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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)

#461

Post by jiggawatts »

Round and round we go...

As a foreigner, it's appalling to see every excuse imaginable trotted out every time this happens.

Don't think you're fooling anyone. You're just making things up on the spot for the sake of pretending to have a rational argument, like an intelligent adult would in your place.

But I will eat my shorts if you personally have spent even an hour doing the research before making statements about "what this would do", or "that wouldn't work", or whatever. I don't mean clicking "like" on a Facebook post by a fellow NRA member. Mean literally reading through scientific publications, or looking at statistics published by third parties that are unaffiliated with any United States organisation.

Or just Googling to see what the other 96% of the human race does with guns and laws.

""No Way to Prevent This", Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22No_Way_to_Prevent_This%22,_...

Jim Jefferies (an Australian comedian living in the States) on gun control:

Part #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0

Part #2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9UFyNy-rw4

Can you counter every single one of his points? Really? With facts? That you can link to in a scientific paper that wasn't paid for by a gun lobby in the states?

19 children just died. Please take this a tiny bit seriously and don't just click the reply link to blurt out something in a public forum that can be trivially shown to be false...

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

#462

Post by arminiusreturns »

whatever1 wrote: post #6

We need gory pictures from the executed kids everywhere. Until we understand the magnitude of the horror. I look at my FB and see proud gun owners cracking jokes and I really cannot comprehend how it is possible.

I remember coming back from Iraq wishing the American public should have to see what we were actually doing. America and it's allies export death and destruction, but we dont show or talk about a president bombing a wedding, or sending arms to the Saudis they use to blow up a school bus full of Yemeni kids. Keep quiet about the ~14,000 dead Russian speakers in the Donbass conflict since a CIA backed coup in 2014. Say nothing about all the various North African countries we've couped, or the South American Ones, or the SE Asia ones. Don't mention programs like Fast and Furious sending mexican cartels arms, or sending other cartels guns for drugs that get pumped into the inner cities and make our 3 letters have oodles of off-books black bag money.

I see pundits on Bloomberg cackle about Lockheed and Raytheon outperforming the market on national television and radio. News hosts talk about missles sent to Syria against our own Constitution as beautiful. Warmongers given platforms on supposedly left shows. Unnacountable bankers financing it all.

SV is so full of myopic hypocrites. Show the gore, sure, but be sure to show it all.

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

#463

Post by kodah »

charles_kaw wrote: post #428
chmod600 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Where many U.S. states permit concealed carry of handguns, handguns are virtually illegal to carry in Canada. Transporting them from your home to the range is legal, but they must be unloaded, locked, and permits are required for the transport." I see no mechanism by which those laws would reduce mass shootings. A mass shooter would simply ignore them. The other policies you mention may be more relevant, but it goes…

>I see no mechanism by which those laws would reduce mass shootings. A mass shooter would simply ignore them. On virtue of how many shootings have begun "without warning", the cultural context in canada versus the us is quite different. The expectation of actions when you see a firearm is very different in these two countries! - in the US, someone with an openly carried firearm may be transporting it or any number of…

> Gun owners consistently misrepresent and come up with inconsistent interpretations of any gun control.

Maybe sometimes, but there's also gun laws like in California that affect large populations of gun owners. I don't think they're making their dissatisfaction and confusion with the gun laws up. Owning a gun in the US isn't very simple; different states have wildly different laws you have to observe, and those are in effect at airports as well.

I don't think it's wise to say, "they just don't understand" to the people who actually have to live with the laws.

As a gun owner, I do think there's reasonable forms of gun control. I don't mind having my background checked or paying a tax stamp. I don't mind psychological evaluations or closing gun show loopholes. Restricting guns, ammo, attachments, magazine sizes etc are not effective forms of gun control imo.

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

#464

Post by ghufran_syed »

Reason077 wrote: post #433
chmod600 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Where many U.S. states permit concealed carry of handguns, handguns are virtually illegal to carry in Canada. Transporting them from your home to the range is legal, but they must be unloaded, locked, and permits are required for the transport." I see no mechanism by which those laws would reduce mass shootings. A mass shooter would simply ignore them. The other policies you mention may be more relevant, but it goes…

> “I see no mechanism by which those laws would reduce mass shootings. A mass shooter would simply ignore them.” And yet, there does seem to be a strong correlation between “countries with stricter gun control laws” and “countries that have low rates of gun-related deaths and homicides”. Canada has between 6-8X fewer gun fatalities per capita compared to the United States - both homicides and unintentional/accidental…

the article you quoted says: “Homicide figures may include justifiable homicides along with criminal homicides, depending upon jurisdiction and reporting standards”

Why don’t we talk separately about “murders” vs “suicide” vs “justifiable homicide”? Each of those terms is fairly clearly defined in most people’s minds (maybe the last one a little less so), and then we could focus on the different mitigation that might be needed for each. I feel conflating them doesn’t actually help move the discussion forward given how different they are. On a moral basis, I think the situation where a law enforcement officer killed the recent texas school shooter is very different from that of that shooter who murdered innocents. So when people conflate such very different things by using terms like “gun deaths”, it makes many gun owners like myself suspicious that people are not arguing in good faith. Or am I missing something? Is there some benefit to doing so that isn’t just political?

