It seems like common sense to make guns have the same requirements as cars. You need to pass a short course and get a license. I don’t understand what is unclear about the 2nd amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Well regulated, as in well maintained. Additionally, it is a conditional clause providing the context for its existence. Taking this legal approach has never worked in court. The Constitution was written to be changed for a reason but we are afraid to or it is opposed.
It’s not a matter of fear. It’s a matter of not being able to get the votes. It’s not a simple majority to make a major change like that and it should not be.
The fear is from the politicians that have historically been voted out for supporting the legislation. It is also why a Constitutional Convention would likely be an absolute shitshow and never be ratified.
Part of it is the wording is “(justification for the amendment) (actual limitation on the governments power)” so the reason the government shall not infringed on the right to bear arms is because that supports the creation of well regulated militias necessary to secure a free state.
The only ‘mass shooting’ was the Philly one. Intellectually stunted and politically blinded morons are trying to change the definition by lumping in gang bangers doing drive bys and shooting up house parties. If you Individually dig through the gunviolencearchive.org sources, the overwhelming majority of them have an African American teenager with a handgun set out to settle a personal vendetta; yet somehow that scenario is - by gunviolence.orgs own statistical criteria - categorized the same exact way as a deranged psychopath with an AR-15 randomly shooting up a mall (which even once is way too fucking common, but not as statistically prominent as the site is trying to mislead the public to believe).
Why can’t it be both? Especially when guns are so interwoven into the culture.
So it’s not a mass shooting if the person is black and the crime is personal? What led you to come with that criteria? I tend to think “A mass shooting is a violent crime in which an attacker kills or injures multiple individuals simultaneously using a firearm.” is a pretty fair definition. You know “mass” as in several individuals involved and “shooting” as in a firearm was involved. Keep it up with the mental gymnastics though.
People love to point the fingers at the tool used to do evil things. Instead of addressing why the evil thing is happening.
Banning and restricting guns is a band aid solution that harms the general populace more than it benefits.
Bad actors that want to inflict harm are not concerned with using something legal to get the job done. There will always be inventive whackos out there that will find ways to hurt people. Guns or no guns.
The Swiss have almost the same firearm to people ratio as America ( at least compared to the rest of the world ) and under have far fewer of the same issues. I think this is largely because of cultural differences and availability for healthcare.
I wonder if there are any other differences in America from other first-world countries? Maybe it’s the availability of swimming pools? Or too many McDonalds? Or maybe there are numerous social issues that are unaddressed here in the states and have been responsible for a much higher incidence of violence in general, of which guns are a small part.
People keep giving the swiss as an example but it’s not the same context. Mainly because in Switzerland all men go through mandatory military service and that builds some discipline when handling a gun. Also they still have to get ( strict ) permits for those weapons, even with the accompanying training.
It is my impression ( and I apologize for the generalizations ) that in the US they’re essentially handing out assault rifles to any rando with some cash on him.
Meanwhile, over 500 people have been killed by police in 2023 so far, and yet we never hear the president comment on that. Maybe we should be disarming the police?
Why? Lots of people have guns, and almost all of them are never a problem to anyone. Perhaps we should look into why violence happens and address those root causes and of course disarm the police because their only purpose is violence.
I would agree if gun regulation wasn’t proven to work 8n every other country on the planet. With that mountain of evidence, maybe it’s time to stop with the what aboutism and pretending it isn’t part of the problem.
This is why we chose to stay home on holidays. I feel bad that my kids are missing out, but I would rather have them miss some fireworks than risk becoming a statistic.
You are paranoid and ruining your children’s childhood for no reason at all. Learn statistics, and incorporate that into your daily life. Hint if you drive a car you are endangering your children way more.
Interesting, you’re telling me to learn statistics, and then you skipped over the leading cause of death for children in the United States.
Try incorporating empathy in your life, and understand it’s not about you. If you don’t have the same concern as others, you don’t have to resort to insults; you can accept that someone else feels differently without trying to hurt them.
