Study Club#1: Effective Firearm Policy

[Hadoblado]

This is a collective effort to learn what we can about weapon ownership and its relation to various outcomes such as violence and suicide. I'll keep it loosely defined for now but insist that anyone participating sticks to scientific evidence. This is about process more than it is product.

This is not a thread about sharing your thoughts and feelings about guns, although it might be useful to share them as a disclaimer before presenting what you find as a way of measuring bias.

As a research question, let's go with: "Which weapon ownership policies have been shown to work, and which have been shown not to work?". We can negotiate the scope as we go based on interest, this is just to get the ball rolling.

 

[Cognisant]

Spoiler: Gun deaths in Australia 1988 to 2012

Spoiler: Gun ownership vs gun deaths, by US state

Comparing the USA to other nations generally isn't very helpful, sure there's probably more murders in Mexico and Brazil but they also have organized crime syndicates and severe poverty problems. The Philippines is surprisingly comparable to the USA in terms of gun deaths, especially given their relative lack of firearms, but they've also had a civil war recently that ended with the Catholics in the North brutally crushing the Muslims in the South. Compared to these incredibly troubled places there's really no excuse for the world's wealthiest nation to have so much gun crime, and granted correlation does not equal causation but I believe the charts above speak for themselves.

You can still buy guns in most parts of the world, places like Australia and Japan, but the difference is the kind of firearms for sale and more importantly the amount of time/effort required to complete the process. Crazy people are generally not long-term thinkers, if they were they wouldn't be crazy, which (I speculate) is why nations like Australia and Japan have far less gun crime, certainly of the suicidal mass shooter variety.

 

[Hadoblado]

I'm going to go through and write my process and thoughts as I go. Each section will be written before I continue the research.

My initial position:

Spoiler

I've historically gone back and forth on this issue. At one point I wanted more guns, at another I was completely anti-gun. Nowadays I'm overall anti-gun, but I'm not interested in a policy that doesn't work. I am skeptical of many leftist ideas about complete disarmament, but at the same time view gun culture as toxic. At the end of the day, I'm an empirical utilitarian and I will support whatever policy is shown to give the outcomes I consider best.

I also don't think this is even close to the most important thing right now for humanity, but it's interesting and this is about process so lets go!

Initial search

Spoiler

Initial selection

Spoiler

2015 Mental Illness...
2020 Gun studies...

2020 Science of gun policy...
I'm having a look at this and I think this is an excellent article to go to for specifics about gun policy in America. It's 412 pages long though, so I'm not reading it without having a really clear question I want answered.

2012 The Effectiveness of Policies and Programs That Attempt to Reduce Firearm Violence: A Meta-Analysis - DOI: 10.1177/0011128708321321

All articles were hits except the third, which I used sci-hub to access.

2015: Mental Illness and Reduction of Gun Violence and Suicide: Bringing Epidemiological Evidence to Policy

Spoiler

Okay so they're concerned about constitutional rights and about the narrative harm done to people with mental health issues due to the disproportionate blame placed upon them. While most people who shoot up schools have mental health issues, most people with mental health issues don't shoot up schools.

I don't really care about constitutional rights, but I'm interested in what the extent of the harm is, so I'm opting to read further because I've never thought about this before.

This isn't a research report, so it means a lot of reading (probably the whole thing). That's probably going to be the norm for the topic.

Spoiler: Citation

This is an impressive claim, though it's from 1994. Might be worth looking into later - I would not have expected mental illness to account for so little of the total violence.

I'm going to write interesting claims down the bottom as a "Questions and Leads" section.

Just finished reading - skimmed the last half as my engagement waned. I'm not convinced about mental health having little to do with mass shootings but I'm taking a step back from the belief I didn't realise I had that all shooters were mentally ill.

Spoiler: Questions and Leads

"If the violence of the mentally ill were reduced to that of the mentally healthy, we would still be left with 96% of current violence".

 

[Cognisant]

Mental illness is inexact phrasing, would you consider someone having a psychotic breakdown in a moment of personal crisis to be mentally ill? I'm sure we've all had our moments of extreme stress/duress in which we have responded inappropriately or disproportionately, to err is human.

There's also factors like inebriation, sleep deprivation, sustained stress over a long period of time, factors which undermine the rational though process and make someone more likely to respond with violence.

Then there's clinical mental illness, someone who's brain is malfunctioning or is affected by some kind of psychological trauma (i.e. PTSD).

Finally there's mental illness in terms of belief and willing ignorance of the factual truth which I think is the most dangerous kind, this is the Unabomber, the Al-Qaeda terrorist, the mosque massacres in Christchurch. I say this is the most dangerous kind because unlike the prior three where the people in question are either in a temporary state of insanity or likely to have their efforts to obtain a weapon undermined by their own mental instability, you can't stop this kind of crazy from getting a weapon by simply making the process lengthy and inconvenient, the actions of an ideologue (religious or otherwise) are premeditated.

Still, I can only speculate, but I suspect these radicalized ideologues a quite rare, like the 1995 sarin gas attacks in Japan (a country where firearms are notoriously difficult though not impossible to obtain) acts like this will happen regardless of the level of gun regulation but I think the frequency of events like this in Japan to mass shootings in the USA gives an indication of how rare they are.

I'm having a look at this and I think this is an excellent article to go to for specifics about gun policy in America. It's 412 pages long though, so I'm not reading it without having a really clear question I want answered.

How about: Will reducing the accessibility of firearms in terms of how long it takes to obtain one reduce incidences of mass shootings?
That seems like a reasonable (bare minimum) concession.

 

[Hadoblado]

Yeah, I'm skeptical of it. They also used the DSM 3 (we've been on 5 a while), but the paper I did read had many references to other studies so I'm keeping it as my placeholder belief until I know better.

It's not about the technical definition of mental illness at the time of violence. It's about whether you can predict offenders from a measurable trait and then screen them out by implementing policy.

Re: concession
Still too broad for me (you're more than welcome). When I said I need a specific question, I don't mean that I need an excuse. I mean that this is a resource for answering specific questions generated by discussion. For instance, there's probably a follow-up to policy based on mental health screening in there. I probably wasn't being very clear (mb).

Re: graphs from the first post
The first graph looks pretty damning, but it might be that this violence is funneled off into other forms. To be really confident it would be good to have a figure for both gun-related deaths and violent deaths total over time.

The second graph is also pretty damning. If I were pro-gun I'd say that people buying guns is a response to the high gun-related crime.
My real concern would be whether or not they control stuff like gang violence, which personally I wouldn't want in my results because it behaves so differently.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

This one is going to be tough to start with.. I'll bite off what I can.
-
My natural curiosity had me seeing if there was a link between age and the shootings, but I stumbled upon things that were already being discussed here so I figured I'd add it.

To address the note on how we look at gun violence: it seems that we can siphon through this by having a precise definition of "mass shooting" and "active shooters" as these filters work to distinguish those who go on vengeful rampage, and those who have the intention of causing chaos, though both do share qualities like they do usually not have the intent of surviving.

This next statement is substantiated by 2021, and 2022 studies but one of the has a well known author in the field with many citations: Essentially these shootings in developing countries don't occur in schools or workplaces, so this is another filter for the data that can give a clearer picture of what constitute a similar event to what happens in America.

