The Thread Where We Discuss Guns and Gun Control

[Lexicus]

I didn't say that one was good for democracy, now did I? Nor did I claim the entire list was comprised of uprisings that were positive.

Well, funnily enough the one you quoted in here and a couple of the others bear resemblance to what I mentioned being okay with, ie, Communist militias checking the police. The workers should create armed organizations to defend themselves from state violence when the law exists for the bosses.

The War on Drugs has nothing to do with the 2nd Amendment though.

Why do you think the War on Drugs has involved so much deadly violence? Do drug dealers not have 2nd Amendment rights?

 

[El_Machinae]

I missed something up thread. Denuclearization of Iran is probably Trump's signature foreign policy, so much so that he's willing to lie about it.

Conservative enough to want to keep your own guns, not conservative enough to prevent your government from disarming other people.

 

[Farm Boy]

Don't stand with it on the porch. Just be cleaning it, disassembled, on the table. Duh.

Standing with it on the porch is for when connoisseurs of the butt hole ride thier snow mobiles up your driveway every night for a week and kick at your dog when they go by. Preferably in your underwear.

 

[El_Machinae]

The War on Drugs has nothing to do with the 2nd Amendment though.

It does. It's an example of a failed government policy that suffered from drastic and violent overreach.

Every liberal democracy had to deal with the drug crisis in their own way. In the 21st century, some democracies dealt with it better than others.

I will point out that the United States is not very high on that list. And also, the Second Amendment not only failed to help, but it made things much worse.

 

[Commodore]

Why do you think the War on Drugs has involved so much deadly violence? Do drug dealers not have 2nd Amendment rights?

It's not because of the 2nd Amendment. This is proven by looking at some of the countries where drug cartels are most active. A lot of those countries either outlaw the private ownership of guns or have laws that heavily restrict it, yet the cartels don't seem to have a problem with either acquiring or using them with near impunity.

And that's not supposed to be an argument for or against any type of gun laws. Just pointing out that criminals are going to do their thing, regardless of the laws that are in place. That's why they are criminals.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I feel the fact you think police officers would be at risk of being shot for trying to collect peoples' guns is a perfect example of why people shouldn't have guns. Wow, scary.

If police are expressly violating the law, they are criminals just the same as when any other person violates the law and can/should be treated accordingly. I thought the popular stance on this forum was that police are insufficiently accountable for their actions, not that they *should* be immune to accountability! And given civil asset forfeiture and current accountability processes I'd mostly agree.

What's scary is the notion of letting ideology create incoherent exceptions to that standard.

k bro you're just making yourself look ridiculous.

"I will protect myself when threatened" is not the same thing as issuing a threat.

I'm cool with Communist militias being armed and ready to check the police but individual reactionary dingbats who buy arsenals to enact their Turner Diaries fantasies....no

They're the same kind of people.

 

[MaryKB]

How is a police officer who's carrying out a democratically-enacted law a "criminal" who deserves to be shot?

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought we're talking here where if the government outlaws private ownership of weapons, and police come to collect them, people will shoot them?

 

[El_Machinae]

People are missing the point. Did an armed populace help the American government realize that criminalizing marijuana was stupid any faster than other liberal democracies?

Drug dealers are shooting cops to protect their businesses. Drug dealers have cheap and easy access to firearms in order to protect their territory. The police are militarizing in order to accidentally kill civilians. All of these things boil out of the fact that the War on Drugs is stupid.

Americans are much more capable of committing violence against the police than, say, the Netherlands.

So why didn't the Second Amendment protect Americans against this over-reach, and not just exacerbate the entire issue?

Not only did it obviously fail to deter an overreaching government, but also allowed civilian damage to be much higher than it was elsewhere

From a second amendment perspective, a drug dealer gaining access to firearms easily and shooting the cops is a success.

Despite the success, the United States seriously mishandled the entire issue compared to other liberal democracies. The Second Amendment didn't deliver. Measurably so. And now I ask, how many kids were shot while you were reading my post?

