Guns in America

Intended for constructive conversations. Exhibits of polarizing tribalism will be deleted.
ZAFCorrection
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Re: Guns in America

Post by ZAFCorrection »

If someone armed with a gun walks up to you with intent to kill and you are on day 10,000 of "no one tried to kill me lately," it doesn't matter if you have the auto-kill particle cannon 3000 holstered. There is a good chance you are going to die. Second, since school shootings are driving the debate, it is implicit (and occasionally explicit) in the argument that even a trivially small number of deaths to gun violence is too many, and arguing about what to do about it is accepting that assumption. So in order to have any chance of driving this number from basically zero to literally zero using the "arm the teachers" paradigm, schools are going to need significant retrofitting for physical controls as well as armed responders. That is going to incur significant costs as well as likely introduce unintended negative consequences (e.g. "my school is now a bunker").

It's probably better to stick with arguing that the problem is not really a problem worth doing anything about.

jacob
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Re: Guns in America

Post by jacob »

"Without loss of generality" (that is, not wasting time looking at irrelevant details), it seems that the US is playing some version of the prisoner's dilemma in which the system has locked-into defection as dominant strategy. It's generally expected that the other guy will defect(be armed and shoot) and therefore one better shoot first.

If the proverbial prisoner (here, any US person) can not figure out a way to somehow coordinate mutual cooperation(*), then the rational choice is the inferior stable strategy in which everybody is armed, shoots first, and pays a heavy price (but not as heavy as shooting last). So here we are. It's the rational outcome of the payoff matrix given by US laws, tradition, and culture.

(*) E.g. via laws, policing, morals, education, etc. all the usual ways a society coordinate cooperation.

Whereas the first world ex. US has mostly achieved collaboration as the dominant strategy by altering the odds and the pay-off matrix basically by making the cost of being armed much higher(**)---this being the only difference as the rest of the world has the same percentages of violent movies, computer games, mental health problems, students, domestic issues, etc. as the US---so mutual cooperation is the preferred strategy.

(**) So you can generally expect that the other person is not armed and therefore would collaborate. Aside from seeing the effect of this in the nearly non-existent mass-shootings elsewhere you also see it in the number of people killed by cops which are far lower than in the US.

Riggerjack
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Riggerjack »

@ Jacob

I agree. And most of my gun nut friends agree. Guns are fun, but I would happily turn them in if I was the last gun owner.

The problem is we have never come up with a feasible plan to disarm criminals. The only plan has been to disarm citizens, and hope that after enough time passes, criminals would run out of guns through attrition.

But the genie is out, you can print guns. I can machine a new receiver for an ak-47 from scrap sheet metal with a harbor frieght press, brake, and drill, all the rest of the parts are available online, untracked in any way. I can cast a gun. I can cut off the end of a hydraulic cylinder, drill out a fuse hole, and I have a black powder cannon in under 15 minutes. The only part of a gun that takes any kind of special tooling is the barrel. Barrel rifling goes back centuries, so good luck suppressing that.

So, attrition won't cut it. Guns are fully developed, and part of the culture. There is too much general knowledge out there to suppress. Confiscation of all the guns, would just make all this firearm machining knowledge more valuable.

jacob
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Re: Guns in America

Post by jacob »

@Riggerjack - This manufacturing knowledge and tooling is also available in the rest of the world. Enough people are perfectly capable of manufacturing machine guns in bicycle shops for the local resistance if the country gets invaded. Otherwise, it's not something people do in the mass numbers you seem to imply. Because it's highly illegal. Same reason why Americans don't habitually convert their legal semi-autos to full-autos although that knowledge is also there. Making things illegal will not suppress the knowledge, but it will put a damper on the use of that knowledge.

As for criminals, it stands to reason that they will bother less to source an illegal gun (at 8-10x the store-price) if odds are low that their adversaries are unarmed---which is generally the case outside the US. A robbery in Europe or Japan is far less likely to have a lethal outcome for the person being robbed than it does in the US. Seeing how criminals ex-US are less likely to carry, police in other countries are also far less twitchy when engaging criminals which then explains why police kill far more criminals in the US than ex-US.

Now, I don't think laws can change culture. But culture can definitely change laws albeit usually with some kind of lag effect.

Campitor
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Campitor »

Riggerjack wrote:
Fri Feb 23, 2018 4:11 pm
@ Jacob
But the genie is out, you can print guns. I can machine a new receiver for an ak-47 from scrap sheet metal with a harbor frieght press, brake, and drill, all the rest of the parts are available online, untracked in any way. I can cast a gun. I can cut off the end of a hydraulic cylinder, drill out a fuse hole, and I have a black powder cannon in under 15 minutes. The only part of a gun that takes any kind of special tooling is the barrel. Barrel rifling goes back centuries, so good luck suppressing that.