Evidence for above statements

Spoiler

Primary source

https://www.theviolenceproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/TVP-Mass-Shooter-Database-Report-Final-compressed.pdf

Prior research suggests there may be fundamental psychological and behavioral differences between offenders who commit murder and offenders who commit mass murder or murdersuicide (e.g., Lankford, 2015), or shooters who target their school or workplace versus those who kill indiscriminately in other public spaces (Fox & Levin, 2012). At the same time, other fields with small Ns and hidden populations, like terrorism studies, have transitioned away from early studies of "profiles" toward more complex studies of "pathways" (Horgan, 2008)

Spoiler

Primary

The Importance of Analyzing Public Mass Shooters Separately from Other Attackers When Estimating the Prevalence of Their Behavior Worldwide · Econ Journal Watch : public mass shootings, public mass shooter, lone wolf, terrorism, gun policy

Public mass shootings have traumatized Americans for more than fifty years. Notable examples include the 1966 University of Texas tower shooting, the …

econjwatch.org

Primary

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359375870_Global_mass_shootings_comparing_the_United_States_against_developed_and_developing_countries

Secondary

Over 70% of mass shootings in developed countries happen in the US, international analysis shows

June 1, 2022 – Mass shootings in the US account for 73% of all 139 incidents occurring in developed countries between 1998 to 2019. During this time, 62% of all 1,318 fatalities from the attacks also happened in the states. These are the findings of a shocking new study, published in the...

yubanet.com

I suppose I'm just saying that there is a level of analysis where we can delve deeper. Sociological factors are important, but they shouldn't get in the way of identifying a problem that exists in more than one space.

 

[Daddy]

Not exactly scientific, but there seems to be some things I noticed.

1. If you don't let people have guns or you have strong restrictions on gun ownership, gun crimes do go down. But this presents other problems. The people usually get oppressed by government and usually are a lot more submissive to them. Often you get authoritarian-like governments strong-arming the people because they don't have reason to be afraid of them. The benefit (or detriment, depending on what you want) is more social or group cohesion; but this is more of a conservative wet-dream, where being different is weeded out or discouraged and one unifying message, culture, or ideology is pushed on the people. Places like Japan, Russia, North Korea, China, Belarus, and India have low homicides by firearm rates. For example, here's Japan - https://knoema.com/atlas/Japan/Homicides-by-firearm-rate with a rate of 0.0. And US has 3.4 https://knoema.com/atlas/United-States-of-America/Homicides-by-firearm-rate and Belarus has 0.2. The low numbers have a very low number of guns in the population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country
For example, Belarus is 6.1 and the us is 120.5 and of course the homicide rate in the US is much higher compared to Belarus. But these countries are usually considered very authoritarian (you can't look into it if you want, maybe I'm wrong here).

2. If you let people have guns, but you set out to make a culture that respects them and aims at making people responsible gun owners, gun homicides don't go up as much, but they still go up. Case in point, Sweden (https://knoema.com/atlas/Sweden/Homicides-by-firearm-rate) at 0.4, with almost 1 in 4 citizens owning a gun is very low compared to the US rate of 125 guns per 100 people and having a score of 3.4. But still higher than Japan at 0.0, which has 0.3 guns per 100 people (or 1 in 300 have a gun). Mathematically if you scaled sweden to the same number of guns as the USA, you would get 2.0 compared to 3.4 of the US, which is still substantially lower (though in this vein having more guns shouldn't necessarily mean a higher homicide rate by firearm in Sweden, since clearly Sweden's gun culture does better than other countries with the same number of guns, so I'm assuming the worst scaling here and it's still about half the USA rate). Portugal is another country similar to Sweden. But take Jordan with a rate of 18.7 guns per 100 people and a homicide by firearm rate of 0.8 (https://knoema.com/atlas/Jordan/Homicides-by-firearm-rate), which is double Sweden's 0.4 (and they have less guns...). Jordan has much looser gun requirements compared to Sweden and Portugal, where those two countries seem to impose a culture of respect and responsibility for having a gun. Basically, if you don't create a culture of respect and responsibility around firearms, it seems you will have a lot more firearm incidents.

Although it might seem like common sense, the data seems to suggest that you want gun owners to realize they have a responsibility to use them appropriately. Basically, the opposite of USA gun culture (and I know because I am a US citizen, been in the military, and own assault weapons, including a scar 20s and soon a 50 cal). It's surprising how easy it is to get a gun in the USA and how little people care. I have literally purchased and picked up an assault weapon after about a ten minute FBI background check because I carry a concealed carry permit, whereas people that don't carry the permit have to wait three days. But getting the permit is the same requirement for a background check, so people just get the permits so they don't have to wait when they buy guns. I don't even conceal carry and nobody questioned me on why I wanted one. And clearly I'm not using it for its intended purpose.

 

[Grayman]

Not exactly scientific, but there seems to be some things I noticed.

1. If you don't let people have guns or you have strong restrictions on gun ownership, gun crimes do go down. But this presents other problems. The people usually get oppressed by government and usually are a lot more submissive to them. Often you get authoritarian-like governments strong-arming the people because they don't have reason to be afraid of them. The benefit (or detriment, depending on what you want) is more social or group cohesion; but this is more of a conservative wet-dream, where being different is weeded out or discouraged and one unifying message, culture, or ideology is pushed on the people. Places like Japan, Russia, North Korea, China, Belarus, and India have low homicides by firearm rates. For example, here's Japan - https://knoema.com/atlas/Japan/Homicides-by-firearm-rate with a rate of 0.0. And US has 3.4 https://knoema.com/atlas/United-States-of-America/Homicides-by-firearm-rate and Belarus has 0.2. The low numbers have a very low number of guns in the population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country
For example, Belarus is 6.1 and the us is 120.5 and of course the homicide rate in the US is much higher compared to Belarus. But these countries are usually considered very authoritarian (you can't look into it if you want, maybe I'm wrong here).

2. If you let people have guns, but you set out to make a culture that respects them and aims at making people responsible gun owners, gun homicides don't go up as much, but they still go up. Case in point, Sweden (https://knoema.com/atlas/Sweden/Homicides-by-firearm-rate) at 0.4, with almost 1 in 4 citizens owning a gun is very low compared to the US rate of 125 guns per 100 people and having a score of 3.4. But still higher than Japan at 0.0, which has 0.3 guns per 100 people (or 1 in 300 have a gun). Mathematically if you scaled sweden to the same number of guns as the USA, you would get 2.0 compared to 3.4 of the US, which is still substantially lower (though in this vein having more guns shouldn't necessarily mean a higher homicide rate by firearm in Sweden, since clearly Sweden's gun culture does better than other countries with the same number of guns, so I'm assuming the worst scaling here and it's still about half the USA rate). Portugal is another country similar to Sweden. But take Jordan with a rate of 18.7 guns per 100 people and a homicide by firearm rate of 0.8 (https://knoema.com/atlas/Jordan/Homicides-by-firearm-rate), which is double Sweden's 0.4 (and they have less guns...). Jordan has much looser gun requirements compared to Sweden and Portugal, where those two countries seem to impose a culture of respect and responsibility for having a gun. Basically, if you don't create a culture of respect and responsibility around firearms, it seems you will have a lot more firearm incidents.