 

[Farm Boy]

Well so long as he's following orders that does change a lot.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

How is a police officer who's carrying out a democratically-enacted law a "criminal" who deserves to be shot?

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought we're talking here where if the government outlaws private ownership of weapons, and police come to collect them, people will shoot them?

We are talking about that, yes.

You can't just "outlaw private ownership of weapons" in the USA. The constitution has a guard explicitly against that and in this scenario as described the government and police would be doing something expressly unlawful. Illegal use of force on citizens merits self-defense.

If the USA dissolves or something and/or the constitution gets magically rewritten despite how enormous a hurdle that is then it's a different story.

 

[Hygro]

It's not because of the 2nd Amendment. This is proven by looking at some of the countries where drug cartels are most active. A lot of those countries either outlaw the private ownership of guns or have laws that heavily restrict it, yet the cartels don't seem to have a problem with either acquiring or using them with near impunity.

And that's not supposed to be an argument for or against any type of gun laws. Just pointing out that criminals are going to do their thing, regardless of the laws that are in place. That's why they are criminals.

There are three countries with the right to bear arms.

They are The USA, Mexico, and Guatemala.

Think about it.

 

[Commodore]

How is a police officer who's carrying out a democratically-enacted law a "criminal" who deserves to be shot?

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought we're talking here where if the government outlaws private ownership of weapons, and police come to collect them, people will shoot them?

As TheMeInTeam said, such a law would be unconstitutional, thus the enforcement of such a law would be a criminal act. And since the government isn't going to stop itself, it falls to the people to stop them.

People are missing the point. Did an armed populace help the American government realize that criminalizing marijuana was stupid any faster than other liberal democracies?

Nobody missed the point. You are just bringing up two completely different issues that aren't even remotely related to each other.

And now I ask, how many kids were shot while you were reading my post?

Appeal to emotion. Pretty basic logical fallacy. Wouldn't have expected that from someone who just spent the last page or so arguing from a supposed position of "logic" and "statistics".

I also like how you made the assertion that the 2nd Amendment hasn't done anything good for democracy and when I presented some evidence to the contrary, you just tried to minimize it and started droning on about the War on Drugs instead of admitting that, at the very least, you aren't as correct as you thought you were. I mean, I doubt you had even heard about the Battle of Athens before I brought it up in this thread.

Not only did it obviously fail to deter an overreaching government,

Maybe that's because the government didn't overreach? Just because you believe they did, doesn't make it true. Also, I'll say the same thing that I said last time you tried to use this argument: There's only going to be an uprising if the people don't agree with what the government is doing. A lot of people did, and still do, agree with what the government is doing in the War on Drugs, thus they don't perceive any threat to their civil liberties. People aren't going to take up arms against the government if they don't believe they are being oppressed by that government.

Again, this is not an issue with the 2nd Amendment, but rather one with public perception. In instances where the public has believed they were being oppressed enough to rise up, the 2nd Amendment has actually served them quite well. I also want to point out, the the point of the 2nd Amendment is to act as a safeguard for individual liberty, not democracy. The two don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. For example, if the people "democratically" vote to outlaw the worship of Islam, then the individual liberty of every Muslim in the US would be trampled on despite such a law coming into effect "democratically". With the 2nd Amendment though, Muslims in that scenario would be free to arm themselves in order to resist society's attempts to enforce the ban on the worship of their religion, preserving their individual liberty against the "democratic" will of the people.

In fact, I would say the idea of democracy more often than not clashes with the idea of individual liberty. Democracy tends to place more emphasis on the general collective will of a society, while sacrificing the individual freedoms of the outliers and minority opinions that disagree with that collective will. That's why the Founders didn't set the US up to be a democracy. They valued individualism over collectivism. And if you look, the US referring to itself as a democracy is really a relatively recent development. During the early years of our nation, up until around WWII, the US always referred to itself as "The Republic" or "The Union". After WWII though our politicians started developing a more collectivist attitude and started referring to the US as "our democracy".

