and the transient desire for what the Greeks called peripetia, are somehow unique to me, a reflection of an entirely personal psychopathy...

(4) then I suggest you talk to some rape victims, or victims of racial violence, because -- to put it bluntly -- you're completely fucking wrong. Go ask a Holocaust survivor what he/she might like to do to Eichmann, or Mengele. I cite Holocaust survivors and rape victims because I search -- hopefully not in vain -- for someone of whom you might say, "Well, it's OK for them to feel murderous rage, for them to fantasize about these things". To acknowledge that such feelings, in varying degrees, are a part of being human.

(If you've never felt murderous rage, the desire to completely destroy another human being -- even just for a fleeting moment -- then you're lucky. But being lucky doesn't give you the right to smugly crow about that fact. And you're completely bonkers if you think that it's a "right-wing" trait.)

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 07:54 (seventeen years ago) link

for reasons ranging from "road rage" to, say, rape, or racially-motivated violence

(that is, being the victim of rape or racially-motivated violence)

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 08:00 (seventeen years ago) link

Lurker: your intervals explanation clears up your argument for me a lot. When you say you're pro-gun control do you mean more gun control, like some kind of ban, or basically the status quo with waiting periods and background checks?

I'm fine with waiting periods for the reasons you cite. They're also good reason not to procrastinate.

― Kerm, Thursday, 19 April 2007 08:01 (seventeen years ago) link

i think lurker's point is pretty explicitly that he considers himself a normal person

he may want to reconsider! normal people who have backgroundy-checky jobs that involve taking care of other people don't post violent murder fantasies on the internet

― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 19 April 2007 08:09 (seventeen years ago) link

even pseudonymously!

― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 19 April 2007 08:09 (seventeen years ago) link

Not feeling "the desire to completely destroy another human being" has nothing to do with luck. It's called empathy, moral reasoning, and normal human function. I'm sorry this hasn't become clear to you yet. I've been angry, even rageful towards other people. That's called emotion. The moment that it becomes something along the lines of what you're talking about it is either overwrought teen stupidity or pathological.

As to your point about suggesting that I talk to some rape victims/victims of racial violence, thanks, I know some, and I talk to them on a regular basis. Oddly enough, they don't seem all that interested in formulating revenge fantasies, because they aren't 15, and they are more interested in the present day than trying to undo the undoable. I'm sure that they would appreciate your attempts to consign them to the position of victimization as definition of personal identity, though.

Still, I have to give you a hand for bringing up the holocaust and italicizing a greek term. A+!

xpost.

― John Justen, Thursday, 19 April 2007 08:12 (seventeen years ago) link

Basically, I think that the status quo should be tightened up a bit, especially with regard to background checks and handguns. But I think there's good reason for saying that a household should be able to have a single-shot rifle or shotgun around -- in other words, something that can be used for hunting, marksmanship, or defense of the home, but that isn't really capable of killing more than one or two people at a time, and that can't be easily concealed. That's my take on it, more or less.

xpost You may be right. Perhaps it's best to keep one's lips sealed, and to pretend that such things are only felt by that shadowy and mysterious figure, the Evil Other.

I prefer, however, Goethe's take on things: "There is no crime of which I cannot imagine myself capable."

xpost

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 08:17 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah okay it's late and off to bed and all, but seriously, John, I think you're villifying Lurker out of all proportion here: yeah, it's really ugly to experience the kind of white-hot murderous rage that makes you actually start pondering hurting people, but it's also something that happens to plenty of normal people, and it's not THAT psychologically sick in and of itself. All dude is saying is that, having been there once himself, he doesn't want people holding guns when they're in that state -- not because he'd actually have done anything, but because he can remember the jacked-up thinking and decision-making it could lead to. (And again, Moonship, it seems unfair to read that as a murder fantasy, and not just as a ... well, a failed literary attempt to describe what impotent rage feels like.)

And John, it's just semantics if you want to describe anyone who'd weild a gun in a blinding rage "pathological" -- maybe that's a fair description -- but it's like factually demonstrable that a significant number of people really are that "pathological." Meaning not rampaging mass-murderers but like guys who get in arguments with their cousins over poker games and whip out guns over it. I'm not saying that's any more than a small percentage of gun owners, but there are enough that you can't just put it down to widespread mental illness, you know?

Anyway, the only gun-control debate there is how much you want the government to keep the weapons out of the angry hands and how much you want that responsibility left to people themselves.

― nabisco, Thursday, 19 April 2007 08:19 (seventeen years ago) link

Not feeling "the desire to completely destroy another human being" has nothing to do with luck. It's called empathy, moral reasoning, and normal human function.

Not feeling that way all the time, or even regularly = "empathy, moral reasoning, and normal human function", i.e. what you feel, what I feel, and what everyone who isn't a sociopath feels on a day-to-day basis

Claiming to not feel that way for a single second in your life, ever = delusional

Or: fuck you, you dishonest, smug, sanctimonious ass. Thanks for judging me based on something I felt for 10 seconds -- felt and didn't act upon -- when I was in high school.

xpost again, thank you, Nabisco

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 08:22 (seventeen years ago) link

I understand your interpretation, Nabisco, but the truth is that people that are willing to express sentiments along the lines of what I quoted earlier either scare the fuck out of me or are completely full of shit. I can't help but hope that lurker is full of shit, and I'm a lot happier believing that to be the case.

