Mega-Thread: Gun Control Thread

[Daerio]

Immense problem. It would have to be attacked from so many angles. Here are some.

Legitimate Arms manufactuers would have to be regulated or bought out.
Ones that didn't comply would have to be sanctioned or shit down.
Illicite "unauthorized" factories would have to destroyed (airstrike?)
The production of gunpowder would have to be regulated.

Complete government takeover of private organizations is what you're talking about. I've never heard anything so completely ridiculous.

Like others in this thread have already said, maybe you really would be more comfortable in another country, like Russia.

[Deadvolcanoes]

Complete government takeover of private organizations is what you're talking about. I've never heard anything so completely ridiculous.

Like others in this thread have already said, maybe you really would be more comfortable in another country, like Russia.

Telling posters to move to Russia is pretty lame. I'd much rather live in a society completely free of guns. Unfortunately, the cat is out of the bag.

[breadisfunny]

@skroesc
world peace at this point and time in humanity won't happen. if you ban guns people will use other weapons to commit their crimes. what should we ban knifes as well? should we ban sporks? scissors? anything sharp that might cause harm? because where is a will there will be found a way to execute that will. unless we try to fix the source and not just treat the symptoms the real problem will never be solved and violence will continue. and thats exactly what your trying to do is treat the symptoms and not the problem itself.

[Deadvolcanoes]

@skroesc
world peace at this point and time in humanity won't happen. if you ban guns people will use other weapons to commit their crimes. what should we ban knifes as well? should we ban sporks? scissors? anything sharp that might cause harm? because where is a will there will be found a way to execute that will. unless we try to fix the source and not just treat the symptoms the real problem will never be solved and violence will continue. and thats exactly what your trying to do is treat the symptoms and not the problem itself.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with treating the source and the symptoms at the same time. It's completely doable, and actually makes a lot of sense.

Obama's executive orders concerning mental health are a good start at treating the source.

[GreatOak]

Telling posters to move to Russia is pretty lame. I'd much rather live in a society completely free of guns. Unfortunately, the cat is out of the bag.

I don't. A society without guns is a society in which the weak become prey to the strong, and brute force dictates everything.

I wish to live in a society that loves guns, but takes them more seriously (something similar to Switzerland).

[lockedout]

Immense problem. It would have to be attacked from so many angles. Here are some.

Legitimate Arms manufactuers would have to be regulated or bought out.
Ones that didn't comply would have to be sanctioned or shit down.
Illicite "unauthorized" factories would have to destroyed (airstrike?)
The production of gunpowder would have to be regulated.
An internationally financed gun-buyback program would be one tool.
Attaching foreign aid by the Paris Group to passing of gun control laws would be a huge step forward as well.
The building of a moral case against gun ownership would be vital.
Make private small-arms exports to non-State buyers illegal (that is, the US government can sell to the German government, but Smith and Wesson cannot export to the German market).

It would take thousands of initiatives to do successfully and many years.
It would cost billions of dollars.

But I think it would eventually pay off. Complete eradication, like slavery, is impossible - the world is too big. But I think, over time, eventually pre-ban guns would break and degrade, and ammunition stockpiles would dry up. That is when the real force of the change will be felt... when the stuff that wasn't seized just gets too old to be dangerous.

Basically you want the government to control everything?
In a free country the people control the government not the other way around.
Really airstrikes on american citizens and private companies in america?

[GreatOak]

I see absolutely nothing wrong with treating the source and the symptoms at the same time. It's completely doable, and actually makes a lot of sense.

Obama's executive orders concerning mental health are a good start at treating the source.

He doesn't really care about the major source. He hasn't proposed anything that will help those on the streets here.

[breadisfunny]

I see absolutely nothing wrong with treating the source and the symptoms at the same time. It's completely doable, and actually makes a lot of sense.

Obama's executive orders concerning mental health are a good start at treating the source.

except that isnt the only thing that causes violence and guns aren't going to go away. once the genie has been uncorked he can never be put back in. to do what he wants to do would involve at the very best billions if not trillions of dollars being spent on what may be an unobtainable goal. at the worst it will involve mass atrocities on those who refuse to go along with the "plan" which may or may not include civilians who simply want to be left alone with their guns to hunt/fish/whatever who have never harmed anyone. i dont see the problem with private gun ownership. the problem is people who commit crimes with them. its akin to banning cars because they can be used as a deadly weapon.(btw i am not talking about obama here.)

[Deadvolcanoes]

I don't. A society without guns is a society in which the weak become prey to the strong, and brute force dictates everything.

I do idolize the Swiss and their gun culture.

