$$$ for your firearms

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FIRE 2018
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by FIRE 2018 »

There were some viewpoints shared in the media where " Stand your ground" laws saves lives namely your own if you feel your life is in immediate danger. Shoot first. Many of the the stand your ground approved states are in the Southern USA. No surprise. Jeb Bush under his time as Governor enacted Stand your ground law in Florida and residents rejoiced.

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Jean
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Jean »

We have lots of guns and very few mass shootings here in switzerland. There is no correlation in the US between death by gun and gun ownership. Death by gun a correllated with a few other factors, but you can check for yourself.

FIRE 2018
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by FIRE 2018 »

Switzerland also has a law where all males at age 20 must perform mandatory military service. The men would have a better understanding and education on guns. And they get to keep them after serving in the military. What a nice farewell present. Can you imagine if all males in the USA needed to do this? Some of them would not survive the first week at boot camp.

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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by jacob »

The US has 6x the gun ownership rate per capita of Switzerland and 4x the murder rate per capita. In terms of mass shootings, the US is now pushing towards 200+ and counting whereas Switzerland and everybody only have none, one, or some. But the US also has 40x the population of Switzerland, so ... Anyway, see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX4qUsgHa4Y
Numbers are given in the link including by country, US states, murders, suicides both in total numbers and adjusted by per capita.

That should pretty much settle it.

The US is an extreme outlier on all counts but the correlations are rather obvious. It's just a difference in culture wherein the side-effects of gun ownership is an accepted health hazard in the US (like driving cars or eating too many donuts is par for the course everywhere now) whereas it's rejected elsewhere in the OECD for mostly historic reasons. Only reason this comes up in the US is because multiple deaths sometimes happen "all at once". Similar to how a bus or a plane crash is news, but everyday car accidents are ignored. There's no reason to be in denial about the stats. It just is what it is.

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Jean
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Jean »

our last mass shooting was 18 years ago. The us homicide rate is 10 times higher than ours (according to your video and wikipedia), and the chart giving a gun ownership rate 6time lower in switzerland than in the us is dumb, doesn't include military guns, which for comparison with switzerland is missing a huge portion of them.
In addition, the chart were they show a correlation is age adjusted, which is quite an arbitrary choice, because otherwise, the correlation is at most weak. It probably means that age is much more of a factor than gun ownership. But coming from vox, it's hard to expect something non partisan. Shooting happen because people have no perspective for their future. The more competent the people that have no perspective are, the more people they will kill during their shooting. When you only exlcude idiots they kill 0 - 2 person, when you exclude competent people, they kill dozens of people.

Dream of Freedom
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Dream of Freedom »

bigato wrote:
Tue Aug 06, 2019 1:31 am
Also, the argument about resisting the state if it goes against you is pretty naive. If they want to go after you, they will and you can't resist even if you are a billionaire. Not with guns. See the many examples in US history where a group of people tried to resist their ground against the state. It just doesn't work, it's stupid at best. The state has the monopoly of violence with a few exceptions and that is how the social contract works for any civilized country. Now if you think that people having easy access to guns would make it easier for a mass revolt to overthrow a government, maybe you could give it some more thought on the war aspect. Do you really expect hand guns to win a revolt against a state, even if they are huge armed crowds? Unless you are advocating for real stuff to be available, like tanks, missiles and such. That could really give an edge to an armed militia. Like in Palestine. And even there, they don't seem to be winning, and the shit has been going for decades. Would you like your country to be a place where your neighboor or anybody can easily buy a missile thrower? Heavy machine guns? Why not? You can't have it both ways.
It is a little naive given today's technology. When the bill of rights was created it was much more possible. Still, that is one of the reasons a total ban is so vehemently opposed.

If you think that I was arguing that we could rather than explain what has happened then you need to reread my post.

