Why is gun control so difficult in the US?

Discussion in 'World Events' started by Saint, Feb 19, 2018.

  1. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    No numbers, I see.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Makes sense. Wealthy, no education in the humanities.
    btw: What means "individual"? Counting the Russians in that? Money managed and/or channeled by the NRA?
    No. It's pretty good, actually. It's just not a perfect indicator.
    So there needs to be an adult in the loop, capable and accountable.
    So they can be forsworn with little effect on individual politicians. Sounds good.
    - - - - -
    See the problem with the "can't fight the army" strawman. It spreads.
     
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  5. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    Straw man and subjective.
    Can't help it if you don't like reality.
    "He said, she said."
    "He said, she said."
    A thief stealing a gun doesn't make it any more of an abetted crime than a car thief committing vehicular manslaughter.
    You literally said "Your natural laws are bullshit."
    Right to life trumps right to liberty when that liberty is the taking of a human life (murder).
    The salesman doesn't proactively kill anyone, and in a free economy, has competition who may better his prices.
    Again, negative rights are all about restricting one person from infringing on the rights of another. You do not have a right to be provided a free speech platform, just that no one stop your freedom of speech. You do not have the right to be supported, just that no one end your life.
    Loss of liberty cannot justify ending a life. You do not gain the ability to remove rights from others just because you don't feel like you can exercise your own. Vigilantism comes to mind.
    And?
    Still an appeal to incredulity. You have no way of knowing, and there's no way to prove it. You can believe me or not, but you have zero basis for asserting other than I've already told you. You're free to say you don't believe me, but that's as far as you can go without an appeal to incredulity.
    No, because the only way to enforce universal background checks would be a nation-wide gun registry. Otherwise, it's just "he said, she said" about who sold ant gun. Simple logic.
    I replied to your argument about bars later in that same post. Don't pretend I didn't.
    No, "privilege" and "right" have different meanings. One is positive and requires someone give or allow it, while the other is negative and only requires no one infringe it. It's actually post-modernist to blur the distinction, which makes the accusation projection.
    There's a possibility he could have been more lethal without a bump stock.
    As part of our own research, we talked to five experts who said Williams is factually correct on one point about the nature of this attachment: Because because bump stocks use a weapon’s recoil to allow the user to fire rapidly and repeatedly, the use of a bump stock makes the weapon more difficult to control when firing. This decreases the weapon’s accuracy, which depends on a weapon’s steadiness.

    Two experts supportive of gun rights — United States Concealed Carry Association president Tim Schmidt and lawyer John Pierce — were not convinced bump stocks would have made the crime more deadly.

    They agreed that a more accurate weapon could have hurt more people, but they needed more information about the crime to come to a conclusion.
    http://www.politifact.com/georgia/s...ump-stocks-prevent-more-casualties-las-vegas/
    I'm saying that, due to the ineffectiveness of full-auto, I'm fine with the current machine gun laws (that seem to give some people some peace of mind). I guess I had to spell that out for you.
    Bad comparison. Those are positive "rights" that require someone provide them, and not guaranteed in the Constitution. No one is required to provide anyone with a gun. Driving is a privilege. Life and liberty are not equivalent to healthcare, education, and cars. And that implication is just plain silly.
    No one has to "prove a need" to buy a car, healthcare, or education.
    Answered above.
    To repeat:
    Who said there was a problem with that?
    Bad comparison. Weapons of mass destruction versus self-defense small arms.
    Again, driving is a privilege, not a right. Don't like it? Call your congressman.
    Is driving a right?
    So a person sells one of the 300 million existing guns to a friend or family member in his own house. A sting stops him, and he says he's always owned that gun. End of story. Catch someone selling a gun elsewhere. Well, I just lent him my gun as collateral for a loan, I just paid him back. End of story.
    Federal law specifically allows one to lend a firearm to another individual, provided the individual is not prohibited.
    https://blog.princelaw.com/2016/12/02/can-you-lend-a-firearm-to-another-person-under-federal-law/
    A lot of wasted enforcement spending. Even if a criminal claimed where he got a gun, the guy could just say he never owned that gun. You couldn't prove otherwise without a gun registry.
    Republicans don't have gun control in their party platform, and many of their constituents are gun owners. Duh.
    Still doesn't explain why Democrats would not submit a passable gun control bill, and opt for no passable action at all.
     
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  7. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    When you're comparing them, apples to apples, it's either a bad comparison or a straw man.
    Criminals have intent to kill, concealed carriers generally do not. So comparing intentional with unintentional gun deaths is intellectually dishonest. Most sane people would assume those intending to kill would kill more than those who don't.

