Jim & Yahtzee's Rhymedown Spectacular: Games, Games, Everywhere.

[Callate]

...And if I could get a car at a car show without having to have a license, take both a written and a competency test, renew my car's registration every year, and periodically prove that I was still competent to drive a car, there would probably be a lot more auto deaths.

Tangentially, I have been in places in large cities where it was literally impossible to legally travel more than about four blocks without access to a motor vehicle. I have never been in a city where basic functional life was impossible without a gun.

I know there are a great many responsible gun owners who care intensely about gun safety, don't use or store their weapons irresponsibly, and would be horrified at the idea of pointing one at a human being.

Unfortunately, in my country, they have the same rights as the people who fire their guns into the air at every holiday celebration, leave loaded weapons where children can get them, and/or are itching for an opportunity to show how macho and self-reliant they are to imaginary violent criminals.

Guns don't cause violence, but it takes a powerful level of delusion to pretend they don't make violence a hell of a lot easier. The utter inability of some to contemplate anything that "infringes on their rights", no matter the cost, is kind of sickening.

 

[Zeles]

I think what Yahtzee's poem was saying was that violence is a problem, but banning forms of art won't solve it.

 

[Vhite]

I am indie gun developer and find this offensive.

 

[Jenny Jones]

I am indie gun developer and find this offensive.

Make a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning please!

 

[UNHchabo]

...And if I could get a car at a car show without having to have a license, take both a written and a competency test, renew my car's registration every year, and periodically prove that I was still competent to drive a car, there would probably be a lot more auto deaths.

Based on the rest of your comment I'm not sure what country you live in, but in the US you can do all those things without a driver's license, and you don't need to register your car to own it. In the US you only need a license to drive on public roads, and you only need to register your car if you want to take it on public roads.

If you want to buy a car and only drive it on private property, and transport the car from place to place on a trailer, you can do so without the government's permission. With enough resources, you can let your 14-year-old kid drive an unregistered home-built car at 200mph on your land.

If you're in America, then the 2nd amendment automatically deals with such issues i.e. limiting of acquiring arms is illegal as per the Constitution. No more needs to be said about that.

So, is it your opinion that the 2nd Amendment allows anyone to buy a nuclear missile?

I'm honestly curious just how broad you (and other pro-gun right advoctes) are willing to stretch this bit of logic.

No, that's hyperbole that nobody actually advocates.

In the most common reading of the Second Amendment, it allows private citizens to acquire personal weapons that are useful for defense. Rifles, including mid-sized semi-auto rifles like the AR-15, are well-suited for this purpose.

 

[RJ 17]

Yeah yeah, I'll bight. Guns are no more to blame than games, movies, books, pictures, and spoken word. Crazy people will do crazy things whether or not they have a gun to do them with.

Political differences aside, I still enjoyed both poems, though the meter in Jim's seemed a bit off.

Except that guns is a tool that empowers, there's a difference between mad with power and mad without power. A mad man with the power of a gun or to launch a nuke is much more dangerous than one without.

Both guns and games are two different perspective taking on the same situation. One claims that we should take away things that make people mad and one claims that we should take away power for mad people to minimize damage. However, taking away power from the mad is a much more sound solution while weather games make people mad is still indebate.

Just because someone has a gun does not automatically mean they're going to shoot a human with it. In fact, the vast majority of people who own guns have absolutely no intention of using it on a human. You were indeed right in saying that a gun is just a tool, what that tool does is dependent entirely on the person that's using it. A hunter who owns a gun has no intention of using it on a human being, they intend to use it to hunt animals. A home owner who has a gun for home/personal defense has no intention of using it on a human being, to have such an intent would mean that they intend for their home to be invaded thereby justifying their use of a gun on a person.

As I pointed out to someone else, we live in an age where people can look up instructions on how to build a bomb on the internet at their local library. Crazy people will always do crazy things, no matter what you take away from them. So let's follow the poem's line of logic and start with banning guns. With no more guns, people start building bombs. With all things that could be used to build bombs banned (which would be quite a feat), some madman starts mowing people down with his car. With all cars banned, some psycho goes on a stabbing spree at a college (already happened). With all knives banned, some nut job goes around clocking people in the back of the head with a hammer. With all hammers banned...etc.

