Suppose we had twenty gun carrying guys at the bar. Are we to suppose that they would be able to react, pinpoint who the shooter is, and take him off WITHOUT hitting any of the scores of innocent patrons surrounding the gallant gun carrying heroes.
So you're saying it's better to let the bad guy shoot 100 people rather than risk an innocent or two getting hit in a cross fire?
If every one of those twenty had accidentally shot four innocent people, the body count still would have been less than the reality, and people wouldn't have been left bleeding for hours waiting for the authorities.
As the people in the bar watched the shooter reload for the 10th time, they probably didn't turn to each other and say "Think about how much worse it'd be if some of us were armed!"
Kazzy: So American individuals should have access to weapons for self-defence and deterrence reasons but nation-states should not?
Dark Matter: ...nation states that think they have a “self-defence” need for nukes have always gotten them.
Kazzy: You didn’t answer the question.
Go re-read that steam again. Regardless of what "should have access" means in this context, the reality is that the moment "self-defence" is on the table the state has gone nuclear.
So American individuals should have access to weapons for self-defense and deterrence reasons but nation-states should not?
Most nation states haven't gone nuclear because of bribes, the risk, the expense, and so forth.
However nation states that think they have a "self-defence" need for nukes have always gotten them. They've mostly been the states which live in rough neighbourhoods (although in NKorea's case a combo of paranoia and fanaticism are probably at root).
Stillwater:
You’re talking about the 1% doctrine. If there’s a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It’s not about our analysis … It’s about our response.
You're comparing "going to war and killing many thousands of people" with "carrying a gun and not using it unless you have to".
I mean, if I were to attend a get together of OT commenters- should I bring a gun in case I need to shoot Jaybird?
Unless Jaybird has a history of insanity or radicalism, probably this is pointless.
If this sounds crazy to you, this is what it sounds like to me when people assure me how reasonable it is that they carry a gun to Walmart
Fire last year killed about 2,650 people. Fire alarms aren't perfect but I have them. I have fire insurance. I'm careful how I use fire. I'd think you'd be nuts to insist that fire can't possibly be a problem anywhere.
The number of homicides last year was about 15,809, or roughly 6x as bad as fire.
Not only are you insisting that it can't happen to you, but you're also insisting that it can't happen to me. That I don't live in an area where drug dealing is a problem, that there's no nest of radicals in the town, that none of my daughters will ever have a stalker, etc.
If that's you're claim, then imho you'd be right. I don't own a gun because imho it'd add more risk than it'd take away.
However, that really should be a personal choice. If one of my daughters picks up a stalker ex-boyfriend, then I may change my mind on carrying. And the people I know who do carry are ex-military, ex-law enforcement, and active hunters. If I had a livestyle which already included having guns around the house, then maybe I'd be carrying.
Let's reverse the question. What do you say to someone who is living in one of these exceptional situations? Say a woman being stalked whose stalker was arrested in her neighbourhood with a rape kit? Should she have a "dark" view of society and carry, or is she better off (being forced to) not having a gun?
Yes, the best way to stop white people imagining that black people are having a race riot and shooting white people en-mass (Instead of just the one actual shooting) in a nearby town, resulting in them pouring into said town to burn it down is….is for black people to start *actually* shooting at the white people.
So you're claiming that the old South Blacks, faced with the KKK, were better off disarmed and helpless?
We’re not *at* authoritarianism yet, but we’re *very clearly* moving in that direction, and it’s goddamn right that’s doing it.
The Right only opposes increasing the size of gov when they're not in power. The Left only opposes the Imperial Presidency when they're not in power.
The first thing has nothing to do with authoritarianism…and the others are literally defining *hallmarks* of it.
Using the IRS to repress political opponents hits the radar as a step in the wrong direction, ditto not holding arms of the gov accountable for things like that. Similarly making laws so complex that literally everyone is guilty of something also seems like a bad idea.
Expanding gov and gov complexity are steps towards authoritarianism by themselves.
The main actual point in that is, from what I can tell, is that *when police officers are in a simulated environment*, they get hesitant against shooting black people.