However, there are a lot of great non-lethal options that allow you to easily subdue brute force.

[xylophone]

I do idolize the Swiss and their gun culture.

However, there are a lot of great non-lethal options that allow you to easily subdue brute force.

Then why do police officers need guns?

[Deadvolcanoes]

He doesn't really care about the major source. He hasn't proposed anything that will help those on the streets here.

Directing the CDC to study mental health and the causes of violence will help immensely. After all, we can't truly understand the source of violence unless we study it.

---------- Post added 2013-02-22 at 11:08 PM ----------

Then why do police officers need guns?

Who said police officers need guns?

In reality, they need them, because there are 300 million in circulation.

If there were zero in circulation, police officers wouldn't need guns. They would probably still have them, just wouldn't carry them at all times, like police officers in other countries.

[lockedout]

Directing the CDC to study mental health and the causes of violence will help immensely. After all, we can't truly understand the source of violence unless we study it.

It will do nothing, 0 , zip.

[Deadvolcanoes]

It will do nothing, 0 , zip.

Studying the source of violence will do nothing to reduce violence?

Well, I'm convinced!

[Skroe]

You keep identifying gun ownership as a hobby. For a lot of people, the majority I'd argue, its about self/home defense. What's your argument against the possession of firearms for the protection of the home?

I like to call it the Baghdad Argument. Iraq is interesting because it was a heavily armed, well educated society with a large middle class that became extremely lawless.

Now if you were an Iraqi, the violence you saw more often than not was criminal, not insurgency/religious. It was lawless because in an Iraqi without a real social contract, functioning civil society or rule of law, guns became how people won arguments and gained influence.

Now Iraq was in many ways kind of the NRA's dream of America. Every household had a gun. It was a person's personal responsibility to defend their family. And important places - people's businesses, places of worship, markets, offices, in absence of police were similarly guarded by men with guns.

Now not all gun owners wanted to kill other people. Indeed many just wanted to defend their property or lives. But more than a few realized with guns and without cops, they could become local, small time power brokers. They could run neighborhoods, establish turf and get rich. And if they get some more men with guns, they can expand their reach. The US Military paid off, so many times, not insurgents, but the local strongman.

As a result those once-passive gun owners started banding together, for protection, with people they were alike, and all of a sudden people started shooting each other.

Citizens defending themselves against criminals
Criminals against citizens
Criminals against insurgents
Citizens against US peacekeepers
Criminals against US peacekeepers
insurgents against US peacekeepers
insurgents against criminals.

With no law and order, no police to provide security and saftey, it was a free for all. Every two-bit group shot every other two-bit group in this melee. That is how the Iraqi acts-of-violence rate skyrocketed from 13 per day in early 2003 to 500 per day in 2007. Arms sent over from Iran and Syria made matters worse.

The US Military was not stupid about this at all. Their job was to win. They knew the problem. That is why the US Military seized and destroyed millions of guns, bribed thousands of local strongmen into cooperation, and disarmed as many people as they could. "Neighborhood watches", as it were, were extraordinarily dangerous to Iraqs security, especially if they were fed something absolutely insane - like the idea that US soldiers sunglasses gave US soldiers X-Ray vision, letting them see Iraqi Women (their wives) naked under their clothes - and decided to start fighting us.

The US also spent billions upon billions of dollars building up the Iraqi National Police. A society without cops, where peoples protection was in their own hands, was leading to insane levels of violence as every human being with a gun and a motive decided to go shooting. A national police force to keep the peace once Iraqis were disarmed was seen as essential.

And it worked. It completely worked. The Surge was the start - putting the US military into full police-mode while co-opting Shiite and Sunni militias into proto-police forces (many later folded in with promise of a job). But intense policing and MASSIVE Disarming of the Iraqi population greatly reduced violence. Today, Iraq is still a dangerous country, but the national police we worked so hard to build is making sure it doesn't fall apart. Iraqis are not armed like they were just a few years ago.

So this is a round about way to getting to the point of my argument: Your gun doesn't protect you. You may think it does, and it may offer you security of mind. But you're really only kidding yourself. You are not shot at every day, unlike the Iraqi people, because our civil society is upheld by a professional police force whose very presence keeps violence at a level far lower than it otherwise would be. That MAY not be enough, to be sure, if an intruder enters your house... that will happen in ANY society no matter the protection. But if it happens once in your life time as opposed to twice a week, that's a credit to the security police officers bring, not your gun collection. In Iraq, we saw this: neighborhood watches with massive arsenals brought instability, NOT security. It took their mass disarmament PLUS building a national police force worthy of the name, to bring increasing security. And it still is dangerous, but its not pre-surge.