The bottom line is, as I said, there are crazy people out there. The gun didn't make them crazy - just as a game didn't make them crazy - they were crazy before they even had the gun in their hand. Crazy people are going to find ways to do crazy things regardless of what you take away from them.

 

[furai47]

If you're in America, then the 2nd amendment automatically deals with such issues i.e. limiting of acquiring arms is illegal as per the Constitution. No more needs to be said about that.

So, is it your opinion that the 2nd Amendment allows anyone to buy a nuclear missile?

I'm honestly curious just how broad you (and other pro-gun right advoctes) are willing to stretch this bit of logic.

So, is your opinion that medical research is completely fine to be done on infants rather than lab rats? Rifles and nuclear missiles are about in the same relationship as those two and frankly, if you can't distinguish a bomb that upon detonation kills thousands (if detonated above a residential area) and a gun that, unless you have people standing in line or are lucky with ricochet, kills one person at a time you are not suited to have a conversation about gun rights.

I am completely fine with the US government going through the required process (Included with every order of the US Constitution, get yours today!) of adding an amendment to regulate guns and arms, but until such time as they do exactly that, limiting magazine sizes, bullets, armour, pistol grips, stocks and any and all plastic bits that make a gun look scary is illegal. Full stop.

There are already restrictions on owning tanks, B17 bombers, artillery stations and the like, so don't pretend "the right to bear arms" means you can carry an intergalactic planet vaporiser around without the necessary paperwork.

 

[Vhite]

I am indie gun developer and find this offensive.

Make a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning please!

No, ninjas and Norse gods aren't retro or pop enough. I am artist, come back when you want Tron dupstep gun.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Fantastic episode.

Jim makes an excellent point that indie games work so hard to be original, they become samey.

Not only was Yahtzee's dark and quite fun, but we ALSO get to see lots of silly people misunderstanding his point and whining about how guns don't cause violence.

It's like the perfect video.

 

[mike1921]

Cars have an important transportation function, knives have an important culinary function. You can't compare a weapon to a practical tool. Guns make it easier to kill larger amounts of people and serve such a small function in civilized life. It's reasonable to require a background check for them, and to limit clip size so that you can only kill so many people with one if you're a murderer. If you're going to say this is about people wanting to ban all guns then point me to one American politican, they have to be at the level of a governor,congressman, president/VP or cabinet member, who supports such a thing. I have never heard rhetoric of banning all guns from any one important besides people using it as a strawman.

If you're in America, then the 2nd amendment automatically deals with such issues i.e. limiting of acquiring arms is illegal as per the Constitution. No more needs to be said about that.
As for the car comment, why not lower the speed limit to 15mph? That way, less people would die in traffic related accidents. Even more interesting, as arriving on time is not a right given by the Constitution but merely a luxury, this should be relatively easy to do.

Yes it does. America's way too devoted to blindly sucking the cocks of the founding fathers. The constitution can be amended for a reason, because the founding fathers realized they're not perfect and don't know what technology will look like in hundreds of years. As the second amendment specifically mentions that the purpose of giving people the right to bear arms is for a well regulated militia, which is a much different statement back then than it is now. Back then guns were inefficient, could kill much less people with a lone madman, and the military was pretty much just dudes with same guns (although navies and cannons existed). The second amendment serves no purpose in this century, where military technology is just miles ahead of anything a civilian militia can use and a lone civilian can kill so many people. To use the second amendment in this day and age is to not understand its purpose.

But really, isn't interpreting what was meant by the constitution the job of the supreme court? Wouldn't them looking at the clear intention of the second amendment and saying that it doesn't apply to people who are a danger to society enough?

"It's unconstitutional" is a valid reason for why a law shouldn't pass at the moment, but it should be seen as an outright demand to think "should it be unconstitutional?" and if not to fix it. It shouldn't be seen as a "oh, well then let's give up".

Because that would cripple us in a major way? Also, arriving on time isn't a luxury. Our economy sort of depends on us having a work force actually....working.

