Mega-Thread: Gun Control Thread

[jonnysensible]

From reports, he had Proud Boys shit, that RWDS patch, Nazi memorabilia, and white supremacist sites on his computer. Just like Enrique Tarrio, Latinos can be Nazis too. There are literally Nazi gangs from central and south America.

*googles Pinochet*

[Jtbrig7390]

"Grabbing your dick is a sin, but owning a gun is a God-Given Right" -Utah Republicans....probably-

That physically hurt me to read because of how fucken true it is.

[Nymrohd]

Medicare for all, with included mental health care, that is available everywhere.
None of this seems too hard, does it? Pretty easy, all things considered.

Only this is NOT easy. No nation in the world has the human resources to pull that off because therapy takes time and requires highly specialized personel. Solutions sought by countries that try to adress this are usually extremely short sessions that do nothing, group therapy that is ineffective for a significant number of cases and simply ever expanding the definiation of what a licensed mental health professional is. I largely agree with what you say but let's not go overboard with the wishlists and then call theme easy.

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*googles Pinochet*

Not to mention all the literal Nazis fleeing there.

[Masark]

Only this is NOT easy. No nation in the world has the human resources to pull that off because therapy takes time and requires highly specialized personel.

"Oh, we don't have the human resources"

If you don't have them, you fucking make them.

That's what they did when my father was a young man, nearly 70 years ago. They wanted to set up a provincial psychiatric facility. So the government built a school to train the human resources they would need for that facility from scratch.

But 40 years of neoliberalism has so poisoned and atrophied minds that people can't even conceive of doing that kind of thing anymore. It's all "oh, the market won't allow that!" like it's a fucking annoyed deity you need to placate before it throws lightning bolts or causes a flood.

[Nymrohd]

"Oh, we don't have the human resources"

If you don't have them, you fucking make them.

That's what they did when my father was a young man, nearly 70 years ago. They wanted to set up a provincial psychiatric facility. So the government built a school to train the human resources they would need for that facility from scratch.

Dude it's not fast or simple to make mental healthcare professionals. We are talking about a specialized field that requires 12-15 years of higher education. Not that many people have the skillset or the right type of personality to be at all effective there. Heck there is no market reason why people would not choose that field, it is extremely well paid so you don't get to blame capitalism for people not choosing that line of work.

[Grinning Serpent]

You are absolutely right, there are things we can do beyond merely gun control. Unfortunately, a certain major political party has interest in doing any of it. Can I elaborate? Sure!

1.) Raise the age of gun ownership to 21 (either have an exemption for members of the military or raise the age of joining the military as well).
2.) Assign criminal liability to those who provide unsupervised access to firearms for those who are under the age of 21, and enhanced liability if the person under 21 hurts someone with said firearms.
3.) Close all loopholes such as the "Boyfriend Loophole" (Federal law prohibits domestic abusers from having guns, but only if they have been married to, have lived with, or have a child with the victim. It does not otherwise prohibit abusive dating partners from having guns. This gap in the law is known as the “boyfriend loophole” and has become increasingly deadly. The share of homicides committed by dating partners has been increasing for three decades, and now women are as likely to be killed by dating partners as by spouses).
4.) Have permanent prohibitions for violent convictions, temporary prohibitions for smaller violent incidents, and a permanent prohibition for gun ownership if you're hurting animals (note, this would've stopped most mass shooting incidents).

On board with all of those. I do have an issue with a system that suspends the rights of the convicted while they are imprisoned, but then continues to suspend them after they are released. Are they or are they not a danger to the public? If they are still a danger, why have they been released? If they are not, why are they still having their rights suspended?

File that one under penal/corrections reform, though. I don't think it's a gun control issue so much as just one element in the enormous shitpile that is our fucked up penal code and corrections systems.

5.) Ban advertisements that link guns and weapons with the military.
6.) Reach out to Hollywood and have them start ridiculing every "Tacticool" thing.
7.) Have the DoD provide basic training to anyone who wants it, so they can actually learn what it's like be in the military, as well as learning how to properly handle firearms. You can incentivize this too if you want, with tax breaks or college scholarships.
8.) Campaign against misogyny and racism. Do this in schools, movies, TV ads, etcetera. Reducing hate in general will reduce targets for people to turn against.