There are three countries with the right to bear arms.

They are The USA, Mexico, and Guatemala.

Think about it.

Mexico most certainly does not have the right to bear arms. It may say so in their constitution, but the heavily restrictive gun laws of Mexico show just how much the government actually respects that right. There is literally only one gun shop in the entire country that is legally allowed to sell to private citizens in Mexico. I'm not familiar with gun laws in Guatemala, but a quick search shows they don't really respect the right either. So really the US is the only nation that truly respects the right to bear arms.

Also, not really sure what point you are trying to make here. Are you trying to claim the right to bear arms makes people less safe? If so, what are you basing that on? Statistics? Not a very good metric in my opinion. For example, you may look at that 39,000 gun deaths a year for the US and start feeling pretty unsafe. But if you take a step back and calm down for a second, you'd see that the statistics aren't matching up with your experience. How many times have you been shot in your life? How many times has someone shot at you? How many times has someone even threatened you with a gun? The answer for the overwhelming majority of Americans to all of those questions is going to be in the "hardly any/not at all" category. When you think of it from that perspective, you'll see that you, as an individual, are actually pretty safe from gun violence, as are most other people in the US. That's why it's actually pretty dumb and narrow-minded to base your opinions on statistics. Statistics hardly ever tell the full story on any given issue and that's because statistics are just numbers on paper. They don't factor in all the nuance or personal experiences of each individual in a society.

 

[Berzerker]

Surely you must admit that just because one person managed to achieve a massive kill count with a bolt-action rifle, that this is in no way enough evidence to make such a claim. There are such things as statistical outliers.

you mixed me up with someone else with that quote

No, he didn't. There is literally nothing in that tweet that a reasonable person would interpret as a threat.

Looks like a threat to me... You want my gun, come and get it and I'll be waiting for you.

But I'm not reasonable

The War on Drugs has nothing to do with the 2nd Amendment though.

Sure it does, people cant own both drugs and guns. And of course the violence created by the black market in drugs translates into momentum against gun rights - a reason the NRA is a threat, they support the drug war.

LMAO look at the first one on his list:

I suspect black people in that town couldn't own guns

There are three countries with the right to bear arms.

They are The USA, Mexico, and Guatemala.

Think about it.

Do they have drug wars too?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Also, not really sure what point you are trying to make here. Are you trying to claim the right to bear arms makes people less safe? If so, what are you basing that on? Statistics? Not a very good metric in my opinion. For example, you may look at that 39,000 gun deaths a year for the US and start feeling pretty unsafe. But if you take a step back and calm down for a second, you'd see that the statistics aren't matching up with your experience. How many times have you been shot in your life? How many times has someone shot at you? How many times has someone even threatened you with a gun? The answer for the overwhelming majority of Americans to all of those questions is going to be in the "hardly any/not at all" category. When you think of it from that perspective, you'll see that you, as an individual, are actually pretty safe from gun violence, as are most other people in the US. That's why it's actually pretty dumb and narrow-minded to base your opinions on statistics. Statistics hardly ever tell the full story on any given issue and that's because statistics are just numbers on paper. They don't factor in all the nuance or personal experiences of each individual in a society.

Statistics are better than anecdotes and aren't the problem here.

The problem is that people disingenuously use crap like "~40k gun deaths in the US" as "logic" for laws against magazine size, when magazine size is only possibly relevant to a tiny fraction of those. I hold that using suicide figures in an argument driven by emotional reaction to a mass shooting is disingenuous at best, and more likely outright dishonest.

That same statistic would actually be useful and relevant if we're instead looking at it after implementing a new suicide intervention program.