Although it might seem like common sense, the data seems to suggest that you want gun owners to realize they have a responsibility to use them appropriately. Basically, the opposite of USA gun culture (and I know because I am a US citizen, been in the military, and own assault weapons, including a scar 20s and soon a 50 cal). It's surprising how easy it is to get a gun in the USA and how little people care. I have literally purchased and picked up an assault weapon after about a ten minute FBI background check because I carry a concealed carry permit, whereas people that don't carry the permit have to wait three days. But getting the permit is the same requirement for a background check, so people just get the permits so they don't have to wait when they buy guns. I don't even conceal carry and nobody questioned me on why I wanted one. And clearly I'm not using it for its intended purpose.

Who cares if you reduce deaths by guns. The goal should be to reduce deaths overall. If people just kill each other with knives because guns are less available, we haven't really solved anything. For this reason, I don't think comparing gun deaths from one country to another is a valid comparison. We should compare homicides overall. Is the effort of stabbing someone vs pulling a trigger going to deter them from committing the crime?

The only things that will truly help are
1) Free and unlimited mental health care with some mandatory cases
2) Required gun training as a graduation requirement
3) promoting a culture where all good guys are packing and any shooter or criminal won't last a second before getting blown away. Just the fear/risk factor would be a deterant (added benefit of people likely to be more polite)

Unfortunately we don't have a situation that fits this to compare data. We would have to construct an expirmental society to test it. We could call it Socialized Texas 2.0

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Who cares if you reduce deaths by guns. The goal should be to reduce deaths overall. If people just kill each other with knives because guns are less available, we haven't really solved anything. For this reason, I don't think comparing gun deaths from one country to another is a valid comparison. We should compare homicides overall. Is the effort of stabbing someone vs pulling a trigger going to deter them from committing the crime?

When you look at a problem, that's made up of multiple sub-problems, you can't really say "lets fix problem; fixing problem will fix all sub-problems". Okay, but how?

Granted it's not like distinguishing between serial killers and one off premeditated homicide is doing much to prevent either. But that's kinda the point of justifying legislation. There is a element of inevitability, and the gateway to getting a lethal weapon can possibly stifle this possibility.

These studies see the elements, and builds a profile for the types of people comiting these crimes, so that any legislation can target people who exhibit certain behavior or have certain traits like looking at social media posts and legislating against impulsive decisions.

1) Free and unlimited mental health care with some mandatory cases
2) Required gun training as a graduation requirement
3) promoting a culture where all good guys are packing and any shooter or criminal won't last a second before getting blown away. Just the fear/risk factor would be a deterant (added benefit of people likely to be more polite)

I'm all for these solutions, it's just that the nature of this super supreme club is evidence. Australia has free healthcare, so maybe that is a shinning example, but I cant imagine that happening. No. 2) Gun training, on it's own, might reduce the frequencies but increase the lethality of mass shootings.

The gun culture position I think has been discredited time and time again

Spoiler

there is absolutely no evidence that more armed guards or armed citizens reduced or stopped any of the 73 mass shooting studied. Only one case involved an unarmed bystander who intervened and tackled a
shooter while he was reloading his weapons. Therefore, the claim that a preventative
heroic action can be taken by an armed guard or citizens is pure speculation and does not
resist the test of fact. Only in 17% of the cases were the shooters killed by police officers
that too only after several victims and casualties. Between the beginning and the end of a
typical killing rampage, the only interruption that makes the shooter pause is the need to
reload or to search for new targets.

https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1145/LankfordMar2020.pdf?mimetype=pdf

Upon reading up more on these studies, I can't help but think of the challenges politically viable solutions would be. A politically viable solution might be something that doesn't raise the time it takes to get a gun more than a couple days.

For example an app that is downloaded to your phone and scrubs it with AI to look for anything resembling a killers behavior. Or a voucher from a psych that is trained in the area. Sounds like a huge undertaking.

 

[Hadoblado]

Oooh nice work. Yeah this is a tricky one because there are no experimental data, there's systematic political bias, it's multifaceted with many variables that can be defined different ways, and stakes are high meaning restrictive ethics.

Loose threads:

I've summarised it this way to try and provide an overview of our efforts. I've stripped away a lot of the nuance sorry, but it won't fit if I provide detail.

We've naturally gone in a lot of different directions. I think we've got kind of close to debating rather than researching on a few occasions. While it's good to discuss possible interpretations, this is a lot more constructive when evidence is provided. I think Endo's done this best thus far.

 

[Grayman]

Who cares if you reduce deaths by guns. The goal should be to reduce deaths overall. If people just kill each other with knives because guns are less available, we haven't really solved anything. For this reason, I don't think comparing gun deaths from one country to another is a valid comparison. We should compare homicides overall. Is the effort of stabbing someone vs pulling a trigger going to deter them from committing the crime?

When you look at a problem, that's made up of multiple sub-problems, you can't really say "lets fix problem; fixing problem will fix all sub-problems". Okay, but how?

Granted it's not like distinguishing between serial killers and one off premeditated homicide is doing much to prevent either. But that's kinda the point of justifying legislation. There is a element of inevitability, and the gateway to getting a lethal weapon can possibly stifle this possibility.

These studies see the elements, and builds a profile for the types of people comiting these crimes, so that any legislation can target people who exhibit certain behavior or have certain traits like looking at social media posts and legislating against impulsive decisions.

1) Free and unlimited mental health care with some mandatory cases
2) Required gun training as a graduation requirement
3) promoting a culture where all good guys are packing and any shooter or criminal won't last a second before getting blown away. Just the fear/risk factor would be a deterant (added benefit of people likely to be more polite)

I'm all for these solutions, it's just that the nature of this super supreme club is evidence. Australia has free healthcare, so maybe that is a shinning example, but I cant imagine that happening. No. 2) Gun training, on it's own, might reduce the frequencies but increase the lethality of mass shootings.

The gun culture position I think has been discredited time and time again

Spoiler

there is absolutely no evidence that more armed guards or armed citizens reduced or stopped any of the 73 mass shooting studied. Only one case involved an unarmed bystander who intervened and tackled a
shooter while he was reloading his weapons. Therefore, the claim that a preventative
heroic action can be taken by an armed guard or citizens is pure speculation and does not
resist the test of fact. Only in 17% of the cases were the shooters killed by police officers
that too only after several victims and casualties. Between the beginning and the end of a
typical killing rampage, the only interruption that makes the shooter pause is the need to
reload or to search for new targets.

https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1145/LankfordMar2020.pdf?mimetype=pdf

Upon reading up more on these studies, I can't help but think of the challenges politically viable solutions would be. A politically viable solution might be something that doesn't raise the time it takes to get a gun more than a couple days.

For example an app that is downloaded to your phone and scrubs it with AI to look for anything resembling a killers behavior. Or a voucher from a psych that is trained in the area. Sounds like a huge undertaking.

You are using examples of a society where the vast majority are unarmed. And that disproves my hypothesis that if the vast majority were armed, they would act as a deterant and not even need to shoot the criminal?

There are a lot of studies that show that criminals are more likely to target the vulnerable. There are also studies that show crime is a risk vs reward.

