Guns in America

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Sclass
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Sclass »

BRUTE wrote:
Sat Feb 24, 2018 7:38 pm
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.
WTH? You had me at submachine gun. :lol:

Jason

Re: Guns in America

Post by Jason »

Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, teach gym. Those who can't teach gym, get guns.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

it's just a fucking rifle, they're all semi-automatic
Clearly you have not been deer hunting with old guys. There's a lot of bolt action still out there in use.

BRUTE is now disqualified from talking about firearms. ;)

Riggerjack
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Riggerjack »

I have to agree with BRUTE, about the political points, and Jacob about how little terms matter. So to me, whether it is an innocent mistake, or is one more way to manipulate the public, has everything to do with the knowledge level of the speaker. If you don't know anything about guns, I don't care what words you use, I don't have an expectation that you should understand the terms you use.

But if one is actively endorsing a policy, and consistently use the wrong terms, in consistent ways, that's not a mistake.

Riggerjack
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Riggerjack »

It occurs to me that I have spouted off about the statistics, but provided no links to backup what I am saying.

Honestly, while I call myself a gun nut, other than moving them around, I haven't touched a gun in a few years. I haven't looked into any of this since before Sandy Hook. And since I'm posting from my phone, I didn't have any of my links saved. Just as well, half are dead now... but in looking, I found this just facts site.

https://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

And they are a gun rights site, but they do a very good job of citing sources, and putting in notes. I dug through it last night, and the only flaw I spotted was they talked about some surveys done in the 90's that weren't as unambiguous as they are presented. Also, it seems I was wrong about the CDC and federal research. There has been lots that I didn't look into recently. The site refers to some of it. I'll dig around and see what the CDC had to say, and compare that to what just facts reports for a feeling of how much spin is there.

This is a great site for general overview of gun rights/control stats:
* Under federal law:
It is illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison for the following people to receive, possess, or transport any firearm or ammunition:
someone convicted of or under indictment for a felony punishable by more than one year in prison, someone convicted of a misdemeanor punishable by more than two years in prison, a fugitive from justice, an unlawful user of any controlled substance, someone who has been ruled as mentally defective or has been committed to any mental institution, an illegal alien, someone dishonorably discharged from the military, someone who has renounced his or her U.S. citizenship, someone subject to certain restraining orders, or someone convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor.[77] [78] [79] [80]
It is illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison to sell or transfer any firearm or ammunition to someone while “knowing” or having “reasonable cause to believe” this person falls into any of the prohibited categories listed above.[81] [82]
It is illegal to “engage in the business of importing, manufacturing, or dealing in firearms” without a federal license to do so.[83] [84] [85]
It is illegal for any federally licensed firearms business to sell or transfer any firearm without first conducting a background check to see if the buyer/recipient falls into any of the prohibited categories listed above.[86] [87]
It is illegal for anyone except a federally licensed firearms business to sell, buy, trade, or transfer a firearm across state lines.[88]
* Under federal law, private individuals are not required to a conduct a background check before selling or transferring a firearm to someone who lives in the same state, but it is illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison for a private individual to sell or transfer a firearm while “knowing” or having “reasonable cause to believe” that the recipient falls into one of the prohibited categories above.[89] [90]
* Some states such as California require background checks for all firearms transactions, including those conducted between private individuals.[91] [92] [93]
Note that is the law today. No new regulations are needed on firearms restrictions. Every state has other laws not listed there. Many localities have even more restrictions.

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Guns in America

Post by ThisDinosaur »

@ffj
You called it, man. That guy is a tool.

@Riggerjack
It's illegal to "knowingly" sell to prohibited individuals, but I wonder if there is a way to make it the responsibility of the seller to know.

Campitor
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Campitor »

ThisDinosaur wrote:
Sun Feb 25, 2018 12:25 pm
@Riggerjack
It's illegal to "knowingly" sell to prohibited individuals, but I wonder if there is a way to make it the responsibility of the seller to know.
Yes - make them run background checks like everyone else.