And we've got that black economist who wanted to support BLM with his study, and found that adjusted for situation they're not dying disproportionally. If it's not racism driving this then, after the police force is remade so they're proven to be not racist, the number of deaths won't go down much or at all. The overall situation is horrible, it's driving all of this, and if we're not fixing that then we're wasting everyone's time and leaving people suffering.
and yet, somehow, that’s not what the NRA seems to care about.
As far as I can tell, politicians in black controlled areas get elected by supporting gun control.
You’re imagining a world where the military shows up at your door and hauls you away. There is absolutely no reason that any government would operate that way. Instead, the government will have a court order, and the person at your door will be the local sheriff. And they will be *arresting* you for violating a law, or because they put pressure on the bank and had them evict you.
The US historical example on the table is the KKK. I don't think they used court orders.
And that guy you’re shooting at to stop this? It’s some local sheriff deputy with a court order. And now you’re in jail *forever*.
There are roughly a million cops in the US (as of 2008, wiki & google). There are 124.6 million households in the US, roughly a third of them have guns.
The gov can do anything it wants to any individual. Doing the same to large numbers of people is harder.
You want me to stop a shooter in a bar? Fine. But give me a sonic weapon.
I think we run into the issue of "money" on that one.
It wouldn't surprise me if technology eventually changes the debate by introducing new options or making existing ones cheaper... but we're not there yet.
Dark, I’m just wondering why you think our policy decisions should be constructed around wildly improbable events.
You're either narrowing the usefulness of a gun to "10 guys on my door" or you're ignoring that these "wildly improbably events" show up in the news several times a year.
And ISIS? Really? (You just lost the argument right there, bro.)
We just had an ISIS thug kill 50 people in a gun-free gay bar. The FBI has his computer(s), he didn't wipe them, they think he wasn't gay or conflicted about his sexuality. His motivation was apparently exactly what he claimed at the time.
The concept that gun control could possibly have kept weapons out of his hands is absurd, he used them professionally and had months or years to plan. But a group of hundreds of 20-40 year old men? Some of them were former or active military/law-enforcement or whatever. We can only speculate if any of them would have being carrying if it weren't a gun free zone.
What’s the old saying? “If you think that everyone you meet in the course of your day is an asshole, then you’re the asshole.”
So because I'm pointing out that these situations Exist, I must be trying to claim that Everyone is in them All the time? Straw man much?
Well, if ten people show up at their door with intent to kill, then that person’s being armed doesn’t mean a damn thing. They’re gonna die.
Finding ten who are willing to abuse or kill someone else is MUCH easier than finding ten who are willing to die to accomplish that. That's one reason why 911 was such a shock.
On the other hand, why are we focusing on an example where ten people show up at a person’s door to kill them? If things have gotten that bad – that each of us should be legitimately fearful of TEN PEOPLE SHOWING UP AT OUR DOOR WITH INTENT TO KILL – then we should be rethinking the society we live in, yeah?
Perhaps you'd prefer one killer in a "gun free" bar who kills 50(ish) and wounds another 50(ish)?
As for "rethinking society", I think we'd need to eliminate ISIS, reinterpret a holy book, cure everyone with mental illness, and maybe do something about who can be elected President.
If you have a different, more realistic plan, by all means put it on the table.
You offer two choices, being a tiny outnumbered minority armed against a mob, and being a tiny outnumbered minority unarmed against a mob. You can’t think of other options we should be pursuing?
Sure, lots of other options. Lots of things have failed in our example.
But I don't see how we can ethically say to someone who is in that situation, "You're better off without a gun. Yes, you're going to die without a chance to defend yourself, but our feelings are more important than your safety."
I mean, if this is your assessment of society, I think it just reaffirms my point about how the underlying fear and mistrust is the really issue, not the guns themselves.
Have you forgotten what happened the few times blacks *did* have guns in that era? I talked about it last time. A black guy shoots at a white mob, they burn that house down. Then white people read about this in the newspaper and travel there to have a goddamn race riot over the next month and burn the entire town down.