FIRE 2018
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by FIRE 2018 »

In being raised and living in the USA, there are laws and there are state rights. In regards to gun ownership in New ( Nazi) Jersey there are stricter gun laws. Intense background checks by state police, and only allowed to buy 1 firearm every 30 days. In Florida, it's an easy 3 day background check and you go back to the gun store to pick up your firearm you just purchased. And you can buy any type of firearm including assault rifles in unlimited amounts if you have the cash. In other states, you can openly display your firearm including your assault rifle on your body and walk around in public and enter establishments that do not have a sign regarding no firearms allowed in the building or venue. The one incident that raised concerns and changes was the Las Vegas incident where the crazy lunatic mowed down many innocents with his assault rifle that had bump stocks that turned his gun into a machine gun. Now, bump stocks are illegal for residential use. Some gun stores raised their buying age to buy firearms from 18 to 21 years old. I am sometimes torn between what should be done to address this issue. However to defend my family and me in case of danger, the bad guy will lose.

Cheepnis
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Cheepnis »

Regardless of constitutional rights or any particular interpretation of statistics, something I feel is not often discussed is the psychological effect holding/shooting a gun has.

I've shot quite a few different guns before and never particularly enjoyed it. It's way too much power and responsibility for me. It's like if you're standing at the edge of a cliff. Do I want to step off? No. Am I going to step off? No. But it would only take a split second of indescretion to do something really stupid. Why would I ever put myself in that situation?

Holding a gun puts you immediately into that sort of high stakes environment with the added dimension that guns make you feel powerful. Feeling that power is frightening to me, but I've spoken to many people who say they know what I'm talking about and that that feeling is a large reason why they like guns. That scares the shit out of me.

I think that feeling of power probably adds to the downward spiral and derangement of many of these mass shooters.

I personally have a hard enough time keeping track of where my mind wanders and what emotions bubble up that I don't think I should be afforded he right to permanently put myself on that edge if I so chose.

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Jean
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Jean »

You don't need to correct for a factor if the factor has no effect. Doing so is acknowledging that this factor has enough correlation to hide what you wan't to show.

IlliniDave
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by IlliniDave »

+1 to what Jacob said a couple posts above. IIIRC 85 people were shot in Chicago over the weekend (and as I heard it the first to die was a 5-year-old child), a number that's above normal but, beyond regionally, is not "news" (contrast that to the attention Smollett initially received in the national media). Through 7 months (again IIRC) the total is around 1,600 shooting victims. I believe those incidents are highly concentrated in neighborhoods on the west side. I think there's a disservice in conflating the grossly pathological behavior of these headline-grabbing mass murderers with the overall problems of violence (especially urban) in the US. Hard to address a problem effectively when you only focus on the facet that that catches the fancy of the national news cycle in full election-hyping mode.

It truly bothers me that violence is so concentrated in largely poor, ethnic urban neighborhoods; and as long as it stays there, so many people are content to look the other way.

FIRE 2018
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by FIRE 2018 »

@illinidave

Violence in urban (ethnic) poverty areas is indeed slowly killing off the ones and innocents in gun violence. On the flip side, some rural (white) poverty areas where many of town residents are armed, it's not the gun violence that's wiping them out, it's the drug fueled opioid epidemic that's out of control.

IlliniDave
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by IlliniDave »

FIRE 2018, sure, there are non-urban areas where addiction is a problem, but the poor urban areas I suspect often have equal or greater issues with drugs/addiction. We just hear less about it (or maybe have become deaf to it) because it's a decades-old problem.

7Wannabe5
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

bigato wrote:Also, the argument about resisting the state if it goes against you is pretty naive. If they want to go after you, they will and you can't resist even if you are a billionaire. Not with guns. See the many examples in US history where a group of people tried to resist their ground against the state. It just doesn't work, it's stupid at best. The state has the monopoly of violence with a few exceptions and that is how the social contract works for any civilized country. Now if you think that people having easy access to guns would make it easier for a mass revolt to overthrow a government, maybe you could give it some more thought on the war aspect. Do you really expect hand guns to win a revolt against a state, even if they are huge armed crowds? Unless you are advocating for real stuff to be available, like tanks, missiles and such. That could really give an edge to an armed militia. Like in Palestine. And even there, they don't seem to be winning, and the shit has been going for decades. Would you like your country to be a place where your neighboor or anybody can easily buy a missile thrower? Heavy machine guns? Why not? You can't have it both ways.
The problem with this argument is that the majority of the humans who participate in the voluntary armed forces of the U.S. hale from families or communities which support gun rights.