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

#466

Post by adamredwoods »

mafro wrote: post #459

People are always saying things like "the second amendment protects my right to bear arms". So can we have another "amendment" that removes this right?

I think it would be easier to create better laws around it, than removing the amendment.

For example, removing the PLCAA, for starters, to create liability from manufacturers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Lawful_Commerce_...

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

#467

Post by colechristensen »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #446
colechristensen wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_India China, with knives: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/06/09/china/china-knife-attacks... These things happen everywhere, aren’t necessarily reported in the same way. One part of why they are so prevalent in America is how each event becomes such a cultural focus, half of what I’ve seen on social media has been people posting about this event. Perpetuating t…

Yet they aren't a cultural focus. How many mass shootings have taken place in the US this year? 10? 20? Try 213. 243 deaths, 922 injuries. This month? 44 mass shootings. 61 deaths, 219 injured. These things don't happen everywhere. They happen here because guns make them easy. People hate facts and so they pretend that everyone has the same problems.

That really depends on your definition of mass shooting, and you seem to be quoting a statistic which uses a very broad definition.

The kind of thing that happened in Texas has not happened 44 times this month.

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

#468

Post by prawn »

jjcon wrote: post #249
condercet wrote: post #68

It is not fair to place the blame for this epidemic of violence squarely on those suffering from mental health issues. Mental health issues are distributed globally, but the gun violence problem is not. People who suffer from mental health issues are tremendously more likely to be victims of violence, rather than the perpetrators. These individuals already suffer from tremendous discrimination and hardships in their…

> Mental health issues are distributed globally, but the gun violence problem is not. I'm not so sure that is true. I'd wager that Americans are suffering more than most right now due to institutional rot (or at least the perception and portrayals of it).

I suspect you're probably right, but I'm not sure it's to the point that it discounts their point. I think the "institutional rot" is a smaller factor than other elements impacting mental well-being.

A hormonal, bullied, enraged teenager where I live is less likely to do monstrous amounts of damage to others. They can get easy access to a knife and might own a car. Out of hundreds of people here, I think I know one person who has a gun, and they live on a farm with a rifle that I'd imagine emerges once a year to shoot foxes or kangaroos.

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

#469

Post by eyelidlessness »

chmod600 wrote: post #358
beloch wrote: post #83

Canada is the U.S.'s neighbour and is probably closer, culturally, than any other nation. Gun ownership is also high in Canada. In terms of guns per capita, the U.S. is #1 by a long shot, but Canada is #7 [1]. In Canada, guns owned per capita is one third of what it is in the U.S.. Canada also has mass shootings. The annual deaths from mass shootings per capita in Canada is 0.032, which is about one third that of the…

"Where many U.S. states permit concealed carry of handguns, handguns are virtually illegal to carry in Canada. Transporting them from your home to the range is legal, but they must be unloaded, locked, and permits are required for the transport." I see no mechanism by which those laws would reduce mass shootings. A mass shooter would simply ignore them. The other policies you mention may be more relevant, but it goes…

As a former gun rights advocate who is now in favor of basically eliminating guns except for hunting…

> I think gun owners would be much more receptive to regulation if they felt people were genuinely trying to separate narrow and effective laws from broad infringements that annoy many and accomplish little.

From both positions, I’d favor regulation that explicitly aims to limit gun possession as much as legally possible. The problem with “more gun laws the better” is everyone knows it’s bullshit that accomplishes nothing, no one benefits, and every terrible incentive is incentivized.

They should come for the guns and get as many as possible, with as much solid legal theory backing it as they can. They’re never going to convince the fringe, but they’ll convince the vast majority of people who agree with regulation that they mean it and intend to be effective. Anything short of that is political theater.

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

#470

Post by themacguffinman »

colechristensen wrote: post #201
themacguffinman wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I show you gory pictures from a car accident, would you understand the magnitude of the horror of cars to the extent that you would want to ban cars?

I was at the DMV and the woman in front of me was describing how her shy child needed a renewed permit as he had been frightened of driving by these kinds of images and never shown interest in learning years since.

I appreciate the story, and I can understand that mindset personally because I have also been dissuaded from driving by my knowledge of the danger of cars.

But it has never persuaded me to support tough car restrictions or bans on cars for other people. It's a personal risk calculation that I do not impose on others. I don't know the shy child you mention at the DMV, but I doubt he was persuaded to outlaw cars for other people either. That's a mindset I do not understand.

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