You want to feel even more secure? Pay more taxes and hire more cops. Encourage your city council to hire 20% more officers - people could certainly use the work and I know from my friend who applied to be an officer in about a dozen cities last year, there are far more people who WANT and are QUALIFIED to be cops than there are positions available. But the "Baghdad Argument" gives you a recent history of what happens in a society where everyone has to protect themselves. It's chaos.

[breadisfunny]

except america is not iraq.

[lockedout]

I like to call it the Baghdad Argument. Iraq is interesting because it was a heavily armed, well educated society with a large middle class that became extremely lawless.

What Iraq was this?
Were you ever in Iraq?

[Extrazero8]

You're right that guns don't cause violence. But this isn't AT ALL about what causes violence. There are thousands of reasons a person or group of people can be violent. Their reason for being violent has also nothing to do with what I'm saying.

Guns however, make violence EASY, easier than ever before. As the UN says, guns act as a FORCE MULTIPLIER. It allows smaller groups to engage in violent behavior that once required far more many people to engage in.

What like police and military work? It works both ways friend. Guns can be used for good, bad, or neutral reasons. You keep going on about the evils caused with guns but never mention everything else.

A Global bans on guns would NOT reduce the INTENTION of individuals to cause violence. Their reasons - ethnic, political, economic, and so forth - are their own. But it will drastically reduce the incidents in which these people can harm large groups of people and intimidate society.

Because bombings don't happen right?

Let's think about the Pakistani Taliban for a minute. They maraud around the lawless regions of Waziristan. They are well armed and use those arms as the tools to intimidate local populaces and absolutely outgun local security forces who can't fight them for fear of their lives. They're extremely dangerous and they have the region in a grip of fear. People who challenge their dominance are killed en masse. Now let's imagine for a second, if instead of guns the Pakistani Taliban had to rely on swords and knives alone. All of a sudden, they're far less dangerous and can be taken care of by local security and a populace in less fear of their lives.

http://www.khou.com/news/local/21-ye...192475271.html

Force multipliers work both ways.

So it's ironic you accuse me of scapegoating. Just keep in mind what you're doing. You're basically trying to justify the continued freedom of manufacture and sale of something - guns - that academic research, international policymakers and international security experts agree, world wide, is immensely destabilizing and has caused terrible harm to the human race by making extreme violence easier than ever.

So guns are more of a factor in destabilizing a region than famine, poverty, education, and disease? You seem to be going to great lengths to justify killing this goat.

You're honestly, going to sit here and justify the continuation of your hobby, despite how many people have died because guns exist in private hands on the Earth by really trying to bring up the "guns don't kill people" misdirection? That's kind of a joke, sir, when method of violence, not underlying cause, is the issue at hand.

My right to own my self-defense weapon is not a hobby.




See that AK47 clone. I don't have to justify owning it to you.

If you want to stop global instability then you should go after the causes of it. Not just just slapping your pet issue on it and giving yourself a pat on the back.

[lockedout]

You want to feel even more secure? Pay more taxes and hire more cops. Encourage your city council to hire 20% more officers - people could certainly use the work and I know from my friend who applied to be an officer in about a dozen cities last year, there are far more people who WANT and are QUALIFIED to be cops than there are positions available. But the "Baghdad Argument" gives you a recent history of what happens in a society where everyone has to protect themselves. It's chaos.

Cops do not have to protect you. They're job is to arrest the criminal after the fact. Hiring more cops that don't have to protect you and won't be there when an intruder is in your home in the middle of the night will do nothing.

[Deadvolcanoes]

I like to call it the Baghdad Argument.

Your comparing a country with a brand new government to America? A country rife with religious fundamentalism, terrorism, and corruption, to America? I'm not sure that's a very good argument.

Let me give you an example to illustrate my point. My wife, when we first moved in together, and before we got married, was being stalked by her ex-boyfriend. He's a mean mother fucker, and he's got access to guns. Am I stupid for wanting to keep a firearm in my house, along with an alarm system? I mean what am I supposed to do? The guns are already out. If you seek to get rid of them, at some point, I'm going to be defenseless, and hes going to be armed.

I certainly agree with hiring more police. But police don't prevent crime, they react to it.

[Daerio]

Telling posters to move to Russia is pretty lame. I'd much rather live in a society completely free of guns. Unfortunately, the cat is out of the bag.

Maybe Russia was too mean? How about China, they don't allow them there either, and they share the Skroesec's view on government seizure of private industry.

Illegal possession or sale of firearms in China may result in a minimum punishment of 3 years in prison, with the maximum being the death penalty.

Sounds right up his alley.