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Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

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Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#791

Post by perrygeo »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #744
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #701

Step 1: repeal the Second Amendment. There's never going to be useful progress here until America unsticks from the idea that the right to arm yourself belongs in the same category as the right to free speech or due process.

Enforce the Second Amendment. It starts with "A well regulated militia..." A well regulated militia has absolutely no relationship to selling assault weapons to teenagers and/or fantasists. There is no constitutional "right to bear arms" outside of that context. And while that's being clarified, it would be also be good to investigate the NRA's Russian money problem. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/27/nr…

This. I know many gun owners personally and almost none of them object to regulation, similar to the level we have for operating a motor vehicle. Things like waiting periods, background checks, denying weapons to violent criminals, mandatory training and gun registries are common sense to most everyone - including gun owners. But the NRA is driving an extremist interpretation of the 2nd amendment that leads a small but very vocal subset of the population to take gun ownership as gospel (literally in some cases) without bothering to ever read the actual text of the Bill of Rights.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#792

Post by softcactus »

themacguffinman wrote: post #541
Aeolun wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always hear this argument, but it’s like people forget what the primary purpose of guns and cars is. If the primary purpose of cars was to drive over people then they would be banned. This is why you can own a car, but not a tank.

It's a little disappointing to see a whole thread of people who clearly haven't even seen a pro-gun perspective at all. The primary purpose of guns as they see it is self defense, as noble a purpose as any, especially compared to travelling really fast. Why don't I ban you from browsing the internet, clearly the primary purpose of the internet is porn, which drives a lot of human trafficking and ruins lives every day…

I am a gun owner but the self-defense thing is a red herring IMO. You are far more likely to shoot yourself or be shot while owning a gun than you are successfully defending yourself. You can make the argument that they are fun to own and a constitutional right, but the self defense argument cant be taken seriously when the statistics show the exact opposite.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#793

Post by oldcigarette »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #725
BobbyJo wrote: post #685

I think a good first step everyone can agree on to stop gun violence is: stop it's gamification. Almost every mass shooting in the last decade was someone looking for media attention and high score. And yet, every shooting is followed by detailed biography and a tally of bodies. Something as simple as a one month moratorium on information for anyone outside the community would probably work wonders, as the public eye…

Sure, one can try this - but I suspect that 4chan will only get more powerful as a place to "get information that is being surpressed". Qanon started on pol, and making pol the best place to go to find the sweet details on the shooter is going to blow up in your face.

Yeah you can go and read what was in the buffalo shooters head though which is a thing. He's pretty much a schizo christchurch copy cat. Amusingly he seems mostly in favor of shootings since it intensifies the gun control debate and accelerate the schism in the united states.

Gun control is not going to fix this kind of radicalism or its impact. The dude was a straight up terrorist and IMO he made the correct observation that this sort of terrorism will be successful in driving the divide and creating more extremism.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#794

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

chipsa wrote: post #784
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enforce the Second Amendment. It starts with "A well regulated militia..." A well regulated militia has absolutely no relationship to selling assault weapons to teenagers and/or fantasists. There is no constitutional "right to bear arms" outside of that context. And while that's being clarified, it would be also be good to investigate the NRA's Russian money problem. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/27/nr…

There's no such thing as a "collective right". Every other right guaranteed in the Constitution applies to an individual. Also, "assault weapon" is a term that means whatever the gun grabbers want it to mean today.

OK then; if you don't like "assault weapon"; let's clear this up terminological issue. I'd like to ban all automatic, select-fire or semi-automatic firearms, except on the basis of a permit issued on evidence of demonstrable need. We can move on to consider other types of actions.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#795

Post by bko »

pc86 wrote: post #691
BobbyJo wrote: post #685

I think a good first step everyone can agree on to stop gun violence is: stop it's gamification. Almost every mass shooting in the last decade was someone looking for media attention and high score. And yet, every shooting is followed by detailed biography and a tally of bodies. Something as simple as a one month moratorium on information for anyone outside the community would probably work wonders, as the public eye…

Enforced by whom? What is the punishment if you break it? This is just not realistic suggestion.

Someone responsible for a news organization can choose to set the policy. Maybe everyone can stop retweeting this stuff and engaging in a flame war online. Or stop consuming articles and videos about this incident. Not every problem can be solved by the state.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#796

Post by tablespoon »

richiebful1 wrote: post #782
tablespoon wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Enforced by whom? What is the punishment if you break it? The government. We need a comprehensive set of media safety laws that prevent publication of these dangerous reports so they won't fall into the wrong hands.

