Non-IT News Thread
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You could make a far more compelling case by saying that Americans are just naturally violent, that we have a violent culture or that race and religious tensions cause mass violence and that the country is unique and that guns are an artifact of that, not the cause. That would be a far more compelling argument. But if you only look at gun figures, the proliferation of guns in the US is negative from every angle. The more guns you have, the more people die from violence.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
if anything it has proven the opposite (conceal carry holders saving other peoples lives).
I'd rather have hundreds of people not shot than get to brag about saving a few once they are being shot at. Concealed weapon "successes" at the expense of deaths is still a loss.
I wasn't bragging, but thanks for that.
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@Dashrender said:
Am I missing something? How are the mass shooters not assault weapons carriers prior to the shootings?
because they aren't out in public scaring you. Those crazy people who go on shooting sprees are generally loners, rarely showing off their arsenal.
I'm confused. They seem to be in public scaring people to me.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
if anything it has proven the opposite (conceal carry holders saving other peoples lives).
I'd rather have hundreds of people not shot than get to brag about saving a few once they are being shot at. Concealed weapon "successes" at the expense of deaths is still a loss.
I wasn't bragging, but thanks for that.
But you are using the "offset" of deaths from concealed to claim that guns protect people when the numbers show that they are killing people. Were you not promoting guns with that statement that guns were saving lives?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Am I missing something? How are the mass shooters not assault weapons carriers prior to the shootings?
because they aren't out in public scaring you. Those crazy people who go on shooting sprees are generally loners, rarely showing off their arsenal.
I'm confused. They seem to be in public scaring people to me.
I agree, I don't know what they are trying to accomplish by doing that.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Am I missing something? How are the mass shooters not assault weapons carriers prior to the shootings?
because they aren't out in public scaring you. Those crazy people who go on shooting sprees are generally loners, rarely showing off their arsenal.
I'm confused. They seem to be in public scaring people to me.
I agree, I don't know what they are trying to accomplish by doing that.
I mean the mass shooters. Aren't they exactly like everyone else with a gun, except that they've pulled the trigger? Both have assault or similar weapons. Both go in public with them. Both scare people. The only difference I see is that one has pulled the trigger.
I understand that often the nutters are roaming in packs like thugs and the mass shooters are often loaners. But do those groups of gun toaters never break up? And do the loaners never go about with other people? Is the pack mentality part of the bigger picture?
Take the guy in Atlanta's Airport.... he was a crazed loaner scaring people. The only thing that made him not a mass murderer was that he didn't decide to pull the trigger. He was a loon, he was terrified of "normal life", he had gotten his hands on a weapon.... maybe he even intended to do it and got scared. All I know is, there is no way to tell the pro gun people from the mass murders. They both put you at risk, they both scare you and you have no way to know which is which until it is too late.
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Trust me, before I started looking at the numbers and traveling a lot I used to be very "but having legal access to guns means the good guys have guns too, the bad guys always have guns" and I still believe that that makes a lot of sense. Having lots of people with concealed weapons does deter certain types of crime and there are awesome success stories. There was even that amazing story of the 11 year old in OK recently that knew how to use a gun and wasted a burglar going through her house about to probably kill her.
But the reality is, for every success story there turn out to be tons and tons of "kid shoots himself with parent's gun" or "parent accidentally shoots child" or "crazed mass murder nut job had no issue finding a high powered rifle because they are freaking everywhere." The successes are not offsetting the failures in the least. not in the real world.
It makes sense, in a way, to think that having guns prevents gun deaths. But evidence says otherwise, and very strongly.
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yes, I think the pack or more accurately loaners is a large part of the picture. Most of the gunmen you hear about, sure they might have had some friends, but they probably never went to gun rallies, instead they stayed home or out of the public light, stewing thinking they were being wronged.
Those willing to walk out in public generally probably have more self confidence, willing to stand up in public to harrasment they would receive, but the loaners do their best to avoid that.
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It's a lot like heroin. Heroin is terrible, right? It destroys lives. We should make it illegal. Make it impossible to get. Protect people from themselves.
Does that work? No, evidence says it does not. The evidence says that when we make heroin illegal we increase its market value, create a market for drug pushers, make it very hard for addicts to get help, make addicts fear the people who might help them, punish people who have already punished themselves and do nothing to help society but, in fact, encourage more damage. And more recently, we find that corruption around it because so lucrative that the FDA authorized making artificial heroin that is even more addicting and less helpful for treatments.
It makes sense to want to stop drug use. But evidence says that helping people with drug problems reduces crime AND reduces drug use and that making drugs illegal creates crime and actually end up funding the spread of drugs by making something with no natural value very lucrative.
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@Dashrender said:
Those willing to walk out in public generally probably have more self confidence, willing to stand up in public to harrasment they would receive, but the loaners do their best to avoid that.
