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So, it is time to talk about [Gun Control in the United States] yet?

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Posts

  • Nova_CNova_C I have the need The need for speedRegistered User regular
    edited August 2015
    Jubal77 wrote: »
    Preacher wrote: »
    America can do more than one thing at a time. I know it doesn't seem that way at points, but its possible I've done it, and I'm an american.

    Preacher 2016, we can do at least two things at once.

    There's a particularly Democratic tendency to embrace impotency. It's like with gay rights. Democrats said the same thing for years ("It hurts our chances", "It's not their time", "The American public will never accept it", "We'll lose the South/white men/Christians/etc. forever"), while the homosexual community went about changing the unchangeable and getting gay marriage made into the law of the land.

    That's why it is important for non-politicians to not cower before the right on any issue. They love to say their ideas are permanent fixtures, and that the nation will rise up, "Rise up, I tell you!" if we try to change them.

    Then we change them, they just bitch about it, and we go on to defeat them again on something else. In a lot of ways, it's like people mistake the Washington Generals for Darth Vader.

    This is completely legitimate. But there is a distinct difference between giving a population their constitutional and social rights and taking them away.

    Having a right doesn't mean it can't be taken away, nor should a right as dangerous as gun ownership not be severely monitored.

    That's literally what rights mean, with incredibly narrow exceptions. The main exception being criminals, which while I think firearms rights are the most reasonable imposition on them, a lot of what we do to criminals regarding voting, etc. is both deeply harmful to them and to society in general.

    Less rights is generally not the best way to go.
    spool32 wrote: »
    Spaffy wrote: »
    Spaffy wrote: »
    I always play the ignorant UK guy, and I apologise, but I need to do it again - it seems clear there'll be no movement on Gun Control policy without a change to the Constitution because the rights it enshrines are seemingly set in stone. Is that even possible? Has it happened before in modern times? If not, how could that be enabled? How do you convince the populace to support that?

    No change to the Constitution is necessary. As several of us have repeatedly pointed out in this thread, for a very long time, it was a settled matter that the Second Amendment was held as a collective right by the states. It was only in the past 30 years that the idea that it should held as an individual right by people in the US was considered anything but a fringe legal theory. This was done in large part by a concerted campaign to push the theory to prominence, and to make the Federal judiciary more amenable to it.

    Is there any reading I can do on this (ie it being a very recent development that owning a gun is an individual right)?

    Hedgie is wildly misrepresenting how "settled" this matter was. To get some reading on it from the non-Hedgie PoV, check this out for starters, by Constitutional Law professor Glenn Geynolds:

    http://www.guncite.com/journals/reycrit.html

    thje Wiki articles on DC vs. Heller and McDonald vs. City of Chicago for the modern recognition of first an individual right (really a negative right, i.e. that the government can't infringe upon the individual's right to bear arms), and secondly the "incorporation" of that right, which means that like the 1st Amendment, it trumps individual state laws that might try to be more restrictive than the Amendment would allow.

    ...yes, Reynolds may be a conlaw professor. But, he's also a very well known conservative pundit who publishes under the name Instapundit.

    That's a pretty big lie of omission there.

    Second, show me the legal scholarship on the individualist reading predating the Cincinnati Revolt. One of the elements of the push was to flood legal academia with papers reinforcing the theory from the conservative side of the community.

    So, what you're saying is that they used their 1st amendment rights to argue in the marketplace of ideas so convincingly that they swayed the opinions of the legal practitioners who were already educated under previous jurisprudence and found it unconvincing?

    This isn't a case of spooky machinations preying on open young minds, everyone but Roberts was already practicing during the "Cincinnati Revolt," and he was most of the way through law school.

    Also, as a point of order, they address your arguments in DC vs. Heller, where they argue a lot of the pro-control arguments were based on pre-incorporation grounds, meaning that prior to states being held to the same standards, state level regulations were permissible.

    If you want to make the argument they are wrong, addressing their merits is fine, but arguing they are wrong because Republicans talked to them in the past is not super strong.

    Do you understand the concept of astroturf? When a legal theory that had been considered a fringe idea is suddenly getting the full court press from one direction, there's a reason why people might not think that the change is all that organic.

    See also, gay marriage?

    Do you have specific arguments that convincingly argue DC vs Heller was wrong?

    Except that if you look at the development of the legal support for same sex marriage, it developed in a much more organic manner. Whereas when you look at the push to interpret the Second Amendment on an individual basis, it pretty much goes from a fringe theory to something getting pushed hard by the conservative legal set very quickly.

    And the reason Heller is a bad ruling is the same reason Citizens United and Shelby County are - you see the Court do a complete 180 from the existing law, which is something very anomalous for the Court.

    So, your argument is jurisprudence should always be conservative and never change quickly, regardless of the relative merits of either position? Do you have an approximate criteria for lower court opinions / years between changing views?

    Also, what specific, objective criteria is "developed in an organic manner?"

    You want to wear blinders, that's your choice. It's pretty apparent that decisions like Heller happened because the skids were greased and the refs were worked, which has been a core Federalist Society strategy.

    I'll ask again, "Do you have specific arguments that convincingly argue DC vs Heller was wrong?" I guess, to clarify, arguments based on the content of the decision itself and not alleged legal paper publishing conspiracies.
    daveNYC wrote: »
    Eh, then what, three guns? Shotgun, .22, and something in the .30 range? That's not exactly a deal breaker for me.

    Why any limited number of guns? This is just restricting freedoms for the purpose of restricting freedoms. I can understand the principle behind, but don't agree with banning all pistols, say, but if some guy owns a shotgun, .22, and a .30-06, what harm would come from allowing them to get a second match grade .22 rifle to shoot competitively?

    I have two .22s. One is a repeater that is perfect as a teaching rifle since it's incredibly easy to use and a Ruger 10/22 that I customized for precision shooting and is not really good for new shooters to learn with.

    I have a 7mm Magnum Winchest Model 70 that I am slowly turning into a long distance precision rifle.

    I have a 410 shotgun from Russia and a Lee Enfield .303 from WW2 that my dad gave me and I keep as collector pieces, but I never use them.

    I have a .204 Ruger Tikka T3 that is my primary rifle because it's cheap to reload and is crazy accurate out of the box and is perfect for varminting AND precision shooting.

    I would like to get a 12 gauge pump for skeet.

    Losing the 410 and Lee Enfield wouldn't change anything other than deny me a couple rarer pieces I never shoot, but I could do without.

    The rest all have significant purpose as a regular hobbyist shooter. I don't hunt. If I did I'd need more since none of my rifles are appropriate for hunting (Precision rifles are way too heavy to serve as hunting rifles).

    EDIT: Well, the .204 could hunt small game, but the 7mm Mag would be no good for big game because it's going to be crazy heavy and big once I'm done the conversion to precision shooting.

    Nova_C on
  • Jubal77Jubal77 Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    Pistol grips and dangerous is a long standing argument. And in end it is ancillary to the main issue. How can we quantify "deadlier" and is it even quantifiable with a weapon such as guns? Having shot both, anecdotally, pistol grip meant nothing to me in terms of ease of use for down sight firing. Like none. It allows you to "shoot from the hip" which is debatable on the "deadliness" factor. Where it helps the majority of the time, again anecdotally, is with people with smaller hands. And then it just allows those individuals to get the same purchase/presssure to the shoulder that i can get either way.

