Guns and gun control in the USA

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Al Capone Junior
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Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by Al Capone Junior » Fri Sep 24, 2021 8:15 pm

I rather like this guy's commentary on (just about) everything, but especially guns and gun control.

Beau of the 5th column playlist on gun stuff.

(Don't know what "of the 5th column" is all about, but it's irrelevant).

These are all worth watching, but especially the first three, and most recent.

Semi-auto rifles have been widely available in the US for >100 years. But only fairly recently (let's say 35 years, for sake of argument) have mass shootings really been a thing. And they have been going up and up, to where they are pretty much commonplace. We can't go a week, without one, sometimes two, active shooter events taking place. Occasionally these will be religious extremists, but mostly it's just US.

Other countries, even well armed ones, don't seem to have this problem.

Why?

Beau argues it is a cultural issue, not a gun issue. (Note that this is a no-brainer, need specifics).

Glorification of violence. Pictures of ppl with their guns, looking tough and manly on social media. Confusion of masculinity with possession of firearms. Step on my flag and I'll shoot you attitudes. Confusion about the 2nd amendment. Violence as the answer to everything. Lack of understanding about what armed insurrection actually means. Shoot first ask questions later mentality.

I will add that it's the use of fear to sell everything, every idea, that exasperates the problem. Amplified greatly by social media. For being the home of the brave, Americans are afraid of abolutely everything.

Really now, how much of a threat are Mexicans to your gated, hilltop community, located hundreds of miles from the border, in an affluent, mostly white section of town? And will the next active shooter at your local school likely be someone freshly arrived from south of the border?

As someone who lives in the heart of such cultural attitudes, I find it very disturbing. Really there are so many better things to focus on. And to this date, I have never found someone who's totally focused on guns, who also carries on a great conversation (tho such a person may exist, but don't expect to readily find them).

I also believe that a severe lack of critical thinking skills, exasperated by the exploitation of natural human cognitive tendencies, is rapidly amplifying and escalating the violence problem in the USA.

I would also like to acknowledge the roll of hand guns in our violence problem, which conveniently give you a chance to make a really critical, irreversible decision in a real hurry.

Please feel free to splain me/us on this.

Note: I had not owned any guns in 2 decades, but recently my mother bought a new shotgun, and gave me back the one I gave to her almost 30 years ago. So now I have a gun again. I CAN go to Walmart without needing to carry it with me, loaded (I never take it out of the house). I refuse to be afraid of anything without a very good reason.

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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by sheldrake » Fri Sep 24, 2021 8:34 pm

This is exactly the argument Michael Moore, a lifelong National Rifle Association member, makes in "Bowling for Columbine'

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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by Al Capone Junior » Fri Sep 24, 2021 8:48 pm

Also note that I first learned to shoot in boy scouts, at 9-10. As I recall it was very much like a military range's procedures, but with .22 rifles.

Note that using ".22" instead of the much preferable "0.22" is a reflection of how you are most likely to see reference to a 22 in print. Perhaps also slightly reflecting the state of scientific literacy around here, which is generally between low and abysmal amongst the gun crowd.

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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by Al Capone Junior » Fri Sep 24, 2021 8:50 pm

Oh, and comparing my argument to michael moore, that doesn't make me feel ant better about it. :roll:

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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by sheldrake » Fri Sep 24, 2021 10:29 pm

Al Capone Junior wrote:
Fri Sep 24, 2021 8:50 pm
Oh, and comparing my argument to michael moore, that doesn't make me feel ant better about it. :roll:
It was Beau's argument, wasn't it? Don't feel bad about it

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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by Boustrophedon » Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:08 am

As I have posted on these pages before, I used to have a firearms licence and had a .22 LR target pistol on it.
I used to enjoy going to the club in Malton and punching holes in a piece of paper, got reasonably good enough to consider actually making a big effort to get really good.

However the attitude of some of my fellow shooters* disgusted me and spoilt some evening's enjoyment.

So when Hungerford happened we could see the end in sight and so Dad and I sold our guns whilst there was a good price to be had, then came Dunblane and we knew we had done the right thing.

I have not regretted that decision for one moment.


*One engraved Nazi symbols all over his "target pistol" and managed to kill himself in a masturbatory "gun cleaning accident" Another later got done for the illegal importation of tons of AKs and the attempted exportation of them to a UN embargoed country, he served 8 to 10 years. Said guns are still locked up in a secure site just down the road from me, they're now State property but no rent has been paid on the unit since.
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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by Chris Preston » Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:20 am

A number of people I know handed in their guns after this.

The world hasn't ended. Violent crime rates did not sky-rocket, but in fact they came down.

There are still homicides, because when people want to kill other people they will find a way. However, there are next to no accidental shootings and there has been 3 mass shootings in 25 years.
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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Sep 25, 2021 1:25 pm

I've moved some posts and responses to them over to The Pit

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Bird on a Fire
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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Sep 26, 2021 11:44 am

Chris Preston wrote:
Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:20 am
A number of people I know handed in their guns after this.

The world hasn't ended. Violent crime rates did not sky-rocket, but in fact they came down.

There are still homicides, because when people want to kill other people they will find a way. However, there are next to no accidental shootings and there has been 3 mass shootings in 25 years.
Of course, the person most gun owners are most likely to kill is themself. (That's why I personally wouldn't want one in the house.)

Sadly it seems there's no strong evidence for an overall reduction in suicide following the ban https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/1 ... 018.304640
We have the right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment.