What you mean is "a" black had "a" gun, and the rest of the town enjoyed your gun free utopia.
You seem to be imagining that if we set some sort of principle *now*, that, in the future, if the US because super-racist and fascist, that principle will *hold*. That they will be unable to alter that principle.
Disarming a population where guns are common is much harder than disarming one where guns are rare.
if the majority of people do not want minorities to have guns, they will figure out a way for that to happen.
This would be a starkly clear sign that it's time to get out.
And it’s pretty easy to make minorities into felons with selective enforcement of the laws
And you think anti-gun laws won't be selectively enforced?
You’d think, if this was actually the logic, the *absolutely most important thing* for the anti-gun-control movement would be to stop police from shooting black people with guns. Not even pretend guns, but *actual* guns. Because right now, the police have effectively outlawed black people possessing handguns, because they are, essentially, threatening to shoot them randomly if they do.
The entire police situation is less clear than you're trying to imply.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html
However even taking it at face value, I think the NRA has some awareness that they want to arm black males. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/spencer-critchley/nras-top-priority-arming-_b_3596576.html
I’m a bit befuddled by this. The U.S. government spends, depending on how you look at it, anywhere from 1 in 6 to 1 in 2 budgeted cents on the military. The Wolverines wouldn’t stand a chance.
True, but not the point.
Think of the amount of money and manpower the gov used at Ruby Ridge.
Yes, the gov "won". Yes, their "victory" was set from the start. But how many similar "victories" can the gov realistically do?
Does the gov really have 10k armed teams to send after 10k families? 100k?
Unarmed, the Weavers could have be handled by a pair of police officers with handguns. Since they were armed it got messy.
1% of the population can be easily abused if they're unarmed. If they're armed then it's much harder (which is not to say impossible).
Are you asking whether George Zimmerman fans electing a president changes my mind about gun ownership?
Basically, yes, exactly that.
There are people running around saying they're afraid and/or making Hitler-before-the-holocaust comparisons. I suspect they're the same people who were saying a few months back how gun ownership is something we should do without and America will never be in a Hitler situation.
What I'm really asking is if the first opinion changes anyone's mind about the 2nd.
However I'd also like to ask if anyone has changed their mind enough that they want a gun now, before it's too late.
In any scenario where the victim is armed, the aggressor will almost surely be.
True.
All guns do is make confrontations more deadly.
More deadly than hanging by a rope?
12 guys with hoods, ropes, and guns show up on your doorstep.
Why are you better off if you're unarmed?
If the guys in hoods are the only ones armed, then all they have to be willing to do is kill. If everyone is armed then everyone is in danger and the guys in hoods also have to be willing to die.
The free access to guns after the Civil War made paramilitary groups like the KKK much more lethal and effective at suppressing liberty.
The KKK effectively owned the local Police and the local Government. Ergo the KKK didn't need guns to terrorise, they could just use ropes to lynch people with the gov either looking the other way or actively assisting.
The purpose and history of gun control in that era was to suppress liberty and keep the Blacks down, because having a rope doesn't do you much good if the other guy has a gun.
...the problem isn’t gun control, but the oppression of the minority group?
Sure. But who is going to help the minority group? The gov (largely controlled by racist whites), or Blacks themselves?
The Racist South is an example of the misuse of gov power which went on for almost a century. You're insisting that giving the (highly racist) gov the ability and authority to take away guns is going to make things better?
What type of gun control is going to disarm a KKK member whose day job is being a cop? Why are we supposed to think that he's going to disarm his racist fellows? Strict gun control in this situation takes guns away from Blacks but not politically connected Whites.
If a guy’s view of society is such that he needs to carry a handgun into Walmart just to buy toilet paper, its kinda hard to build any sort of trust.
First of all, have you ever googled "mass shooting at walmart"? https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=mass%20shooting%20at%20walmart
2nd of all, the guy I know who does this is perfectly willing to admit the odds of him ever being in a situation where he needs to draw are low enough that it probably won't happen during his lifetime. Thing is if it does happen he'd like to be able to do something other than bleed.