    Jubal77 on
  • matt has a problemmatt has a problem Points to 'off' Points to 'on'Registered User regular
    The bottom rifle is the top rifle. Everything from the bottom rifle can be put on the top rifle with nothing more than a screwdriver. The only functional difference between the two is the bottom one has a 15 round magazine while the top has a 5, which is also something that is interchangeable on either. How well either is fired is entirely up to the skill of the person handling it, if you suck with the top one, a pistol grip isn't going to turn you into Franz-Albrecht. You can't actually "ban" the bottom rifle because the bottom rifle doesn't exist as a whole, it's the top wooden-stocked rifle that someone has purchased aftermarket parts for.
    Goumindong wrote: »
    How many people, would you say, are you ok with being killed in a mass shooting then?

    Clearly less than you

    And you know this is bullshit, seeing as it was taken from a quote where someone was saying banning semi-automatics would limit the deaths, and I was advocating, you know, stopping them completely.

    nibXTE7.png
  • DrezDrez Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    I hope this is what John Oliver discusses on Sunday. Has he done gun control yet?

    Drez on
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  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    For "aiming down the sights" its not an issue. For quick reacquiring and movement of the weapon it absolutely unquestionably increases the ability of a shooter. Just like forward hand grips.

    wbBv3fj.png
  • PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    Drez wrote: »
    I hope this is what John Oliver discusses on Sunday. Has he done gun control yet?

    He did a fairly scathing one while he was still on the daily show.

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
  • Jubal77Jubal77 Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    Goumindong wrote: »
    For "aiming down the sights" its not an issue. For quick reacquiring and movement of the weapon it absolutely unquestionably increases the ability of a shooter. Just like forward hand grips.

    Disagree. Down sight aiming means just that. Or are you basing the statement on less accurate, "from the hip", type firing. Edit: In fact, thinking through it, the only bonus I can see from using a pistol grip is increased, clip based, reload speed. Slightly.

    Jubal77 on
  • DrezDrez Registered User regular
    Preacher wrote: »
    Drez wrote: »
    I hope this is what John Oliver discusses on Sunday. Has he done gun control yet?

    He did a fairly scathing one while he was still on the daily show.

    Huh. I'll go look that up. But I want The Best Show On TV (sorry, Last Week Tonight) to cover this incident.

    Switch: SW-7690-2320-9238Steam/PSN/Xbox: Drezdar
  • PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
  • spool32spool32 Contrary Library Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    Jubal77 wrote: »
    Preacher wrote: »
    America can do more than one thing at a time. I know it doesn't seem that way at points, but its possible I've done it, and I'm an american.

    Preacher 2016, we can do at least two things at once.

    There's a particularly Democratic tendency to embrace impotency. It's like with gay rights. Democrats said the same thing for years ("It hurts our chances", "It's not their time", "The American public will never accept it", "We'll lose the South/white men/Christians/etc. forever"), while the homosexual community went about changing the unchangeable and getting gay marriage made into the law of the land.

    That's why it is important for non-politicians to not cower before the right on any issue. They love to say their ideas are permanent fixtures, and that the nation will rise up, "Rise up, I tell you!" if we try to change them.

    Then we change them, they just bitch about it, and we go on to defeat them again on something else. In a lot of ways, it's like people mistake the Washington Generals for Darth Vader.

    This is completely legitimate. But there is a distinct difference between giving a population their constitutional and social rights and taking them away.

    Having a right doesn't mean it can't be taken away, nor should a right as dangerous as gun ownership not be severely monitored.

    That's literally what rights mean, with incredibly narrow exceptions. The main exception being criminals, which while I think firearms rights are the most reasonable imposition on them, a lot of what we do to criminals regarding voting, etc. is both deeply harmful to them and to society in general.

    Less rights is generally not the best way to go.
    spool32 wrote: »
    Spaffy wrote: »
    Spaffy wrote: »
    I always play the ignorant UK guy, and I apologise, but I need to do it again - it seems clear there'll be no movement on Gun Control policy without a change to the Constitution because the rights it enshrines are seemingly set in stone. Is that even possible? Has it happened before in modern times? If not, how could that be enabled? How do you convince the populace to support that?

    No change to the Constitution is necessary. As several of us have repeatedly pointed out in this thread, for a very long time, it was a settled matter that the Second Amendment was held as a collective right by the states. It was only in the past 30 years that the idea that it should held as an individual right by people in the US was considered anything but a fringe legal theory. This was done in large part by a concerted campaign to push the theory to prominence, and to make the Federal judiciary more amenable to it.

    Is there any reading I can do on this (ie it being a very recent development that owning a gun is an individual right)?

    Hedgie is wildly misrepresenting how "settled" this matter was. To get some reading on it from the non-Hedgie PoV, check this out for starters, by Constitutional Law professor Glenn Geynolds:

    http://www.guncite.com/journals/reycrit.html

    thje Wiki articles on DC vs. Heller and McDonald vs. City of Chicago for the modern recognition of first an individual right (really a negative right, i.e. that the government can't infringe upon the individual's right to bear arms), and secondly the "incorporation" of that right, which means that like the 1st Amendment, it trumps individual state laws that might try to be more restrictive than the Amendment would allow.

    ...yes, Reynolds may be a conlaw professor. But, he's also a very well known conservative pundit who publishes under the name Instapundit.

    That's a pretty big lie of omission there.

    Second, show me the legal scholarship on the individualist reading predating the Cincinnati Revolt. One of the elements of the push was to flood legal academia with papers reinforcing the theory from the conservative side of the community.

    So, what you're saying is that they used their 1st amendment rights to argue in the marketplace of ideas so convincingly that they swayed the opinions of the legal practitioners who were already educated under previous jurisprudence and found it unconvincing?

    This isn't a case of spooky machinations preying on open young minds, everyone but Roberts was already practicing during the "Cincinnati Revolt," and he was most of the way through law school.

    Also, as a point of order, they address your arguments in DC vs. Heller, where they argue a lot of the pro-control arguments were based on pre-incorporation grounds, meaning that prior to states being held to the same standards, state level regulations were permissible.

    If you want to make the argument they are wrong, addressing their merits is fine, but arguing they are wrong because Republicans talked to them in the past is not super strong.

    Do you understand the concept of astroturf? When a legal theory that had been considered a fringe idea is suddenly getting the full court press from one direction, there's a reason why people might not think that the change is all that organic.

    See also, gay marriage?

    Do you have specific arguments that convincingly argue DC vs Heller was wrong?

    Except that if you look at the development of the legal support for same sex marriage, it developed in a much more organic manner. Whereas when you look at the push to interpret the Second Amendment on an individual basis, it pretty much goes from a fringe theory to something getting pushed hard by the conservative legal set very quickly.

    And the reason Heller is a bad ruling is the same reason Citizens United and Shelby County are - you see the Court do a complete 180 from the existing law, which is something very anomalous for the Court.

    So, your argument is jurisprudence should always be conservative and never change quickly, regardless of the relative merits of either position? Do you have an approximate criteria for lower court opinions / years between changing views?

    Also, what specific, objective criteria is "developed in an organic manner?"

    You want to wear blinders, that's your choice. It's pretty apparent that decisions like Heller happened because the skids were greased and the refs were worked, which has been a core Federalist Society strategy.

    I'll ask again, "Do you have specific arguments that convincingly argue DC vs Heller was wrong?" I guess, to clarify, arguments based on the content of the decision itself and not alleged legal paper publishing conspiracies.