I don't think 5 is possible, that seems like some sort of First Amendment violation. https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/art...co-advertising covers the restrictions that were placed on tobacco advertising, and may be usable as some kind of pattern for a gun advertisement restriction. What would the "surgeon's warning" sticker for a gun look like, though? I'm in favor of the idea, I just don't know how plausible it is.

The other three, I like. I would definitely like to see media corporations make a more concerted, genuine effort towards combating various forms of bigotry and the violent rhetoric that seems to come with them. But there's no way to *force* them to do it, we can only try to encourage it somehow.

9.) Devise and implement better social safety nets. This removes stressors that help build up to people hitting a breaking point where they actually go out and shoot people.
10.) Medicare for all, with included mental health care, that is available everywhere. Also stop demonizing the idea of therapy or seeking help.

Yup. 10 will necessarily need to require programs to encourage people to get into the healthcare field, however. As anyone that's had to go to the ER in the past few years will tell you... there ain't enough nurses or doctors to go around. Last time I had to go it was a weeknight, not even a busy one, and the doctor I was waiting to be seen by had 16 people ahead of me and looked like she was about to fall over from fatigue. Doesn't exactly give you confidence that you're getting quality care, you know? Not to mention that I spent ten fucking hours there, all told. And god forbid you're trying to find a therapist or psychiatrist, or trying to switch yours out because you don't quite connect with them.

But we absolutely have the fucking money and raw resources to get it done.

Semi-related, yeah! This is a good one too. Needing people to actually go through a background check and complete a gun safety course to get a license in every state would be pretty great. Sadly, in some states you can just go in, fork over cash, and walk away with a gun. Even if you can't do that at gun shops, you can do it at gun shows, which are one of those big loopholes we should be closing.

The problem is that licensing requirements open up many opportunities for the state to deny people the rights that they are granted (well, technically, that's backwards but whatever) by the Constitution. Mandating "shall issue" formats for the licenses will help, but there's still a lot of ways that the state can adhere to the letter of the law while still skirting around the spirit to deny access to people that the enforcers of that law find distasteful. No guns for Blacks/hippies/commies/whatever, sorry we're closed every day that you can afford to drive out here for the test. Try again after you're less Black or less trans.

It's essentially the same reason that Democrats and progressives are (correctly) adamantly against the "voter protection" horseshit the GQP gets up to. It's just adding barriers to the exercise of a fundamental Constitution right to people that the powers that be find distasteful.

I don't think a license makes sense. Open NICS to the public, or at least make FFL fees tax-deductible (or make them free, and instead Uncle Sam just compensates the FFL for their time when that FFL files their taxes), and mandate background checks for all new gun sales, coupled with whatever additional checks we see fit to add. The background checks and whatever else would effectively already function as your gun license, wouldn't they?

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Genuine question, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't own any guns (or even fired one?), right? I could be misremembering.

If so, I'd like to ask why you're fighting so hard against the logic of better gun control. Sure, there are other things that can also be done (doesn't have to be just one thing at a time), but you seem incredibly adamant against more stringent gun control. You keep saying people here are just circlejerking some culture war shit, and are apparently angry that they do it "while more innocent people die." But you also argue against things that would lower the numbers of dead innocents.

Why?

I've fired a lot of guns. I grew up around them. Small town in Georgia, etc. Used to go shooting with my Pathfinder table, but COVID put an end to that and we never have tried to start it up again (ammo got expensive, one of our guys has a wife that hits every fucking bullet point on the "escalated risk" COVID assessment and is ardently antivax, etc.) I haven't owned a gun in several years, but I was firing guns at least a few times a year back in I guess late 2019? I think we went after the big gun show here and before the Christmas holidays, so it was probably late November? I'd like to get back into shooting and I probably will someday, but for now I can't justify the cost is all. I can shoot, I know how to shoot (probably badly, at this point), but I choose not to.

I argue against gun control because the way I see it, we need Democrats to get elected, because Democrats are the only politicians that even try to do anything useful for the common man. They're neoliberal sleazeballs, but that's still heads and shoulders better than anything the Republicans have been since I've been alive, let alone the current crop of GQP christo-fascist nutjobs they all are.

