[POLITICS] Two Mass Shootings in 15 Hours, and O'Rourke on Trump

[Baffle]

That is, on balance, people value their illusion of safety much more than they value the lives of those killed because they were at the mercy of someone who doesn't care about laws.

No, not people, you. You're saying that you value your illusion of safety more than you value those people's lives. Fair enough, they are strangers after all, and there's loads of Americans anyway.

But, accepting that the so-called safety is illusory, why do you value it so highly?

 

[Saelune]

Well, people who would rather other people died in mass shootings at least.

...The hell is that supposed to mean?

Probably that some people value guns more than they value human life.

 

[Saelune]

I think the people most afraid of gun control are the same kind of people afraid of the #metoo movement, people who know that their own inability to be responsible will get them specifically in trouble. Just like I don't think any man who knows how to respect women is afraid of false rape accusations, I don't think anyone who would use a gun safely and responsibly would be worried about keeping guns out of the hands of nut jobs who would go on shooting sprees.

The whole point is to keep guns out of the hands of these people so that we never need to have a 'good guy with gun' save us from them.

Basically, I think the people most against gun control are the very people we need to keep guns away from.

They always think the goal is to have the government go and round up every gun ever, when really it is to make sure that the people who can get guns are responsible, sane, and understand the danger, and that if they do something wrong, they are held accountable along with anyone who let them get past the system.

You know, kind of like how people say they only want 'legal immigrants' who go through the system. But ofcourse many pro-gun people are anti-immigration, funny that.

 

[Leg End]

You don't think making it much harder to obtain the tools to complete a task will reduce the chance of that task being completed? I mean, I've got a bunch of plasterboard (drywall) to put up, but I can't find my drill, so the odds of me completing this task are reduced. Same with guns and killing. Don't have a gun, can't fire a gun randomly into a crowd.

If someone very, very specifically wants to commit a mass murder with their special favorite firearm, that would pose a problem if they, in no way possible, could get ahold of it. This requires they want to kill people with a super specific favorite firearm and don't want to go with the alternative of other arms, the Home Depot approach, the McVeigh approach, the Carmageddon approach, the Arson approach, the... you know where this is going.

Hmm, I (and most people in most countries worldwide) would consider it pretty unregulated when someone is able to purchase guns without a permit or having undergone any training, and without any background check.

Just because we don't have your regulations, doesn't mean we don't have regulations.

...since my argument does not rest on specifics, yes.

So, a gun period.

That defencelessness doesn't result in anywhere near as much death in countries without easy access to guns, so... yes, I consider it a price worth paying. Fewer people are dying.

Ever consider the defensive gun uses preventing things from actually happening? Rapes, Robberies and Murders that don't happen, don't happen.

I feel much safer, even without a gun, because my assailant will not have one... and the stats back me up. I am statistically much safer.

Statistically, he's going to have a knife. Statistically here, they're likely to have a gun or a knife. Within the realm of reality, there is no way we can manage to flush out the supply of firearms held by criminals without actually going 1984 overnight and performing the action over several decades, as well as building what amounts to a giant dome around the country because we're not an island, and we kind of have what amounts to an open border with a country that is more or less being controlled by organized crime. The situation, as you have previously stated months back, is not the same. What you are proposing would not in fact work. The amount of firearms floating around exceeds the number of people to use them. You will never, ever be able to tell me you can actually prevent someone from using a gun to rob me.

Ah, so it's about defending against tyranny.

That's a very big component here, yes.

Would you say the mass shootings are an acceptable price to pay for that defence against tyranny? It's that honest cost/benefit analysis I'm asking for.

Operating under the assumption this is how mass shootings work? Alright, brutal, cold numbers. 340 people died in a mass shooting in 2018, according to a quick Google search. The amount of defensive gun uses varies depending on the source, but the lowest reported estimate by anyone was the Gun Violence Archive at a hair over two thousand. Other estimates skyrocket above that at at least 55,000 a year bare minimum as a common number, with other numbers ranging up to six digits, and surveyed usage has gone as high as over four million uses. It's not hard to imagine that, even with the lowest number possible, defensive uses may have saved as many or more lives than people died in mass shootings here in 2018.

So in short? Yeah. That sounds like a lot more life saved.

Don't craft hypothetical scenarios to address this through emotional manipulation; we could both do that endlessly.

Yeah, we could. If only the example was hypothetical.

That mother and daughter are undeniably, demonstrably safer in my country than the USA.