    It's not a conspiracy. Prior to 1970, only three law journal articles were written on the individualist reading. By 1980, the output had exploded by an order of magnitude, with many of the pieces being written by individuals with ties to pro-gun groups. It was a campaign of volume, which in turn gave ground for the new wave of conservative jurists to rule in this new direction.

    That article is very interested in the idea that if you make enough noise, even the best legal minds in the country will be bamboozled, at least down to the page numbered 357, where he uses disgraced historian Michael Bellisiles as a source and I stopped.

    This Spitzer is involved in quite a crusade against the individualist interpretation!

    spool32 on
  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    spool32 wrote: »
    Jubal77 wrote: »
    Preacher wrote: »
    America can do more than one thing at a time. I know it doesn't seem that way at points, but its possible I've done it, and I'm an american.

    Preacher 2016, we can do at least two things at once.

    There's a particularly Democratic tendency to embrace impotency. It's like with gay rights. Democrats said the same thing for years ("It hurts our chances", "It's not their time", "The American public will never accept it", "We'll lose the South/white men/Christians/etc. forever"), while the homosexual community went about changing the unchangeable and getting gay marriage made into the law of the land.

    That's why it is important for non-politicians to not cower before the right on any issue. They love to say their ideas are permanent fixtures, and that the nation will rise up, "Rise up, I tell you!" if we try to change them.

    Then we change them, they just bitch about it, and we go on to defeat them again on something else. In a lot of ways, it's like people mistake the Washington Generals for Darth Vader.

    This is completely legitimate. But there is a distinct difference between giving a population their constitutional and social rights and taking them away.

    Having a right doesn't mean it can't be taken away, nor should a right as dangerous as gun ownership not be severely monitored.

    That's literally what rights mean, with incredibly narrow exceptions. The main exception being criminals, which while I think firearms rights are the most reasonable imposition on them, a lot of what we do to criminals regarding voting, etc. is both deeply harmful to them and to society in general.

    Less rights is generally not the best way to go.
    spool32 wrote: »
    Spaffy wrote: »
    Spaffy wrote: »
    I always play the ignorant UK guy, and I apologise, but I need to do it again - it seems clear there'll be no movement on Gun Control policy without a change to the Constitution because the rights it enshrines are seemingly set in stone. Is that even possible? Has it happened before in modern times? If not, how could that be enabled? How do you convince the populace to support that?

    No change to the Constitution is necessary. As several of us have repeatedly pointed out in this thread, for a very long time, it was a settled matter that the Second Amendment was held as a collective right by the states. It was only in the past 30 years that the idea that it should held as an individual right by people in the US was considered anything but a fringe legal theory. This was done in large part by a concerted campaign to push the theory to prominence, and to make the Federal judiciary more amenable to it.

    Is there any reading I can do on this (ie it being a very recent development that owning a gun is an individual right)?

    Hedgie is wildly misrepresenting how "settled" this matter was. To get some reading on it from the non-Hedgie PoV, check this out for starters, by Constitutional Law professor Glenn Geynolds:

    http://www.guncite.com/journals/reycrit.html

    thje Wiki articles on DC vs. Heller and McDonald vs. City of Chicago for the modern recognition of first an individual right (really a negative right, i.e. that the government can't infringe upon the individual's right to bear arms), and secondly the "incorporation" of that right, which means that like the 1st Amendment, it trumps individual state laws that might try to be more restrictive than the Amendment would allow.

    ...yes, Reynolds may be a conlaw professor. But, he's also a very well known conservative pundit who publishes under the name Instapundit.

    That's a pretty big lie of omission there.

    Second, show me the legal scholarship on the individualist reading predating the Cincinnati Revolt. One of the elements of the push was to flood legal academia with papers reinforcing the theory from the conservative side of the community.

    So, what you're saying is that they used their 1st amendment rights to argue in the marketplace of ideas so convincingly that they swayed the opinions of the legal practitioners who were already educated under previous jurisprudence and found it unconvincing?

    This isn't a case of spooky machinations preying on open young minds, everyone but Roberts was already practicing during the "Cincinnati Revolt," and he was most of the way through law school.

    Also, as a point of order, they address your arguments in DC vs. Heller, where they argue a lot of the pro-control arguments were based on pre-incorporation grounds, meaning that prior to states being held to the same standards, state level regulations were permissible.

    If you want to make the argument they are wrong, addressing their merits is fine, but arguing they are wrong because Republicans talked to them in the past is not super strong.

    Do you understand the concept of astroturf? When a legal theory that had been considered a fringe idea is suddenly getting the full court press from one direction, there's a reason why people might not think that the change is all that organic.

    See also, gay marriage?

    Do you have specific arguments that convincingly argue DC vs Heller was wrong?

    Except that if you look at the development of the legal support for same sex marriage, it developed in a much more organic manner. Whereas when you look at the push to interpret the Second Amendment on an individual basis, it pretty much goes from a fringe theory to something getting pushed hard by the conservative legal set very quickly.

    And the reason Heller is a bad ruling is the same reason Citizens United and Shelby County are - you see the Court do a complete 180 from the existing law, which is something very anomalous for the Court.

    So, your argument is jurisprudence should always be conservative and never change quickly, regardless of the relative merits of either position? Do you have an approximate criteria for lower court opinions / years between changing views?

    Also, what specific, objective criteria is "developed in an organic manner?"

    You want to wear blinders, that's your choice. It's pretty apparent that decisions like Heller happened because the skids were greased and the refs were worked, which has been a core Federalist Society strategy.

    I'll ask again, "Do you have specific arguments that convincingly argue DC vs Heller was wrong?" I guess, to clarify, arguments based on the content of the decision itself and not alleged legal paper publishing conspiracies.

    It's not a conspiracy. Prior to 1970, only three law journal articles were written on the individualist reading. By 1980, the output had exploded by an order of magnitude, with many of the pieces being written by individuals with ties to pro-gun groups. It was a campaign of volume, which in turn gave ground for the new wave of conservative jurists to rule in this new direction.

    That article makes no accusation of a conspiracy, at least down to the page numbered 357, where he uses disgraced historian Michael BellisIles as a source and I stopped.

    This Spitzer is involved in quite a crusade against the indivisible interpretation!

    ...remind me again where John Lott works?

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • rockrngerrockrnger Registered User regular
    The bottom rifle is the top rifle. Everything from the bottom rifle can be put on the top rifle with nothing more than a screwdriver. The only functional difference between the two is the bottom one has a 15 round magazine while the top has a 5, which is also something that is interchangeable on either. How well either is fired is entirely up to the skill of the person handling it, if you suck with the top one, a pistol grip isn't going to turn you into Franz-Albrecht. You can't actually "ban" the bottom rifle because the bottom rifle doesn't exist as a whole, it's the top wooden-stocked rifle that someone has purchased aftermarket parts for.
    Goumindong wrote: »
    How many people, would you say, are you ok with being killed in a mass shooting then?

    Clearly less than you

    And you know this is bullshit, seeing as it was taken from a quote where someone was saying banning semi-automatics would limit the deaths, and I was advocating, you know, stopping them completely.

    Almost Every gun can be made illegal with (or sometimes without) a screwdriver.

    And the bottom one could be made legal with a minimal effort from the manufacturer. They just don't.

