The Thread Where We Discuss Guns and Gun Control

[Commodore]

I am, along with over 50% of the population, asking; universal background checks, magazine maximums, and licenses for gun owners. Please counter our requests with logic or emotional pleas that over ride mine

The whole point of the Constitution is precisely to prevent exactly what you are talking about here. You should not be able to vote rights away simply because you have a majority. That's not what this nation is supposed to be. Again, we are supposed to be ruled by laws, not by people. That's why the Founders made it so damn difficult to change the Constitution.

 

[Estebonrober]

The whole point of the Constitution is precisely to prevent exactly what you are talking about here. You should not be able to vote rights away simply because you have a majority. That's not what this nation is supposed to be. Again, we are supposed to be ruled by laws, not by people. That's why the Founders made it so damn difficult to change the Constitution.

I'm not taking away your right, I'm regulating it. All rights have boundaries.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Hallowed be the Founders.

 

[Farm Boy]

don't need to provide "more free", the hypothesis is that the 2nd Amendment provides freedoms that other liberal democracies would remove.

A lot of it is simple mentality. And heck, the world is smaller and people talk wider. The "control me I'm scared, but mostly control him" sentiment seems as popular as ever. Heck, we gonna come for your vapes and buckle you in and errything in its good time.

 

[El_Machinae]

Admitting that a previous question was a bit unfair isn't being bad faith, it's trying to move the conversation forward. Bad faith would be denying that the previous question was unfair after somebody else spent effort trying to meet the challenge.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Of course it does, like we've been over before, the 2A exists to stop government tyranny and over-reach. It did nothing during the war on drugs, therefore...

Claiming it did *nothing* seems to be a reach. Guns were used in both sides of the "war on drugs". Whether this was to the long term benefit of the country is debatable, but it's hard to make sound case for "what would have happened if US gun laws were completely different". Can't just assume it away though.

 

[El_Machinae]

The Second Amendment hypothesis is that it would have incentivized politicians to come up superior solutions to the social dilemma presented by illicit drugs.

I think it obviously failed. This is why the attempted counterpoint is that the Second Amendment had nothing to do with the War on Drugs

 

[zxcvbob]

If drug dealers did not have a constitutional right to arms, does anybody think they wouldn't have guns anyway? Criminals don't obey the law. And big drug dealers have lots of money. I think the war on drug argument is silly. (as an aside, whenever .gov declares a "war on <fill in the blank>" it always seems to make the problem worse, or creates new problems worse than the original w/o really solving the original)

If guns are outlawed and somehow magically disappear, the police will still have their guns, and career criminals will have guns, and both will prey on the defenseless.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I am, along with over 50% of the population, asking; universal background checks, magazine maximums, and licenses for gun owners. Please counter our requests with logic or emotional pleas that over ride mine.

It's a high cost move with questionable benefit to address the core issue (people getting killed by guns). Background checks are already a thing, yet they are executed poorly or ignored. You can't just hop online, buy a gun, and have it shipped straight to your house.

Multiple school shootings had not just warning signs, but blatant alerts that the shooter was a risk to do it long before it happened. Like a kid's own parents voiced concerned/reached out to authorities, or a kid was put in a special school because he was already talking about killing people for years prior. Yet somehow these people got their hands on a weapon.

It was already illegal, there's no point in making it more illegal. Rather than bogus laws that pointlessly restrict law abiding citizens, how about taking a look at why things that were already illegal during many steps of the process nevertheless happened uninterrupted until the point of people getting shot?

It's also not comforting that police are under no direct obligation to use their weapons/risk themselves to defend others, yet people still want to arbitrarily restrain tools for self-defense.

The Second Amendment hypothesis is that it would have incentivized politicians to come up superior solutions to the social dilemma presented by illicit drugs.

We do not know what solutions politicians would have attempted & what results would have happened in the absence of the 2nd amendment in that particular case, which is far from the only potential case where the 2nd amendment might be useful.