The real consideration of stats to use depends on what you're trying to optimize. Freedom? Total # of deaths next year? Total number of deaths long-term, factoring country stability? I'm mostly fine with not protecting people from themselves, even if that does mean more people in aggregate die. I'd rather compromise that than long-term freedom for individuals in the country. Not everyone agrees, so they will want to optimize for other things.

Looks like a threat to me... You want my gun, come and get it and I'll be waiting for you.

"I'm going to send people to take your property by force if necessary" is the initial threat. Calling out someone responding to a threat for making a threat is odd.

 

[El_Machinae]

Of course the War on Drugs has something to do with the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment affects whether or not the drug dealers have cheap and easy access to guns.

But no, you'll notice that despite an incredible number of people that think that marijuana criminalization is stupid, and that drug dealers were quite willing to arm themselves, it did not stop government overreach.

Also, it's not an appeal to emotion. It's pointing out the costs to the benefits. Is there some ratio of kids getting shot that would show that the fundamentalists of the Second Amendment are incorrect?

But I did misunderstand the themes, I will acknowledge. I thought that the second amendment was there to prevent government over reaching its Authority. Or, in other words, to prevent the majority from dominating the minority. And so I've been looking at the Second Amendment and its ability to deliver freedoms better than other liberal democracies. It failed on that front.

But given that the government would only take guns when it has a democratic mandate to do so, threatening to use violence to prevent that over reach is a little bit self-serving. The Second Amendment arms people to protect their rights to own guns, and that's about it.

 

[ashendashin]

But given that the government would only take guns when it has a democratic mandate to do so, threatening to use violence to prevent that over reach is a little bit self-serving. The Second Amendment arms people to protect their rights to own guns, and that's about it.

Self-serving is the whole damn point of it. If you want to speak, live, and follow your own interests freely you must have the means to do so. Take away arms and poof goes your right to anything seeing how you can't hold on to them yourself.
I really don't understand this obsession with a democratic appeal. Desire for freedom has never been a democratic concept.

 

[El_Machinae]

That's a common sentiment, it's just incorrect in practice. The only freedom that gun owners seem to threaten to use their guns for is to continue their unqualified right to own a gun.

It certainly doesn't measurably prevent government tyranny, and I will make the case that it made it worse.

 

[ashendashin]

That's a common sentiment, it's just incorrect in practice. The only freedom that gun owners seem to threaten to use their guns for is to continue their unqualified right to own a gun.

It certainly doesn't measurably prevent government tyranny oh, and I will make the case that it made it worse.

Takes a lot to unify people against their government. Being under a government at all is taking away your own freedom but with arms it's something of a choice. It's a foundational concept meant to have the means readily available, not quite so much a guaranteed check to simply reign in the existing government every time you disagree with it. The 'readily available' part has already been achieved to the point that limitations won't do much beyond pissing people off.

 

[El_Machinae]

Won't disagree, the populace is armed and many will shoot to protect that freedom. I certainly don't advocate for taking guns. I think the 2A needs to be re-written to be less obsolete and make buying a gun a licensed privilege

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Also, it's not an appeal to emotion. It's pointing out the costs to the benefits. Is there some ratio of kids getting shot that would show that the fundamentalists of the Second Amendment are incorrect?

"Think of the children" is a highly specific and suspicious plea in this context. It also sounds awfully familiar when compared against every inane political policy push ever.

You're asking people to think about the target group that is mostly represented by random collateral deaths and comprises a tiny percentage of all deaths related to this topic? The group that also happens to be least capable of defending itself against alternative means of DV homicide? And that's *not* an appeal to emotion? Really?

But I did misunderstand the themes, I will acknowledge. I thought that the second amendment was there to prevent government over reaching its Authority. Or, in other words, to prevent the majority from dominating the minority. And so I've been looking at the Second Amendment and its ability to deliver freedoms better than other liberal democracies. It failed on that front.

That's an interesting claim. Which countries are significantly more free than the US...and what measures are being used to claim such? Most EU countries making such a claim are somewhat of a joke, and not a whole lot of alternatives come to mind.