It should also be noted that although you can legally carry, most stores and public areas don't allow weapons. Evidence shows, as you pointed out, that security is insufficient. Putting yourself in harms way to protect others you don't know is a lot different then arming people to protect themselves or people they love.

 

[Hadoblado]

Grayman, this thread is specifically about the science stuff, not the debate stuff. It's about exploration not defending your beliefs. This is a collaborative effort.

Please, don't just gesture at the supposed existence of evidence, provide it!

 

[Grayman]

Grayman, this thread is specifically about the science stuff, not the debate stuff. It's about exploration not defending your beliefs. This is a collaborative effort.

Please, don't just gesture at the supposed existence of evidence, provide it!

I believe in a collaborative debate, especially when determining the merit of a claim or perspective you don't necessarily hold but don't fully see it as invalid. I am not fond of a circle jerk setting. Too many hidden pitfalls and blind spots.
All evidence requires interpretation and that interpretation requires some opposition to determine its merit.

If all you are doing is collecting evidence without concern for any outcomes of what that evidence means, I guess that is another matter.

Here is one of my claims about how criminals look for easy victims...

How Criminals Find Their Most Likely Victims

Are there certain visual cues that attract criminals? Research says yes; consider how to avoid them.

www.psychologytoday.com

Of course this mentality does not apply to mass shootings but mass shootings make a small portion of overall.

Gun violence in the United States - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

5 shootings per year -> which makes me wonder, with three hundred million people, are you really going to be able to do anything to bring that number down? Would it be more reasonable to bring the number of deaths from each shooting down?
1) Eliminate all more dangerous weapons to reduce the number of deaths. .... I mean that would be a massive undertaking that would only reduce a few numbers before police respond.
2) Eliminate the shooter instantly. Much more doable but that would require more people on scene trained and or capable.

****************************

Another thing to consider is that criminals such as this lack empathy. Their lack of emapthy means a lack of ability to empathize with their future self. aka see long term consequences. For this reason I do not think more laws and punishment will do anything.

Self-Control Is Just Empathy With Your Future Self

The same part of the brain that allows us to step into the shoes of others also helps us restrain ourselves.

www.theatlantic.com

******************************

Lastly, The biggest number of deaths comes from suicide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States

Mental medicine can be helpful in that and also the mass shootings, maybe.

But really is that true? I mean why is depression increasing so drastically even as we advance in medicine? Even access to medical help has increased via schools, and via ACA which allow kids up to 25 to stay on their parents medical plan. Yet the younger are drastically the ones facing the biggest spike in depression...

I met enough super poor people to know htat you can have nothing and still be happy. Some internet searches claim that it its about them not having financial security or being afraid of ahing to deal with government debt and global warming and the world ending or somethign.

Millennial Depression: Why Are Millennials Depressed?

Spoiler alert: The economy isn't helping

thriveglobal.com

I think its more about having a sense of meaning in ones life and self worth/value. That ball was dropped when it came to them. While religion doesn't necessarily need to be THE factor that provides this. It was a major factor and I am not sure something else has adequately taken its place.

Why Millennials Might Feel Alone In Their Churches

I had a strange moment at church several weeks ago. As I was sitting at a table fellowshipping after services and looked around, it hit me that I was the only person in my 30s in the whole room. Th…

likeananchor.com

Some will claim it social media, but why this specific group when other groups are on social media? Is social medial particularly damaging before you develop a sense of identity and self confidence?

If so, maybe the youth should be banned from a large section of the internet. What else are you going to do? Yet it will be needed for them to fuction in our future society...to ge ta job even. Unfortionetly humans cannot evolve faster than our technology.

 

[Hadoblado]

I wasn't saying don't talk about stuff or have an opinion. I was saying don't only do that. That big post is plenty.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

This is an exercise @Grayman , that spawned from a different thread. You are inferring your conclusion with some evidence, and that is somewhat in the spirit of what we are doing. But the goal isn't to solve systemic issues, it's mostly practice analysis of scientific information. Not defending our views.

I think we can get more argumentative once enough information is aggregated. Hado is generously cataloging and tabulating the conversation.

Spoiler: continued rambling about what I already wrote

I have provided evidence that suggests that one of your solutions, the one about culture of gunowner ship, is ineffective. We have the highest rate of gunowner ship. We have the most guns in the world, and yet we also have the most mass shootings. I don't have to cite that do I?

Just to reiterate I only mentioned bringing other countries statistics into the mix just in case someone finds something useful from there. It's kind of ludacris to think that scientists don't know what they're doing when they're comparing other countries to the US, and I referenced 2 studies that reinforce that claim.

I cited sources with specific definitions for these crimes and the people that perpetrate similar to them. This isn't about gun violence as a whole, but a broader perspective is useful occasionally. For the goal in the title, I don't think bringing up the question of whether it's useful to try to legislate policy, is going to help find good legislative policy.

I did see a paper that proposes some sort of mental health intervention like you said Grayman, but it's new and many people haven't given it a look apparently. Well, it's cited by a study that trys to suggest we take in concideration how being an incel might contribute to violence and aggression, but at this point I'm noticing a lot of the same authors appearing, which is increasingly concerning.

Spoiler

APA PsycNet

psycnet.apa.org

Findings indicate that public mass shooters were more often male, unmarried, and unemployed than the average American. Active shooters were not significantly different from the general population based on prior felony convictions or preexisting firearm ownership. Public mass shooters and active shooters appeared more like people who die by suicide than homicide offenders, given their high frequency of premeditation, acting alone, suicidal ideation, and unnatural death. Overall, this suggests that felony histories and firearm ownership may have limited utility for threat assessment, but several suicide prevention strategies might help reduce the prevalence of these attacks.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047235221000854

Sexual frustration is not only a problem for those who are “involuntarily celibate”; it also affects many people who are sexually active. Frustration arising from unfulfilled desires to have sex, unavailable partners, and unsatisfying sexual activities appears to increase the risks of aggression, violence, and crime associated with relief-seeking, power-seeking, revenge-seeking, and displaced frustration.

 

[Hadoblado]

Cog and I had a conversation regarding how to proceed over in the ground zero thread. It might be worth pitching in how we're feeling there. Cog and I agree that the scope is a bit too large but I want others' input before making any changes.

We want to focus the scope more. Cog suggested split-off threads, I was thinking of keeping it to one thread and as we converge on answers we cycle to the next issue.

If I were to refocus the issue, I'd try to capture and address our disagreement. Something along the lines of "what can we expect gun restrictions in America to accomplish?".

 

[Grayman]

This is an exercise @Grayman[/

I cited sources with specific definitions for these crimes and the people that perpetrate similar to them. This isn't about gun violence as a whole, but a broader perspective is useful occasionally. For the goal in the title, I don't think bringing up the question of whether it's useful to try to legislate policy, is going to help find good legislative policy.

I don't have the time to get into this anymore but I will clarify that my suggestion wasn't a lack of policy. Instead I suggested a policy to require all students to receive arms training and to promote more citizens to carry.
You may feel the policy is poor, but that isn't the same as a lack of policy.

 

[Hadoblado]

Grayman you're out, but before you finish can I just get a clarification on whether your proposal is training for all gun users (like the training required to get a driving license), or mandatory gun use for everyone (so more like a public education approach)?