Maybe that is true. But a lot of those people walking around with guns, I assume, are not in packs. Like the airport guy. Maybe he is the rarity.
The thing is.... needing a pack of heavily armed people suggests (to me at least) that these are truly timid, terrified people trying to bulk up their self confidence by carrying big weapons and scaring innocent people. They aren't standing up to harassment, they ARE the bullies (even if only mentally.) The exact things that I have a problem with is that they are scared bullies running in gangs or gang-like groups. Maybe that is better than loaners, but both are pretty bad.
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actually I disagree - I think that people should be allowed to take all the drugs they want - ok not really, but I'm driving a point here. Like alcohol, drugs are something that people should be able to do if they want, and be accountable for their own actions and other requirements they might encounter (thinking higher healthcare here) because of this use.
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@Dashrender said:
actually I disagree - I think that people should be allowed to take all the drugs they want - ok not really, but I'm driving a point here. Like alcohol, drugs are something that people should be able to do if they want, and be accountable for their own actions and other requirements they might encounter (thinking higher healthcare here) because of this use.
You disagree by agreeing? LOL I believe that drugs should be legal. But the logic that allowing people to have guns will protect them is the same logic that people use that we should control the drugs. Both feel obvious when we talk about them, both end up being the inverse when put into practice. Allowing guns makes everyone scared and in danger and blocking drugs does the same thing.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
actually I disagree - I think that people should be allowed to take all the drugs they want - ok not really, but I'm driving a point here. Like alcohol, drugs are something that people should be able to do if they want, and be accountable for their own actions and other requirements they might encounter (thinking higher healthcare here) because of this use.
You disagree by agreeing? LOL I believe that drugs should be legal. But the logic that allowing people to have guns will protect them is the same logic that people use that we should control the drugs. Both feel obvious when we talk about them, both end up being the inverse when put into practice. Allowing guns makes everyone scared and in danger and blocking drugs does the same thing.
lol I got distracted and didn't read past the first sentence of your post....
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LOL. Over time I've become very pro-drug. Prohibition does no one any good. We are destroying much of Latin America because America has made drugs illegal creating drug markets all over that part of the world. The damage done is unbelievable.
And the damage to the US is unthinkable too. But there is so much money in the status quo that no matter how much it would help the country or the people, they won't do anything about it.
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@scottalanmiller said:
The US has a recent epidemic of mass shootings from these people.
@JaredBusch said:
Prove it.
All of the shootings I am aware of have been lone mentally unstable individuals or individuals acting with the assistance of Islamic extremeist (another whack job nutter group).
Note, that you specifically said these people
This conversation has been about Open Carry extremists. Prove the connection.
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And you do make a good point about the gun toters, but a single people going out I think looks a lot more like a nut job - aka Atlanta dipshit! I guess I look at them (the gun toters) like people going out raising awareness for their politician, cause, etc... a lone person just looks like a nutter, a group might make you consider their point better. But yeah, people are scared by it.. so it's self defeating....
To me personally I simply look at the disarmament of citizen in pre war Europe, this is why I think our rights to own arms are so important - not for a militia, for an over powered government. It's probably really already to late, citizens can probably be easily overrun, the best that believe in holding the government accountable can hope for is that if the government ever comes knocking to remove weapons, that an unfortunate confrontation would make them stop by public pressure.
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@JaredBusch said:
Note, that you specifically said these people
This conversation has been about Open Carry extremists. Prove the connection.
I consider people who carry assault weapons in public to be extremists. I guess you are correct, the people doing the carrying might not be extremists about carrying in public and may just be doing the action of carrying.
I was never really talking about people who were extremists about carrying guns in public, I was talking about the extremists who were carrying guns in public. There are plenty of "pro gun" people who don't carry and don't want to carry themselves. I don't fear them. There are, I assume, lots of people who don't care if we have the right to carry assault weapons in public but take advantage of the fact that we do.
I've been meaning to refer to the extremism of actually carrying in public, not the extremism of believing that we should be allowed to.
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@Dashrender said:
But yeah, people are scared by it.. so it's self defeating....
I find it a bit far fetched to think that any significant number of assault rifle toting "gangs" don't intend to be intimidating. So scaring people is what I see as their goal, by and large. They might state otherwise because it is actually illegal to intentionally terrorize people. But doing so while claiming you are raising awareness is a grey area where you'd have to prove intent.
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I agree with that, as I personally have no desire to carry in public the weapons i own, other than a conceal carry piece.
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@Dashrender said:
To me personally I simply look at the disarmament of citizen in pre war Europe, this is why I think our rights to own arms are so important - not for a militia, for an over powered government. It's probably really already to late, citizens can probably be easily overrun, the best that believe in holding the government accountable can hope for is that if the government ever comes knocking to remove weapons, that an unfortunate confrontation would make them stop by public pressure.
How do you feel an armed populace would have changed Pre-War Europe? And which war are you speaking of?