  • matt has a problemmatt has a problem Points to 'off' Points to 'on'Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    rockrnger wrote: »
    The bottom rifle is the top rifle. Everything from the bottom rifle can be put on the top rifle with nothing more than a screwdriver. The only functional difference between the two is the bottom one has a 15 round magazine while the top has a 5, which is also something that is interchangeable on either. How well either is fired is entirely up to the skill of the person handling it, if you suck with the top one, a pistol grip isn't going to turn you into Franz-Albrecht. You can't actually "ban" the bottom rifle because the bottom rifle doesn't exist as a whole, it's the top wooden-stocked rifle that someone has purchased aftermarket parts for.
    Goumindong wrote: »
    How many people, would you say, are you ok with being killed in a mass shooting then?

    Clearly less than you

    And you know this is bullshit, seeing as it was taken from a quote where someone was saying banning semi-automatics would limit the deaths, and I was advocating, you know, stopping them completely.

    Almost Every gun can be made illegal with (or sometimes without) a screwdriver.

    And the bottom one could be made legal with a minimal effort from the manufacturer. They just don't.

    There's nothing illegal about the bottom one. In the US at least. The only way to make either of those guns illegal would be to modify them to fire fully automatic.

    :edit: or I guess if you cut the barrel down to make it a short-barreled rifle.

    matt has a problem on
    nibXTE7.png
  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    Drez wrote: »
    I hope this is what John Oliver discusses on Sunday. Has he done gun control yet?

    He's off until September 13.

    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
  • DrezDrez Registered User regular
    @Preacher Thanks

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  • DrezDrez Registered User regular
    Drez wrote: »
    I hope this is what John Oliver discusses on Sunday. Has he done gun control yet?

    He's off until September 13.

    GOD DAMN IT.

    Switch: SW-7690-2320-9238Steam/PSN/Xbox: Drezdar
  • rockrngerrockrnger Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    rockrnger wrote: »
    The bottom rifle is the top rifle. Everything from the bottom rifle can be put on the top rifle with nothing more than a screwdriver. The only functional difference between the two is the bottom one has a 15 round magazine while the top has a 5, which is also something that is interchangeable on either. How well either is fired is entirely up to the skill of the person handling it, if you suck with the top one, a pistol grip isn't going to turn you into Franz-Albrecht. You can't actually "ban" the bottom rifle because the bottom rifle doesn't exist as a whole, it's the top wooden-stocked rifle that someone has purchased aftermarket parts for.
    Goumindong wrote: »
    How many people, would you say, are you ok with being killed in a mass shooting then?

    Clearly less than you

    And you know this is bullshit, seeing as it was taken from a quote where someone was saying banning semi-automatics would limit the deaths, and I was advocating, you know, stopping them completely.

    Almost Every gun can be made illegal with (or sometimes without) a screwdriver.

    And the bottom one could be made legal with a minimal effort from the manufacturer. They just don't.

    There's nothing illegal about the bottom one. In the US at least. The only way to make either of those guns illegal would be to modify them to fire fully automatic.

    :edit: or I guess if you cut the barrel down to make it a short-barreled rifle.

    That was my point (I mixed them up I guess). A semi automatic and a machine gun are them same gun except for some modifications.

    Edit: and that you can put whatever you want on a gun that doesn't accept a magazine over 5 rounds.

    rockrnger on
  • programjunkieprogramjunkie Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    For "aiming down the sights" its not an issue. For quick reacquiring and movement of the weapon it absolutely unquestionably increases the ability of a shooter. Just like forward hand grips.

    Not really true. It is entirely a personal preference thing, which is precisely why the US Army supplies forward grips but does not mandate them, and plenty of combat veterans who also have experience as marksmanship instructors choose not to mount them.

    Honestly, this goes for most aspects of a firearm. It's also why the advice, when asked, for "what handgun should I get for concealed carry?" is "One you will enjoy shooting enough to do it consistently and feel comfortable with."

  • ElJeffeElJeffe Moderator, ClubPA mod
    spool32 wrote: »
    ElJeffe wrote: »
    spool32 wrote: »
    speaking of sustenance, I need to go eat. Back later! jeffe please @ me on the reply. :)

    dave, reread those two posts... I don't think you're arguing what you mean to be.

    X in that example is people who died because of the government's action to restrict access.

    Thanks for responding, @spool32

    I think we have a lot of similarity in our philosophical bases for regulation, and I think the main difference lies in our weighting metrics.

    For example, if the government passed a law banning the ownership of unicorns, I would consider this to be very mildly negative. It's a needless regulation, so there's a strike, but it's also a regulation that effects literally nobody, so it's hard to give more than the very tiniest of shits about it. I suspect you would probably agree, though your shit might be slightly larger.

    Moving back to guns, I would figure the loss of freedom of everyone on the country into my equation, perhaps, but I would weight them so much less that it makes sense to split them into X and Z. I am much, much more interested in the actual lives gained and lost than in the loss of a freedom that most people never had any desire to exercise. One is real loss, and one is philosophical loss. And I think that the mourning of one person over a lost loved one is greater than the mourning of a thousand people over a lost <insert object that you never even wanted until the government told you it was verboten>.

    Yes, yes, that way less tyranny. We must be ever vigilant, sure. But I prefer to perform a cost-benefit analysis before spending my outrage, because I have only a finite amount.

    For me, the seriousness of Y builds a sense of urgency for finding a solution that fits my criteria: Y is really bad! It impacts less how much tyranny I'm willing to demand we all suffer. You never feel the loss of a Right until you do, if you take my meaning.

    Also, for me, death caused by the State is far more unjust that death caused by another citizen. The remedy is often impossible to obtain, and the power imbalance is astronomical. It savages the fabric of society... witness responses in Ferguson.

    I place a very great weight on those deaths, when thinking about how to balance individual liberty and societal good.

    I think "death caused by the State" is not a very accurate way to put it, as it equates indirect casualties to a government regulation with, say, death die to capital punishment.

    Like I said, in a nation of 300 million people, all kinds of laws and regulations are going to lead to fatalities. You ban lead in paint, several lead processing plants shut down due to decreased demand, many people lose their jobs, one of them is clinically depressed and commits suicide after being laid off. The government acts, and people die. A year later, the government reallows lead in paint. Demand for <whatever replaced lead> declines, people lose jobs, some of them wind up homeless and starve to death.

    When literally everything the government does (our declines to do) can wind up killing (or at least affecting negatively) people, I think you kinda need to be a little utilitarian about things.

    I also have no idea how you come to the remedy for wrongful death being harder to obtain from the government than from a private citizen. There is pretty much nobody better suited to recompensing a wrongful death than a government with billions of dollars at its disposal and a considerably lower emotional attachment to those dollars.

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  • spool32spool32 Contrary Library Registered User regular
    ElJeffe wrote: »
    spool32 wrote: »
    ElJeffe wrote: »
    spool32 wrote: »
    speaking of sustenance, I need to go eat. Back later! jeffe please @ me on the reply. :)

    dave, reread those two posts... I don't think you're arguing what you mean to be.

    X in that example is people who died because of the government's action to restrict access.

    Thanks for responding, @spool32

    I think we have a lot of similarity in our philosophical bases for regulation, and I think the main difference lies in our weighting metrics.

    For example, if the government passed a law banning the ownership of unicorns, I would consider this to be very mildly negative. It's a needless regulation, so there's a strike, but it's also a regulation that effects literally nobody, so it's hard to give more than the very tiniest of shits about it. I suspect you would probably agree, though your shit might be slightly larger.

    Moving back to guns, I would figure the loss of freedom of everyone on the country into my equation, perhaps, but I would weight them so much less that it makes sense to split them into X and Z. I am much, much more interested in the actual lives gained and lost than in the loss of a freedom that most people never had any desire to exercise. One is real loss, and one is philosophical loss. And I think that the mourning of one person over a lost loved one is greater than the mourning of a thousand people over a lost <insert object that you never even wanted until the government told you it was verboten>.