I didn’t know “children” included 18 and 19 year olds but not infants.
Regardless, I hope that you and your family were able to enjoy the holiday and feel safe wherever you were. Freedom includes doing what you feel is best, and nobody should fault you for wanting to keep your kids safe.
So first and foremost, how you raise your children is your business. Also, it really sucks you live in a place where you have to factor can violence into the education of your kids. However, as someone who believes over protecting children can be more harmful than beneficial to them, there is a counter argument to be made.
In a way, the tone of the reply of the other poster might have been more wrong than the content. What I mean by this, is that statistics is a very tricky science to apply to our own reality sometimes. For instance, one could substract the cases of gun violence caused by guns of the own household if you don’t own any guns. Or correct for the area you live in, if this is a place with particularly low or high incidence of gun violence. Or discount the school shooting statistics, if you are only using the statistics as a reason not to let them go to social gatherings.
Again, in no way do I want to tell you what to do, just stating that the same statistics can be used to both support or counter an argument.
The president again parrots “assault rifle” and magazine capacity bans, which only pushes actual reform further out of reach. We lack a centralized database of ownership, private sale registration but we are able to keep a computer database of prescription medications so a kid doesn’t get his Adderall a day early. We register cars regardless of type of sale and require a license to drive but firearms are freely sold by private sale with no requirements to register or license the user. We suspend driving privileges for nonpayment of debts, but you are expected to be honest about being a fugitive when filling out ffl forms. If we don’t treat firearms at least as seriously as cars, why does the magazine capacity matter? Why do people who can’t define the term assault rifle calling for reforms based on nuanced features of firearms.
This cycle just repeats. Someone tries to ban magazine size or something they know nothing about and any chance of meaningful reform is over. I would gladly submit to more stringent background checks, registration, and proof of competency. But when the conversation starts out with banning scary black rifles or magazines over 10 rounds I know nothing will change. These suggestions are worthless and make gun owners unwilling to engage.
Imagine we wanted to cut down on traffic crashes so the suggestion is made by someone who does drive to limit fuel tank size or ban “sports cars”. Of course no one can define sports car, and gas tanks don’t make people drive recklessly, but the person proposing the law doesn’t know anything about cars. Car enthusiasts would roll their eyes and consider the attempt a joke. But instead we have speed limits, vehicle registration, driver license requirements, and safety standards that actually make cars safer. You can own a Porsche, but if you break the law your registration will be used to find you and your driver’s license in jeopardy.
Americans aren’t going to give up guns. But there is hope that current technology could better regulate ownership and usage. Unfortunately idiotic hollow statements about magazine size and the assault rifle boogy man make those who could facilitate change look foolish.
For all its foibles and peculiarities, the US’ apparently almost fetishistic relationship with guns is far and away the hardest for me to understand as an outside observer.
Just look at the guns these zealots buy. Big and black. Combine that with the typical racialized sexual insecurities of the white male conservative American, which as a group is becoming more and more incel because no woman in this day and age wants anything to do with them.
You think conservatives are buying big black guns because they’re thinking about big black cocks?
Business idea: put white cerakote on big guns to sell to these weirdos, and use phallic sexual marketing tactics with undertones of their stupid replacement theory.
Well my opinion is based on data. There’s a reason why you don’t see these incel shooters buying snub nose revolvers or ultra compacts. And yes, I do think those types of guys spend way more time thinking about what’s in other dude’s pants than is healthy.
Your claim isn’t even mentioned in that source. There’s nothing there about types of guns. It literally just says that men own more guns than women, especially men with families to protect, and extra especially racist men with families to protect from hypothetical black aggressors. And that’s just a long walk to say that weak cowards rely on guns to feel adequate and strong, which I thought was pretty obvious already. But yeah, absolutely nothing about desiring big black guns because they’re jealous of big black cocks. I think you might just be projecting a bit, bud.