Riggerjack
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Riggerjack »

@Riggerjack
It's illegal to "knowingly" sell to prohibited individuals, but I wonder if there is a way to make it the responsibility of the seller to know.
As campitor said, requiring background checks at the state level can work, if you are concerned about that. If you read my link, it shows:

* A 2004 study of state prisoners who possessed guns during crimes for which they were jailed found that the guns were obtained from the following sources:

40.0% through an illegal/street source
37.4% through family or friends
7.3% at a retail store
2.6% at a pawnshop
0.8% at a gun show
0.6% at a flea market.[122]
* A study of crimes committed with firearms in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2008 showed that 18% of the perpetrators lawfully owned the gun, and 79% were not legal gun owners.[123]
So 77.4% bypassed background checks by finding someone willing to risk a 10 year sentence, 9.9% went through the background check, and 1.4% went through gun shows and flee markets. The last 1.4%, some went through checks, some didn't.

As much noise as we hear about the gun show loophole, you would assume all guns used by criminals come through there, not 0.8%. In Washington state, the organization that runs our main guns shows, Washington Arms Collectors, has required a background check for membership, and at renewal each year. Selling a firearm to a non-member is punished by a lifetime ban from the club, no appeal.

See, these guys are gun nuts, and nobody is more serious about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. I have been to gun shows in a few states, and while many will allow you in with no background check, none would allow purchase without one. Yeah, the state may not require it, but once background checks became easy and fast, (Brady bill 94, thanks grabbers) gun show promoters were quick to provide them. All pawnshops that buy or sell firearms will have an FFL, and do background checks.

Of course, now we (Washington state) have a required background check for private purchases. Which is a bit of a pain in the butt. The only guys I'm interested in buying guns from are guys I know, and have known for decades. But if I want to buy a gun from a friend, I have to meet him at an FFL with the gun. Conduct the paperwork, pay the fee, ($15 last time plus 10% sales tax) come back 3 days later and pick up the gun. If I pass the background check. I have so far. :roll:

I get it, you think tougher rules will slow down these scary shootings. I assume you just don't know how many rules are already out there, and that is why you are suggesting solutions that have already been implimented.

The guys shooting up schools are young, angry, outsiders. They haven't been through our justice system, or they would have real grievances. How do you filter for these guys? Most have no record, and no mental health history that would throw up flags.

The guy in FL was voted most likely to shoot up a school. Think about that. We know how to spot these guys. It was done in advance, by kids. And there were 39 referrals to law enforcement about this guy. Maybe, if we really cared about this issue, we would follow up on that.

But I expect we will ignore that, and focus on the super scary stuff like gun show loopholes and black guns.

Toska2
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Toska2 »

Im going to group "mass shootings" as mental illness.

How are we dealing with other forms?
Opiod addictions have treatment centers.
Alcoholics have group therapy.
Hug not Drugs campaigns.
Gambling & suicide hot lines.

In those cases we deal with the individual. The policies being thrown around are about the item. The debate, imo, more about ideology than facts, as others stated.

I wonder why the classmates didn't include the shooter?

A side thought. Wouldnt smaller schools foster a closer knit bonds between classmates? Not in a "friends" way but "I know your name and you're in two of my classes".

Riggerjack
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Riggerjack »

Good point. And I would like to point out just how effective out-lawing drugs has been, as a drug prevention measure.

As to smaller schools, that was my first thought. In the smaller schools that I attended, there was far less social stratification. But the cruelty was just as present. I remember one kid got cornered, stripped, stuffed folded into a trash can, and walked out to the fifty yardline during half-time, where he was left, struggling to knock over the trashcan, crawl out, and walk off the field, carrying the can. He was a decent guy, but he had been the dedicated subject of bullying, from the same bullies, since elementary school. He's one of the people who graduated and never looked back, so I don't know what happened to him.

I think of him when I think of school shootings. He never did anything to give the impression that he would, but just all the crap he went through, that never stopped, that came from the same people, year after year. I had it rough as a kid, but I at least knew every shitty situation was temporary. No matter how bad, it would be different in a few months or a year. Now that the school shooting template is out there, I don't know how to stop kids dealing with this kind of regular abuse at school from choosing it.

It would be nice to think antibullying measures would fix this, but the evidence points the other way.

Since I can't see a way to separate the bullied kids from the guns, I think our best hope lies in stopping the abuse in school. But that would require throwing out the industrial schooling model, and starting fresh.

Which is just so much more work, than just calling for a gun bans, and going back to watching TV.