So, we *NEED* Democrats to get elected. *Especially* at the state and county level. But so long as gun control is a thing they talk about and want to do, they are going to lose election after election that they might otherwise have a real chance at winning. Polling says one thing, but *voting* says something quite different. Every time Democrats have campaigned on gun control outside of blue strongholds, their opposition gets tons of free votes. Gun control likely does not cost Democrats meaningfully, but it certainly gives Republicans a lot of diehard votes that might have abstained or voted Libertarian had they not been gung-ho on banning assault weapons or whatever bug they've got in their craw. Saw a LOT of it first-hand both in 2016 and 2020 - people that expressed disdain or even hatred for red team, but said they still felt they were compelled to go vote for them because team blue was talking about banning guns again. I know most of those folks typically vote team yellow otherwise. Oklahoma has a large amount of people who like team yellow, I guess.

So my stance is pretty fucking simple, as I see it: shut the fuck up about the guns. You want to address gun violence? Cool, we *KNOW* that accessibility to guns is not the only factor in those things happening, so shut the fuck up about the guns and investigate the other angles. Maybe there will come a time where talking about the guns does not result in you getting thrown out of office in the next election, but that time is not now, so shut the fuck up about the guns because we need you to be in that seat to protect our people from misogyny, bigotry, and the violence that shortly follows those things.


As an aside, while I would not at all be inconvenienced by gun control (I would be able to pass the checks and tests in pretty much any of our peer countries, with or without some amount of additional effort), I also understand that is true because I am privileged. I am white, male, heterosexual, and can pass as Christian if I had to. I am probably on the lower end of middle class, so while money is still a factor for me, I am not living a hand-to-mouth existence like many do. *I* would not have issues exercising my right to "bear arms", but I can't say that about everyone. I already have a certain amount of... disdain for cops, and a lot of that is not borne out of my personal experiences, but the experiences of my friends and loved ones, many of whom are *not* white or male or heterosexual and I regularly see ways in which they are abused or denied by the system where I can walk by freely. As a result, I tend to be generally disdainful of most legislation that would place further limitations on the rights of the people, especially if we're assuming enforcement is handled by the existing system that we damn well know is corrupt and full of institutionalized racism and misogyny.

I'd probably be more in favor of gun control if we dealt with *that* problem first. I'd have much fewer social/political reservations if I felt that we could actually trust our cops and courts to actually be as fair and impartial as they can be.

[Nymrohd]

So my stance is pretty fucking simple, as I see it: shut the fuck up about the guns. You want to address gun violence? Cool, we *KNOW* that accessibility to guns is not the only factor in those things happening, so shut the fuck up about the guns and investigate the other angles. Maybe there will come a time where talking about the guns does not result in you getting thrown out of office in the next election, but that time is not now, so shut the fuck up about the guns because we need you to be in that seat to protect our people from misogyny, bigotry, and the violence that shortly follows those things.

Isn't this the reason Democrats never actually tried to enshrine abortion rights in federal law? To not lose votes from the anti-abortion crowd? Isn't that why many of them would not commit to a clear viewpoint on gay marriage for decades?

[Flarelaine]

Isn't this the reason Democrats never actually tried to enshrine abortion rights in federal law? To not lose votes from the anti-abortion crowd? Isn't that why many of them would not commit to a clear viewpoint on gay marriage for decades?

Federal laws fall as soon as you lose Congress. A Supreme Court ruling looked much more solid until suddenly it wasn't. Ultimately, you would need an Amendment, but good luck getting 38 states to ratify.

[Nymrohd]

Federal laws fall as soon as you lose Congress. A Supreme Court ruling looked much more solid until suddenly it wasn't. Ultimately, you would need an Amendment, but good luck getting 38 states to ratify.

I would never have expected the Democrats to propose blanket abortion on demand. It is an extreme rarity of a position. They absolutely could have legislated for abortion on demand up to the point of viability and then only for medical exception and then spend time defining medical exceptions. It would have created a far more stable ground for state legislation to be build and it would have cut the legs off the abortion debate by completely invalidating most of the anti-abortion side's appeals to emotion. Also by taking a stance on abortion as a medical service on a federal level they could have better protected abortion access. As things are now even if you copied an average western country's abortion laws it would still be very problematic because of the multi level war against abortion access; e.g. Germany has 97% of abortions before the 12th week! But that is because of exceptional access

[Puupi]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_May_...rbia_shootings

Not sure if this case has been mentioned here. Anyhow, in short: a couple of days ago there was a school shooting in Serbia. In response to this one single incident, the minister of education has resigned and they are strictening the gun laws in such a way that it should reduce the number of guns the public has by 90%.