    Yes, yes, that way less tyranny. We must be ever vigilant, sure. But I prefer to perform a cost-benefit analysis before spending my outrage, because I have only a finite amount.

    For me, the seriousness of Y builds a sense of urgency for finding a solution that fits my criteria: Y is really bad! It impacts less how much tyranny I'm willing to demand we all suffer. You never feel the loss of a Right until you do, if you take my meaning.

    Also, for me, death caused by the State is far more unjust that death caused by another citizen. The remedy is often impossible to obtain, and the power imbalance is astronomical. It savages the fabric of society... witness responses in Ferguson.

    I place a very great weight on those deaths, when thinking about how to balance individual liberty and societal good.

    I think "death caused by the State" is not a very accurate way to put it, as it equates indirect casualties to a government regulation with, say, death die to capital punishment.

    Like I said, in a nation of 300 million people, all kinds of laws and regulations are going to lead to fatalities. You ban lead in paint, several lead processing plants shut down due to decreased demand, many people lose their jobs, one of them is clinically depressed and commits suicide after being laid off. The government acts, and people die. A year later, the government reallows lead in paint. Demand for <whatever replaced lead> declines, people lose jobs, some of them wind up homeless and starve to death.

    When literally everything the government does (our declines to do) can wind up killing (or at least affecting negatively) people, I think you kinda need to be a little utilitarian about things.

    I also have no idea how you come to the remedy for wrongful death being harder to obtain from the government than from a private citizen. There is pretty much nobody better suited to recompensing a wrongful death than a government with billions of dollars at its disposal and a considerably lower emotional attachment to those dollars.

    Well, just look at how much trouble we seem to have with prosecuting the police. People get injured and property destroyed by mistaken no-knock raids pretty regularly and it's difficult / impossible to get any compensation. Hell, it's a legal fight to get the State to compensate you for mistakenly convicting you of a crime and putting you in jail for a decade or so. It's surprisingly hard to get justice from the State when the State caused the harm.

    And yeah, cause at three removes isn't terribly compelling. In your original example we were talking about death by badger (essentially Act of God) that would have been preventable but for the direct impact of a decision to restrict a liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. It's especially well suited to this discussion! I feel like the only example closer to the source would be "murdered by the cops for no reason", and we have a great examples of what that sort of thing does to the fabric of society - Kent State. Honestly we have a lot of these examples.

  • jmcdonaldjmcdonald I voted, did you? DC(ish)Registered User regular
    spool32 wrote: »
    Jubal77 wrote: »
    Basically, the "if we cower more, maybe the issue will go away" crowd is asking us not only to ignore one of the Top 20 causes of death in the country, but also one of the few (along with suicides and auto accidents) that actually can be directly alleviated by good government policy.* It also puts the "Statistically, you are safe.." in a weird light, since we certainly don't say that about the other top causes of death.

    Policy has been alleviating it though. Since 1993 gun homicides have dropped 49% in the US. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/

    Violent crime in general is down. That said, the suicide rate has barely budged, and the rate of mass shootings has tripled since 2011.


    That article is an interesting use of data. The calendar map that's been posted a few times seems to be using the method James Allen Fox uses, 4 or more people killed, to say that mass shootings are out of control while Fox is using the same method to say mass shootings are consistent and haven't actually increased. The article chooses to discard domestic violence-related mass shootings which Fox and the calendar map use and only counts public mass shooting/spree killing incidents to say that they're happening more frequently.

    We don't have a definitive view of it because of reasons shown. To me the numbers are skewed the same way we have changed our definition of terrorist as of late.

    It seems the FBI uses Fox's method though.

    http://www.vox.com/cards/gun-violence-facts/mass-shootings-rare-united-states
    As Brad Plumer explained, they were just looking at different numbers than Fox, and Mother Jones's numbers excluded certain types of mass shootings. "Fox is looking at all mass shootings involving four or more victims — that's the standard FBI definition," Plumer wrote. "Mother Jones, by contrast, had a much more restrictive definition, excluding things like armed robbery or gang violence."

    Note: shootings aren't deaths, and include the gunman shooting himself or the police shooting him.

    So what? That makes it OK?

    Well, you only got shot!

  • programjunkieprogramjunkie Registered User regular
    jmcdonald wrote: »
    spool32 wrote: »
    Jubal77 wrote: »
    Basically, the "if we cower more, maybe the issue will go away" crowd is asking us not only to ignore one of the Top 20 causes of death in the country, but also one of the few (along with suicides and auto accidents) that actually can be directly alleviated by good government policy.* It also puts the "Statistically, you are safe.." in a weird light, since we certainly don't say that about the other top causes of death.

    Policy has been alleviating it though. Since 1993 gun homicides have dropped 49% in the US. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/

    Violent crime in general is down. That said, the suicide rate has barely budged, and the rate of mass shootings has tripled since 2011.


    That article is an interesting use of data. The calendar map that's been posted a few times seems to be using the method James Allen Fox uses, 4 or more people killed, to say that mass shootings are out of control while Fox is using the same method to say mass shootings are consistent and haven't actually increased. The article chooses to discard domestic violence-related mass shootings which Fox and the calendar map use and only counts public mass shooting/spree killing incidents to say that they're happening more frequently.

    We don't have a definitive view of it because of reasons shown. To me the numbers are skewed the same way we have changed our definition of terrorist as of late.

    It seems the FBI uses Fox's method though.

    http://www.vox.com/cards/gun-violence-facts/mass-shootings-rare-united-states
    As Brad Plumer explained, they were just looking at different numbers than Fox, and Mother Jones's numbers excluded certain types of mass shootings. "Fox is looking at all mass shootings involving four or more victims — that's the standard FBI definition," Plumer wrote. "Mother Jones, by contrast, had a much more restrictive definition, excluding things like armed robbery or gang violence."

    Note: shootings aren't deaths, and include the gunman shooting himself or the police shooting him.

    So what? That makes it OK?

    Well, you only got shot!

    Well, kinda. Shootings do include injuries so minor that you can literally put a smiley face band-aid on them and it will be all better. It really ranges the full spectrum between funny stories and injuries unsurvivable even with immediate medical attention.

    Specifically, the minor injuries tend to be fragmentation related injuries. Bullets tend to kick up a lot of stuff, and it often results in superficial injuries. Direct hits can still be comparatively minor to a worst case, but do almost always require experienced medical intervention.

    The reason that's relevant is that all murders are approximately equal, whereas violent crime that results in injuries can range from trivial but still morally wrong to permanently crippling, and everything in-between, so the severity is relevant to deciding how bad it was.

  • jmcdonaldjmcdonald I voted, did you? DC(ish)Registered User regular
    jmcdonald wrote: »
    spool32 wrote: »
    Jubal77 wrote: »
    Basically, the "if we cower more, maybe the issue will go away" crowd is asking us not only to ignore one of the Top 20 causes of death in the country, but also one of the few (along with suicides and auto accidents) that actually can be directly alleviated by good government policy.* It also puts the "Statistically, you are safe.." in a weird light, since we certainly don't say that about the other top causes of death.

    Policy has been alleviating it though. Since 1993 gun homicides have dropped 49% in the US. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/

    Violent crime in general is down. That said, the suicide rate has barely budged, and the rate of mass shootings has tripled since 2011.