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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Sep 26, 2021 11:58 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Sep 26, 2021 11:44 am
Chris Preston wrote:
Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:20 am
A number of people I know handed in their guns after this.

The world hasn't ended. Violent crime rates did not sky-rocket, but in fact they came down.

There are still homicides, because when people want to kill other people they will find a way. However, there are next to no accidental shootings and there has been 3 mass shootings in 25 years.
Of course, the person most gun owners are most likely to kill is themself. (That's why I personally wouldn't want one in the house.)

Sadly it seems there's no strong evidence for an overall reduction in suicide following the ban https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/1 ... 018.304640

This is the earlier article:

Australia’s 1996 gun law reforms: faster falls in firearm deaths, firearm suicides, and a decade without mass shootings
https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/12/6/365

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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by Chris Preston » Mon Sep 27, 2021 11:40 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Sep 26, 2021 11:44 am
Chris Preston wrote:
Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:20 am
A number of people I know handed in their guns after this.

The world hasn't ended. Violent crime rates did not sky-rocket, but in fact they came down.

There are still homicides, because when people want to kill other people they will find a way. However, there are next to no accidental shootings and there has been 3 mass shootings in 25 years.
Of course, the person most gun owners are most likely to kill is themself. (That's why I personally wouldn't want one in the house.)

Sadly it seems there's no strong evidence for an overall reduction in suicide following the ban https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/1 ... 018.304640
I am not sure you are interpreting the data quite correctly. Age standardised rates of suicides by firearms in Australia started to decline from the late 1980s and now are about 20% of what they were (see below). The article you linked to was arguing that the rate of decline had not changed. However, such an argument has to assume that the factors leading to a decline between 1988 and 1996 would continue unabated. It is quite clear by looking at the data over a long period that availability of methods of suicides is a significant factor in the use of the method, c.f. the rise and fall of poisons as a method of suicide.

https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-ha ... -over-time

See also this paper https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs ... .tb03580.x
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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Sep 27, 2021 11:51 am

Thank you both - I was a bit surprised by that article's claims, but wasn't sure if much was wrong with them. Certainly the picture is more complicated than trends in a single method - it does seem that the increase in hanging has compensated for some of the decline in firearm use, but probably not all of it.

If restricting firearms can also help protect vulnerable people from their own impulsive actions that's a good thing. It's just always tricky working out what would have happened otherwise.
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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by Al Capone Junior » Fri Oct 07, 2022 5:13 pm

No, this is not a joke. This was an item for auction at a charity event, benefiting a catholic school. It sold for over $8,000. It was one of five guns donated. A glock handgun was a door prize.

Behold, the trump Maga AR-15 for ladies*:
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I'm not sure which of the five guns was most disturbing, but I can say for sure that none were particularly popular for hunting deer.

Why the scope, I dunno. The thing is similar enough in handling to the M4, which any decent shot could easily kill lots of ppl with from 150 meters or more.

*now all you ladies can kill lots of ppl quickly too, and remain fashionable in the world of American super maga c.nts at the same time

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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by Al Capone Junior » Fri Oct 07, 2022 5:34 pm

Everybody hold up your index finger on your dominant hand. Now bend it slightly. See how easy that was?

This super easy motion, combined with the fundamental lack of self control due to the limbic system inherent to all humans, is the problem with guns. Well that, plus the irreversible, yet highly important and consequential ramifications thereof of this motion.

I say humans are inherently incapable of possessing guns without the detrimental side effect of people getting dead around you occurring at a highly increased rate when you have a gun.

And unlike many merkinanians, I see this as bad.

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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by Al Capone Junior » Sun Nov 20, 2022 11:06 pm

More front page gun violence in the US, LGBTQ+ place shot up. Not even gonna link it bc it's the same story over and over. Bitter American loner with serious psychological problems but no problems getting guns and ammo kills a bunch of ppl. It's gone from rare to monthly to weekly to daily and yet greg f.cking abbott* gets reelected.

Didn't even check to see if it was an AR-15, tho it's a good bet anytime another shooting happens. But you could accomplish about the same thing with a variety of commonly available guns anyway, so what's the difference.

Despite the carnage of our daily mass murders and the horrors of assault weapons, we manage to kill each other at a much higher rate daily primarily via the handgun. These dead ppl are only going to make the local news tho, thus helping to keep up the belief that crime is skyrocketing and we should all be afraid.

And thus, more data points are added to support my hypothesis that humans fundamentally should not have guns, period.

*proof that you can be in a wheelchair and still be a complete piece of sh.t

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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by dyqik » Mon Nov 21, 2022 12:45 am

Note that the county that this happened in is a "2nd Amendment county", and the police are not investigating this as a hate crime. Despite the fact it clearly was.

The police also knew the perpetrator was hoarding guns and making terrorist threats, because they arrested him last year for making hoax bomb threats, and saw the guns etc.. But there's a policy in place to buy do anything about that kind of thing.

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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by headshot » Mon Nov 21, 2022 7:07 am

Apparently Lauren Boebert has the victims in her prayers…

Though these were her thoughts on these particular victims previously:
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And, of course, she’s just been re-elected too.

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Re: Guns and gun control in the USA

Post by Al Capone Junior » Mon Nov 21, 2022 1:39 pm

She does provide a great argument FOR the use of guns. :roll:

She's also exhibiting feminism by boldly taking a role that was traditionally held by men: being a complete and total a..hole whilst holding a seat in congress. :roll:

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