 

[mike1921]

Cars have an important transportation function, knives have an important culinary function. You can't compare a weapon to a practical tool. Guns make it easier to kill larger amounts of people and serve such a small function in civilized life. It's reasonable to require a background check for them, and to limit clip size so that you can only kill so many people with one if you're a murderer. If you're going to say this is about people wanting to ban all guns then point me to one American politican, they have to be at the level of a governor,congressman, president/VP or cabinet member, who supports such a thing. I have never heard rhetoric of banning all guns from any one important besides people using it as a strawman.

If you're in America, then the 2nd amendment automatically deals with such issues i.e. limiting of acquiring arms is illegal as per the Constitution. No more needs to be said about that.
As for the car comment, why not lower the speed limit to 15mph? That way, less people would die in traffic related accidents. Even more interesting, as arriving on time is not a right given by the Constitution but merely a luxury, this should be relatively easy to do.

Yes it does. America's way too devoted to blindly sucking the cocks of the founding fathers. The constitution can be amended for a reason, because the founding fathers realized they're not perfect and don't know what technology will look like in hundreds of years. As the second amendment specifically mentions that the purpose of giving people the right to bear arms is for a well regulated militia, which is a much different statement back then than it is now. Back then guns were inefficient, could kill much less people with a lone madman, and the military was pretty much just dudes with same guns (although navies and cannons existed). The second amendment serves no purpose in this century, where military technology is just miles ahead of anything a civilian militia can use and a lone civilian can kill so many people. To use the second amendment in this day and age is to not understand its purpose.

If there was an open rebellion there's a possibility that the rebels could get foreign aide. Hell we got in the revolutionary war and that helped.

So the foreign aid would include things that would actually make it viable to fight the US military...but it won't include the right guns?

 

[furai47]

Yes it does. America's way too devoted to blindly sucking the cocks of the founding fathers. The constitution can be amended for a reason, because the founding fathers realized they're not perfect and don't know what technology will look like in hundreds of years. As the second amendment specifically mentions that the purpose of giving people the right to bear arms is for a well regulated militia, which is a much different statement back then than it is now. Back then guns were inefficient, could kill much less people with a lone madman, and the military was pretty much just dudes with same guns (although navies and cannons existed). The second amendment serves no purpose in this century, where military technology is just miles ahead of anything a civilian militia can use and a lone civilian can kill so many people. To use the second amendment in this day and age is to not understand its purpose.

But really, isn't interpreting what was meant by the constitution the job of the supreme court? Wouldn't them looking at the clear intention of the second amendment and saying that it doesn't apply to people who are a danger to society enough?

"It's unconstitutional" is a valid reason for why a law shouldn't pass at the moment, but it should be seen as an outright demand to think "should it be unconstitutional?" and if not to fix it. It shouldn't be seen as a "oh, well then let's give up".

Because that would cripple us in a major way? Also, arriving on time isn't a luxury. Our economy sort of depends on us having a work force actually....working.

Hence why it's called the second _amendment_. Look a few post above you, I've no qualms with the government going through with amending the constitution. But whatever law they want to pass they have to do in form of an amendment, as any other is automatically squashed by the second. If it can be circumvented this way, I see no reason why the first, fourth or the fourteenth can't be in a similar fashion. And yet people always get uppity when those are at stake.

By the way, you do realise that the US has its military and that there's also a standing army (a "militia" of sorts) of each individual state, which must by law be supplied with the exact same hardware that the military is, right? People get guns, rifles, shotguns etc. and the standing army gets military hardware so as to resist the military should the government decide to use it on its people. This is what the second amendment also protects.

It most certainly would be enough for the Supreme court to do so. So if it's such a clear cut case, why haven't they?

See my first paragraph.

You can leave early. If 300 people last year are worth banning assault rifles or passing illegal laws, then surely 30000 people are worth lowering the speed limit. Especially since the former is a right codified (not given) by the US Constitution.

 

[Fiairflair]

Living in a country without guns, it is hard to understand why Americans are so tolerant of them. Between 1986 and 1996 we had 11 mass shootings in Australia. In 1996 there was a shooting in the tourist town of Port Arthur. 35 people were killed. Following the event the government legislated popular gun control laws and a gun buyback scheme.
Since then there have been no mass shootings in Australia. Neither was there a torrent of angry drivers running people over, no inundation of wannabe Samurais attacking people with swords or knives. There was simply a lot less death.