So, attrition won't cut it. Guns are fully developed, and part of the culture. There is too much general knowledge out there to suppress. Confiscation of all the guns, would just make all this firearm machining knowledge more valuable.
@ Rigger

I completely agree.
If guns can be made in a 3rd world hovel as show in the videos above, I have little reason to believe that a knowledgeable US machinist with access to modern machinery couldn't do the same. Or they can go the DIY route and make their own machine lathes per the instructions provided in the bottom 2 links and start popping out black market guns. I'm sure gun making recipes will be bought and sold on the black market quite readily if a ban is implemented. And gun-bans are a moot point until that 2nd amendment is done away with via ratification by 38 of the 50 states.

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Re: Guns in America

Post by jacob »

I suppose what you guys are saying that insofar there was a constitutional amendment analogous to the 18th amendment (prohibition of alcohol) that prohibited some or all guns, then this would not materially reduce gun ownership because most people would break the law and shortly start making their own guns or at least easily be able to source one from a "friend" because the knowledge/materials is out there.

Campitor
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Campitor »

jacob wrote:
Fri Feb 23, 2018 5:18 pm
I suppose what you guys are saying that insofar there was a constitutional amendment analogous to the 18th amendment (prohibition of alcohol) that prohibited some or all guns, then this would not materially reduce gun ownership because most people would break the law and shortly start making their own guns or at least easily be able to source one from a "friend" because the knowledge/materials is out there.
That is exactly what I'm saying. Gun bans face too many hurdles for it to be a practical or inexpensive in terms of enforcement.

The biggest hurdles to gun bans in my opinion:
  1. A 2nd amendment ban will never pass because historically and presently, most people believe in some form of gun ownership. Ratification of 3/4 states (38 out of 50) is highly unlikely.
  2. Ex military and police, thanks to their training, are taught that weapons are important and indispensable. Many have seen the worst of humanity and would be hyper reluctant to turn in their guns.
  3. Too many people know how to make guns. They will readily share this knowledge if a gun ban is put in place.
  4. The equipment to make bootleg guns is the same equipment needed to machine car parts, industrial parts, etc., so banning gun making equipment is IMPOSSIBLE without destroying a large sector of our economy.
  5. It's easy to build your own gun lathe with very accessible items that have multiple uses. You can even smelt your own gun metal with a DIY furnace.
  6. Cartels and smugglers will start selling guns to fill the void of the crippled 31.8 billion dollar US gun industry.
  7. The military and agents of the state will still have guns. Some of those guns will find their way into civilian hands: ‘Easy money’ made selling Army weapons stolen by US soldiers.
  8. Criminals don't care about laws and will ignore any gun bans. They will start hustling guns like they currently hustle drugs. illegal guns will be as plentiful as illegal drugs imho.
The biggest hurdles to stopping mass killings:
  1. Bad guys with brains and determination.
  2. Media sensationalizing and immortalizing mass murderers.

BRUTE
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Re: Guns in America

Post by BRUTE »

jacob wrote:
Fri Feb 23, 2018 4:49 pm
machine guns in bicycle shops
this casual misnomer about firearms annoys brute. the Sten is not a machine gun. words have meanings. this is the same attitude as casually calling things "semi-automatic" or "assault rifle". brute isn't sure if it's actual ignorance or virtue signaling to other gun-haters that the speaker knows nothing about firearms (like saying "sportsball").

Riggerjack
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Riggerjack »

@ Jacob

Oh, I'm sure an Australian style confiscation would get a significant percentage of guns. 66-75%, I think. But probably 98%of gun owners would turn in their guns, or go through whatever is needed to comply.. As I said, the community tends to the extreme law abiding end of the spectrum. But that 98% wasn't the problem.

All you have done now is make the fringe even more distant and unconnected to the community, and give a monopoly on firearms to the cops and robbers. It's not like the same guys who have records and still have guns (despite the additional charges he will rack up for possession) are concerned about whether they will need it against joe public, he's concerned by his competition. He's concerned about maintaining his Independence from organized crime. He's concerned about getting a 3 second head start on the cops. That his prey is also unarmed is simply a bonus. But organized crime will always have guns. It's part of the business model. They will have what they already do, they will stock up during a confiscation, and they will set up shops for manufacturing when it's needed. Because organized crime is all about the implied threat. It's how they keep their people in line, it's how they interact with competition. Legality and whether the common citizen is armed are influencing factors, not determining factors.