 

[BurnedOut]

Gun laws are certainly an interesting case study. The personality facets of American gun owners were amusing - Red, confident and communitarian. I am a big fan of guns but I personally don't think having guns can lead to a better quality of life.

In many poor countries even, mass shootings are a rarity except those who battle with civil wars, mercenary trouble, broken goverments, etc. You will not hear of people getting trigger happy in countries like India despite the fact that Indians constitute a huge slice of world demography.

When kids and youngsters wield AR-15 and AR-16 class weapons with 5.56mm and 7.62mm ammunication, i think we should put statistics aside and actually ask ourselves if gun ownership is actually a requirement or not because empirically it is useless when it comes to lifestyle improvent insofar being a bauble like an expensive TV. That is what the research says but it does not talk about some of the major problems in gun wielding demography like USA - the psychological deterioration of people.

Current data is largely inconclusive about worsening mental health because we don't know if people are seeking help more often or there are more afflicted. The former is the one that can be empirically supported and the latter is the one which lacks a credible theory.

But

There is enough research on materialism to suggest that spirituality is largely missing in today's neoliberal world. You can make inferences but not proper deductions and the inference is that if in case mental health deterioration continues, gun ownership is likely to turn into a problem in the future.

 

[Hadoblado]

Again, gonna remind peops to try and substantiate their ponderings. Don't talk in vagueries, specify which evidence is conclusive/inconclusive.

Sorry, I'm gonna be insistent on this.

If this endeavor yields zero relevant conclusions regarding gun policy, that's fine, because hopefully we will have learned something about the process of becoming informed. But if we accept a rationalist (in the rational vs. empirical sense) standard of discourse as we have everywhere else on the forum we're going to struggle even more with focus and we're going to struggle to reach bedrock in both the policy and epistemic domains.

 

[Grayman]

Grayman you're out, but before you finish can I just get a clarification on whether your proposal is training for all gun users (like the training required to get a driving license), or mandatory gun use for everyone (so more like a public education approach)?

Public education, but if I was to spell it out more, I would take it as far as government financially subsidizing guns but "smart guns" to be specific. In order to promote a culture of gun comfort and to promote certain guns that would be safer for the public.

Smart gun - >Finger print activated weapons to prevent others from firing your weapon and better traceability. Just some ideas.

 

[Hadoblado]

Hmmm interesting. How do you feel about mandatory military service? IIRC Singapore, Korea, and Sweden all have this for men? We might already have a bunch of good examples.

 

[BurnedOut]

Source: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2019.100463

There are two broad theories - palliative and fear driven motivations to seek guns. The latter one has been proven by the research.

I contend the sociological and political view that despite the palliative effects of gun ownership has the cause and effect of all such behaviours emerge from society itself. They considered several variables.

My metareview:
It is a complex psychological phenomenon constituted of 2 causes - personal and societal. When the former drives gun seeking to less extent, the latter combined with the former has a synergistic effect on self-perception of gun-ownership. The ability to feel secure while wielding a rifle can only be explained by the owner's ability to feel the need to retaliate violently when necessary. Therefore what ultimately matters is the perception of law and order. A man with a gun in a no man's land is as good as a man without a gun in a populated area. Therefore it is extremely difficult to criticize the phenomenon of gun ownership

 

[BurnedOut]

Again, gonna remind peops to try and substantiate their ponderings. Don't talk in vagueries, specify which evidence is conclusive/inconclusive.

I was gonna immediately post my evidences but I forgot. Did it now and I admit there is not much substantiation.

 

[Grayman]

Hmmm interesting. How do you feel about mandatory military service? IIRC Singapore, Korea, and Sweden all have this for men? We might already have a bunch of good examples.

Personally, not at all, but it could be effective for training and ensuring there is a respect for the weapon. However there is the element of higher suicided rates among veterans. https://americanaddictioncenters.org/veterans/suicide-among-veterans

I think it would have to be a 'ready response only'. They should not be required to deploy, specifically to combat situations, unless there is a declaration of war against the USA and an imminent threat to the mainland.

Looking at those examples I think they are all consistently less 'interventionism' than the USA.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

I'll look it up when I can, but has anyone found anything linking online communities encouraging antisocial behavior on the level of mass shooting?

We seem to be looking at multiple causes, so we should at least come up with multiple solutions. Maybe the next study group can treat an aspect of that?

 

[scorpiomover]

This is a collective effort to learn what we can about weapon ownership and its relation to various outcomes such as violence and suicide. I'll keep it loosely defined for now but insist that anyone participating sticks to scientific evidence.

Scientifica evidence or evidence written by scientists?

This is about process more than it is product.

Judging by your previous thread that led you to start this thread, I'd say it's about the products of modern science and thus not any scientific process.

This is not a thread about sharing your thoughts and feelings about guns,

How can you possibly understand science if you don't think about it?

As a research question, let's go with: "Which weapon ownership policies have been shown to work,

India has a very low gun-homicide rate.

and which have been shown not to work?"

Australia, for one.

 

[ohshtt]

Hmmm interesting. How do you feel about mandatory military service? IIRC Singapore, Korea, and Sweden all have this for men? We might already have a bunch of good examples.

Personally, not at all, but it could be effective for training and ensuring there is a respect for the weapon. However there is the element of higher suicided rates among veterans. https://americanaddictioncenters.org/veterans/suicide-among-veterans

I think it would have to be a 'ready response only'. They should not be required to deploy, specifically to combat situations, unless there is a declaration of war against the USA and an imminent threat to the mainland.

Looking at those examples I think they are all consistently less 'interventionism' than the USA.

not here to debate, just to give info. (i am singaporean. my brother is currently undergoing his mandatory national service.)

there are 2 types of soldiers in the army - conscripted boys age 18-20 + older full-time staff. the conscripted boys are not deployed (unless they apply) & are not veterans. suicide rates are irrelevant. however, many boys get depressed by army life. with a psychiatric assessment, they can leave the service OR be assigned to lighter duty/another unit.

the amount of gun training depends on vocation (what job in the army). all boys get minimum 9 weeks military training beforehand, depending on fitness level. personally, my brother is a clerk in the army. he only touched and fired a gun ONCE in his two years there.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Can't find anything linking online communities to shootings at all. Kinda hard to frame it as such honestly anyways. Just stuff on why the media landscape makes people compete for attention, but nothing linking competing for attention to mass shootings.

Study analyzing people who specifically commented on their own intentions those that who have self-expressed why they perpetrated these attacks. There is mention of people wanting to mimic shooters, but it's again, besides the point at connecting online communities that promote/advocate for shooters.

Spoiler

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320817539_Different_Types_of_Role_Model_Influence_and_Fame_Seeking_Among_Mass_Killers_and_Copycat_Offenders

Regard headspace of shooters

There have been several cases of shooters who identified previous killers as their heroes or idols.

A number of shooters were apparently impressed by a specific attack and committed their own attacks shortly thereafter. This seems like the most basic form of influence. Unlike many other cases cited in this article, these perpetrators did not conduct indepth research or engage in significant planning. They appear to have engaged more in simple imitation rather than significant idolization of previous shooters

In a number of cases the perpetrators cited previous killers as inspiration, though it is not clear how much research they each did into the attacks.