Also, it is undeniably a murder/revenge fantasy. That's what makes it so utterly fucked up.

xpost No, dude, the minute you decide to graphically describe some scary psychotic episode from your high school experience that involves the desire to sadistically punish your friends "enemies" and use that embarrassing admission in order to prove a point on the internet = CREEPY SCARY TIME.

― John Justen, Thursday, 19 April 2007 08:42 (seventeen years ago) link

Although, you know, if you know where I live and have access to a gun/axe/bomb/car/brick/pointy stick, no harm, no foul, right?

― John Justen, Thursday, 19 April 2007 08:45 (seventeen years ago) link

I understand your interpretation, Nabisco, but the truth is that people that are willing to express sentiments along the lines of what I quoted earlier either scare the fuck out of me or are completely full of shit.

John, if a rape survivor expressed to you the desire to torture and murder her rapist, would you consider that "creepy as fuck"? Would you tell her so?

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 08:54 (seventeen years ago) link

YES, YOU NUTJOB.

― John Justen, Thursday, 19 April 2007 08:56 (seventeen years ago) link

Well, then you'd be a piece of shit, frankly, for doing so.

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 08:57 (seventeen years ago) link

I mean, if your work has anything to do with counseling, teaching, or anything helping people, get out. You don't belong there.

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 08:57 (seventeen years ago) link

(Sorry if that's harsh -- but if you would honestly say that, how can you possibly have the empathy to work with anyone who's been through any kind of trauma?)

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:01 (seventeen years ago) link

Are you suggesting that nurturing vengeful fantasies of torture and murder is somehow a positive stance in counseling?

― John Justen, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:06 (seventeen years ago) link

I mean, rather than promoting some sort of healing that is based on the individuals self-worth vs. some sort of definition of the self through victimization?

― John Justen, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:09 (seventeen years ago) link

Jesus, seriously, I'm no counselor, but given the limited amount of info/world view I've gotten about you so far, I hope to god you aren't in the profession.

― John Justen, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:10 (seventeen years ago) link

A decent counselor will tell the victim that it's normal to have those feelings, and figure out if she means to act on it; if she's not planning to act on it, then the only issue is making sure she's not obsessing over it endlessly. Making her feel ashamed of the feelings, on the other hand, would be an incredibly destructive thing to do, and would encourage her to sublimate her rage in all kinds of dangerous ways, many of which are likely to be self-destructive.

This is basic, Psych 101 stuff. Is this honestly new to you?

xpost Without dealing with and accepting rage, effective therapy is impossible. That doesn't mean you encourage them to define themselves as a victim, but if you communicate the sense that murderous rage is a bad emotion that needs to be suppressed, you'll never get ANYWHERE with a patient. Rage is part of being human -- children express the genuine desire to kill each other and/or their parents all the time!

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:11 (seventeen years ago) link

I mean, seriously, I'm picturing you as having this uber-WASPy background with parents who told you it was never okay to get angry, who punished you for weeks for saying "I hate you" to them once. I hope I'm wrong.

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:12 (seventeen years ago) link

FWIW Lurker I heartily agree with you and you make perfect sense. Jhonen Vasques has spoken of appealing to the monster inside all of us who we need to allow play in our minds on the rare occasion - precisely so we DONT act on them. This is what keeps people sane!

OK I'm going back to being gone now, I just felt the need to support the argument.

― Trayce, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:23 (seventeen years ago) link

Points, in some sort of order:

A) This is all completely off-topic, and I realize that, and apologize for stringing it out this long
B) You are completely and totally wrong on my WASPy background etc., but I'll give you the benefit of understanding that we're interacting on a message board, which leads to this sort of misapprehension
C) I should have been more specific about the fact that I would never tell someone in said position that their feelings AT THE TIME were "creepy as fuck" but that doesn't change the fact that universal human understanding of the desire to torture and murder anyone is, by definition "creepy as fuck"
D) I think that your ability to argue from a viewpoint of frothing anger/feel comfortable recounting distinct and detailed vengeance fantasies from years ago/use allusions to racial epithets and the holocaust as argumentation points is not terribly well-suited to someone who wants to weigh in as an arbiter of who is qualified to speak to people in times of crisis and counseling
E) Returning to the point at hand, I would rather see Manalishi/Roger etcetera (even in the (hopefully) exaggerated stance he has chosen to take) have access to firearms, in place of you (again, in the (hopefully) exaggerated stance you have chosen to take) having access to them.

― John Justen, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:41 (seventeen years ago) link

i just actually punched a hole in something in my office reading lurker's post.

i would just like to say that it's really, really fucking creepy and disgusting to me, on a highly personal level, that you're insisting on using rape and sexual abuse victims as part of your little revenge fantasy and that you KEEP BRINGING THIS UP OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

trayce otm.

― the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:24 (seventeen years ago) link

altho ha ha joke's on me i just punched something so lurker's insane, disturbing, creepy fantasy proven true??

― the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:26 (seventeen years ago) link

lurker i hope you get that new untreatable tuberculosis that's going around.

― TOMBOT, Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:37 (seventeen years ago) link

or alternatively maybe you could just die from Tiresome Troll Dipshit With Delusions Of Having Enlightening Points To Make syndrome, then you don't have to acquire anything new

― TOMBOT, Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:39 (seventeen years ago) link

nabisco can you give me 5000 words on a couple of topics? I need to explain to some college graduates that "People Get Angry" and "Guns Are Designed For Killing Things"

― TOMBOT, Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:40 (seventeen years ago) link

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