BRUTE
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Re: Guns in America

Post by BRUTE »

schools are prisons. no wonder the inmates are shanking each other.

disparatum
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Re: Guns in America

Post by disparatum »

A new literature review on gun control research: https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy.html

Strength of Evidence for Relationships Between Gun Policies and Outcomes: https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis.html

There are things you can quibble with, but overall probably one of the more objective looks. I have not read it all. The overall conclusion seems unsatisfying but not too surprising: It's hard to identify the effect of various gun-control laws due to limited data and poor methods. The effect everyone pays the most attention to, mass shootings, is particularly inconclusive.

Riggerjack
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Riggerjack »

Over in the firearms recommendation thread, I posted:
We talk about F you money here, a lot. But why? It's not going to be enough to retire on, and it won't stop your retirement savings from tanking with the markets, it makes you more vulnerable to fraud and theft and liability to have ready cash, so surely f you money is a net loss, right? No. Having f you money changes one's relationship with your work. Having that bit of savings, means not automatically accepting whatever your boss offers. Not coming in for an extra shift when they just expect you to. Not taking the pay cut, or whatever your issue is with work. It gives you the freedom to reject the expectation of compliance, and going your own way. It empowers you to choose to accept those conditions, as well. But the choice is yours. Even if you don't exercise the option, it's better to have it. Having that option changes your relationship with your employer, and coworkers.

And when someone looks at the world, for what it is, and decides that some parts are to be avoided, and makes the plans, decisions, and preparations necessary to exclude those factors, this is equally empowering.

You can do this with martial arts, building a safe room, training with a gun, or what have you. Look at the advice in this thread. Plenty about gun choice, but just as much about influencing factors and why one should make this or that choice. Nobody is recommending going out and getting a gun so you can blast away at a bump in the night. No, the advice is to match the gun to the need and the environment. To be safe, to get it right.

I don't come from safe, middle class neighborhoods. I have seen plenty of violence, but little gun violence. For me, growing up, I just knew I wanted a different life, and in my twenties, I got it. I was out, and living in those safe neighborhoods, and that was good enough for a while. Right up until I heard someone coming in through the sliding glass door, as I described in the guns thread. It was a false alarm, but it was definitely an alarm. It got me thinking about the people I knew growing up, and what they did to people like me, now. This is what got me going on security.

And I found that having a gun, having looked at security, having made the decision to exclude parts of the world from my life, changed my relationship with the world. A similar change to the "f you money" effect I described above. Bad things still happen, but there are now limits. I feel backstopped. I don't control everything, but I can stop some things, close to me.

I have my little space, where I exercise both authority and responsibility. A place where I decide what doesn't belong. A place where I can determine what matters, and what doesn't. And just as importantly, having that space, let's me let others do as they wish outside of that space. And that is what I am endorsing, when I talk about guns.
But I thought it belonged here.

And I thought I have talked a lot about gun control, and the effects of the same, but I haven't talked about emotions much. The above is how I deal with the bad things in the world.

I can't make violence go away. I can't force people to be good or nice. All I can do is stake out my little corner, and declare, if only to myself, "that won't happen here." But it's not enough to whisper it in the dark under the blankets, like a child. For me, it's the start of looking at possibilities, probabilities, and capabilities, and coming up with contingency plans.

Because I'm a slow thinker. When presented with a situation I haven't expected and explored mentally, I have too many potentials, and I haven't worked out the best course. This causes me to slow down, look more, think more. Exactly the wrong response to a hazardous, quickly developing, situation. So part of staking out my corner is pre-planning for bad things. How to respond, where to go, what to do. Getting the right things in the right places to deal with the problem.

Now I know that crime on my island paradise is about as common as it is in gated private communities with staff security on the mainland. There just isn't much, and not much to do to prevent what little there is. The local rag can milk a murder for years. I've done all the passive crime prevention I can.

But it's not enough. I need a plan for me and mine, because when things change, is the wrong time to plan for changes. Firearms, for me, is part of that. They are part of the plan because they are the most effective deterrent to someone else using them. Not a great defense, but then the threat isn't ever present, either.

This is how I deal with a suboptimal world. What's the other option? Hope? Banding together and pretending the world is better than it is? Honestly, I just don't understand the thought process of looking at a world that includes violence, and deciding not to do anything about it. Maybe people who are less familiar with violence are just better about not thinking about it. I don't know.