And I mentioned organized crime, right? All these gun free Utopias on the continent still have organized crime. I don't know the numbers, because the source is an advocate of gun nuttery, but supposedly, the UK has a much higher rate of "hot burglaries" where the burglar is acting, knowing someone is at home. It's not like going to the European systems comes all benefits, no costs. They have entirely separate histories and cultures. None of them ever had to disarm a significant fraction of their population, with the Australian exception. I am watching to see how that goes. Give it a few decades to see how it works out in the long term.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

I received active shooter training and the officer said that the model until very recently in an active shooter situation was to set up a perimeter outside the building and wait for the swat team or negotiators to take over. It was built on a time when the gunman was taking hostages and making demands, not killing as many as possible. He said that their new policy is the first officer goes in even if they are alone. Maybe the police in this situation were still using the old model.

In these gun arguments it seems like a strawman is always set up, though probably not intentionally. Policy changes that realistically could happen are things like longer waiting periods to buy, limits on magazine size, better background checks and limits on who can own, etc. Instead the people who like guns bring up confiscation of all guns and how people will hoard guns and manufacture them. Sure, a ban is a possibility but it is so unlikely that I mostly see bringing it up as a tactic to avoid discussing policies that actually might be implemented.

Before I get labeled as a "gun grabber" (not helpful terminology for having a discussion), note that I have plenty of experience with and mostly like guns, though I don't feel I need any in my life right now.

IlliniDave
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Re: Guns in America

Post by IlliniDave »

Many such policies are and/or have been in place. It's not hard to extrapolate from arguments to expand them further where it is headed, although extrapolation is not necessary given the fairly vocal faction who just blurt it out that they want guns prohibited. And strawmen, deception, and hyperbole are shamelessly employed by both sides. Humans are primarily emotional creatures and when emotional chords are struck logic is drowned out by louder impassioned voices that throw it out the window.

Kriegsspiel
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Kriegsspiel »

ffj wrote:
Fri Feb 23, 2018 10:23 pm
@Kreigsspeil

So now the story is that four deputies stayed put and didn't enter when it mattered, apparently if true they waited until the municipal police showed up and by then it was too late.

I'm not a police officer but I've worked with and been around a lot of them. I find it very hard to believe that four of them hid behind their cars while kids were being shot. They must have been following their departments policy or they didn't have one regarding school shootings which led to confusion. The alternative is that they were scared and stayed put, which I find very hard to entertain, but I don't know. I do know that cops follow orders though.
Here's what Israel said:
Sheriff Scott Israel said that, to his knowledge, deputies followed protocol and did not wait for specialized teams to arrive before going into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. But he said that details over the office’s response remained unclear.

“That’s exactly what we’re examining,” Sheriff Israel said, noting that active shooter protocols require confronting suspects as quickly as possible. “You don’t wait for SWAT, you get in, and you push toward the shooter.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/us/p ... oting.html
Hiding, or taking up defensive positions during an active shooter scenario, seems more like the actions of rent-a-cop security guards than police officers. I'm thankful that I wouldn't have to rely on that kind of farce if there was an active shooter in my apartment building.
I don't trust this Sheriff Israel dude. All of his actions are leading me to believe he is projecting here. He's hiding something in my opinion.

Just another series of failures in this massacre.
"If you have a lone wolf assassin that’s committed to commit great carnage and killing people, there’s really nothing you can do about it."
- Sheriff Israel, Oct 2017

Some would call this excellent pre-emptive sandbagging. Personally, I think he's right. With our current levels of technology and societal complexity, there are just too many ways to rain some chaos.

Riggerjack
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Riggerjack »

In these gun arguments it seems like a strawman is always set up, though probably not intentionally. Policy changes that realistically could happen are things like longer waiting periods to buy, limits on magazine size, better background checks and limits on who can own, etc. Instead the people who like guns bring up confiscation of all guns and how people will hoard guns and manufacture them. Sure, a ban is a possibility but it is so unlikely that I mostly see bringing it up as a tactic to avoid discussing policies that actually might be implemented.
Well, if you read back through what I have written, just in this thread, you will see I have addressed this issue from both ends, minimal change, maximal change. Neither is a strawman. Both ways have been tried. Results are in. Effectiveness guaged. Success measured.