    That article is an interesting use of data. The calendar map that's been posted a few times seems to be using the method James Allen Fox uses, 4 or more people killed, to say that mass shootings are out of control while Fox is using the same method to say mass shootings are consistent and haven't actually increased. The article chooses to discard domestic violence-related mass shootings which Fox and the calendar map use and only counts public mass shooting/spree killing incidents to say that they're happening more frequently.

    We don't have a definitive view of it because of reasons shown. To me the numbers are skewed the same way we have changed our definition of terrorist as of late.

    It seems the FBI uses Fox's method though.

    http://www.vox.com/cards/gun-violence-facts/mass-shootings-rare-united-states
    As Brad Plumer explained, they were just looking at different numbers than Fox, and Mother Jones's numbers excluded certain types of mass shootings. "Fox is looking at all mass shootings involving four or more victims — that's the standard FBI definition," Plumer wrote. "Mother Jones, by contrast, had a much more restrictive definition, excluding things like armed robbery or gang violence."

    Note: shootings aren't deaths, and include the gunman shooting himself or the police shooting him.

    So what? That makes it OK?

    Well, you only got shot!

    Well, kinda. Shootings do include injuries so minor that you can literally put a smiley face band-aid on them and it will be all better. It really ranges the full spectrum between funny stories and injuries unsurvivable even with immediate medical attention.

    Specifically, the minor injuries tend to be fragmentation related injuries. Bullets tend to kick up a lot of stuff, and it often results in superficial injuries. Direct hits can still be comparatively minor to a worst case, but do almost always require experienced medical intervention.

    The reason that's relevant is that all murders are approximately equal, whereas violent crime that results in injuries can range from trivial but still morally wrong to permanently crippling, and everything in-between, so the severity is relevant to deciding how bad it was.

    I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I don't give a damn about the delineation between "trivial" and "nontrivial" injuries that are a result of violent crime.

    Additionally, if one is going to argue the potential "triviality" of these injuries, perhaps there should be data to back it up.

  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    Preacher wrote: »
    Drez wrote: »
    I hope this is what John Oliver discusses on Sunday. Has he done gun control yet?

    He did a fairly scathing one while he was still on the daily show.

    Also on a two week break starting after last week's episode

    EDIT: Beat'd

    Lanz on
    waNkm4k.jpg?1
  • ElJeffeElJeffe Moderator, ClubPA mod
    jmcdonald wrote: »
    jmcdonald wrote: »
    spool32 wrote: »
    Jubal77 wrote: »
    Basically, the "if we cower more, maybe the issue will go away" crowd is asking us not only to ignore one of the Top 20 causes of death in the country, but also one of the few (along with suicides and auto accidents) that actually can be directly alleviated by good government policy.* It also puts the "Statistically, you are safe.." in a weird light, since we certainly don't say that about the other top causes of death.

    Policy has been alleviating it though. Since 1993 gun homicides have dropped 49% in the US. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/

    Violent crime in general is down. That said, the suicide rate has barely budged, and the rate of mass shootings has tripled since 2011.


    That article is an interesting use of data. The calendar map that's been posted a few times seems to be using the method James Allen Fox uses, 4 or more people killed, to say that mass shootings are out of control while Fox is using the same method to say mass shootings are consistent and haven't actually increased. The article chooses to discard domestic violence-related mass shootings which Fox and the calendar map use and only counts public mass shooting/spree killing incidents to say that they're happening more frequently.

    We don't have a definitive view of it because of reasons shown. To me the numbers are skewed the same way we have changed our definition of terrorist as of late.

    It seems the FBI uses Fox's method though.

    http://www.vox.com/cards/gun-violence-facts/mass-shootings-rare-united-states
    As Brad Plumer explained, they were just looking at different numbers than Fox, and Mother Jones's numbers excluded certain types of mass shootings. "Fox is looking at all mass shootings involving four or more victims — that's the standard FBI definition," Plumer wrote. "Mother Jones, by contrast, had a much more restrictive definition, excluding things like armed robbery or gang violence."

    Note: shootings aren't deaths, and include the gunman shooting himself or the police shooting him.

    So what? That makes it OK?

    Well, you only got shot!

    Well, kinda. Shootings do include injuries so minor that you can literally put a smiley face band-aid on them and it will be all better. It really ranges the full spectrum between funny stories and injuries unsurvivable even with immediate medical attention.

    Specifically, the minor injuries tend to be fragmentation related injuries. Bullets tend to kick up a lot of stuff, and it often results in superficial injuries. Direct hits can still be comparatively minor to a worst case, but do almost always require experienced medical intervention.

    The reason that's relevant is that all murders are approximately equal, whereas violent crime that results in injuries can range from trivial but still morally wrong to permanently crippling, and everything in-between, so the severity is relevant to deciding how bad it was.

    I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I don't give a damn about the delineation between "trivial" and "nontrivial" injuries that are a result of violent crime.

    Additionally, if one is going to argue the potential "triviality" of these injuries, perhaps there should be data to back it up.

    Violent crimes include an unarmed mugging, a glancing punch, beating someone with a tire iron, and shooting someone five times in the chest.

    Not distinguishing between those things is kind of dumb.

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  • jmcdonaldjmcdonald I voted, did you? DC(ish)Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    ElJeffe wrote: »
    jmcdonald wrote: »
    jmcdonald wrote: »
    spool32 wrote: »
    Jubal77 wrote: »
    Basically, the "if we cower more, maybe the issue will go away" crowd is asking us not only to ignore one of the Top 20 causes of death in the country, but also one of the few (along with suicides and auto accidents) that actually can be directly alleviated by good government policy.* It also puts the "Statistically, you are safe.." in a weird light, since we certainly don't say that about the other top causes of death.

    Policy has been alleviating it though. Since 1993 gun homicides have dropped 49% in the US. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/

    Violent crime in general is down. That said, the suicide rate has barely budged, and the rate of mass shootings has tripled since 2011.


    That article is an interesting use of data. The calendar map that's been posted a few times seems to be using the method James Allen Fox uses, 4 or more people killed, to say that mass shootings are out of control while Fox is using the same method to say mass shootings are consistent and haven't actually increased. The article chooses to discard domestic violence-related mass shootings which Fox and the calendar map use and only counts public mass shooting/spree killing incidents to say that they're happening more frequently.

    We don't have a definitive view of it because of reasons shown. To me the numbers are skewed the same way we have changed our definition of terrorist as of late.

    It seems the FBI uses Fox's method though.

    http://www.vox.com/cards/gun-violence-facts/mass-shootings-rare-united-states
    As Brad Plumer explained, they were just looking at different numbers than Fox, and Mother Jones's numbers excluded certain types of mass shootings. "Fox is looking at all mass shootings involving four or more victims — that's the standard FBI definition," Plumer wrote. "Mother Jones, by contrast, had a much more restrictive definition, excluding things like armed robbery or gang violence."

    Note: shootings aren't deaths, and include the gunman shooting himself or the police shooting him.

    So what? That makes it OK?

    Well, you only got shot!

    Well, kinda. Shootings do include injuries so minor that you can literally put a smiley face band-aid on them and it will be all better. It really ranges the full spectrum between funny stories and injuries unsurvivable even with immediate medical attention.

    Specifically, the minor injuries tend to be fragmentation related injuries. Bullets tend to kick up a lot of stuff, and it often results in superficial injuries. Direct hits can still be comparatively minor to a worst case, but do almost always require experienced medical intervention.