From what I've experienced firsthand? No, they'd actually be less safe in your country. The things I've seen your government do to someone to cover up their own fuck ups is probably what made me go from entertained with firearms, to fanatical devotion to never leave myself at the mercy of government, or anyone else for that matter.

 

[Leg End]

No, not people, you. You're saying that you value your illusion of safety more than you value those people's lives. Fair enough, they are strangers after all, and there's loads of Americans anyway.

...Do you seriously believe I see it that way? That I really don't care about the lives of people I'm not personally acquainted with, fuck em, I got my guns?

But, accepting that the so-called safety is illusory, why do you value it so highly?

I value my means to fight back because I don't want to see people get hurt. People I know, people I don't. I'm not going to just sit there and cower when some animal decides he wants to end lives. I'm not going to sit there, letting government take people away to be disposed of. I'm not going to stand there when someone and their child are being murdered because the bastard doing it seems to have familial and friends of the family connections deep within the local police, to the extent that even other officers not in on it don't even fucking know why that person hasn't been nailed to the cross by a DA.

If you want to know why I'm so absolutely hardline in favor of firearm ownership, it's because my life experiences have taught me that government is filled with corruption, rapists, child abusers and murderers, the police are likely in the pocket of someone or are willing to turn a blind eye to serious crimes that they agree with being performed, and that if you want to make sure something or someone protected, you do it yourself because you can't rely on anyone else to.

 

[Seanchaidh]

When your country is built on treason to the crown...

Yeah, but what about all the other countries that secured their independence at gunpoint and don't feel the need to fetishise guns? The US love of guns is probably a lot more about its early disinclination to maintain a strong, standing, professional army, thereby putting defence in the hands of a citizen militia.

I don't think that would be enough to explain it. Need to add anxiety about the possibility of slave revolt and other racial animus: white supremacy has been maintained ultimately at gunpoint.

 

[Casual Shinji]

If you want to know why I'm so absolutely hardline in favor of firearm ownership, it's because my life experiences have taught me that government is filled with corruption, rapists, child abusers and murderers, the police are likely in the pocket of someone or are willing to turn a blind eye to serious crimes that they agree with being performed, and that if you want to make sure something or someone protected, you do it yourself because you can't rely on anyone else to.

Wow, and you really don't see a problem with this mentality? It's this level of paranoia coupled with an over abundance of firearms that breeds these kinds of situations. Where people have no trust and only fear for the government and the authorities and have guns to take the law into their own hands if need be. Now imagine this coming from someone who considers all mexicans to be criminals and rapists.

 

[Baffle]

The things I've seen your government do to someone to cover up their own fuck ups is probably what made me go from entertained with firearms, to fanatical devotion to never leave myself at the mercy of government, or anyone else for that matter.

Yeah, 'I love guns and I'm a fanatic' should probably disqualify you from having a gun.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Just because we don't have your regulations, doesn't mean we don't have regulations.

Well, maybe consider that your regulations are not enough?

I mean, someone who is a paranoid schizophrenic who has been deemed not responsible enough to manage their own back account can still own a gun. Someone with a decade long track record of domestic abuse can buy a gun. Someone who is known by the FBI to be consorting with KKK filth and arguing about starting a race war with guns can still open carry right down the street. Some dude who thinks 'gunz are cool lawl' can take exactly zero safety courses and leave his loaded gun on a counter within easy reach of his kid or dog with zero respect for how dangerous it is.

These are all no-brainers. None of these people should have their guns.

But due to the minimal regulation, they all can. All of these people (the last one less so) are people who are very much a danger to other people, and the fact they can own a semi-auto-5-rounds-per-9-second-large-ammo-clip-rifles just makes it so much easier for them to snap and kill someone.

Hell, there are people who think a gun registry is 'too much', and that boggles my mind.

Seriously, these kinds of massacres are unique to the USA, to the point where many mass shootings don't even make the news anymore because they're so frequent.

Why is that? Why are these massacres a uniquely american thing?

Are Americans just naturally evil and predisposed to mass murder?

Is American culture just naturally violent, enough that mass murder is seen as 'just a thing that happens'?

Or is it the fact that there are loopholes all over that let actually deranged people buy and keep guns, and the fact they can acquire rifles that can mow down 9 people in the 30 seconds it takes for the cop outside to intervene?

My money's on the last one.

I'm not going to sit there, letting government take people away to be disposed of.

Soo........How many more children need to die from fully-known awful conditions in those asylum seeker detention camps before you stop sitting there and letting the government do it...?