Yet experience shows from the KKK, to strikebreakers, to the Freikorps, to the murder of abortion doctors that easy access to firearms only works to the benefit of the dominant majority, to suppress the rights of unpopular minorities.
The Klan would agree with you that gun control was a much needed and desirable thing.
Further, “The KKK began as a gun-control organization. Before the Civil War, blacks were never allowed to own guns. During the Civil War, blacks kept guns for the first time — either they served in the Union army and they were allowed to keep their guns, or they buy guns on the open market where for the first time there’s hundreds of thousands of guns flooding the marketplace after the war ends. So they arm up because they know who they’re dealing with in the South. White racists do things like pass laws to disarm them, but that’s not really going to work. So they form these racist posses all over the South to go out at night in large groups to terrorize blacks and take those guns away. If blacks were disarmed, they couldn’t fight back.”
The problem is, exactly one side is stopping reasonable laws.
What gun laws would you view as too onerous? Better yet, what laws would you support that enable gun ownership? Perhaps banning these gun-free zones which turn into mass murder shooting ranges? Something else?
If the answer is "nothing", if the very definition of "reasonable law" must always mean restriction of gun rights and not enabling them, and your core beliefs are that individuals don't have the right to a gun, then imho it's easy to believe whatever laws you pass won't be enough and you'll always be back for more.
It's the whole Russia-needs-land-to-give-up-in-a-war problem. Sooner or later the NRA will lose. Gun laws will be passed, either because there's a mass murder or because the Dems get control. When that happens, the NRA will lose territory, and where they end up depends on where they start. If you know you can lose a hundred miles then you want the border far from the capital.
On “Confession of a Liberal Gun Owner”
So you're saying it's better to let the bad guy shoot 100 people rather than risk an innocent or two getting hit in a cross fire?
If every one of those twenty had accidentally shot four innocent people, the body count still would have been less than the reality, and people wouldn't have been left bleeding for hours waiting for the authorities.
As the people in the bar watched the shooter reload for the 10th time, they probably didn't turn to each other and say "Think about how much worse it'd be if some of us were armed!"
"
Go re-read that steam again. Regardless of what "should have access" means in this context, the reality is that the moment "self-defence" is on the table the state has gone nuclear.
"
One doesn't need to be afraid of fire in order to have fire insurance.
"
Most nation states haven't gone nuclear because of bribes, the risk, the expense, and so forth.
However nation states that think they have a "self-defence" need for nukes have always gotten them. They've mostly been the states which live in rough neighbourhoods (although in NKorea's case a combo of paranoia and fanaticism are probably at root).
"
You're comparing "going to war and killing many thousands of people" with "carrying a gun and not using it unless you have to".
IMHO a better comparison would be "insurance".
"
Unless Jaybird has a history of insanity or radicalism, probably this is pointless.
Fire last year killed about 2,650 people. Fire alarms aren't perfect but I have them. I have fire insurance. I'm careful how I use fire. I'd think you'd be nuts to insist that fire can't possibly be a problem anywhere.
The number of homicides last year was about 15,809, or roughly 6x as bad as fire.
Not only are you insisting that it can't happen to you, but you're also insisting that it can't happen to me. That I don't live in an area where drug dealing is a problem, that there's no nest of radicals in the town, that none of my daughters will ever have a stalker, etc.
If that's you're claim, then imho you'd be right. I don't own a gun because imho it'd add more risk than it'd take away.
However, that really should be a personal choice. If one of my daughters picks up a stalker ex-boyfriend, then I may change my mind on carrying. And the people I know who do carry are ex-military, ex-law enforcement, and active hunters. If I had a livestyle which already included having guns around the house, then maybe I'd be carrying.
Let's reverse the question. What do you say to someone who is living in one of these exceptional situations? Say a woman being stalked whose stalker was arrested in her neighbourhood with a rape kit? Should she have a "dark" view of society and carry, or is she better off (being forced to) not having a gun?