    The reason that's relevant is that all murders are approximately equal, whereas violent crime that results in injuries can range from trivial but still morally wrong to permanently crippling, and everything in-between, so the severity is relevant to deciding how bad it was.

    I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I don't give a damn about the delineation between "trivial" and "nontrivial" injuries that are a result of violent crime.

    Additionally, if one is going to argue the potential "triviality" of these injuries, perhaps there should be data to back it up.

    Violent crimes include an unarmed mugging, a glancing punch, beating someone with a tire iron, and shooting someone five times in the chest.

    Not distinguishing between those things is kind of dumb.

    Not in the context of being "shot" which is the root of this discourse.

    Edit

    Seriously. The defense to "well you were only shot" was "well, it could have been trivial".

    Which

    1. Has not been supported by anything other than that statement

    And

    2. Is so absurd to me it borders on pythonesque

    Where's the black knight when you need him?

    jmcdonald on
  • mcdermottmcdermott Registered User regular
    ElJeffe wrote: »
    Violent crimes include an unarmed mugging, a glancing punch, beating someone with a tire iron, and shooting someone five times in the chest.

    Not distinguishing between those things is kind of dumb.

    Yeah, thanks for hitting that. Of course you want to delineate between minor injuries and death, and firearms do cause both. Once we start saying violent crime = violent crime, we have to start talking about selling cooking knives without pointy tips, thus creating the very slippery slope argument that people point to. We don't want that, I'm assuming.

    Agree, however, that if we're going to talk about minor injury versus death when it comes to shooting stats, it would be beneficial to provide data as to their relative frequency.

  • ElJeffeElJeffe Moderator, ClubPA mod
    spool32 wrote: »
    Well, just look at how much trouble we seem to have with prosecuting the police. People get injured and property destroyed by mistaken no-knock raids pretty regularly and it's difficult / impossible to get any compensation. Hell, it's a legal fight to get the State to compensate you for mistakenly convicting you of a crime and putting you in jail for a decade or so. It's surprisingly hard to get justice from the State when the State caused the harm.

    And yeah, cause at three removes isn't terribly compelling. In your original example we were talking about death by badger (essentially Act of God) that would have been preventable but for the direct impact of a decision to restrict a liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. It's especially well suited to this discussion! I feel like the only example closer to the source would be "murdered by the cops for no reason", and we have a great examples of what that sort of thing does to the fabric of society - Kent State. Honestly we have a lot of these examples.

    It's also hard to get a private citizen to recompense someone after inflicting harm. It usually involves suing them, hoping your lawyer was more expensive than theirs, getting a favorable judgement, waiting out the appeal, and then hoping they actually bother to pay you once the judgement comes down.

    As to harm at three removes, fine: the lead is replaced with a different material you have a rare allergy to, and you die as a direct result of the new paint regulations. Better? I don't much see the difference; dead is dead, and math is a thing. Unintended consequences happen, is my point. Often predictably.

    See, I think the impasse is that "dead is dead" thing that you seem to regard less if it occurs due to a regulation versus due to lack of a regulation. Restricting, say, a kind of handgun might cost 100 lives but save another 500. And according to your calculus, those 100 are the more important, because Second Amendment.

    I think all the extra deaths you get, sans regulation, are kind of important! And it is probably a cold comfort when you go up to a person and tell them, "Okay, yes, your husband is dead, his children fatherless. But! A million people somewhere have the right to purchase a gun they technically have no interest in buying. Freedom!"

    Abstract liberty is great. But do you know who has even less liberty than a man barred from buying a specific subgenre of firearm? A person who was murdered by that firearm.

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  • DacDac Registered User regular
    To paraphrase John Oliver, christ, it's always about 'liberty' with people. It's never about my liberty to not get shot by a maniac wielding a gun.

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  • spool32spool32 Contrary Library Registered User regular
    Dac wrote: »
    To paraphrase John Oliver, christ, it's always about 'liberty' with people. It's never about my liberty to not get shot by a maniac wielding a gun.

    We can't guarantee safety. No one can make you free from harm by lightning, drowning, botched operations, car accidents, cancer, or murderers.

    What we can do is try to minimize things in ways that restrict us as little as possible to accomplish the goal.

    Jeffe, I'll have a longer response for you later, but I think you've fallen somewhat into an appeal to emotion and we're trying to talk about how best to make public policy. If you don't believe that liberty is a worthy goal to protect at all, we can easily solve this crime problem by locking up four or five times as many people, confiscating all weapons of all types, and so forth. If you do, we need to find some balance.

  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    spool32 wrote: »
    Dac wrote: »
    To paraphrase John Oliver, christ, it's always about 'liberty' with people. It's never about my liberty to not get shot by a maniac wielding a gun.

    We can't guarantee safety. No one can make you free from harm by lightning, drowning, botched operations, car accidents, cancer, or murderers.

    What we can do is try to minimize things in ways that restrict us as little as possible to accomplish the goal.

    Jeffe, I'll have a longer response for you later, but I think you've fallen somewhat into an appeal to emotion and we're trying to talk about how best to make public policy. If you don't believe that liberty is a worthy goal to protect at all, we can easily solve this crime problem by locking up four or five times as many people, confiscating all weapons of all types, and so forth. If you do, we need to find some balance.

    This is stupid and you know it. It's stupid because you know it wouldn't work as a solution to crime or violence.

    But it's also stupid because it's not at all what we're talking about with regards to gun control. You're more then content to do nothing because ultimately you're pretty sure this specific issue will never happen to you.

    You want to get all philosophical about it, because it distracts from the uncomfortable business of telling the friends, families and surviving victims about why their dead loved ones are a necessary sacrifice for your grand ideology. You get to disregard anyone who uses the word tragedy because gosh darnit we can't let obviously emotional people make policy! It's definitely just too soon, we're all to emotional to think about legislation due to this last shooting.

  • ElJeffeElJeffe Moderator, ClubPA mod
    edited August 2015
    Well, I said above that I specifically do value liberty, I just also value actual people more. I think emotion is important, because it informs empathy, and empathy is critical to living in society with other people.

    One thing I really appreciate about my current job is that I get to see both the big picture and the minutae of policy at the same time. Running a cost analysis of providing reimbursements for crime scene cleanup, for example, I can see the tangible monetary cost of handling 40,000 claims that potentially need help paying for that sort of thing. Bump up the maximum payout from a thousand bucks to two thousand bucks, and I can see how much it's expected to cost us.

    BUT!

    But I also get to see that one person who, for reasons that would give you fucking nightmares, doesn't need a thousand dollars, or two thousand dollars. He needs twenty six thousand dollars.

    Now, think about that from their perspective. Imagine what it's like being the person who needs to spend the cost of down payment on a house to clean up several gallons of bad fucking mojo. Now imagine being the person who gets to tell them: sorry, but no. We could help you, sure, but spending that money goes against policy. But don't be too sad! That money, instead, is going to let us lower taxes on 30 million people by a nickel! Needs of the many, and whatnot!

    And that is something that is super fucking important to consider. Because emotional considerations are important, inasmuch as they are what we are made of. If you would find it difficult to tell a widow that her husband died so that a bunch of people could reload their handguns less frequently while at the shooting range, maybe that's not an indication of silly emotions that need to be shoved aside. Maybe that, instead, tells you something about the relative merits of abstract liberty versus actual human life.

    Emotions aren't the only thing, but they are sure as fuck a thing.

    ElJeffe on
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  • The EnderThe Ender Registered User regular
    spool32 wrote:
    We can't guarantee safety. No one can make you free from harm by lightning, drowning, botched operations, car accidents, cancer, or murderers.