And that is why I talk about it. It's not like we don't know exactly what will happen when changes to the rules are made. They don't stop or slow down gun crime. Limit the hi cap magazines, someone will buy up a half million extras, and ensure decades or more supply at massive profits, as gun grabbers guarantee his monopoly. Add more wait time, etc, ok. All you are doing is inconveniencing those 98% of gun owners who aren't a problem.

Because gun grabbers have an agenda. It involves getting as many guns out of civilian hands as they can. This is their unquestionable good deed. They aren't interested in disarming criminals, except as a minor secondary effect. There is no plan to disarm criminals. They don't want to cut gun crime, they just think they will feel safer, if I (and people like me) don't have a gun.
Before I get labeled as a "gun grabber" (not helpful terminology for having a discussion), note that I have plenty of experience with and mostly like guns, though I don't feel I need any in my life right now.
I use the terms gun grabbers and gun nuts, not because they are flattering, but because they are not. I'm very specifically not using the terms each group would prefer, to make clear that I am not acting as a shill for either group. I reserve gun grabbers for the people who are interested in more gun control, and too ignorant or self centered to care about the actual effects of the changes made in their names. And gun nuts for people, like me, who are familiar enough with the issues to have looked into all of this, and desensitized to the horrors of gun violence to still support gun rights.

And that's what it is, desensitized. If I could get rid of all my guns, and end violence forever, I would have to do that. No question, no qualms. The secondary effects of guns are absolutely not justified at the price of the primary cost of the violence. However, that primary cost is not optional. There has always been, and always will be violence. Giving up my tools to deal with it doesn't stop it. There has never been a plan or an attempt at removing the gun threat from criminals, and every gun control measure proposed would have a net zero effect on the crimes people talk about gun control to address.

So, if you want me to call you a gun grabber, feel free to propose exactly the same, ineffectual solutions they do. If, like most Americans, you fit in the undecided 60-80% with I'm happy to discuss any options. Why they work, or don't. If on the other hand, you are just offended by my terminology, please, go back and re-read what I posted.

I'm sure I said something more worthy of offence than gun grabbers or gun nuts. :roll:

Jason

Re: Guns in America

Post by Jason »

Watching videos of galvanized teenagers eviscerating politicians over NRA affiliations has led me to realize how the NRA's intransigence on this matter has led their opponents into trenching out a basic straw man argument that could potentially be to their own detriment. It's like blaming liquor companies for drunk driving fatalities, and subsequently identifying the type of liquor i.e. beer, wine, vodka that is responsible for the most deaths and saying "At least stop selling that type of liquor." If I was the NRA (which I am not) I would make some type of concession and then just sit back and wait for the next mass shooting in order to say "Told you so."

This "musket" argument is reductionist as it equates technology with principle. It's an ad absurdum argument. However, the school shooting survivors, using this narrative, are now becoming the corollary to breast cancer survivors within the entire cancer survivor community. Eight million people die of cancer each year but only 40K from breast cancer but this specific segment fought and lobbied and got their pink ribbons due to associative factors. The school shooting contingent's influence will rise in a disproportionate measure to their place in the overall argument/problem using this simplistic narrative. If any concessions are made directly on their account, my guess is (pardon the pun) it will backfire as their single bullet theory (pardon the pun again) will not change a damn thing.

Riggerjack
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Riggerjack »

If I was the NRA (which I am not) I would make some type of concession and then just sit back and wait for the next mass shooting in order to say "Told you so."
A sound strategy. Unfortunately, it has been tried. Up until '94, the NRA was like any other lobbying group. You pays your money, and you take your chances. And there were concessions made. DC basically banned all civilian arms. Illinois required permits for all firearms, then stopped issuing permits. Etc.

But then, in '94 we passed the Brady bills and the assault weapons ban. Congressmen who took our money, decided gun control was better for their careers than gun rights, and strategies and tactics changed. Instead of giving money to each congressman with a hand out, the money was used anywhere the race was close, and someone took the money, and screwed us. This is that scary NRA that won't compromise. We limit the careers of congressmen who take our money and lie to our faces. We don't hand out money for wanting a seat, we give money where it will make a difference. And to be clear, some of those seats are and have been blue forever. You have to be right about guns, not be on the right team.

So we did what you say. And we are standing back "saying I told you so", and have been. But the problem is that it is hard to teach history in this country, that doesn't value history as much as others. It's harder to point out over and over the effects of gun control, than it is to scream about the need for it in the aftermath of a catastrophe. And the people sensitized to the issue by that catastrophe are not much interested in the history or long term changes. They just want to do something to stop this from happening.