In the United States, I highly doubt this would hold up in court. Forcing media to not publish about mass casualty events is antithetical to the First Amendment protection of free speech and press

> Forcing media to not publish about mass casualty events is antithetical to the First Amendment protection of free speech and press

So? Shouldn't all options be on the table to solve this problem?

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#797

Post by ryathal »

christophilus wrote: post #709
christophilus wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the gun issue, there’s a glaring issue that seems more obvious to me: mental health. The solution seems to be a much better mental health system and safety net. If we got rid of all the guns in the world, psychopaths would make pipe bombs, etc. Getting rid of guns would help, no doubt. It would add friction to the process of pulling off massacres. But the real, root problem seems to me that we have comp…

Gah! I can’t edit my comment, but evidently, this “mental health” thing is a Republican talking point. Let’s see if they put their money where their mouth is. (I doubt it.)

Mental health is a talking point, but it's a really good one. The U.S. dismantled their mental health systems in the 80s. It was well justified at the time as there were a number of human rights issues around torture and indefinite detention. Now the pendulum has swung too far the other way and problematic individuals are essentially impossible to hold anywhere. There is a definite need to have facilities that can hold people for potentially prolonged periods, but aren't prisons.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#798

Post by michaelt »

cout wrote: post #721
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #701

Step 1: repeal the Second Amendment. There's never going to be useful progress here until America unsticks from the idea that the right to arm yourself belongs in the same category as the right to free speech or due process.

How do you enforce that in the era of 3D printers and consumer grade CNCs?

Here in the UK, we haven't had a school shooting in decades - despite the availability of affordable CNC machines and 3D printers.

After all, I have no gun and also no bullets, and also no gunpowder or primers, and also nobody I could show a DIY gun off to, and also nowhere I could shoot a DIY gun, and also if I use it to defend my home, the cops can put two and two together.

Criminals generally just use knives. Obviously people who can import illegal drugs can also import illegal guns, but they're keen to keep a low profile.

Of course, I doubt America could ever get to where the UK is today - too many people who are passionately pro-gun, and too many guns around out there.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#799

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

galangalalgol wrote: post #774
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #701

Step 1: repeal the Second Amendment. There's never going to be useful progress here until America unsticks from the idea that the right to arm yourself belongs in the same category as the right to free speech or due process.

There is a saying that god may have made man, but Samuel Colt made them equal. The right to use lethal force in defense of self is pretty widely accepted, but we should acknowledge that some of us have dramatic advantages in that regard. Being taller, having been in more fights, having a physically active job, being male... Firearms, more than literally any other weapon, level that disadvantage. So to acknowledge the…

This is an appealing idea, with a great soundbite, that has literally no large-scale evidence in its favor. The epidemiological evidence is pretty clear on this; the prevalence of self-defense use of guns is minuscule.

Even where guns are used in self-defense, it's often in the context of an escalation of an argument rather than in the scenarios people imagine. People who do use guns to protect themselves in the course of crimes are no less likely to be injured than those who do not.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#800

Post by JofArnold »

christophilus wrote: post #647
JofArnold wrote: post #643

What are guns bringing to the table that makes them so precious? At the very least they don't seem to be capable of feeding people nor preventing attempted insurrections nor preventing innocent people being killed by the authorities. In the situations they are used for self-preservation they are only done so because the adversary has/may themselves have a gun. It defies logic; unless I'm missing something crucial is…

The US is an independent country (as opposed to a British colony) purely due to the fact that we had lots of individuals with guns who could be organized into a rebel army. (And the help of foreign arms.) I think that is why guns are so precious in the US psyche. It’s also why guns are enshrined in the constitution. There’s disagreement on why the constitution left the arming of militias up to “the people”, but I’m o…

That I guess is a big thing I can't fully understand at a deep level, not growing up in USA. Seems like hanging on to something that made sense 240 years ago. Times change. I mean, slavery was legal then... Hopefully people don't want to hang onto that too even though it was "useful" at the time?

Furthermore, how in the modern world can people stand up to a government on a military level? An untrained population of gun owners with limited ammo doesn't stand a chance against the biggest and most heavily armed army in the history of the world, right?

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