So, for those who do something else, what do you do? How do you think? What is your plan?

Mikeallison
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Mikeallison »

London Mayor now calling for knife control...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatod ... /500328002

Maybe I should invest in whoever makes safety scissors eh? It seems like we will all be headed back to kindergarten soon. All kidding aside, I hope you can see, this is one slippery slope with a dystopian hell at the bottom of it.

I'll take the chance of a mass shooting any day over the possibility of .gov trying to take away my kitchen knives because of the actions of a few psychopaths. The crazy people will always be there, and if you take away their toys, they will simply find new and creative ways to kill you, like IEDs, or big trucks.

We have massive inequality, toxic identity politics, and very weak social and cultural cohesion, and idiots want to blame an inanimate tool for all the woes of the world. Maybe, just maybe, we should look at those issues instead of trying to ban everything from guns to frying pans. Unless of course, there is an ulterior motive here? Nah couldn't be...

plow_2
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Re: Guns in America

Post by plow_2 »

https://www.investors.com/politics/edit ... shootings/

There have been alot of mass shootings here in the US but the media isn't giving us the full picture. I'm not a gun control advocate, but even if I were the fact is that banning guns won't change anything. If it would then there would be no illicit drugs in the US because they are illegal. The only way it would actually work would be to wave a magic wand and make all of the guns magically disappear. But since there are millions upon millions of guns here, banning them will only remove them from lawful citizens hands. The real problem is with the person, not the tool. If removing the tool worked then we can castrate all sex offenders and let them babysit our kids.

TimeTravel
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Re: Guns in America

Post by TimeTravel »

In the news recently is 3-D printable guns, non-traceable. Downloadable blueprints to print out 3-D gun parts to assemble. The argument for the pros goes like this is free speech and the right to bear arms. The argument against is this is a gift to terrorists and other bad folks.
For the last half decade, 3-D printed pistols and metal-milled "ghost guns" have only rarely caught the attention of lawmakers, and have barely registered in the mainstream of America's gun control debate. But now, a controversial legal settlement may have unlocked a new era of digitally fabricated, DIY guns. It's also unleashed a political backlash unlike anything seen in the five years since the first 3-D printable firearm appeared online.

Earlier this month, WIRED broke the news that gun access group Defense Distributed had obtained a key settlement in its lawsuit against the State Department, winning the right to publish the blueprints and CAD models for practically any commercially available gun, files ready to be downloaded from the web and fed into a 3-D printer or computer-controlled milling machine to produce a lethal weapon in the unregulated privacy of anyone's garage.
https://www.wired.com/story/legal-fight ... stributed/

prognastat
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Re: Guns in America

Post by prognastat »

TimeTravel wrote:
Tue Jul 31, 2018 4:34 pm
In the news recently is 3-D printable guns, non-traceable. Downloadable blueprints to print out 3-D gun parts to assemble. The argument for the pros goes like this is free speech and the right to bear arms. The argument against is this is a gift to terrorists and other bad folks.
This isn't anything entirely new though. Anyone with access to a lathe, drill press and some other basic tools could build their own gun well before the advent of 3D printing though it definitely makes access easier and cheaper than ever. However a machined gun is going to be much more durable than a plastic one.
Last edited by prognastat on Tue Jul 31, 2018 4:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

Looks like more evidence that gun control laws will not stop malevolent actors from illegally obtaining lethal weapons, and just put law-abiding citizens at their mercy.

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Guns in America

Post by ThisDinosaur »

prognastat wrote:
Tue Jul 31, 2018 4:47 pm

This isn't anything entirely new though. Anyone with access to a lathe, drill press and some other basic tools could build their own gun well before the advent of 3D printing
There was a Vice piece about the Philippines that showed a family manufacturing semiautomatic handguns in their back yard.

Riggerjack
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Re: Guns in America

Post by Riggerjack »

There was a Vice piece about the Philippines that showed a family manufacturing semiautomatic handguns in their back yard.
Look up 80% receivers. That's happening here, too. Nobody is manufacturing from 80's as a business, to my knowledge, but I know plenty of gun nuts with custom made guns, often of their own making. There is also plenty of amateurs making functional semi-automatics from demilled military surplus. Perfectly legal. Just hobbyists doing what hobbyists do.

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