    No, but we can increase the level of safety involved in certain activities. We can mandate that home builders ground houses to prevent lightning strike fires, for example, or we can mandate that life guards be on staff at pools, or we can institute safety standards for cars & road rules, or we can fund public research into notorious diseases & issue vaccines.

    All of the above, by the way, only work by impacting your liberties in some way.
    spool32 wrote:
    Jeffe, I'll have a longer response for you later, but I think you've fallen somewhat into an appeal to emotion and we're trying to talk about how best to make public policy. If you don't believe that liberty is a worthy goal to protect at all, we can easily solve this crime problem by locking up four or five times as many people, confiscating all weapons of all types, and so forth. If you do, we need to find some balance.

    I'm thinking some firearm restrictions are a pretty decent balance between the liberties in question. And, let's just be frank here: we're talking , by and large, about a hobby. Even if we want to discuss this in the harshest terms possible, with forcible confiscation of everyone's firearms (again, something nobody is actually talking about), this is hardly the equivalent of the government locking you up. It would be more like the government coming to take away all of your video games or movies or Warhammer figurines, and hey, that would also be pretty awful - but it would not be comparable to being tossed into a gulag.

    With Love and Courage
  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    Gonna just say, we make a lot of compromises between various kinds of "liberty" in balancing out a modern, first world lifestyle to the point that going "I guess you just value liberty less than I do" is either being so deep in an ideological swamp that you long since lost the little light that managed to penetrate the surface or known disengenous bullshit.

    No, Jeffe doesn't fail to value liberty; no one arguing gun control here does, I would imagine.

    But, imagining that "LIBERTY" (in a horrifically terrible metaphor but fuck it let's go with it) is a great big board full of sliders of various kinds of liberties, that interact by sliding each other down accordingly on their interactions, a lot of us would like the Liberty slider for "Access to Firearms" slid down a good bit and see the "Not Get Fucking Shot by Assholes with a Grudge and a gun" liberty slider go up accordingly.

    personally, I find my liberty negatively impacted by America's current gun policy because our culture has reached the point where we can't go two months it seems without a mass shooting. For years following Holmes shooting a theatre full of Dark Knight moviegoers, I wound up filtering my decision to go see a goddamn movie through "do I want to take the risk that some copy-cat asshole is going to shoot me dead while trapped in a theatre?" It is only in recent months that I can finally relax enough to pre-Holmes levels while sitting in a movie theatre, and that's only if I'm able to sit all the way in the back where I can simply turn my head left or right to survey the room for anyone acting suspicious.

    Where is my liberty to just enjoy a fucking movie in a public theatre without the concern I'm never going to see my friends and loved ones after I go in there?

    Where is the liberty of kids to go to school without the fear that one of their own or a random stranger barely connected to them is going to come in and murder them in cold blood?

    Let's stop pretending that regulating and, where needed, restricting access to modern deadly weapons, intended by their design to be deadly weapons, is this grand assault on liberty; It's fucking not. It's just another compromise made between different, often conflicting kinds of freedoms in order to create a modern way of life.

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  • ThirithThirith Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    Edit: If I'd waited a couple of minutes, I could've just pointed to Lanz's post and gone, "What he/she said."

    I have to admit that as soon as anyone in these discussions brings up liberty as the greatest good to be preserved, I tend to skip to the next post. Liberty, more often than not, is a fetish; it's an excuse to jettison intellectual honesty. In human society, all liberty is curtailed in one way or another, and all liberty tends to impinge on someone else's freedom to do something or freedom from something. If we're honest about it, it's not just about more liberty vs less, it's about whose liberty, it's about what this liberty means or doesn't mean, what it forces onto others or what it keeps them from doing.

    In practice, almost everyone will agree that liberty isn't binary, there's always at least one axis along which a compromise is sought between one thing and another, and the one side of that axis is rarely absolute, universal liberty. It's usually one particular group's liberty to do one particular thing. Ignoring this or pretending this isn't the case is naive or disingenuous. Liberty as an absolute, an ideal, is a thing of philosophy seminars and of propaganda, but it's got precious little to do with social or political reality.

    Thirith on
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    "Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    Thirith wrote: »
    I have to admit that as soon as anyone in these discussions brings up liberty as the greatest good to be preserved, I tend to skip to the next post. Liberty, more often than not, is a fetish; it's an excuse to jettison intellectual honesty. In human society, all liberty is curtailed in one way or another, and all liberty tends to impinge on someone else's freedom to do something or freedom from something. If we're honest about it, it's not just about more liberty vs less, it's about whose liberty, it's about what this liberty means or doesn't mean, what it forces onto others or what it keeps them from doing.

    In practice, almost everyone will agree that liberty isn't binary, there's always at least one axis along which a compromise is sought between one thing and another, and the one side of that axis is rarely absolute, universal liberty. It's usually one particular group's liberty to do one particular thing. Ignoring this or pretending this isn't the case is naive or disingenuous. Liberty as an absolute, an ideal, is a thing of philosophy seminars and of propaganda, but it's got precious little to do with social or political reality.

    Seriously.

    It's like arguing about, say, big government stepping on our "liberty" to buy whatever food we want. Except that bolsters our liberty in not, say, getting preyed upon by companies who have lax standards in maintaining the quality and safety of their food, frees us from having to find means of individually testing it ourselves to ensure we don't poison ourselves with it, etc. etc.

    EDIT: She, for reference, Thirith

    Lanz on
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  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    And I am well aware that the number of people, out of the entire populace, killed in mass shootings is just a fraction. But it's a cold comfort when they keep happening with regularity.

    Sure, only a select few are going to die when the town comes together to draw lots, but, well, someone is going to die. And we've decided instead of once a year every june to hold the Lottery, we decided we'd rather it be held at the mercy of anyone with access to a gun.

    Lanz on
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  • cckerberoscckerberos Registered User regular
    Lanz wrote: »
    It's like arguing about, say, big government stepping on our "liberty" to buy whatever food we want. Except that bolsters our liberty in not, say, getting preyed upon by companies who have lax standards in maintaining the quality and safety of their food, frees us from having to find means of individually testing it ourselves to ensure we don't poison ourselves with it, etc. etc.

    The thing is, when the term "liberty" is used in this way, it's essentially being used to mean "security". This just muddies the argument since I think most people would agree that liberty and security compete with each other when policies are being considered. I think that the FDA does restrict our liberty by restricting what we can and can't buy. But that's okay, because by doing so they increase safety and liberty is not an absolute.

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  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    cckerberos wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    It's like arguing about, say, big government stepping on our "liberty" to buy whatever food we want. Except that bolsters our liberty in not, say, getting preyed upon by companies who have lax standards in maintaining the quality and safety of their food, frees us from having to find means of individually testing it ourselves to ensure we don't poison ourselves with it, etc. etc.

    The thing is, when the term "liberty" is used in this way, it's essentially being used to mean "security". This just muddies the argument since I think most people would agree that liberty and security compete with each other when policies are being considered. I think that the FDA does restrict our liberty by restricting what we can and can't buy. But that's okay, because by doing so they increase safety and liberty is not an absolute.

    Liberty as a concept has often historically and still does include liberty from certain aspects of life that put restrictions on what others can do. Lots of people have different ideas of what Liberty™ should mean and there really isn't any one right answer. Which is why using liberty as a reason for something isn't especially great. One person's concept of liberty doesn't invalidate another person's.

This discussion has been closed.