"
So you're claiming that the old South Blacks, faced with the KKK, were better off disarmed and helpless?
The Right only opposes increasing the size of gov when they're not in power. The Left only opposes the Imperial Presidency when they're not in power.
Using the IRS to repress political opponents hits the radar as a step in the wrong direction, ditto not holding arms of the gov accountable for things like that. Similarly making laws so complex that literally everyone is guilty of something also seems like a bad idea.
Expanding gov and gov complexity are steps towards authoritarianism by themselves.
And we've got that black economist who wanted to support BLM with his study, and found that adjusted for situation they're not dying disproportionally. If it's not racism driving this then, after the police force is remade so they're proven to be not racist, the number of deaths won't go down much or at all. The overall situation is horrible, it's driving all of this, and if we're not fixing that then we're wasting everyone's time and leaving people suffering.
As far as I can tell, politicians in black controlled areas get elected by supporting gun control.
"
The US historical example on the table is the KKK. I don't think they used court orders.
There are roughly a million cops in the US (as of 2008, wiki & google). There are 124.6 million households in the US, roughly a third of them have guns.
The gov can do anything it wants to any individual. Doing the same to large numbers of people is harder.
"
I think we run into the issue of "money" on that one.
It wouldn't surprise me if technology eventually changes the debate by introducing new options or making existing ones cheaper... but we're not there yet.
"
Yes.
"
You're either narrowing the usefulness of a gun to "10 guys on my door" or you're ignoring that these "wildly improbably events" show up in the news several times a year.
We just had an ISIS thug kill 50 people in a gun-free gay bar. The FBI has his computer(s), he didn't wipe them, they think he wasn't gay or conflicted about his sexuality. His motivation was apparently exactly what he claimed at the time.
The concept that gun control could possibly have kept weapons out of his hands is absurd, he used them professionally and had months or years to plan. But a group of hundreds of 20-40 year old men? Some of them were former or active military/law-enforcement or whatever. We can only speculate if any of them would have being carrying if it weren't a gun free zone.
So because I'm pointing out that these situations Exist, I must be trying to claim that Everyone is in them All the time? Straw man much?
"
Finding ten who are willing to abuse or kill someone else is MUCH easier than finding ten who are willing to die to accomplish that. That's one reason why 911 was such a shock.
Perhaps you'd prefer one killer in a "gun free" bar who kills 50(ish) and wounds another 50(ish)?
As for "rethinking society", I think we'd need to eliminate ISIS, reinterpret a holy book, cure everyone with mental illness, and maybe do something about who can be elected President.
If you have a different, more realistic plan, by all means put it on the table.
Edit: Add to that list ending the war on drugs.
"
Sure, lots of other options. Lots of things have failed in our example.
But I don't see how we can ethically say to someone who is in that situation, "You're better off without a gun. Yes, you're going to die without a chance to defend yourself, but our feelings are more important than your safety."
How often are mass murder and riots in the news?
"
What you mean is "a" black had "a" gun, and the rest of the town enjoyed your gun free utopia.
Disarming a population where guns are common is much harder than disarming one where guns are rare.
This would be a starkly clear sign that it's time to get out.
And you think anti-gun laws won't be selectively enforced?
The entire police situation is less clear than you're trying to imply.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html
http://www.dailywire.com/news/7347/7-statistics-show-systemic-racism-doesnt-exist-aaron-bandler
However even taking it at face value, I think the NRA has some awareness that they want to arm black males. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/spencer-critchley/nras-top-priority-arming-_b_3596576.html
"
True, but not the point.
Think of the amount of money and manpower the gov used at Ruby Ridge.
Yes, the gov "won". Yes, their "victory" was set from the start. But how many similar "victories" can the gov realistically do?
Does the gov really have 10k armed teams to send after 10k families? 100k?
Unarmed, the Weavers could have be handled by a pair of police officers with handguns. Since they were armed it got messy.
1% of the population can be easily abused if they're unarmed. If they're armed then it's much harder (which is not to say impossible).