[Edge-]

Boy, so the latest mass shooter in TX was another white supremacist nazi type?

Weird how there seem to be quite a few of those. If only we could add basic checks like, "Do you post positively about nazi shit on public facing social media?" before selling people guns. That seems like a simple, common sense requirement that might keep weapons out of that hands of some literal fuckin murderous nazi's.

Then again I'm wondering where the fuck the Second Amendment types are whenever the nazi's do show up, because they never seem to show up to try to scare away the literal folks whose ideology requires genocide.

[Draco-Onis]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_May_...rbia_shootings

Not sure if this case has been mentioned here. Anyhow, in short: a couple of days ago there was a school shooting in Serbia. In response to this one single incident, the minister of education has resigned and they are strictening the gun laws in such a way that it should reduce the number of guns the public has by 90%.

You mean something bad happened and their politicians are doing something to solve the problem besides thoughts and prayers? almost like lawmakers can make laws instead of giving thoughts and prayers.

[Edge-]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...ng-1234731063/

EVIL FORCES ARE TO BLAME! Nothing we can do about that.

MENTAL ILLNESS! But let's not fund any expanded access to mental health care.

DRUGS! But let's continue the failing war on drugs rather than actually pursue modern policies around decimalization and treatment to get folks off drugs instead of just sending every petty user to prison.

Oh, and blame antidepressants too, because literally blame anything other than America's unique right to easily access and purchase firearms for any person who publicly posts their support for nazi's on their social media.

I'm beginning to think that we as a nation like, maybe deserve to have regular mass shootings like this. I take no joy or pleasure in this gross position but like, if the glove fits?

[jonnysensible]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...ng-1234731063/

EVIL FORCES ARE TO BLAME! Nothing we can do about that.

MENTAL ILLNESS! But let's not fund any expanded access to mental health care.

DRUGS! But let's continue the failing war on drugs rather than actually pursue modern policies around decimalization and treatment to get folks off drugs instead of just sending every petty user to prison.

Oh, and blame antidepressants too, because literally blame anything other than America's unique right to easily access and purchase firearms for any person who publicly posts their support for nazi's on their social media.

I'm beginning to think that we as a nation like, maybe deserve to have regular mass shootings like this. I take no joy or pleasure in this gross position but like, if the glove fits?

who can say what his politics and motives were????? its a mystery???

https://twitter.com/AricToler/status...538896/photo/1

[Edge-]

who can say what his politics and motives were????? its a mystery???

https://twitter.com/AricToler/status...538896/photo/1

Reading up on how, again, people had their literal faces blown off. Dude checking some lady for a pulse while she's face down in blood, rolls her over, "My face when I have no face".jpg

Must be fun finally being able to leave one of the stores you were sheltering in place in only to have to basically walk through what looks like a warzone with bodies and blood and bits of people around because you need to see where you're walking and cover your kids eyes so they don't have "People with their faces blown off." as a formative childhood memory. Just some mild trauma, no big deal. It's just a Friday in America.

[jonnysensible]

violent incel nazi who watches tim pool. But which mass shooter am i talking about for 10 points?

[Edge-]

The document also says the alleged shooter was discharged from the military in 2008 amid “mental health concerns.”

“Mauricio Garcia entered the regular Army in June 2008; he was terminated three months later without completing initial entry training. He was not awarded a military occupational specialty. He had no deployments or awards. We do not provide characterization of discharge for any soldier,” an Army spokesperson said in a statement.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...ds-1234731085/

Boy, if you wash out of the military because they don't think they can trust you with a gun and shit then maybe you should go on some kinda list where you shouldn't be allowed to purchase guns as a civilian?

Or is this just crazy talk on my part where I desperately just want to infringe on peoples rights?

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https://www.dallasnews.com/news/poli...outputType=amp

AUSTIN — Gov. Greg Abbott rejected the need for gun control and instead emphasized the importance of mental health funding in an interview on Sunday about the mass shooting at an Allen shopping mall.

Boy, if only Republicans actually voted for money for mental health services!