Both sides want to stop it from happening. But one side is willing to look at how it works, and conclude that none of the proposed solutions will work, see all of history, and the other just wants to do SOMETHING.

I'm not a fan of the "just do something" thought process. Especially not when all the proposed "somethings" have been tried and failed to produce the promised results.

Which leaves us where we are. Inflexible. Uncompromising. Stuck. But this isn't us being especially hard headed. There would be some resistance to any new, good, gun control idea that could possibly work from gun owners. But we can be reasoned with.

This hasn't been an issue just because there are no new, workable solutions being offered. every idea being pushed has been tried before. And we know where that road goes. And the destination doesn't match the road signs.

Riggerjack
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Riggerjack »

This hasn't been an issue just because there are no new, workable solutions being offered. every idea being pushed has been tried before. And we know where that road goes. And the destination doesn't match the road signs.

Let me back up a bit from that statement.

There are no new, workable solutions being proposed as gun control.

But our issues are broader than that. We abandoned mental health in the 80-90's. Closed down the asylums, as the disasters they were. But we didn't replace them with something better. If you want to remove guns from those with mental problems, addressing it from the mental health side is easy. Everyone wants to help keep guns and crazy separate. The only resistance the gun lobby would show is making sure the new law isn't step one of a 2 stage process, where step 2 is to label gun owners as crazy, then take their guns. This may sound paranoid, but it matches the history of gun grabbers.

But the problem with that is we aren't very good at mental health. It's an incredibly nuanced, complicated subject. There are already lots of gray areas of rights suspension and interpretation of capability. Nothing that screams "do something, anything!" the way mass shootings do. Add in a party affiliation between gun grabbers and mental health advocates, and I'm not expecting any new progress from here any time, soon.

I imagine there are other avenues to approach this. School reform, so maybe we don't have marginalized angry young men looking for a catastrophe, or fewer, anyway. Maybe others I haven't thought of.

But all the resistance against the "just do SOMETHING" proposals comes from trying it before, and not liking the results.

Jason

Re: Guns in America

Post by Jason »

The kid voted most likely to shoot up the school did just that and it appears a new gemeration is going to bark until they get a bone thrown at them. If their parents won’t or are too ignorant to teach them, I guess they will have to learn the hard way. Those who fail to learn...

BRUTE
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Re: Guns in America

Post by BRUTE »

Riggerjack wrote:
Sat Feb 24, 2018 3:40 pm
Both sides want to stop it from happening. But one side is willing to look at how it works, and conclude that none of the proposed solutions will work, see all of history, and the other just wants to do SOMETHING.
brute believes Trump is actually quite good at abusing the "just do SOMETHING, ANYTHING" crowd. since they are reacting to whatever is on the news cycle, but don't care about efficacy, the proper response is to do pretty much anything at the right time, something that sounds kinda right but will have no actual effect (positive or negative). "something" will have happened, and the reactionary crowd will have forgotten 3 weeks later.

for example, the bump stock ban is such a thing. nobody cares about bump stocks, or even full-auto in general, really. full auto is not a useful tool to any marksman, its only legitimate function is to lay down suppressing fire in combat. it's expensive and inaccurate. hobbyist marksmen and hunters and home defenders don't lay down suppressive fire because they typically don't have to contend with snipers and don't have a squad ready to move while they shoot. thus Trump can let himself be negotiated down from "lift age to 21, ban bump stocks" to "ban bump stocks" by the NRA types, ban something that nobody uses or cares about. then he can claim that he did "SOMETHING, ANYTHING" (which is true) without having to care that it will have zero effect in solving the actual problem or piss off too many gun owners.

jacob
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Re: Guns in America

Post by jacob »

@brute - Oi! A direct attack on my dictionary. This shall not stand! :twisted:

I do know the difference between a machine gun and a submachine gun or whatever. However, I don't think it helps the conversation to get bogged down in technical definitions when solving problems(*) because, as you note, it's a very effective way to appear to be doing something while in reality it's doing nothing. However, arguing technicalities violates the principle of charity, so lets leave the technical definitions and diversions to the lawyers and the gun-nerds or nuts. When laymen and lawyers say machine gun they mean anything that's capable of putting out lots of rounds at high rates somewhat far down the range. Whether that's a machine gun, a submachine gun, a bump-stock, or a hundred bolt actions wired together in some Rube Goldberg contraption is a matter for the lawyers.

Accepting this, we also don't have to waste time arguing whether the legal definition of a machine gun (=more than 1 round fired for each trigger pull) also covers bump stocks which technically is one pull=one shot, but in practice is one push=rapid shots. See link below for mechanical details.