"
Basically, yes, exactly that.
There are people running around saying they're afraid and/or making Hitler-before-the-holocaust comparisons. I suspect they're the same people who were saying a few months back how gun ownership is something we should do without and America will never be in a Hitler situation.
What I'm really asking is if the first opinion changes anyone's mind about the 2nd.
However I'd also like to ask if anyone has changed their mind enough that they want a gun now, before it's too late.
"
True.
More deadly than hanging by a rope?
12 guys with hoods, ropes, and guns show up on your doorstep.
Why are you better off if you're unarmed?
If the guys in hoods are the only ones armed, then all they have to be willing to do is kill. If everyone is armed then everyone is in danger and the guys in hoods also have to be willing to die.
"
Thank you for the detailed reply.
"
The KKK effectively owned the local Police and the local Government. Ergo the KKK didn't need guns to terrorise, they could just use ropes to lynch people with the gov either looking the other way or actively assisting.
The purpose and history of gun control in that era was to suppress liberty and keep the Blacks down, because having a rope doesn't do you much good if the other guy has a gun.
Sure. But who is going to help the minority group? The gov (largely controlled by racist whites), or Blacks themselves?
The Racist South is an example of the misuse of gov power which went on for almost a century. You're insisting that giving the (highly racist) gov the ability and authority to take away guns is going to make things better?
What type of gun control is going to disarm a KKK member whose day job is being a cop? Why are we supposed to think that he's going to disarm his racist fellows? Strict gun control in this situation takes guns away from Blacks but not politically connected Whites.
"
First of all, have you ever googled "mass shooting at walmart"? https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=mass%20shooting%20at%20walmart
2nd of all, the guy I know who does this is perfectly willing to admit the odds of him ever being in a situation where he needs to draw are low enough that it probably won't happen during his lifetime. Thing is if it does happen he'd like to be able to do something other than bleed.
Think of it as another type of insurance.
"
The Klan would agree with you that gun control was a much needed and desirable thing.
Further, “The KKK began as a gun-control organization. Before the Civil War, blacks were never allowed to own guns. During the Civil War, blacks kept guns for the first time — either they served in the Union army and they were allowed to keep their guns, or they buy guns on the open market where for the first time there’s hundreds of thousands of guns flooding the marketplace after the war ends. So they arm up because they know who they’re dealing with in the South. White racists do things like pass laws to disarm them, but that’s not really going to work. So they form these racist posses all over the South to go out at night in large groups to terrorize blacks and take those guns away. If blacks were disarmed, they couldn’t fight back.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/opinion/gun-control-and-white-terror.html
"
It's not about armed revolt. It's about increasing the cost of implementation.
"
What gun laws would you view as too onerous? Better yet, what laws would you support that enable gun ownership? Perhaps banning these gun-free zones which turn into mass murder shooting ranges? Something else?
If the answer is "nothing", if the very definition of "reasonable law" must always mean restriction of gun rights and not enabling them, and your core beliefs are that individuals don't have the right to a gun, then imho it's easy to believe whatever laws you pass won't be enough and you'll always be back for more.
It's the whole Russia-needs-land-to-give-up-in-a-war problem. Sooner or later the NRA will lose. Gun laws will be passed, either because there's a mass murder or because the Dems get control. When that happens, the NRA will lose territory, and where they end up depends on where they start. If you know you can lose a hundred miles then you want the border far from the capital.
On “Obama Is Warning America About Trump’s Presidency. Are You Listening? | New Republic”
http://nypost.com/2016/11/21/trumps-supposed-muslim-registry-is-just-more-fake-news/
I like numbers, so rather than state an opinion let's show some.
Number of Nazis in the US: 400
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism#United_States
But the number of SJW in the US is harder to estimate but at 10,000x they'd be 4 Million, or less than 10% of the people who voted for HRC.
On “Confession of a Liberal Gun Owner”
Now that Trump is elected, does that change anyone's mind about gun ownership?
Everyone on the Left still sure we can trust the government's sanity over multiple centuries?
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.