In 1966, there was tremendous media attention on the crimes portrayed in the book In Cold Blood, as well as on the mass murder of nurses in Chicago. The biographer of the man who committed the sniper attack at the University of Texas in Austin wrote: “The power of mass murder to capture the attention of, to shock, and to break the heart of a nation could not have escaped [perpetrator’s name redacted].” (Lavergne, 1997, p. 81). Lavergne concluded, “He climbed the Tower because he wanted to die in a big way ... making the headlines” (p. 269). On 12 November 1966, not long after the Texas Tower massacre, a different young man committed an attack at the RoseMar College of Beauty in Mesa, Arizona. After he was captured, he said that he got the idea for mass murder from the Texas Tower shooting and the mass murder in Chicago that year. He commented, “I wanted to kill about 40 people so I could make a name for myself. I wanted people to know who I was” (Langman, 2016b).

Citing limitations of the study

The findings presented in this report reflect a thorough and careful review of the data derived almost exclusively from law enforcement records. Nevertheless, there are limitations to the study which should be kept in mind before drawing any conclusions based on the findings. First, the Phase I study on which the present analysis is based included only a specific type of event. Shootings must have been (a) in progress in a public place and (b) law enforcement personnel and/or citizens had the potential to affect the outcome of the event based on their responses. The FBI acknowledges there is an inherent element of subjectivity in deciding whether a case meets the study criteria. Moreover, while every effort was made to find all cases between 2000 and 2013 which met the definition, it is possible that cases which should have been included in the study were not identified. Overall, as with the Phase I study, the incidents included in the Phase II study were not intended to and did not comprise all gun-related violence or mass or public shootings occurring between 2000 and 2013. Second, although the FBI took a cautious approach in answering protocol questions and limited speculation by relying on identifiable data, there was some degree of subjectivity in evaluating which of the original 160 cases had sufficient data to warrant inclusion in the study. Third, while reliance on official law enforcement investigative files was reasonable based on the study’s objectives, the level of detail contained in these files was not uniform throughout and the FBI was not able to definitively answer all protocol questions for all subjects.

Though theres is no reason not to believe that these people would find each other thanks to algorithms, as they are characterized by certain behaviors that algorithms could catch on to. No studies confirming it however. You'd need to make a dummy user that make it look at similar information a mass shooter would hypothetically look at.

 

[Hadoblado]

This covers Australian firearm policy and talks loosely about the different statistical methods that support its efficacy.

 

[birdsnestfern]

Stricter Registeries Probably:
Finger printing, putting it on a drivers license, or requiring an open database of who has what.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

JS has always made it easy to spot the stupidity in someone's arguments. Comedy Central fucked up taking him for all he had. Apple bought him off, and we are better for it but then again, then again Apple TV is a more walled garden.

The double standards of gun nuts is kinda obscene, and not compatible with the reality of.. Well reality.

 

[Daddy]

Stricter Registeries Probably:
Finger printing, putting it on a drivers license, or requiring an open database of who has what.

So, I know this is kind of off-topic, but for argument's sake if people are stable and treat each other well, would they act neurotically and shoot each other? Sure, you could have accidental shootings or accidental manslaughter, and people with certain mental illnesses (or just people on drugs) could act recklessly or be impaired and make poor judgements and shoot someone.

But other than that? Theoretically, no. So you can train people to avoid accidental shootings and you can restrict firearms from the mentally ill or druggies.

But if people aren't stable and don't treat each other well? You can probably expect the gun shootings to increase with the number of gun owners. Then you can reduce the shootings by reducing guns, but was that really your problem from the beginning? Truly, people see the deaths and violence and think that's a problem, but the suffering that precipitates the shootings is somehow not or ignored. A bit hypocritical if you ask me. And Jon seems to focus on trying to keep guns from the "bad" ones, while the senator doesn't seem to want to restrict at all, but neither seems to understand how hypocritical that sounds.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Boxers shouldn't get in random fist fights because their hands are weapons. At least, in court, they will have to make a compelling case for why they thought the force they used was necessary.

They are conditioned to fight in certain settings, and outside that setting they aren't in danger of accidentally killing someone because of a slip of the wrist and incidentally bad judgement. They also feel generally more secure iirc

Guns aren't so just.
Some states: *threat = reason to shoot

"Common sense gun laws" is a political dodge, as these conversations aren't easy. There's no simple 1 minute answer and courts are slow for good reason, but it's quite infuriating because precisely what you say.

I don't think the point you bring up is bad, but it doesn't really resolve anything if anything it's a whole other branch of the discussion, because the people that end up getting guns skews towards jumpy people and people who are interested in them for specific reasons.

Hunting game? I think these are the most modest gun owners. I don't want them to shoot woodland creatures/destabilize ecosystems, because, well I that's my moral compass talking, but this is just conjecture at this point, derailing the intent of this thread.

People that get guns because guns exist are honestly my biggest worry. I've done some security gigs, worked with security personnel. You are educated to not even touch someone who isn't a *threat to anyone or you can risk being fired/losing your license. Guns tho, you get a pass no matter who you are.

 

[Daddy]

Well I'm not sure what you mean when you say people get a pass with guns. The courts are typically against the gun owner. If you use it, you need to justify why it was self-defense and not murder, generally, but there might be some weird isolated states with strange laws, but even just accidentally firing a gun and not hitting anyone can be a crime where I live (Florida). Each city/county has different rules, but where I live something like this happened - https://www.pumphreylawfirm.com/blo...fter-accidental-shooting-of-off-duty-officer/ and this is in California (), but also illegal where I live - http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes...tute&URL=0700-0799/0790/Sections/0790.15.html discharging is a misdemeanor, but still a crime.

There was also a case where a woman shot a gun to scare away her abusive husband - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/us/marissa-alexander-released-stand-your-ground.html she was sentenced to 20 years and then 3 and 2 years house arrest. There's actually a lot of laws put in place to punish people from using guns recklessly.

Also people here do need to pass a background check as well to even buy a gun. And if you want to carry it around in public you need a conceal carry permit and training. And this is Florida! The redneck state! Home of The Florida Man! Haha. What we don't have is required safety training for someone that wants to buy a gun to keep at home, go to the range, or go hunting. Something where they learn how to be safe and treat it as something dangerous that you only use when you're sure you need it (if that's what you are talking about). But that's something that can always be added with legislation that both sides can potentially come to agreement on, since it's just about being safe with guns.

 

[Daddy]

I don't think the point you bring up is bad, but it doesn't really resolve anything if anything it's a whole other branch of the discussion, because the people that end up getting guns skews towards jumpy people and people who are interested in them for specific reasons.

Oh, also, what do you mean by jumpy? Specific reasons? What do you mean?

 

[EndogenousRebel]

I'm inclined to agree here, but isn't this just confirmation bias? Is it a dick move to say that?

If she had just shot and killed/wounded this person it would just be a run of the mill act of gun violence and likely wouldn't have been reported?

To me this is just the media being the media.

When you have a hammer, all you see are nails. Case and point, she wasn't using the gun for what it was intended to be used for. Warning shots in war are coordinated by various parties. This one lady, by her state was given licesence to use the gun "however" she wanted and this is what resulted.