Also, there is currently enough wildlife in rural areas that gun ownership is still useful towards private property protection. For instance, I just read the "2019 Michigan Fur Harvester Digest" a free publication of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources which I picked up off a rack at local Wal-Mart, so I know that there is no bag limit on coyote with year-round, state-wide open season and that "coyotes doing or about to do damage to private property on private land may be taken by the owner or designee without a license." The collapse of small and medium sized family farms and associated communities has altered the urban/rural/wilderness perimeter structure in a manner that has rendered it more chaotic, especially when combined with erratic extreme weather events associated with climate change. For instance, a couple days ago I drove through a Hitchcock thick flock of seagulls swooping down low across a rural highway, convening to gorge on large piles of fish-flies humans had attempted to sweep up from a lakeside expanse of parking asphalt. Most of them were able to evade the cars, but there were more than a few bloodied casualties littered about the scene.

Anyways, since spoken word is now believed to be non-genetically-coded human technology, my rule would be that if you can read the Constitution or pass an oral test on its contents, you can get a license to own a gun, otherwise not. Wouldn't help with evil or insane, but might at least make a dent in stupid.

Riggerjack
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Riggerjack »

The last time a gun thread came up, Jacob had an interesting question. Something along the lines of why criminals had so many guns in the US, but not in Europe.

And it's a good question, I have been kicking it around a while, and I think the difference is both historical, and the cultural remnants of the different histories.

The critical time period I am thinking about would be 1865-1930's. After the civil war, there were lots of displaced vets moving West and invading native lands. These were men not likely to be intimidated by guns. They knew both the strength and weaknesses guns bring to the table. Eventually, they became fathers and grandfathers. Telling stories about when this land was "free". Which usually meant they could do as they pleased, with no signs of a civil authority. In rural areas, civil authority is still pretty thin on the ground.

This results in definite differences in attitude towards civil authority in rural areas. Here, cops are usually fine, but we understand that if a situation gets violent, the violence will be over, long before police arrive. (On my island, 911 police calls average 20 minute response times, but down at my end, it's closer to 45 minutes.) This is where I see a difference in attitudes towards guns: Some folks move here to live in a wet paradise, they usually come from Seattle or So Cal, and hate guns and hunters. And some came from less "civilized" places, where taking care of yourself and your family is an expected part of being an adult. (Though it is sad when I see folks with the aggressive part of that equation solved, but none of the rest.)

I remember a kerfluffle over a 911 call placed in South Western Oregon, where the caller wanted police response to her drunken ex boyfriend trying to break into her house. The operator was trying to talk her thru the situation, but that area is served by a sheriff's department that worked office hours. Leave a message, and we'll get back to you on Monday... This was in the 21st century. Life in the sticks is different. She should have called her neighbor.

Now I really don't think anywhere in Europe went through multiple generations without a civil authority riding herd over the populace. Certainly not within living memory. I don't think there was ever a time when firearms were common among the common folk, being reserved for the aristocrats. But that could be ignorance on my part.

But getting back to that timeline. 1865-1930's brought big changes in firearms tech. Muzzle loading to full auto Thompson submachine guns. And then we brought in prohibition. And we saw a wave of gun violence like we had never seen. Bonnie and Clyde, gang wars, it was a very different world, very quickly. Lots of folks armed up, and lots of folks called for tougher gun laws. And they weren't necessarily different folks. Gun owners have long been law and order advocates.