What sort of person wants the right to have a killing machine?
Why don?t Americans relate guns to gun-related crime?

 

[mike1921]

It most certainly would be enough for the Supreme court to do so. So if it's such a clear cut case, why haven't they?

In the words of Antonin Scalia, writing the majority opinion
"nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."
That seems like a pretty clear cut case of them saying it is constitutional to limit firearms according to certain conditions. If they go out of their way to say "yea it's fine to keep the guns away from felons" ain't it safe to assume that they also would be supportive of being able to check if they're felons?

You can leave early. If 300 people last year are worth banning assault rifles or passing illegal laws, then surely 30000 people are worth lowering the speed limit. Especially since the former is a right codified (not given) by the US Constitution.

Except banning assault rifles harms no one, lowering the speed limit harms everyone.

 

[Blachman201_v1legacy]

I think that Alfred Hitchcock summarizes it best:

 

[furai47]

In the words of Antonin Scalia, writing the majority opinion
"nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."
That seems like a pretty clear cut case of them saying it is constitutional to limit firearms according to certain conditions. If they go out of their way to say "yea it's fine to keep the guns away from felons" ain't it safe to assume that they also would be supportive of being able to check if they're felons?

Cool. Now you have to both propose and ratify this as an amendment, getting majority support of Congress and the States and you can start enforcing it by law. Easy peasy.

Except banning assault rifles harms no one, lowering the speed limit harms everyone.

Assault rifles are already regulated, there's many hoops to be jumped through to get legal ownership. The ones you can acquire more easily are semi-automatic, which =/= assault rifle.
By the way, a lot of people enjoy shooting guns. Do you think those people would not disagree with banning semi-automatics?

 

[deathjavu]

In the words of Antonin Scalia, writing the majority opinion
"nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."
That seems like a pretty clear cut case of them saying it is constitutional to limit firearms according to certain conditions. If they go out of their way to say "yea it's fine to keep the guns away from felons" ain't it safe to assume that they also would be supportive of being able to check if they're felons?

Cool. Now you have to both propose and ratify this as an amendment, getting majority support of Congress and the States and you can start enforcing it by law. Easy peasy.

Except banning assault rifles harms no one, lowering the speed limit harms everyone.

Assault rifles are already regulated, there's many hoops to be jumped through to get legal ownership. The ones you can acquire more easily are semi-automatic, which =/= assault rifle.
By the way, a lot of people enjoy shooting guns. Do you think those people would not disagree with banning semi-automatics?

Except for the part where the NRA, a group explicitly formed to further the interests of gun salesmen (a biased group in this discussion if ever there was one), has a very well funded lobbying group that makes passing any such law impossible regardless of public support. It's been proven time and time again that public interest in a law being passed cannot make it so, much less something trivial like common sense.

Anyways it's a bit late to jump to the defense of the US consitution now, the US been wiping their asses with it since it was printed. Unreasonable search and seizure has been the order of the day from the moment any new intelligence agency was formed. Cruel and unusual punishment takes place on people who were never given trials. US citizens can be killed without trial. The US judiciary is a political branch of the government with the same party divisions as congress. Free speech is heavily restricted, both in the media and in public. Protesters are often evicted from public locations. Laws with the purpose or effect of limiting voting availability are passed all the time. Disenfranchisement is legal and common.

Seriously, at this point it's more butt-stains than ink. Time to flush it.

 

[Mr Companion]

For those saying guns are not to blame. Imagine a guy goes nuts, there is an automatic gun, he kills a crowd of 34 people before being gunned down himself. Now imagine there is not a gun, but a knife. He might be "lucky" to kill one or two. Guns don't kill people but they do make it 50 times easier.

 

[MisterColeman]

I'll throw my dumb opinion into the mix.

... Changed my mind. Good poems.

 

[JLink]

The second amendment serves no purpose in this century, where military technology is just miles ahead of anything a civilian militia can use and a lone civilian can kill so many people.

I think these people would disagree with that: