[Discussion] How to enact Gun Safety

The scope of this discussion is strictly options or suggestions on HOW to create policy and law and how to implement them in the US so as to reduce the number of guns in the hands of those who intend to use them for criminal purposes.

Whether or not those options should be explored is not under debate. The 2nd Amendment is not under debate nor under discussion. The assumption of the thread is that "gun control" law is necessary at this point and which policies and laws are good to pursue on the basis of putative results.

The Genie isn't going back in the bottle because you also have a very noisy Genie Liberation Front making things harder.

Bruce wrote:

The Genie isn't going back in the bottle because you also have a very noisy Genie Liberation Front making things harder.

And a very noisy, angry, violence-agitating minority that thinks it's going to overthrow the government with its arsenal, so best have them at the ready.

Maybe we can just convince people that this particular Djinn is muslim, then they'll really push to get it back into the bottle.

Bruce wrote:

The Genie isn't going back in the bottle because you also have a very noisy Genie Liberation Front making things harder.

The Genie Liberation Front is scared enough that they just came out in favor of additional regulations on the bump stocks that allowed Paddock to effectively turn his semi-automatic rifles into machine guns.

It's a deflection ploy, of course. But it does show that they recognize there's a body count so high that they'll lose political cover and support.

OG_slinger wrote:

And, if I'm being honest, it's also about exploiting the extremes of gun owners. It's about driving a wedge between the folks who might have purchased a single firearm for home protection and the folks who've amassed an arsenal along with enough ammunition to fight off an Army battalion. It's about pointing to the white supremacist state militias increasingly showing to political gatherings and protests armed to the teeth and asking "Is this how our Founding Father intended the 2nd Amendment to be used, as a tool of intimidation?"

I'd start there. Flight and roadway safety incrementally works because it's not The War on Flight or the War on Automobiles -- and I use that phrasing, with intent, because we all know how well the War on Drugs worked out/is working. Selectively target key, important areas. Isolate and hammer away until there's nothing left in that very specific spot. Paleocon isn't the only one out there. It's seems more productive to me to enlist the help of responsible gun owners, of relatively modest firearm 'collections', to speak out. Surely there are high profile athletes (for example) that own guns and and aren't Karl Malone (NRA).

thrawn82 wrote:

It can be done, Australia did it, we (America) just don't have a desire as a culture to do so. Heck there is still a not insignificant portion of our population that would really like to roll back that whole emancipation thing and that was over 100 years ago, so I don't really find it surprising we can't muster up the willpower to properly address the whole gun thing.

Yes, it did happen in Australia, but we had nowhere near the number of firearms floating about in America, nor did we have multibillion industries and livelihoods grounded in gun culture. We certainly didn't let our large retailers put them in Back To School sections in the supermarkets.

I think a major reason why the ban came in with bipartisan support is because a very large proportion of the Port Arthur massacre (in which an AR-15 weapon was used) were foreign tourists. If I recall correctly, there was a big concern it would destroy Australian tourism if the world considered Australia as a deadly destination (well, on top of the deadly snakes, spiders, marine life etc etc that we have). Gun problems in the US doesn't really seem to stop global tourism in America, but that might be because it is such a big business/tourist destination. Plus, in Australia, we don't have a bill of rights and thus 'freedom' is something we regularly dispense with in Australia in favour of state intervention.

Bfgp wrote:

Plus, in Australia, we don't have a bill of rights and thus 'freedom' is something we regularly dispense with in Australia in favour of state intervention.

Well we do have a bill of rights it's just encoded into the constitution instead of being a list of amendments. It also doesn't include gun ownership.

Mixolyde wrote:

If every black adult male in the U.S. bought & registered a semi-automatic rifle tomorrow, Congress would Pass gun control laws by Friday.

@ebenet’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/ebenet/status/91...

I wasn't gonna comment here but man this is way too true. If y'all want gun control so bad campaign for this. It still wouldn't matter though. The original poster said that all police should have the anti personnel weapons the problem is the police are already pretty much a military force. The last thing I want to see them do is get more power and terrorize the people in the black community more than they already do.

OG_slinger wrote:
Bruce wrote:

The Genie isn't going back in the bottle because you also have a very noisy Genie Liberation Front making things harder.

The Genie Liberation Front is scared enough that they just came out in favor of additional regulations on the bump stocks that allowed Paddock to effectively turn his semi-automatic rifles into machine guns.

It's a deflection ploy, of course. But it does show that they recognize there's a body count so high that they'll lose political cover and support.

It's also worth noting they didn't actually come out in favor of regulations of bump stocks, they came out in favor of the executive branch conducting a review to determine if regulations of bump stock are warranted or not.

AAND there is a run on bump stocks, because of course there is.

I swear. If Congress hinted at regulating syphilis, half of Flyover America would go out and bang a crack addled hooker to beat the deadline.

Paleocon wrote:

AAND there is a run on bump stocks, because of course there is.

I swear. If Congress hinted at regulating syphilis, half of Flyover America would go out and bang a crack addled hooker to beat the deadline.

also known in that area as "Tuesday"

edit: Also lets be honest, in Flyover America they can't afford cocaine derivatives, it's def a meth-addled hooker.

thrawn82 wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

AAND there is a run on bump stocks, because of course there is.

I swear. If Congress hinted at regulating syphilis, half of Flyover America would go out and bang a crack addled hooker to beat the deadline.

also known in that area as "Tuesday"

edit: Also lets be honest, in Flyover America they can't afford cocaine derivatives, it's def a meth-addled hooker.

Meth's so 2000s. We're all about the heroin now, baby.

OG_slinger wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

AAND there is a run on bump stocks, because of course there is.

I swear. If Congress hinted at regulating syphilis, half of Flyover America would go out and bang a crack addled hooker to beat the deadline.

also known in that area as "Tuesday"

edit: Also lets be honest, in Flyover America they can't afford cocaine derivatives, it's def a meth-addled hooker.

Meth's so 2000s. We're all about the heroin now, baby.

Fake news! It’s both! Sure, opioids are hot right now and all the buzz on the LAMESTREAM LYIN MEDIA but you take the meths so you can get up at 1 AM in Cass Lake, Minnesota and you need to make it to Kenosha, Wisconsin by 9 AM to meet your heroin dealer coming from Ohio and be back to your night shift at the county jail cause the last time you went on a 96 hour with no sleep meth bender you fell down the side of an abandoned open pit mine west of Virgina, Minnesota while setting an old Celica on fire and dislocated your knee and ankle and now it hurts every time you have to walk the gantry on the secure unit
and the gawt-dang doctor won’t script you any more pain meds cause you been taking them since Oh-Nine when you wrecked on I35 headed down to Hinckley to see Montgomery Gentry at the casino but it turned out great cause you still made it, Praise Jesus, and at that concert you met Rick who was from Toledo who had some business at the rez and he also happened to have some percocet with him so that’s why you’re headed to Kenosha.

I have been troubled by what I view as "gun culture" for a while. And even aside from the guns themselves, the attitudes of folks who stockpile them really reveal an underlying pathology that makes these kinds of mass shootings seem inevitable given their context.

Principle among the characteristics of this "gun culture" a the following:

1) deep distrust in institutions, expertise, government, and conventional methods of truth determination. Science and data based analyses being chief among them.
2) sense of aggrievement which real or imagined motivates the individual to harbor a shapeless grudge.
3) "preparation" talk and action that either presupposes or longs for a "breakdown in society" or circumstances that justify an expression of violent behavior.
4) the interpretation of any challenge to the above as evidence of a conspiracy

To paraphrase Steinbeck, gun control never took off in the states because Americans don't see themselves as victims but as temporarily undeployed badasses.

Poor flyover America. Always to blame by the City Folk on the coasts for all of America's woes.

athros wrote:

Poor flyover America. Always to blame by the City Folk on the coasts for all of America's woes.

Which is mostly how we in flyover country like it.

Also, please send money.

I'm going to leave this here, a somewhat left leaning but well reasoned legal breakdown on the history of the second amendment in the US. Seems relevant to the discussion here. Also if you have trouble getting through it, Try Meth!

