U.S. Gun Violence

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Not exactly. I suppose if you want to go back and read our posts, you'll find that we came to a determination that we fundamentally have different world views. There's no point trying to cram the libertarian concept of "don't ban something that hasn't proven to be a problem" down the throat of someone who doesn't agree with the fundamental concept of freedom > safety.

I think he understands our position perfectly well, and I understand his - we just fundamentally disagree. *Shrug* Oh well.

Last edited by sliqua-jcooter on 23 Jan 2014, 1:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

Since you've resorted to strawmanning, it may be time to declare victory and go home.

I think there's a definite reason that Dox and I are being rather dismissive of this particular example. I get the impression, based on a lot of things, that the shooter in this case put form over function. Based on the number of shots fired vs the number of injuries, I get the impression that he was trying to get off as many shots as he could in as short a time possible - instead of trying to manage recoil and make those shots land. It makes a twisted amount of sense - his letters and notes that he left indicate that he viewed the shooting as an "assassination" - so once he took out his target, the rest became spray-and-pray.

I think that attitude saved a lot of lives that day, and I think his choice in an extended magazine is a reflection of that attitude.

I'd be interested to hear if others concur with my armchair analysis.

And yet he managed to shoot his intended target in the head, kill six people, and injure 18 others. Not bad numbers for an active shooter.

I'd expect a lot more "dead" and a lot less "injured" with the amount of rounds he had. Especially because, IIRC, the majority of the injuries on the scene weren't serious - random arm shots, etc. From what I remember, there were only a handful of really serious injuries.

Well I certainly agree with the first part. The second is an example of flat-eath comparative politics.



Probably true but that does not help your case at all.



Yes, Australia is secretly a terrible place and mad max is a leaked documentary.....



Did I ever say that a semi-auto with a high cap magazine is necessary? Nope, not even close. I said that such equipment can make a smart shooter more efficient. I own a Lee-Enfield myself and you certainly could do damage (less perhaps than some because I was born with the curse of being left-handed) with it but if you used my service weapon, you would do more. Its call an efficiency dividend and you cannot have it both ways. You cannot claim that having a weapon makes you more capable of defending yourself and then on the other hand wave of the risk that it can make someone more lethal.



Tell me you love me .... As for the social contract discussion, I discuss it because a well armed populace was seen as a component in building the responsible citizen of the United States. A love of guns is not sufficient on its own for an unrestricted right to keep them and accept the negatives that come from a society where they are everywhere. I am not convinced as to that statement but I can say with absolute certainty that treating weapons as an intrinsic freedom is neither obvious or necessary to understand the sentiment inherent in the second amendment. There is an argument that weapons used by responsible people can enhance the security of society and make a better citizen, but a citizen who arms himself against his fellow citizens is not an argument that supports that social contract.

As I discussed with sliqua-jcooter I can see why some people carry weapons for strict defence but that does not make a social contract, rather it is about resisting the one that exists already. Iit is a view that shows a failure of citizens to relate to one another and to their government. If this discussion is to be resolved or compromise reached, then interested people will have to make the case as to why they should prefer one view over another. So far you have shown us lots of paranoia and a real desire to keep your guns (to the point where you admit you would actively undermine lawmaking) but why on Earth should someone adopt your position without sharing your love of guns and being prepared to wave off the negative externalities of the same.

24 out of 31 shots landed in a scene of chaos. A lot of other shooters spray bullets everywhere, but only end up injuring half a dozen or fewer people. The only more 'successful' (American) shooter in recent history is the Sandy Hook shooter, and his targets were children.

i find it upsetting that the anti gun mindset is "if you don't agree with me your a paranoid loon"

just cause you don't see a need for object a doesn't mean someone else doesn't have a need for it

and grenade launches can shoot other things then grenades. flares, and non lethal rounds

as for banning guns leading to no guns on the streets, from what i read in news articles the uk is seeing a a steady increase in guns being confiscated with no end in sight. probably cause its impossible to patrol all of their seas and yet its expected that the us will prevent guns from coming up from Mexico when we can't stop people and the gov is worried a nuke could be smuggled across and we wouldn't know. lol

speaking of that the us military stores guns and ammo unguarded and up into the late 90s they also store small portable nukes there too. until some guys hunting found it and took it. luckily the 30day check in was the next day and they tracked it down.

i guess i get the reason of having ammo supply stations but how much trouble is it to have guards stationed there. just putting it out in the woods and hoping no one finds it not good

there's also lost bunkers with ww2 stuff in them so full auto guns, antitank rockets etc. a guy found one and reported it, because it was on his land he got to keep all the simi auto guns but the gov took the other stuff. but imagine if a guy found it and didn't report it?
one can not remove all guns, they were invented and will always be here

A bit of a strange discussion. Seriously though, grant for the sake of argument, that everything LKL is saying is true. That the independent variable in mass shootings is the contemporary state of US firearms culture. That restricting said weapons would stop them utterly (for the sake of argument grant this). Even if all of this were shown to be true, would you then agree that the gun restrictions are a good idea? Please answer to the logical example, just so we can see where you stand on the issue.

