The Thread Where We Discuss Guns and Gun Control

[El_Machinae]

I was just being silly

 

[Farm Boy]

My bad. I pick up on cock jokes faster than lobster ones...

>.>
<.<
>.>

(another random edit: Joke doesn't work. Apparently lobsters are "cocks" and "hens" too sooooo....

-=Sorry, my bad, I'm usually quicker on the cock jokes than that....=-)

 

[Lexicus]

I was just being silly

Same

The United States, Mexico and Guatemala, if you're wondering.

Wow, the only countries in the world that are truly free. *sniffle*

 

[Sommerswerd]

Sounds perfectly natural to me

And universal too!

 

[Broken_Erika]

Full stop. We agree. The "right" to own a gun comes from the state and can be taken away by the state. There's nothing "natural" about it.

LIES!!!!!
The right to own a gun IS natural!
Guns were created by God and given to America by Jesus himself!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Really? That's the entirety of the logic? We punished because we declared it a crime?

Honestly, I consider it to be a right-wing trait where people serve Justice merely because Justice deserves to be served

There are quite a few "crimes" that are punished because the action is declared a crime. Doesn't matter whether there is an actual victim, or whether any general harm can be demonstrated. Doesn't matter that for any coherent set of standards a wide swath of "legal" actions are worse. You do X and the law says you get punished because reasons.

Even worse, these laws just beg for uneven enforcement, which is what happens. An obvious common example is smoking pot. Even as someone who has never touched it and almost certainly never will, it's obvious that this is a common victimless action that is declared a crime and then punished very unevenly from person to person. It's far from the only example, but it's an obvious demonstration.

Arguments like "well people have killed others while impaired by it" ring pretty hollow when we straight up allow alcohol and then people drive while impaired by that, which is much worse impairment (though neither should be on the road).

So you have right-wing garbage pushing this kind of enforcement while leftists will do crap like send cops to people's houses in the UK over misgendering someone go after a guy over a bad-taste Hitler joke.

Gun ownership vs actual criminal action does fall under this umbrella to a degree, and that does include the "possession of bump stock". The fraction of "bump stocks" used to kill people is tiny, and deaths related to bump stocks compared to other deaths even in the US are also tiny. Yet now we have another specific "you own this and it's illegal so if you're caught you get punished because we declared it a crime".

 

[Sommerswerd]

Let's talk about how the historical genesis of the idea that a natural right to firearms exists is literally the aftermath of slave uprisings.

It is remarkable that what obviously started out as:

"Hey! Militias were pretty useful in that war we just fought... that's a pretty good excuse to put it in our rulebook that militias are good and everyone should be able to keep weapons around in case we need to raise one again... for uhhhh security purposes"...

has been morphed into the outright sanctification of a particular hobby/fetish.

 

[Farm Boy]

Enforcing crimes with no direct victim other than self, so basically "sin," is something both our snapping-on-street-corners camps like to do. They just phrase it differently. Seatbelts "omg I might extend these mandatory benefits to you and it might cost me cash, so I'll punish you for endangering yourself." Smoking "omg I might extend these mandatory benefits to you and it might cost me cash, so I'll have the state treat the interaction punatively." Omg if you hurt yourself you'll stop working and providing me with low class services and taxes, and that's further justification. Omg cartoons are creepy, they're illegal because you're a sicko. It goes on man. Humans will peck because they can. The pecking is the point(ha!).

 

[Sommerswerd]

Really? That's the entirety of the logic? We punished because we declared it a crime?

No silly goosey but I didn't think you wanted a dissertation on the different theories/purposes of criminal justice. Anyway @Lexicus already listed most of them so its been covered.

The point is the death penalty is not "self-defense", its punishment.

 

[metalhead]

It is remarkable that what obviously started out as:

"Hey! Militias were pretty useful in that war we just fought... that's a pretty good excuse to put it in our rulebook that militias are good and everyone should be able to keep weapons around in case we need to raise one again... for uhhhh security purposes"...

has been morphed into the outright sanctification of a particular hobby/fetish.

Even more remarkable is the fact that the Second Amendment has within it the explicit justification for the right.

Anyone reading the amendment critically should immediately think to themselves, "but what if a Militia is no longer necessary for the security of a free State?" 2A humpers spin it that individual freedom depends on the individual's right to bear arms, but the amendment itself explicitly says that it is collective armed resistance that is necessary, and not for individual liberty, but for the security of the State.

 

[Farm Boy]

"Humpers." Go stick your "lobster" in a blender, Boomer wannabe.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Anyone reading the amendment critically should immediately think to themselves, "but what if a Militia is no longer necessary for the security of a free State?"

Or... "Hmmm do the police and/or National Guard essentially act as the 'well regulated milita'?" But that part of the Amendment just gets handwaived because... reasons...

"I get to have that thing I like/want, cause its the LAW!"

"But the law doesn't say that at all."

"Whatever, its my natural/God-given/universal rights! And no silly so-called 'law' can take it away!"

 

[Broken_Erika]

Let me explain how it works with lobsters...

I just realized something. Jordan Peterson is an Agent of the Crab-People!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Anyone reading the amendment critically should immediately think to themselves, "but what if a Militia is no longer necessary for the security of a free State?" 2A humpers spin it that individual freedom depends on the individual's right to bear arms, but the amendment itself explicitly says that it is collective armed resistance that is necessary, and not for individual liberty, but for the security of the State.