    Who knows. Maybe you assume everyone is equally likely to kill. That's on you.
     
  8. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Ok clearly I'm not asking the question correctly. Once again: why can't we get it implemented? Most Americans are for it rigghhhtt? So what wrong with it?
     
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    We're just accounting for effects. Conceal carry as currently established increases the number of stolen, easily concealed, criminal possessed, guns floating around. Conceal carried guns are often stolen, and often suitable for being carried, and in concealment - a feature criminals prefer, in guns. Some researchers suspect that partly explains their discovery of a small rise in violent crime involving guns - that particular category of crime - in the wake of States adopting more permissive conceal carry laws.

    Here's another factoid effect : during NRA convention season, a regular event, gun injuries drop 17 - 20 % nationally. (Mentioned in passing in a recent Science magazine report).
    In combination with the spike in accidental gun deaths following the Sandy Hook spike in gun sales (as many extra children killed in those extra accidents - 20 - as killed at Sandy Hook itself) and other such spike sales, it introduces an area of possible mitigation - accidental gun injuries and deaths are clearly alterable via ordinary and uncoerced changes in societal expectations and responsible behavior.
    What you posted was stupid.
    Plus all the other evidence - just like anything else. It's called "investigation". People get convicted all the time, on the basis of evidence discovered through investigation.
    You don't need a national gun registry to enforce a mandatory background check.
    You blew off my repeated answers to that, why ask me again?
    Not strictly true. Some healthcare, in particular, requires proof of need (drugs, devices, procedures) - normally a "prescription" from a licensed medical doctor suffices. There are also some situations involving cars and education.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2018
  10. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    Possible problem of unsecured guns, not concealed carry in general. And the only study I've seen only had 1,604 gun-owning respondents, with only 2.4% reporting a stolen gun, out of almost 100 million gun owners. If you think that's a good sample size, that's on you.
    Can't help it if you don't understand reality.
    How?
    Not the same kind of "proof of need" either. Discretionary permits are largely arbitrary.
     
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    It is a problem with conceal carry, in general.
    That size is good enough for decent error range - the question would be selection criteria.
    The figure from the Science study report was 1% of conceal carry guns, not 2.4% of gun owners - obviously a different study.
    What you posted was stupid, not difficult.
    You keep asking, the answer doesn't change.
    You must present proof of need to buy prescription medical stuff - that's what the prescription is.
     
  12. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    You are just being obtuse now aren't you? If you answered before then answer again because it seem you keep answer the wrong question. I'm asking why it can't be implemented, not what is inherently wrong with it, or your opinion on it, etc.
     
  13. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    7,447

    soo the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB are lobbying the government to roll back drink/drunk driving laws ?

    how much money do those sports clubs put into paying politicians to remove laws against drunk driving ?
     
  14. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    3,864
    Never heard of that. Got some credible sources?
     
  15. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    excuse my over exuberance in correlating a simili.
    my point is that drinking alcahol and watching sports or playing sports is a part of most western cultures.
    drunk driving is thus facilitated by watching sports while drinking then driving home or driving to or from sports events.
    alcahol is directly advertised towards sports fans/clubs etc...
    all the massively rich mega sports associations do not attempt to lobby government to remove anti drunk-driving laws to allow sports fan to have a "right to sports".

    the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB are making billions, employing millions and doing it while not attempting to interfear with politics by changing laws or attempting to re-write social moral control.

    look at all this kneeling to the anthem at sports games and all the media attention it got and all the nut-jobs claiming US citizens do not have the right to kneel to the anthem in their own country.

    the moral fortitude of the advocates that seem to be against protecting society seem at odds with the biggest sports clubs and at odds with the concepts of cultural norms...
    people cant carry guns into sports games.
    do they need to ?
    so at what point is it ok that a sports club is allowed to invade the personal life of the US citizen to define what level of culture and protection they can and cant have ?

    thus the irony of those who seek to put more guns on the streets and remove gun regulation and block better quality gun control that will save lifes, in calling themselves a "sports club" they are not. they are a political activist group.
     
  16. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    3,864
    Okay, so no credible sources. Got it.
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Answers to that question have been my central posting focus in the matter of gun control for years now, on this forum. My guess would be that every single thread in which I have posted on gun control contains at least two repetitions of some aspect of one of my answers to that question. It even shows up in my posts on other matters, ostensibly unrelated to guns, in which I use gun laws as an example of certain political features of the American landscape.

    Meanwhile, I've posted nothing on what is inherently wrong with the basic idea, and almost nothing on my opinion of it beyond repeated approval of the basic idea. None of my posts in response to any question have dealt primarily with either of those two matters.