Or are you going to wait until they install actual gas chambers and wait until someone somehow manages to leak that fact before you stop sitting there and letting them do it? Even though by then hundreds would have been killed in that time frame?

Just wanna gauge how far that point goes for you.

I'm not going to stand there when someone and their child are being murdered because the bastard doing it seems to have familial and friends of the family connections deep within the local police, to the extent that even other officers not in on it don't even fucking know why that person hasn't been nailed to the cross by a DA.

If the guy already has contacts within the police, I am REALLY not sure how much good owning a gun will do unless the guy happen to be drunkenly assaulting their home without his own gun and somehow the cops don't stick up for him after he's dead and lock them up and throw away the key after the fact.

Also, if they DO need a gun, I am fine with people (with at least some safety training) owning handguns or shotguns for home defense. They don't need a shoot-5-rounds-in-6-seconds rifle.

Hell, I struggle to see why ANYONE needs a rifle like that unless they're in a warzone, or deep in wild coyote/mountain lion country, or unless 30-50 feral hogs are raising their backyard.

If you want to know why I'm so absolutely hardline in favor of firearm ownership, it's because my life experiences have taught me that government is filled with corruption, rapists, child abusers and murderers, the police are likely in the pocket of someone or are willing to turn a blind eye to serious crimes that they agree with being performed, and that if you want to make sure something or someone protected, you do it yourself because you can't rely on anyone else to.

See, I understand that instinct especially given how rotten the cops and government are in the US (and in a lot of other places too)...

But face it, if the cops really do want you dead, your gun might buy you, what an hour tops before a van of SWAT guys come in with kevlar and armor-piercing burst-fire rifles and flashbangs that they will use to murder you anyway, now even MORE motivated to kill you and anyone around you because you shot back.

And as for taking on the government...They have drones that can take you out without putting themselves at risk, not to mention tanks, missiles, a literal standing army of crack shots with long range rifles, armor, and full-auto guns. Your single gun is worthless. Heck, a full on militia army would be worthless.

The idea that gun owners will stand up to government tyranny is almost laughable because

a) The government has way more people and weapons and tech that will make any direct violence against them pointless.

b) The government has been snatching rights away and doing horrible things to people (mostly minorities, and undocumented people) for ages now, and its only been ramping up in the past few decades (NSA spying on everyone, etc), and not only have they not fought back, but the most hardline gun nuts tend to be GOP loyalists who LOVE that tyrranical shit. FFS, these kinds of nuts are the same ones who formed roving militias to go pretend to police the border (even illegally holding migrants/asylum seekers at gunpoint and lying that they were border patrol) with humvees and guns and I am SHOCKED there weren't people gunned down.

So...While the sentiment is understood, and I don't have a direct beef with YOU in particular owning a gun (although I still think having the ability to mow own 9 people in 30 seconds is unceccesary)...

I SEVERELY doubt the whole myth about 'responsible gun ownwers are the last bastion against the government when it becomes a tyranny'

 

[Saelune]

You don't think making it much harder to obtain the tools to complete a task will reduce the chance of that task being completed? I mean, I've got a bunch of plasterboard (drywall) to put up, but I can't find my drill, so the odds of me completing this task are reduced. Same with guns and killing. Don't have a gun, can't fire a gun randomly into a crowd.

If someone very, very specifically wants to commit a mass murder with their special favorite firearm, that would pose a problem if they, in no way possible, could get ahold of it. This requires they want to kill people with a super specific favorite firearm and don't want to go with the alternative of other arms, the Home Depot approach, the McVeigh approach, the Carmageddon approach, the Arson approach, the... you know where this is going.

Ohio shooting, less than 30 seconds, 10 people killed, 27 injured. How is that better than one person being killed with a knife, maybe 1-3 others injured with cuts?

You don't want to talk statistics, cause you only want it when it suits you, not when it doesn't. Unless you can prove guns save more lives cause of 'good guys with guns' than injure or kill, then you have no ground to stand on.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

Spoiler

(last one is satire)
ETA bonus meme

Meanwhile Trump tells Beto to shut up being upset about people being murdered in his home town by a guy repeating Trump's Rhetoric because this is really about Trump being the least racist person on earth. Go figure.

8channers are probably going to flood 4chan or go to decentralized social media platforms.

The more decentralized, the better. The goal is to make it as difficult as possible for terrorists like this to spread their ignorance feeding off mindless rage and indoctrinate recruits. This isn't about "silencing free speech" as some have suggested, it is about reducing the numbers of people they have access to be able to indoctrinate into these ignorant and dangerous beliefs.