I’m sure the correlation can be much more attributed to white men tending to have more wealth, paired with consuming media that glorifies the “hero with a gun” trope, who also is usually white. John Wick, Die Hard, 007, Schwarzenegger movies, Rambo, the list goes on. Also, pretty much every AAA video game of the past 20 years is centered around shooting guns.
Trust me, I live here and I don’t get it either. And when you ask people they’ll tell you they have guns because other people have guns so they need it for protection. So you guys all have guns because you’re scared other people have guns?? Great recipe.
If only the crazies have guns, they’re going to start acting a lot crazier. Does it magically make everything safer to have your own? Obviously not. Statistically you’re more likely to shoot yourself.
But until we pass actual gun control, it’s hard to judge someone for having a gun.
I bought my first gun right after the fat dipshit won the 2016 election. I realized that there were many more hateful, violent, dumbasses here than I’d ever imagined. I lived in a very red county at the time and I didn’t think it was impossible that they might “leak” lists of registered non-Republican voters’ info along with stochastic terroristic speech like “it’d be nice if my supporters who also support the 2nd amendment could do something about these misguided people.”
I’m less worried about that now for various reasons, but we’re not completely out of the fascist woods yet. There’s a deep, festering rot and we’ve only treated symptoms. Until we address campaign finance, education funding, disinformation, and stronger market regulation and trust busting, we’re just kicking the can down the road.
Why not buy a bulletproof vest instead? Fighting fire with fire is not always the most efficient…
I remember seeing some sort of huge bulletproof blanket used by Japanese police to apprehend armed peoples. They hide behind that blanket and run towards the gunner to wrap them in it. The good side is that the gunner can be arrested alive for trial.
I don’t know if it was just a concept or of its really in use…
I have an honest question for you. Have you ever seen a bulletproof vest?
Also, the person you’re replying to gave a very frightening scenario: being hunted down at your own home. If you’re not shooting back, what do you think the enemy is going to do? Give up and go away? Molotov cocktails are an easy, low-tech solution to a barricaded enemy you don’t care about taking alive.
Now, if we assume you’re in public, there are still issues with a bulletproof vest. They’re not really all that great at being concealed. If you truly have a bulletproof vest that can fit underneath clothing, it’s not going to stop many bullets. You can look through the wikipedia page on different levels of body armor, and do a quick search to see how bulky the different types are. Police armor is rated for most handguns, and is super bulky already. Military armor can hopefully stand up to a rifle bullet, but they’re often ceramic plates, which don’t last against multiple rounds, and are very obvious and stand out. Your slim-fit vest may be able to handle a very small subset of rounds. If you go the route of more protection, you’re going to find yourself targeted by the gunman due to your visibility and because your potential as a threat is large compared to others. Even a very high quality, military vest/suit is not going to cover you well enough to make a difference if a single person is shooting at you and A) you don’t have buddies to give you cover fire and make them put their head down and B) space because you knew the shooter was an enemy before he pulled out a gun and started shooting at you.
I was once advised never to discuss this topic with Americans because it’s impossible to have a normal logic discussion… But I’m a bit dumb so I’ll do it anyway! (Assuming you’re American, sorry if I’m mistaken!)
A couple of points:
You’re right, I’ve never actually seen a bulletproof vest in real life. Notice that your laser focus on the technicality of some vests is very interesting and explains why they are not very common. Yet it doesn’t really implies that it couldn’t work. For example, the slim-fit c’est you’re taking about would be an excellent solution to give a chance to run away. In a similar vein, ABS brakes on a car do not perfectly prevent collisions but still help reduce the severity of accidents.
Regarding your imaginary scenario, please re-read the thread… It seems to me that you’re the first one mentioning the “very frightening scenario”. I’ll skip this one for now since it’s a different topic.
In public, would a concealable vest be good enough against concealable guns? Would a concealable gun be effective against a non-concealable big gun? It seems to me that all your arguments against vests also applies to guns…
Replacing guns by non-lethal tools would probably be just as effective to disable an attacker, while at the same time being a good first step to detox from this gun addiction, hopefully leading to a reduced number of gun accidents.