    So I'm tired of repeating myself in response to you repeating that question. I'm going to refer you to the dozens of past repetitions, instead, for a while. You could, say, reconsider your posting #533 in this thread, beginning with:"How the fuck am I supposed to fix that".
    "How the fuck am I supposed to fix that" does not, after all, make "that" vanish from the scene. The "that" is still there, along with the rest of what is described in #518, whether you can fix it or not.
     
  18. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    And yet ... I think the biggest problem with our neighbor's example is that it is overly complex.

    We could dig up the sad tale of any number of NFL stars. It would be one thing to say the owners admit it, but that would mean they think there is something wrong. And we, as a society, spend the whole time teaching young people that conduct off the field is just as important as on, but once money enters the game, at the college and university levels, that rhetoric is just for show. Testosterone-charged warriors suffering routine head injury are not going to work and play well with others; at some point we ought not be surprised at off-field violence.

    Removing laws against violence off the field won't help anything, of course, but if we stand in the middle of the violence and look out at the marketplace, what we see is that the American people want it. That is to say, if a murder here, a few wife-beatings there, and serial rapes there, there, there, and there—oh, and there, too ... and there ...—are the price society has to pay in order to watch men kill themselves and each other slowly on a football field, the attitude generally runs, (1) as long as it's not me and mine, and, (2) as long as we don't have to say it out loud, well, yeah, sure, Americans are okay with the toll.

    As long as it is not that person paying the price, or the people that person cares about, and as long as we don't ask that person to say it out loud, yes, the mass shootings have been an acceptable price for our cowboyish hero fantasies and other aesthetic satisfaction.

    Consider American football: Without the spectacular violence on the field, football is not a massive spectator extravaganza. And in accepting the price, the off-field violence, Americans are also willing to engage in the same victim-blaming they always do when they find accusations inconvenient to aesthetics.

    (Okay, this part sounds a little digressive and, for its own part, complicated, which is why it is reserved to a parenthetic note: Consider singing in the shower. Now ask, is the most popular music "the best", and by what criteria? The point being that plenty about music is not appreciated within the pop market context. The Fibonacci aspect of Tool's "Lateralus" is cool, and all, but fewer people hum that in the shower than the latest candy-pop flavor of the week. Similarly, if we note contemporary complaints about violence in movies and video games, we must also consider what sells and why. People somehow feel they can relate to some aspect of the art they prefer; it is easy enough to understand the pop accessibility of The Lost Boys, or an A-list cast mixing the sexy vampire lore of a bestselling novel like Interview With the Vampire, compared to Nadja; the innovative filmcraft is the least accessible, in this case. Nietzchka Keene directing Björk in The Juniper Tree results in a breathtaking film; there is a reason, though, more Americans prefer the dry cool wit of an action hero surviving a volley of ridiculous gunfire. In the end, this is about aesthetics, and as long as we don't have to say it explicitly, and the death toll stays far enough away from us, what happened in Parkland, or Sutherland Springs, or Las Vegas, is just part of the price of our satisfaction.)​

    One other aspect worth noting:

    It's not entirely problematic, but this is an unusual equivocation of generally different applications of the word, "sport". As with the well-regulated militia, if the gun owners wish to form, say, rifle teams, and practice and compete, and all that, we have a similar context of sport. If, however, we look for the sporting analogy to the sportsman with his rifle, we're watching Eugene Morris Jerome pitch baseballs against a board in his Brighton Beach backyard, circa 1937, or heading out back to throw footballs through a tire swing. The bit about someone dying when we miss is not exactly a loose end; it tends to make or be a certain point of its own.

    The National Rifle Association, furthermore, is not, as it presents itself, a sportsman's or sporting group; they are an industry lobby. When we hear their recommendations, remember: A world so chaotic that the best solution is, "Buy a gun!" is the world the firearms industry wants the rest of us to live in.
     
  19. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    They're willing to let the US become a mad house of gun violence while they live in their gated enclaves or off-shore entirely. They have no sense of responsibility or community, just greed.
     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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  21. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah there is no answer there, could you sum it up in say one sentence?

    Oh but it will be mostly black people dying, so they don't care.

    So shot up the house or senate? Honestly I would not be that bothered if that happened.
     
  22. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    Tiassa ... copernicus to the flat earthers, like hubble compared to a reflection in a muddy pond.
    Beautifully articulated
     
  23. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    You have not shown that.
    Don't blame me if you don't want to cite the studies you reference.
    No, just reality.
    "He said, she said" is not an effective enforcement.
    No where near the same as discretionary "may-issue" laws, where the accepted proof of need is arbitrary. Proof of medical need is standardized.
     

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