(*) If indeed it is a problem. Personally, I don't think it's a problem: See my first post in this thread for why I think so.

Same goes for military/tactical issues. Indeed, squad tactics have changed to a point where the idea is to lay down large amounts of suppressing fire in the general direction of some enemy while the marksmen "figure something out". The weapons are spec'ed for that ... or maybe it's the other way around; that since those are the weapons, these are the tactics that naturally derive. Anyway, the idea of suppressing enemy snipers hiding somewhere in the bushes also works for "suppressing" a field of people standing close together in plain view at a rock-concert a few hundred meters away.

Same point with "assault weapons". The general "end" of an assault weapon (whatever the definition) is a weapon that can consistently hit and keep hitting targets beyond 40 yards because the capacity is high enough. Those are the qualities you'd want if you want to storm a trench our outgun someone with a handgun or a shotgun (important point for home defense(+), police, or SWAT teams). If the weapon can't do that, you'd be stupid to bring it. However, assault capability "means" are not necessary for deer or duck hunting though. OTOH, I think everybody now realizes that quantity beats quality when it comes to people-who-shoot-back killing. There's a reason why law enforcement and military switched from reliable revolvers to pistols.

(+) Not in the city though. Here you'd want rounds that don't affect the nearest 10 blocks down the street. Using a rifle around here (the nearest house is <10ft away on both sides) would fit the Cipolla definition of stupid.

What the gun-grabbers, to borrow RJ's term, are saying is that those ends (putting many lethal rounds into many different people in a short amount of time) should be harder to achieve regardless of what the technical means and definitions of doing so are. This is likely because they rely on police/SWAT to provide those services being close by in urban areas. In rural counties where such services are 20+ minutes away, you might like to provide those services yourself ... just like you might like to provide other services on your own like snow plowing, fire fighting, bear fighting, CPR, or catastrophic bleeding services. This also makes sense.

Therefore, I agree with Trump and so think that this is something that should be solved at the state or more accurately at the county level (to dispense with the rural/urban division which naturally makes sense because distance/density). This way, people can weigh their love of shooting against the risk of the rare mass shooting or just move out if they don't agree with the local politics. A few years ago I actually looked into getting some arms and even had everything picked out (Mossberg500 and Ruger Redhawk---I can give you model numbers too) but ultimately decided that the ROI (risk-adjusted and all) in my (suburban) neighborhood wasn't worth it at all, so I didn't bother acquiring. Around here, the ROI of fleeing and calling the cops at the first sign of trouble >>> standing my ground and dealing with the outcome whether it's the mortuary, the hospital, and/or the courtroom.

PS: For those who don't know how or can't infer how a bump stock works, here's a good vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2IOZ-5Nk5k
PPS: The reason why almost all people buy bump stocks is to experience the "yay/wow/fuckin'a"-moment shown at 4:15.

BRUTE
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Re: Guns in America

Post by BRUTE »

jacob wrote:
Sat Feb 24, 2018 6:43 pm
When laymen and lawyers say machine gun they mean anything that's capable of putting out lots of rounds at high rates somewhat far down the range. Whether that's a machine gun, a submachine gun, a bump-stock, or a hundred bolt actions wired together in some Rube Goldberg contraption is a matter for the lawyers.

Accepting this...
brute does not accept. while in a well-intentioned discussion he could give the benefit of the etymological doubt, the anti-gun team has clearly weaponized (haha) misdefinitions to evoke greater emotional responses.

saying "machine gun" instead of "submachine gun", saying "assault rifle" or "semi-automatic rifle" instead of "it's just a fucking rifle, they're all semi-automatic" repeatedly, especially if the true difference is known to the speaker, can only be considered a deliberate attempt at misdirection or scaring humans who don't know better.

brute could argue about the technical points Dear Leader jacob is wrong about with regards to the assaultness of assault rifles, revolvers, and pistols, but he won't, because that's not the point.

the point is that the point in this discussion where one side can assume good intentions upon incorrect usage of a definition is long past. saying "machine gun" or "assault rifle" is like saying "pro-life" - it's not an innocent word, it's politically motivated, and therefore has to be pointed out.

edit:

brute just realized that, of course, not all rifles are semi-automatic. there are plenty of bolt-action rifles out there, and some lever-action rifles. but, pretty much all pistols and revolvers these days are semi-automatic. so it's really not such a useful term to distinguish what should be banned, it just sounds scary.

Locked