Opening Arguments podcast Second Amendment Masterclass Part 1

Opening Arguments podcast Second Amendment Masterclass Part 2

Interestingly enough, FBI profilers often cite a sense of aggrievement and trigger event as the two things they ALWAYS look for in a particularly violent criminal. Spree killers, terrorists, and serial killers most often seem to fall in that pattern. They harbor a grudge that defines their mental state and are "pushed over the edge" by a trigger event.

Gun culture appears to pander to this. It sells itself on being the "defender of liberty" and pushes some kind of heroic myth that the faithful gun owner who blocks out the "fake news" and stays true to the "song of liberty" defined by the bible and a revisionist legend of the Founding Fathers is the only thing standing in the way of Liberal Elites who want to turn all your children into dope smoking homosexuals. And it tells you to prepare for the fateful day that you and your gun will be called upon.

Derail, nm.

Paleocon wrote:

Interestingly enough, FBI profilers often cite a sense of aggrievement and trigger event as the two things they ALWAYS look for in a particularly violent criminal. Spree killers, terrorists, and serial killers most often seem to fall in that pattern. They harbor a grudge that defines their mental state and are "pushed over the edge" by a trigger event.

Gun culture appears to pander to this. It sells itself on being the "defender of liberty" and pushes some kind of heroic myth that the faithful gun owner who blocks out the "fake news" and stays true to the "song of liberty" defined by the bible and a revisionist legend of the Founding Fathers is the only thing standing in the way of Liberal Elites who want to turn all your children into dope smoking homosexuals. And it tells you to prepare for the fateful day that you and your gun will be called upon.

There's a reason why owning a gun is the strongest predictor that someone is a Republican.

Las Vagas shooting estimated costs over $700 million.

One man, 42 guns, nearly a billion in costs. Sounds like terrorism to me.

AU money but still $600m USD

I'm starting to think it makes more sense if you view it as an addiction. I hear the same kind of justifications, rationalizations, and turning the argument on the person suggesting you quit from the pro-gun lobby as I did from friends hooked on nicotine or cocaine.

Sort of related: FBI terrorism unit says 'black identity extremists' pose a violent threat

Get your guns, black folks! The government's coming for you. Please be our sacrificial lambs (again) so we can make gun control palatable to the poor white victims of changing demographics.

/all the s'sssss

Chairman_Mao wrote:

Sort of related: FBI terrorism unit says 'black identity extremists' pose a violent threat

Get your guns, black folks! The government's coming for you. Please be our sacrificial lambs (again) so we can make gun control palatable to the poor white victims of changing demographics.

/all the s'sssss

We are used to it at this point

Waiting Periods Really Do Reduce Gun Deaths

Interesting conclusions from a new gun study: Imposing a waiting period between the initiation of a gun purchase and the close of the sale significantly reduces deaths by gun violence. The study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that in the 17 states (including the District of Columbia) that have waiting periods of three to 14 days, gun homicides are reduced by approximately 17%, or 750 deaths per year.

Three Harvard Business School professors tracked policy changes from 1970 to 2014, as well as a subset of gun-violence data: the effect of the federal law that imposed a waiting period in some states on gun purchases from 1994-1998. They found that even short waiting periods “cause large and statistically significant reductions in homicides”; waiting periods also reduce suicides, though the effect is not quite as large.

A big step forward would be publicly castigate pieces of sh*t like this for their crass insensitive and, most importantly, make sure they never hold public office.

Georgia GOP Candidate Holds Rapid-Fire ‘Bump Stock’ Giveaway Contest

A Republican candidate for governor in Georgia is giving away a "bump stock," the rapid-fire gun modification linked to the Las Vegas shooting, in a campaign contest to highlight his opposition to new regulation on the devices.

State Sen. Michael Williams, who is positioning himself as the most pro-Donald Trump candidate in a crowded GOP field to succeed term-limited Gov. Nathan Deal, said the contest is a celebration of the Second Amendment.

"The tragedy in Las Vegas broke my heart, but any talk of banning or regulating bump stocks is merely cheap political lip service from career politicians," Williams said in a statement announcing the contest. "Georgia's gun owners deserve a governor who will stand with them when liberals and Hollywood elites attack our fundamental rights."