 

[El_Machinae]

You have literally dozens of liberal democracies that had to deal with illicit drugs. Of that group, the United States is not more obviously successful. The Second Amendment didn't incentivize the population or the government to innovate solutions other than oppression. Again, the hypothesis is that the United States would have out performed the other liberal democracies

But yes, the drug dealers would have armed themselves even without people protecting the drug dealers' constitutional right to protect their business from an oppressive government. And so the second question is whether the Second Amendment made it easier for the drug dealers to arm themselves.

 

[Estebonrober]

It's a high cost move with questionable benefit to address the core issue (people getting killed by guns). Background checks are already a thing, yet they are executed poorly or ignored. You can't just hop online, buy a gun, and have it shipped straight to your house.

Multiple school shootings had not just warning signs, but blatant alerts that the shooter was a risk to do it long before it happened. Like a kid's own parents voiced concerned/reached out to authorities, or a kid was put in a special school because he was already talking about killing people for years prior. Yet somehow these people got their hands on a weapon.

It was already illegal, there's no point in making it more illegal. Rather than bogus laws that pointlessly restrict law abiding citizens, how about taking a look at why things that were already illegal during many steps of the process nevertheless happened uninterrupted until the point of people getting shot?

It's also not comforting that police are under no direct obligation to use their weapons/risk themselves to defend others, yet people still want to arbitrarily restrain tools for self-defense.



We do not know what solutions politicians would have attempted & what results would have happened in the absence of the 2nd amendment in that particular case, which is far from the only potential case where the 2nd amendment might be useful.

Yea fix the background check issues (not on all purchases, not long enough for FBI to run them), magazine regulation is cheap and easy to enforce, licensing was the previous norm and reduces gun ownership considerably among the ignorant.

 

[Farm Boy]

They should really put more tests on potentially dangerous rights, probably. Tired of those ignorants. Voting seems a really lost opportunity there. Immigration? Really need economic criterion. So many turds with power, need more empowered purity.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

^Yes, there's a real danger in this kind of rationale. More dangerous than the marginal threat of magazine capacity.

Immigration isn't a "right" in the sense of voting or bearing arms as a citizen though, and at least some criterion is useful. For example, the person entering isn't "convicted of serious crime" should be uncontroversial. The specifics of where to draw the line aside, there probably should be one.

 

[Farm Boy]

I dunno. Depends upon from where. Asylum always seemed expressly for people getting hosed on convictions and social oppression and whatnot.

 

[Estebonrober]

They should really put more tests on potentially dangerous rights, probably. Tired of those ignorants. Voting seems a really lost opportunity there. Immigration? Really need economic criterion. So many turds with power, need more empowered purity.

So you are against licensing for guns and for people to own them and carry them around with no formal training on them?

 

[El_Machinae]

We always need to distinguish between immigration and refugees. Some people are desperate to get us to conflate them.

Also, you don't want licensing for voting, because it creates the wrong incentives. Universal voting creates the incentive to educate and uplift.

 

[Farm Boy]

My post said and implied exactly what I wanted it to(I hope!). You've given me a "yes/no" on a broad nebulous policy tribal stance. It's a "camp" question.

 

[Estebonrober]

My post said and implied exactly what I wanted it to(I hope!). You've given me a "yes/no" on a broad nebulous policy tribal stance. It's a "camp" question.

I mean it feels to me your post just attacked my lack of tact. Which I get I worded it badly and don;t mean it in that manner really. Well anyways I do stand by my concerns on the issue. So does the majority of the american public and contrary to belief when these same measures I'm advocating now were in effect the government did not become some solitary totalitarian state.

 

[Farm Boy]

Well, if you're attempting to address intentional shootings and murder, "ignorant" can't possibly apply to "of how to operate the firearm." It then must apply to another criterion. And those sorts of criterion are the sorts of things that people who seem in love with accreditation and status are just gaga over. You know, professionalists or whatever. The socially approved right kinds of people.

It's a compelling argument on the face. It's dressed up pretty well behind relevant social need and effective governance. Probably gets me fairly frequently.

 

[Estebonrober]

Well, if you're attempting to address intentional shootings and murder, "ignorant" can't possibly apply to "of how to operate the firearm." It then must apply to another criterion. And those sorts of criterion are the sorts of things that people who seem in love with accreditation, and status are just gaga over. You know, professionalists or whatever. The socially approved right kind of people.

Yea good point.