Sure, but you have to consider the totality of the circumstances - there was a crowd of around 30 people around Giffords as she was doing her politician thing. The shooter walked right into the middle of that crowd, shot her in the head, and then proceeded to shoot at everyone around him. It's hard to imagine firing at people no more than 15 feet away and somehow failing to seriously injure more than a dozen or so. Even if they're running away.

More or less accurate.

I'd say that at that point you'd have a persuasive argument, something which is now lacking. However, the only thing that would really convince me that any given gun control measure would be worth enacting is if it made a measurable impact on violent crime as a whole, or even just specifically homicides with a big enough drop - not any specific sub-part of that statistic. Also assuming that said control measure doesn't take away my right (as a person with no criminal record, no history of mental illness, a family with a background in law enforcement, and however many hours of self-defense and other gun training under my belt) to carry a weapon.

or, you know, you could shoot them out of a flare gun/shotgun like a normal person. Unless you operate for a super-secret retail shopping center security team, saving the mayor's nephew from rapists.



Cite your source or I'll call BS.

You have also done an awful lot of typing without justifying your fears, desires, and claims in any way other than to insult or demean the opinions of others. I have stated my OPINIONS, which I have always tried to represent as my OPINIONS.



I do have an issue with the ranges that I have been to, other than those run by the military. At the military ranges, there seem to be a lot more reasonable people. The biggest thing we went back and forth about was that you continued to claim that you were some sort of expert on a firearms owners because of your range experience, while I continued to state that your experience only makes you an expert on gun owners who visit the range. I also had to repeatedly justify my personal OPINIONS which led me to stop going to the range, which you repeatedly tried to use to somehow tell me I don't know anything about anything. I also had to spend a lot of time reading how my experience with gun owners was not valid because they did not match your own. Most of the talk of ranges came as responses to your foaming at the mouth "you are an anti-gun liberal" assumptions.



I have only shot at civilian ranges in the mid-Atlantic and mid-west (all in rural areas). Which is why I used the words "in my experience." They weren't shooting at helicopters; they were saying that they would. They were full of paranoid BS. They were making it clear that they believed people were out to take their guns away and would shoot anyone who tried to get them. They believed that any type of firearm regulation would ultimately result in a violent government gun confiscation program. It wasn't everyone (or even a majority), but it was the loudest and most annoying group that was present at EVERY SINGLE ONE of those ranges, and more often than not from people who did not fire a single round while I was there. Granted, I haven't been to a range for years now, so perhaps things have changed, but as the paranoia in the media has only gotten worse, I somehow doubt it.

As for Heston, he was a promoter of mandatory firearm safety training, was against the extremist "no compromise" views of Knox (his predecessor), and a very strong proponent of background checks. He was seen as a moderate and was successfully put into power by a collective of moderate NRA members. He was frequently denounced by fellow NRA members for his views on regulation. After he left, the NRA budget shifted to a point where less and less money was spent on safety and education and massive amounts of the budget shifted to lobbying and campaign contributions. Heston was reasonable, although had a bit of a flair for the dramatic. He was definitely against firearm prohibition and confiscation, but definitely not against all forms of regulation.

I also doubt that anti-gun legislation is going to come about soon. I do see gun regulation legislation coming soon, though (which I suppose you would label any legislation that doesn't put two firearms in every household as anti-gun). Public opinion on firearms is changing fairly rapidly, in large part because the NRA is being seen more and more as a radical extremist group. If you don't want true anti-gun legislation, you should try to get your NRA buddies to stop trying to eliminate regulation attempts. It is going to happen eventually, and the less the NRA is willing to discuss the legislation, the more anti-gun it will be.

More money should be spent on educating the public about firearms, not trying to scare them about big government. Fear has its limitations in long-term thought control these days. It eventually reaches the point where the fear only motivates those who are as extreme as you while driving anyone even slightly less extreme away.

The answer is simple.

Gun rights for ALL Americans should be limited by what the military and POLITICIANS are willing to be bound by.

That means no private security firms with the BFGs to protect their clients. Magazine limits on soldiers here and abroad, etc.

If it's good enough for US, it's good enough for THEM.

Oh, well if it's that simple then - problem solved.

Seriously though, tieing the weaponry available to the Military to the weaponry available to civilians in any codified way is a horrendous idea. The last thing I want is some soldier dying because some short-sighted politician decided to make a bill banning high-capacity magazines and somehow it managed to pass.