So what we had, was an alcohol fueled gold rush, for anyone who could control some aspect of the booze trade. But the common man is armed. So criminals are armed, and quickly that lead to an arms race.

The common man was armed, so just having numbers and a willingness to violence wasn't enough for violent criminals, they had to arm up. And organized crime, which is far more interested in the criminals than the victims, had to have enough force (numbers, firepower, information) to force compliance on a group not known for compliance.

That is where I see Europe and the US splitting. First, generations of self reliance, and community protection, with little, if any, civil authority. Then, we built the template for how to use firepower to get some of that prohibition gold rush. Then, we wholeheartedly embraced prohibition, but now we call it a war on drugs.

This also explains the cultural divide on firearms. Those in very populated areas, where police response is rapid, tend to be comfortable abdicating the responsibility for their physical safety to a professional police force (though I do find it odd that those same people are so comfortable hating those same professionals...). And for less populated areas, there is no effective way to abdicate that responsibility. And those who grew up expecting to take on this responsibility, find themselves in a culture war with those who didn't.

It's not about guns, or crime. It's about one group feeling safe without guns, and threatened by civilians with guns; and another group feeling safe with guns, and feeling threatened by those who preach tolerance but don't practice it.

Campitor
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Campitor »

When you join the US Military, or become a US citizen, you have to swear an oath to uphold and defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic; you don't swear an oath to a politician or branch of government. If the US Government ever became a tyrannical institution, there will probably be large swathes of the military and their leadership that will join the revolt; history is replete with many examples of this occurring. A civil war in this country will not be citizens vs the government - it will be pro-constitutional government vs anti-constitutional government with each side controlling various segments of the military and their destructive assets. The winner of said revolution will enjoy a pyrrhic victory.

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Bankai
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Bankai »

There are rural/remote areas outside of US as well.

Anyway, has anyone ever changed their mind thanks to any of the previous gun threads on these boards? Since average IQ here is likely (much) higher than that of overall population, we are masters at rationalising our viewpoints regardless of contrary evidence.

Riggerjack
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Riggerjack »

The whole "we need guns to overthrow a corrupt government" thing is a strawman.

If a former army ranger in his own private Idaho couldn't hold his own (think Ruby Ridge), none of the rest of us could, either.

My guns protect me from my government, in that guns in homes is a very serious check on bureaucratic overreach. We have inspectors in our WA state agencies who have been trained that permission and or warrants are not necessary to access private property. It took years for this abuse to gain the attention of the attorney general. It was pushed by private landowners kicking them out and raising hell.

When the "inspectors" are armed, and landowners are not, what stops that overreach, again? The inherent goodwill of the bureaucracy?

This is how firearms protect me from my government. By ensuring the individual or political minority is not completely powerless. This should be of interest to populations who have suffered from political disempowerment, and the abuses that allows.

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Bankai
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Bankai »

There are remote areas in Europe and yet people manage just fine without guns, murder rates are lower and people are not advocating easy gun access.

Riggerjack
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Riggerjack »

I've often said, for example, that if an opportunity exists for someone to steal from a company, then eventually somebody will. It's not even a question of if it will happen, but when. So you shut that door of opportunity. You sure as hell don't trust that every future employee will be honest.
Alternatively, one could accept that a percentage of people will take dishonest opportunities, given the chance.

The efficient scenario is to present easy opportunities, and then cull the offenders. Lower enforcement costs, more compliance, fewer offences, more freedom to act, and an improved population.

But for this to work, examples must be made...

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

Bankai wrote:
Tue Aug 06, 2019 9:02 am
Anyway, has anyone ever changed their mind thanks to any of the previous gun threads on these boards?
Maybe it could be agreed upon that the media should stop glorifying the shooter by putting his name and picture everywhere. In a world of Instagram and YouTube where everyone wants to be famous, stop giving disaffected crazies a chance. 40 years later and they are still putting up the mugshot of John Lennon’s assassin. That’s exactly what they want. Subject them to damnatio memoriae instead.

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