This would be less shitty and hypocritical if the same governor didn't cut $200M from the state's HHS department to fund some political virtue signaling at the border. But it hits a bit different when you remember that the very funding that the Republicans say is necessary is also the very funding they're happy to redistribute at the drop of a hat.

Almost as if they genuinely don't care and consistently refuse to take any action to prevent these kinds of mass shootings from being, at this point, a daily occurrence.

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https://twitter.com/GavinNewsom/stat...90651200864256

Republican governor Greg Abbott out there arguing strict gun laws don't work because California had mass shootings too.

Meanwhile looking at actual rates of gun death - https://giffords.org/lawcenter/resou.../?scorecard=CA

California and its "strict" gun laws result in 9 gun related deaths per 100K, 39% below the national average

https://giffords.org/lawcenter/resou.../?scorecard=TX

Texas and its "loose" gun laws see well over a 50% increase over California, with 15.6 gun related deaths per 100K, around 7% above the national average.

I wonder if gun laws and a state-level culture that doesn't worship firearms as if they are divine has something to do with this?

[PACOX]

The usual suspects were churping nonstop about this and that when the migrant killed a bunch of people but are hush mouth when we get to our usual domestic terrorist suspects?


They want to blame gun violence on everything but loose gun laws, poor healthcare, and brain rotting rhetoric.


I can't let my mind imagine what might prompt a wake up call because I feel like we've traversed the spectrum at this point.

[s_bushido]

I can't let my mind imagine what might prompt a wake up call because I feel like we've traversed the spectrum at this point.

There is nothing. These are lunatics who believe (or who are supported by people who believe) that owning guns is a fucking human right.

[Grinning Serpent]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_May_...rbia_shootings

Not sure if this case has been mentioned here. Anyhow, in short: a couple of days ago there was a school shooting in Serbia. In response to this one single incident, the minister of education has resigned and they are strictening the gun laws in such a way that it should reduce the number of guns the public has by 90%.

What was gun crime etc like prior to this, though? For example, Kiwis banned AR-15 type rifles after Christchurch, but what was the point? There had not been any shootings of that nature prior to Christchurch, nor was there much crime in general (I'm lead to believe that New Zealand is basically paradise, but I'm sure people who live there could point out the flaws of the place. But maybe there's a fuckin reason the Maori and other indigenous peoples decided to stick around rather than trying to move somewhere else, eh?) Moreover, Christchurch was committed by an Australian, not a Kiwi, and the guns were not legally obtained.

I mean, if the people decide that such weapons should not be available and there are sufficient votes to make it happen, then that's that. But at least in the case of New Zealand, it seemed completely and utterly pointless. It was political theater. I don't know if that's the case for Serbia.

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Weird how there seem to be quite a few of those. If only we could add basic checks like, "Do you post positively about nazi shit on public facing social media?" before selling people guns. That seems like a simple, common sense requirement that might keep weapons out of that hands of some literal fuckin murderous nazi's.

Come on, dude. You aren't stupid. You *KNOW* that this sort of thing would immediately be used against the very people the fascists are trying to oppress and brutalize. What's that line RATM wrote in that one song? "Some of those that work forces, burn crosses?"

Or, hey, what about the 50's and McCarthyism and the Commie panic? What about reconstruction era and freedmen? What about Jim Crow era and Black people? Or the 60's and Black people? Or today and Black people?

Yeah, yeah. "We can fix that too." Miss me with that, though. It's gonna take us a long, *long* time to fix what's fucked about our justice system and its enforcers, and I would greatly prefer that we do not give them more opportunities to abuse the people they hate before that happens.

Then again I'm wondering where the fuck the Second Amendment types are whenever the nazi's do show up, because they never seem to show up to try to scare away the literal folks whose ideology requires genocide.

It's all talk, like so much else. People like to say about Sandy Hook, that if a bunch of children being murdered didn't convince us to pass gun control, nothing would. For me, I kind of look at Jan 6th - literally an attempt to overturn a legal and valid democratic election to place a dictator in power - as that watershed moment for the 2A muh tyrannay nutters.

There's your tyranny, *right fuckin there.* You said you needed those guns so you could shoot tyranny, right? Cool, go shoot it! It's right there!!!

It's a bunch of machismo bullshit. LARPing in the most pathetic of ways.