A state that continually adds legislation against victimless crimes and takes away means to oppose it does seem to threaten the security of a *free* state. Free, except for the part where we arbitrarily control your actions, possessions, and very likely speech later (since there will be no way to fight back at that point).

As a thought experiment, let's say Trump declared himself president for life in 2023, after doing a strange-for-his-party maneuver to collect as many guns as possible. More than half the military backs him. Still happy you gave your guns away?

For Trump I consider this outcome implausible for several reasons, but who's to say someone can't do similar in 2040? 2058? The *state* is secure after all in that context, similar to how North Korea is "secure".

 

[metalhead]

A state that continually adds legislation against victimless crimes and takes away means to oppose it does seem to threaten the security of a *free* state.

We have a means to address this already, they're called "elections."

If you're talking about a State that no longer holds or honors elections, than the constitution is no longer relevant.

 

[El_Machinae]

No silly goosey but I didn't think you wanted a dissertation on the different theories/purposes of criminal justice. Anyway @Lexicus already listed most of them so its been covered.

The point is the death penalty is not "self-defense", its punishment.

He added Rehabilitation and then you added deterrence shortly thereafter. And then I laid out the case that the death penalty could be framed in terms of a deterrent effect.

Some people definitely think that the value of a death penalty is its punishment benefit. I don't really have much sympathy for that viewpoint.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

He added Rehabilitation and then you added deterrence shortly thereafter. And then I laid out the case that the death penalty could be framed in terms of a deterrent effect.

Some people definitely think that the value of a death penalty is its punishment benefit. I don't really have much sympathy for that viewpoint.

Except that there is absolutely no evidence that severity of punishment as a variable has any impact at all on crime. Criminals do not contemplate the consequences of getting caught, and are almost universally unaware of the sentencing options for the crimes they commit until after they have been caught. So "deterrent effect" is a dead end. Arguing the death penalty over LWOP as a deterrent hinges on the impossibly rare "killer serving life without parole manages to escape and kill again." Yes, in that case the death penalty can be argued to have been a more effective deterrent factor had it been applied, but that happens...once every few decades?

 

[Sommerswerd]

Except that there is absolutely no evidence that severity of punishment as a variable has any impact at all on crime. Criminals do not contemplate the consequences of getting caught, and are almost universally unaware of the sentencing options for the crimes they commit until after they have been caught. So "deterrent effect" is a dead end. Arguing the death penalty over LWOP as a deterrent hinges on the impossibly rare "killer serving life without parole manages to escape and kill again." Yes, in that case the death penalty can be argued to have been a more effective deterrent factor had it been applied, but that happens...once every few decades?

I already laid that out for El Mac in this post:

Spoiler :

There are multiple holes, but for just a couple examples... deterrence in the form of mandatory minimum sentences can only work when people are actually aware of the penalty. Most folks don't even find out what the potential sentence is until after they've already been arrested/charged. So deterrence is a farce as it relates to those folks.

Another problem, is that deterrence only works on people who think they will be caught. If they don't think they are going to get caught then the penalties are irrelevant. Most people wouldn't commit crimes in the first place if they thought there was a good chance they'd be caught. Ever notice how everyone drives the speed limit when there is a visible police car on the road? If the state wanted to protect public safety by deterring people from speeding, they would have highly visible squad cards on the highway... but since they're most interested in collecting fines, the police hide in ambush instead.

With respect to discouraging recidivism, deterrence only works if the released convict has other attractive, viable options. If they have little choice but to return to crime and/or no assistance in changing their ways, or even if a return to crime is the path of least resistance, then the prospect of being convicted again isn't an effective deterrent.

Again, those are just a few holes in the deterrence theory of criminal punishment.

​

and he seemed to agree... so I'm a little confused why he's circled back to the same reasoning . Anyway you're right of course... the conversation tends to go:

"Okay so you've been charged with X, and Y, if convicted of X you're facing a mandatory zz years in jail""

"What the eff? Why?!? zz years for X? That's crazy!"

Deterrence fail.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

We have a means to address this already, they're called "elections."

If you're talking about a State that no longer holds or honors elections, than the constitution is no longer relevant.

If the constitution stops being relevant, what becomes more relevant?

That said, the distance between "elections" and "votes on particular legislature" have a lot of noise. Most people can't tell you offhand what votes their representative made.

Having a hedge against the worst behavior isn't a bad idea.

 

[Sommerswerd]

He added Rehabilitation and then you added deterrence shortly thereafter. And then I laid out the case that the death penalty could be framed in terms of a deterrent effect.

Some people definitely think that the value of a death penalty is its punishment benefit. I don't really have much sympathy for that viewpoint.

We're going in circles. Again, as @Timsup2nothin points out, the death penalty as a deterrent fails for some of the same reasons that mandatory minimums fail as a deterrent.

More importantly... the whole reason we are talking about the death penalty as a deterrent in the first place, is because folks were framing gun rights as an extension of the "natural" right of self defense and you tried to extend this into framing the death penalty as "self-defense" as well, via transfer/extension of the dead victim's "natural" rights, but when the illogic of that was pointed out you pivoted to the theories of criminal punishment, specifically, "deterrence" instead.

So in reality, the fact that you've moved off the position that the death penalty is "self-defense" really resolves the issue... at least for the purposes of this thread.