This alt right Nazi BS is ridiculous in hardcore pvp community where I play (nothing to do with the games themselves of course) and they spread this crap though guilds/clans as well, any possible way they can be limited from being able to coddle this crap the better as far as I am concerned. Would be nice if they knocked all their hidey holes offline. They need to make it abundantly clear that this behavior and vitriol has no place in society anywhere.

Like I have stated before, it is a matter of social conditioning. From the time we are born we are subjected to social conditioning, sadly much of it can be bad, but not all social conditioning is bad, it can also be used as a force for good. Where I come from people are taught from the time they are born that we are to take care of the earth and all that dwell upon it, to show respect to all things. Yes, that too is a form of social conditioning, but one the world is better off with rather than one that teaches hate such as these scum.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

...Where people have no trust and only fear for the government and the authorities and have guns to take the law into their own hands if need be...

You say this, at a time where black people getting blown away by militarized cops hopped up on hyper-masculinized "escalation above all" propaganda is less an emergent issue of existential import, than it is a national sport. Over an issue that was a cause celebre...

...during the '30s to keep the populace from arming themselves and revolting in the face of the Great Depression...

...during the '60s to keep black folks from arming themselves during the civil rights and black liberation movements.

Real funny how gun control advocates, especially those who want to talk the legality and jurisprudence of gun control and the Second Amendment, have a Cruikshank-sized hole in their jurisprudential knowledge.

But, sure, keep on talking about paranoia.

 

[Erttheking]

No, not people, you. You're saying that you value your illusion of safety more than you value those people's lives. Fair enough, they are strangers after all, and there's loads of Americans anyway.

...Do you seriously believe I see it that way? That I really don't care about the lives of people I'm not personally acquainted with, fuck em, I got my guns?

But, accepting that the so-called safety is illusory, why do you value it so highly?

I value my means to fight back because I don't want to see people get hurt. People I know, people I don't. I'm not going to just sit there and cower when some animal decides he wants to end lives. I'm not going to sit there, letting government take people away to be disposed of. I'm not going to stand there when someone and their child are being murdered because the bastard doing it seems to have familial and friends of the family connections deep within the local police, to the extent that even other officers not in on it don't even fucking know why that person hasn't been nailed to the cross by a DA.

If you want to know why I'm so absolutely hardline in favor of firearm ownership, it's because my life experiences have taught me that government is filled with corruption, rapists, child abusers and murderers, the police are likely in the pocket of someone or are willing to turn a blind eye to serious crimes that they agree with being performed, and that if you want to make sure something or someone protected, you do it yourself because you can't rely on anyone else to.

You?re not going to sit there? No. That?s exactly what you?ll do. You?ll sit there and do nothing. Hard liner 2nd amendment advocates love to talk shit. To talk about how badass they are and how they?ll take down cops and the army. And when corrupt police shoot unarmed civilians they sit there and do nothing. Hell. They defend the police. When the army kills civilians, they sit there and do nothing. Hell. They defend the army. When civil rights are violated, they sit there and do nothing. Hell. They voted for the people who cause those abuses. You will not be different. You are not John Mclane. You?re just a guy using internet tough guy rhetoric. If you ever witness police abuse, I promise you this.

You will sit there and do nothing.

Because all this abuse has been going on and I don?t see you taking up arms. You aren?t following through.

 

[Erttheking]

...Where people have no trust and only fear for the government and the authorities and have guns to take the law into their own hands if need be...

You say this, at a time where black people getting blown away by militarized cops hopped up on hyper-masculinized "escalation above all" propaganda is less an emergent issue of existential import, than it is a national sport. Over an issue that was a cause celebre...

...during the '30s to keep the populace from arming themselves and revolting in the face of the Great Depression...

...during the '60s to keep black folks from arming themselves during the civil rights and black liberation movements.

Real funny how gun control advocates, especially those who want to talk the legality and jurisprudence of gun control and the Second Amendment, have a Cruikshank-sized hole in their jurisprudential knowledge.

But, sure, keep on talking about paranoia.

The person he?s accusing of being paranoid isn?t Black. Also what are you suggesting. That we should shoot corrupt cops? Yeah I?m sure guns rights advocates will support that. They won?t shriek hysterically when a black man kills a cop.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

The person he?s accusing of being paranoid isn?t Black. Also what are you suggesting. That we should shoot corrupt cops? Yeah I?m sure guns rights advocates will support that. They won?t shriek hysterically when a black man kills a cop.