Is the state not just pressing charges because they can make a quick buck off of her? Isn't it dramatic that she is fighting this case? The media loves reporting the drama, but it sucks at following up with it. Social media mediates that I guess, but when a corporate entity takes hold of stories they only follow up based on the herds desire to do so.

The statute in the law might be different but that is not something many people are privy to to begin with.

I don't think the point you bring up is bad, but it doesn't really resolve anything if anything it's a whole other branch of the discussion, because the people that end up getting guns skews towards jumpy people and people who are interested in them for specific reasons.

Oh, also, what do you mean by jumpy? Specific reasons? What do you mean?

Saying I'm buying a gun for self-defense is a cop out isn't it? What the fuck else do you buy a gun for besides perhaps hobbism/hunting?


I'm kinda glad this sort of shit exists. Do I think that excuses the wide-spread accessibility of guns at the drop of a hat? Not for me to say, but I can def argue against it.

If people were at scale decent I would agree. We are mere animals in my eyes I guess, and I don't see why I would let a tiger or a gorrlla, and certainly why I would want all my neighbors to be armed to the teeth when something goes wrong. I don't really hear that much senseless gun violence outside of the big massecars that happen, but to me it is still something that we as a soceity have dealt with poorly.

 

[Daddy]

I'm inclined to agree here, but isn't this just confirmation bias? Is it a dick move to say that?

If she had just shot and killed/wounded this person it would just be a run of the mill act of gun violence and likely wouldn't have been reported?

To me this is just the media being the media.

When you have a hammer, all you see are nails. Case and point, she wasn't using the gun for what it was intended to be used for. Warning shots in war are coordinated by various parties. This one lady, by her state was given licesence to use the gun "however" she wanted and this is what resulted.

Is the state not just pressing charges because they can make a quick buck off of her? Isn't it dramatic that she is fighting this case? The media loves reporting the drama, but it sucks at following up with it. Social media mediates that I guess, but when a corporate entity takes hold of stories they only follow up based on the herds desire to do so.

The statute in the law might be different but that is not something many people are privy to to begin with.

So there is this as well -
Also, Kyle Rittenhouse, you probably heard about him. The only reason he got off is because in his state, you don't have to attempt to flee. But they went after him and if it was a state where they required you attempt to flee, he would have most likely been convicted.

People have to follow the gun laws. No one suddenly gets a pass because they don't know the laws. Even something like shooting someone too many times in self-defense can become manslaughter. The lady that shot in the air, did it illegally. If you are going to argue that people break the law with guns, sure they do. But people break all laws. That doesn't mean the freedom to be lawful with a firearm should be taken away because we might break a law. That doesn't make much sense.

I don't think the point you bring up is bad, but it doesn't really resolve anything if anything it's a whole other branch of the discussion, because the people that end up getting guns skews towards jumpy people and people who are interested in them for specific reasons.

Oh, also, what do you mean by jumpy? Specific reasons? What do you mean?

Saying I'm buying a gun for self-defense is a cop out isn't it? What the fuck else do you buy a gun for besides perhaps hobbism/hunting?


I'm kinda glad this sort of shit exists. Do I think that excuses the wide-spread accessibility of guns at the drop of a hat? Not for me to say, but I can def argue against it.

If people were at scale decent I would agree. We are mere animals in my eyes I guess, and I don't see why I would let a tiger or a gorrlla, and certainly why I would want all my neighbors to be armed to the teeth when something goes wrong. I don't really hear that much senseless gun violence outside of the big massecars that happen, but to me it is still something that we as a soceity have dealt with poorly.

I understand. Humans are animals. I get it. But if you take away someone's right to defend themselves against other human animals, how is that right either?

 

[EndogenousRebel]

People have to follow the gun laws. No one suddenly gets a pass because they don't know the laws. Even something like shooting someone too many times in self-defense can become manslaughter. The lady that shot in the air, did it illegally. If you are going to argue that people break the law with guns, sure they do. But people break all laws. That doesn't mean the freedom to be lawful with a firearm should be taken away because we might break a law. That doesn't make much sense.

I don't think the point you bring up is bad, but it doesn't really resolve anything if anything it's a whole other branch of the discussion, because the people that end up getting guns skews towards jumpy people and people who are interested in them for specific reasons. Click to expand...
Oh, also, what do you mean by jumpy? Specific reasons? What do you mean? Click to expand...
Saying I'm buying a gun for self-defense is a cop out isn't it? What the fuck else do you buy a gun for besides perhaps hobbism/hunting?

[video]
I'm kinda glad this sort of shit exists. Do I think that excuses the wide-spread accessibility of guns at the drop of a hat? Not for me to say, but I can def argue against it.

If people were at scale decent I would agree. We are mere animals in my eyes I guess, and I don't see why I would let a tiger or a gorrlla, and certainly why I would want all my neighbors to be armed to the teeth when something goes wrong. I don't really hear that much senseless gun violence outside of the big massecars that happen, but to me it is still something that we as a soceity have dealt with poorly.

I understand. Humans are animals. I get it. But if you take away someone's right to defend themselves against other human animals, how is that right either?

Laws should be understood and accepted. Where is that line? Can be draw straight laws from one thing to another without someone "playing devil's advocate" on some technicallity. We both have to be vain if we want to make following arguments after this.

You can say we are to follow laws, but why not just fire into the air? Federalism is supposed to step in and decide this, and it is hardly all that different from Feudalism in the case where this lady can't fire warning shots into the air. Do I own my land or not? Am I just a holder of rights or do I actually have in(f)alible rights in the eyes of government?

I appreciate conversations like this, they evade lots of scientific research, but what we settle on will be some untested ideal that might end up worse than what we expect. Communism is a nice example.

 

[scorpiomover]

People have to follow the gun laws. No one suddenly gets a pass because they don't know the laws. Even something like shooting someone too many times in self-defense can become manslaughter. The lady that shot in the air, did it illegally. If you are going to argue that people break the law with guns, sure they do. But people break all laws. That doesn't mean the freedom to be lawful with a firearm should be taken away because we might break a law. That doesn't make much sense.

I don't think the point you bring up is bad, but it doesn't really resolve anything if anything it's a whole other branch of the discussion, because the people that end up getting guns skews towards jumpy people and people who are interested in them for specific reasons. Click to expand...
Oh, also, what do you mean by jumpy? Specific reasons? What do you mean? Click to expand...
Saying I'm buying a gun for self-defense is a cop out isn't it? What the fuck else do you buy a gun for besides perhaps hobbism/hunting?

[video]
I'm kinda glad this sort of shit exists. Do I think that excuses the wide-spread accessibility of guns at the drop of a hat? Not for me to say, but I can def argue against it.

If people were at scale decent I would agree. We are mere animals in my eyes I guess, and I don't see why I would let a tiger or a gorrlla, and certainly why I would want all my neighbors to be armed to the teeth when something goes wrong. I don't really hear that much senseless gun violence outside of the big massecars that happen, but to me it is still something that we as a soceity have dealt with poorly.

I understand. Humans are animals. I get it. But if you take away someone's right to defend themselves against other human animals, how is that right either?

Laws should be understood and accepted.

Laws should be questioned and debated. Otherwise, how will they change?