I’ve had to wear bulletproof vests, and now choose not to because they are a massive pain. So that’s why I felt like I should explain why they aren’t a good solution. They won’t be of any help in the majority of cases, and will likely slow you down. Unlike the ABS example, the amount of help a vest that would fit underneath your typical clothing is so small that it would be next to useless. At the distance you’d have to be from a shooter in order for it to be effective against a round it isn’t meant for, the reason you’d survive is because they can’t accurately aim at you. Anywhere within reasonable accuracy distances, it would be worthless. Most individuals aren’t going to be accurate with a pistol past 10-15 yards, well within the range that a 9mm, .45, .40, etc. are effective against level I or level II armor.
You’re right, I looked quickly and it looked like you were replying to MrVilliam’s post, where he said he was afraid the locals would leak his home address. Obviously, on a re-look, that’s not the case. So… oops.
No. Concealable guns (handguns, for the most part, leaving aside the ridiculous sweatpants video) easily penetrate all but the best armor. The Ft. Hood shooter, for example, used a pistol that was chambered in .223, the ‘civilian’ version of the 5.56.
3b. Also, yes. While I wouldn’t want to use a handgun against a rifle or shotgun, I’d still much prefer to have one, especially in the situations where the majority of shootings happen. It wouldn’t help at all in the Las Vegas shooting, but in the rest? Schools, grocery stores, large chain stores? A pistol would work well. The range you’d be engaging the shooter at will likely be within those 15 yards that people can accurately aim a handgun. That kind of carries into your last, unnumbered point. Right now, non-lethal (which should really be called less-lethal, but that’s a whole thing I personally roll my eyes at) options don’t have anywhere near a large enough range. The longest Tasers reach around 40’, I think, while the 37mm or 40mm bean-bag shooters are never going to be carried around by a civilian casually. The taser almost certainly won’t be effective at that range. I think it’s an 8 degree spread between the two probes, which works out to about 1 foot of spread every 7 feet of distance to the target. At the maximum range of 40’, that’s nearly a 6 foot spread. A taser isn’t going to be super accurate either, so you’d have to aim for the head and get lucky, and also get lucky that your nearly 6 foot spread of the barbs hit the other guy’s foot. Otherwise it isn’t going to be very effective at stopping the shooter from shooting you.
As an aside, sure, I’m an American. I think I’m pretty logical about everything, though. I think societies that don’t have guns outnumbering folks are great and wish we could get there. I also think that we’ve gotten ourselves into a shithole, and it is at the point where the first person to disarm is fucked. It’s just like this stupid nuclear weapon situation. Can you really imagine America, Britain, France, etc. giving up their nuclear weapons after seeing how Russia is acting? That’s what it’s going to be like for at least a decade if we vote now to get rid of civilian ownership of guns. ‘The Purge’ wouldn’t be a good depiction of what it would be like, but I don’t want to wait 30 minutes for the police to come help when my meth head neighbor decides to get revenge for all the ‘slights’ I’ve ever given him (like asking him not to dump his tires and burn them next to my chicken coop because he thought it was funny) with his little dump gun in hand and here I am having turned over my guns to the sheriff.
Thanks for the enlightening discussion! I still think it would be better to try anything but guns to try and protect against guns… Yet you made me understand that the situation is to far gone to just take a chance and go defenseless!
I mean, my next door neighbor is the closest to a “methhead” in the neighborhood, but he’s only a violent alcoholic and never displayed aggression towards strangers… He’s nice and shares his free run eggs with us, so I don’t fear for my life living next door!
It’s a chicken and egg problem, but your neighbor may not come at you with his gun if he didn’t feel threatened by the one he fears you own! From his perspective, don’t go knocking at the door of someone who might point a gun at you without bringing your own…
Imagine a defensive tool which would make you feel safe without making people around you scared of you!
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