Honestly, I'm speaking also to this atittude:

I don't think that would be enough to explain it. Need to add anxiety about the possibility of slave revolt and other racial animus: white supremacy has been maintained ultimately at gunpoint.

That's a two-way street. White supremacy has been maintained ultimately at gunpoint...and conflict asymmetry, meaning gun control has also been historically used to maintain white supremacy. Hence, my pointing out the post-Cruikshank Jim Crow South, and the formal and informal forceful disarmament of black southerners. That's not an historical context that won't be ignored or whitewashed, because while I'm a pacifist I do believe historically-disadvantaged peoples have a right to proportional self-defense as does anyone, particularly against hate crime.

And, absolutely I am highly skeptical and distrustful of people who are supportive of both civilian disarmament and the security state. Especially when, bar none, the single biggest correlation to and predictor of firearm violence and death is Gini coefficient. Personally, I'm supportive of sane gun control legislation and the dismantling of the security state.

 

[Agema]

I have direct experience with your specific country's government and legal system, and someone living under the whole thing, that absolutely states otherwise. The level of corruption within government to cover it's own ass is astounding and sickening.

Your direct experience means approximately nothing in the entire scheme of an entire country's worth of crime and justice, and even still it's meaningless without comparison to the USA (as if to imagine the USA doesn't have major corruption and cover-ups!)

 

[Kwak]

A big issue I have is that people talk like without guns, murders would just suddenly take a big drop off a cliff. Nobody ever seems to consider that killings happen regardless of the tools used.

Proved in suicide statistics.

 

[Erttheking]

The person he?s accusing of being paranoid isn?t Black. Also what are you suggesting. That we should shoot corrupt cops? Yeah I?m sure guns rights advocates will support that. They won?t shriek hysterically when a black man kills a cop.

Honestly, I'm speaking also to this atittude:

I don't think that would be enough to explain it. Need to add anxiety about the possibility of slave revolt and other racial animus: white supremacy has been maintained ultimately at gunpoint.

That's a two-way street. White supremacy has been maintained ultimately at gunpoint...and conflict asymmetry, meaning gun control has also been historically used to maintain white supremacy. Hence, my pointing out the post-Cruikshank Jim Crow South, and the formal and informal forceful disarmament of black southerners. That's not an historical context that won't be ignored or whitewashed, because while I'm a pacifist I do believe historically-disadvantaged peoples have a right to proportional self-defense as does anyone, particularly against hate crime.

And, absolutely I am highly skeptical and distrustful of people who are supportive of both civilian disarmament and the security state. Especially when, bar none, the single biggest correlation to and predictor of firearm violence and death is Gini coefficient. Personally, I'm supportive of sane gun control legislation and the dismantling of the security state.

Gun control has been used historically to maintain white supremacy. Ok. I don?t see how that is the case in the modern day unless you want to accuse everyone who?s pro gun control of Being racist. Particularly when only one person is advocating total 2A abolition in this thread.

Also the idea of being pro gun control and security state is a head scratcher. Most gun control advocated tend to be critical of police brutality and militarization. I know I am.

 

[Schadrach]

He's blaming video games?! B..b..but I thought only LIBERALS did that! But he's our God Emperor! G[REDACTED] told me that Republicans are our allies in the culture war against ess jay dubyas! I'm so confused?!

Enemies on all sides. Nothing new here. Before Jack Thompson it was Hillary Clinton, Tipper Gore, and Joe Lieberman. The only real variation was the names and the detour from "games cause violence" into "games cause sexism" for a while.

I used to think we would never get back to literal concentration camps, but here we are.

If we're using the literal definition of concentration camps (that is, places to hold civilians who have not been charged or convicted of a crime), then we've never stopped using them, and most countries have them in some form. Us having "concentration camps" for processing immigrants isn't even new to Trump. If you didn't see them before 2017 that means you weren't looking.

Personally, I'm supportive of sane gun control legislation and the dismantling of the security state.

The million dollar question is of course what you consider "sane" gun control?

 

[Trunkage]

A big issue I have is that people talk like without guns, murders would just suddenly take a big drop off a cliff. Nobody ever seems to consider that killings happen regardless of the tools used.

Well, I've never been into this 'people don't argue in good faith' on this forum. Until now.

You're literally making stuff up. I know, your just speaking from the NRA manual. Doesn't make it okay.

Gun restrictions are against gun violence. No one thinks this will cure all homicides. Please provide any evidence that anyone in history has said this. What you are saying doesn't make sense. You are trying to listen to the other side and you are making up their arguments to suit your needs