You can say we are to follow laws, but why not just fire into the air?

Why not indeed? Argue the case.

Federalism is supposed to step in and decide this,

Federalism has been the worst cop-out in nearly all of humanity. We all know the capitalist Trumpists of this world control the Federalist state.

Do I own my land or not?

Under Federalism? The Federal government gets to legislate all the rights to the land, and thus gets to dictate all the rights to the land, and thus owns all the rights to the land. You just get to pay money for a fiction that the government pretends to let you have, until it is more profitable for them to take it away from you, e.g. eminent domain for a strip mall, paid by bribes from wealthy donors to your party.

Am I just a holder of rights or do I actually have in(f)alible rights in the eyes of government?

In the eyes of the government, you have every right to everything inside your own mind. But your body, what you say, what you do, even what you think, is their property.

Communism is a nice example.

Communism just turned out to be another version of Western capitalist socialism. So no great difference there.

 

[Daddy]

People have to follow the gun laws. No one suddenly gets a pass because they don't know the laws. Even something like shooting someone too many times in self-defense can become manslaughter. The lady that shot in the air, did it illegally. If you are going to argue that people break the law with guns, sure they do. But people break all laws. That doesn't mean the freedom to be lawful with a firearm should be taken away because we might break a law. That doesn't make much sense.

I don't think the point you bring up is bad, but it doesn't really resolve anything if anything it's a whole other branch of the discussion, because the people that end up getting guns skews towards jumpy people and people who are interested in them for specific reasons. Click to expand...
Oh, also, what do you mean by jumpy? Specific reasons? What do you mean? Click to expand...
Saying I'm buying a gun for self-defense is a cop out isn't it? What the fuck else do you buy a gun for besides perhaps hobbism/hunting?

[video]
I'm kinda glad this sort of shit exists. Do I think that excuses the wide-spread accessibility of guns at the drop of a hat? Not for me to say, but I can def argue against it.

If people were at scale decent I would agree. We are mere animals in my eyes I guess, and I don't see why I would let a tiger or a gorrlla, and certainly why I would want all my neighbors to be armed to the teeth when something goes wrong. I don't really hear that much senseless gun violence outside of the big massecars that happen, but to me it is still something that we as a soceity have dealt with poorly.

I understand. Humans are animals. I get it. But if you take away someone's right to defend themselves against other human animals, how is that right either?

Laws should be understood and accepted. Where is that line? Can be draw straight laws from one thing to another without someone "playing devil's advocate" on some technicallity. We both have to be vain if we want to make following arguments after this.

You can say we are to follow laws, but why not just fire into the air? Federalism is supposed to step in and decide this, and it is hardly all that different from Feudalism in the case where this lady can't fire warning shots into the air. Do I own my land or not? Am I just a holder of rights or do I actually have in(f)alible rights in the eyes of government?

I appreciate conversations like this, they evade lots of scientific research, but what we settle on will be some untested ideal that might end up worse than what we expect. Communism is a nice example.

You're taking this down a weird sophist path. Most people don't fully understand the law, which is why we have lawyers, but that doesn't stop most people from knowing when they have done something wrong or negligent or when someone has done that to them. All the courts do is make sure that when things get out of control, they punish the right people for the right reasons and use them as an example to deter others. It generally works as it should (unless corrupted or is just plain immoral, which nothing is perfect). No sophistry is needed.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

@Daddy
Sophistry is where people want to go, but find in whatever they want it to be. I'm not advocating for specific judgements, I'm merely pointing out that you can create an ideal scenario if you want. Perhaps you can cut down the amount of nutty people to 1/3 of gun owners. (1/3rd of republicans said they will vote Republican no matter what).

You to me aren't compelling an argument that comes from God fearing people. Some people only understand fear, so I guess that is where you want to go, but those be murky waters.

In some way it is favorable to know that 1/3rd of people may be out of their banana stocking, but I don't see the world so simply. ME PERSONALLY, I would prefer that barriers to gun ownership be vast, transparent, and communal. What does that mean? Well- whatever I'm just shooting the shit myself.

People have to follow the gun laws. No one suddenly gets a pass because they don't know the laws. Even something like shooting someone too many times in self-defense can become manslaughter. The lady that shot in the air, did it illegally. If you are going to argue that people break the law with guns, sure they do. But people break all laws. That doesn't mean the freedom to be lawful with a firearm should be taken away because we might break a law. That doesn't make much sense.

I don't think the point you bring up is bad, but it doesn't really resolve anything if anything it's a whole other branch of the discussion, because the people that end up getting guns skews towards jumpy people and people who are interested in them for specific reasons. Click to expand...
Oh, also, what do you mean by jumpy? Specific reasons? What do you mean? Click to expand...
Saying I'm buying a gun for self-defense is a cop out isn't it? What the fuck else do you buy a gun for besides perhaps hobbism/hunting?

[video]
I'm kinda glad this sort of shit exists. Do I think that excuses the wide-spread accessibility of guns at the drop of a hat? Not for me to say, but I can def argue against it.

If people were at scale decent I would agree. We are mere animals in my eyes I guess, and I don't see why I would let a tiger or a gorrlla, and certainly why I would want all my neighbors to be armed to the teeth when something goes wrong. I don't really hear that much senseless gun violence outside of the big massecars that happen, but to me it is still something that we as a soceity have dealt with poorly.

I understand. Humans are animals. I get it. But if you take away someone's right to defend themselves against other human animals, how is that right either?

Laws should be understood and accepted.

Laws should be questioned and debated. Otherwise, how will they change?

You can say we are to follow laws, but why not just fire into the air?

Why not indeed? Argue the case.

She should have shot into the dirt next to the person. Potentially more deadly, but certainly less of a gamble for harm all things concidering. Shooting into the air, particularly at an angle, will fucking maim someone within 300~ miles or at least leave them very confused.

Federalism is supposed to step in and decide this,

Federalism has been the worst cop-out in nearly all of humanity. We all know the capitalist Trumpists of this world control the Federalist state.

Do I own my land or not?

Under Federalism? The Federal government gets to legislate all the rights to the land, and thus gets to dictate all the rights to the land, and thus owns all the rights to the land. You just get to pay money for a fiction that the government pretends to let you have, until it is more profitable for them to take it away from you, e.g. eminent domain for a strip mall, paid by bribes from wealthy donors to your party.

Am I just a holder of rights or do I actually have in(f)alible rights in the eyes of government?

In the eyes of the government, you have every right to everything inside your own mind. But your body, what you say, what you do, even what you think, is their property.

Communism is a nice example.

Communism just turned out to be another version of Western capitalist socialism. So no great difference there.

Right, the State is a certain state in the system we (I) am living in. People still have to respect the Queen, at least modestly so. She seemed like an upstanding senior of ask me.

Ideally we are like Russian nesting dolls, but then of course, the problem with this is the game of divide and conquer. The silly games we all play that things have any been any different is shameful, and if people united at every level we would all be better off. The nature of these connections is what is in question, for firearms.

Federalism I think suits firearm safety adequately, despite valid critisisms. It is bad actors in the middle that are tangling the conversation up.

If you need a weapon within 10 minutes, you need to call someone else to help you. The police? Yeah, this is where society needs to pick up the pieces.