USA Gun Rights/Gun Control Discussion Thread

[Jason-SilverStarApple]

Howdy, this is the USA-Centric Gun Rights/Gun Control Discussion Thread!

Here's my two cents:

Remember that time a mass shooter attacked some church in Texas, and was immediately stopped and shot by some old man with a big iron on his hip? A Sig Sauer, if I recall the Big Iron parody song sung about him correctly. Just one good man with a gun shot the criminal, saved every life at that church. Nobody had to wait for the cops to show up because at least one good person with a gun was already there.

Remember that time a gay nightclub called Pulse got shot up by a homophobe in Orlando, Florida? Omar Mateen. His name is remembered because he successfully killed people. And if one person in that club had a gun, that one person could have shot the criminal and saved the day.

Gun stores don't get robbed, but helpless and defenseless stores do.

No compromises made with the anti-gun lobbyists will ever make them happy, because they will never stop trying to chip away at America's second amendment rights. A law against guns with more than 11 bullets here, a law against guns with more than 9 bullets a while later, all to disarm good people so the increased crime rates they cause can be blamed on gun rights by anti-gun lobbyists for clout.

No amount of draconian laws will ever allow the government or its police to stop all crime, or all sales of illegal firearms. When cops are called, they typically show up long after most of the bodies have cooled. All gun control laws do is disarm law-abiding citizens and make it easier for criminals to prey on them. The war on drugs has been more successful than the government's war on guns, and if you know how badly that has gone, that's saying something.

Anyway, that's my two cents. Discuss the topic here, since I got warned for answering someone else's questions about it in the general politics thread.

[Anacybele]

Excellent post! You're basically saying exactly what my stepdad and I agree on. Though I also have to add one thing, people outside the military don't need to have weapons like assault rifles. A simple pistol or whatever and some gun training should be enough. Also, thorough background checks for people who buy guns. Because we still don't want guns falling into the hands of people who are cuckoo.

Because remember Sandy Hook Elementary School? Right before Christmas 2013, a mentally messed up teenage kid shot and killed 20 little kids. Little. Kids. And two teachers. Right before Christmas. These kids were getting excited about Santa bringing them presents and their lives were needlessly taken. Schools will always be defenseless because they don't want guns and stuff around the kids. Guns fall into the hands like those of that messed up teenager, and we'll have another incident like this one. The mentally unstable can't be allowed guns.

Law-abiding citizens with gun training and no history of crime or severe mental illness should be the ones allowed to have guns for self defense.

Edited March 17, 2020 by Anacybele

[Shoblongoo]

As has previously been stated by another poster, America is the only developed nation behind-the-curve enough that this is even still a discussion.

And parents in other developed countries tell their children "Why would you want to go to an unsafe country like America. Do you want to get shot? Go somewhere safe like Canada or Australia or Japan" when discussing their options for something like study abroad programs.

You have more violence, more incidence of violence escalating to deadly violence, and more  preventable deaths when you have a population running around with casual civilian access to firearms.  

You also have higher incidence of cops overreacting and murdering people before taking time to fully assess whether or not there is a legitimate law enforcement need to use lethal force, because its always in their head that they have to assume they could be dealing with someone who is armed.  
_____

If you want to be intellectually honest about your support for 'gun rights' in America, just come out and say: I believe the individual freedom to own and operate a firearm is more important then the public health and safety downside of widespread gun violence, and should be protected as a higher priority of public policy.

But don't be obtuse about it and try to argue that having everyone who wants one running around with glocks and rifles and shotguns makes us safer than countries that disallow this, because thats just demonstrably false and you're going to get hammered on that. 
 

Edited March 17, 2020 by Shoblongoo

[Etrurian emperor]

I think the main argument that guns improve safety and reduce crimes has one fatal weakness. 

America is just about the only country where its so easy to get guns and it doesn't seem very safe compared to the country that do not have guns. My country doesn't have guns and we don't have a wave of crimes and stores getting robbed every day. Just about every other country in Europe is like that too. The population doesn't have guns yet everyone is still mostly safe. Not only are European countries safe but America has a reputation of not being a particularly safe place to be in. 

Americans often like to argue that certain things like gun regulations or healthcare just don't work and are impossible to implement but in many of such cases the rest of the world already implemented these supposedly impossible measures ages ago. 

Edited March 17, 2020 by Etrurian emperor

[Shoblongoo]

There's three (3) primary factors that affect prevalence of violent crime variance by country:

1)  Poverty Rates
2)  Education Levels
3)  Access to Guns

(1) and (2) are superseding factors over (3); which is to say regardless of access to guns, the countries with richer and more educated populations are generally going to have less violence then countries with poorer and less educated populations. 

But when you compare countries of comparable developmental levels (i.e. first world countries to other first world countries), such that variance in poverty rates and education levels is relatively low, the main factor explaining the difference in rates of violence is access to guns.
_____


America consistently ranks as so violent and having such a high incidence of gun deaths that we're not only dead last of the first world countries;  we're closer to countries like Zimbabwe in prevalence of gun violence and public safety threats therefrom then to countries with a modern take on gun control laws. (And I use the phrase 'modern take on gun control laws,' because the American opposition thereto is primarily steeped in 18th century political theory. Which the 'gun rights' crowd purports to be infallible and something we can never update or advance beyond, no matter how society develops and the needs of public policy change)  



We know what works.

We know what doesn't work.

And we just don't want to feel shitty about refusing to protect public health and safety. So we lie and put out platitudes to the effect of the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun and make up stories about how all those guns actually make us safer--its not just gun owners being selfish and refusing to make reasonable concessions to improve country conditions--to mentally insulate ourselves from a sense of culpability for the consequences of our choices. 

Edited March 17, 2020 by Shoblongoo

[Etrurian emperor]

6 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

And we just don't want to feel shitty about refusing to protect public health and safety. So we lie and put out platitudes to the effect of the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun and make up stories about how all those guns actually make us safer-

And blaming video games when it all goes wrong of course. 

[Shoblongoo]

1 hour ago, Etrurian emperor said:

And blaming video games when it all goes wrong of course. 

Or mental health. Or lack of armed guards in every public venue.

Or anything other than the actual venue.
_______
 

3 hours ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

Remember that time a mass shooter attacked some church in Texas, and was immediately stopped and shot by some old man with a big iron on his hip? 

Remember that time a gay nightclub called Pulse got shot up by a homophobe in Orlando, Florida? Omar Mateen. His name is remembered because he successfully killed people. And if one person in that club had a gun, that one person could have shot the criminal and saved the day.

This argument is a particularly meritless one because it purports to do a cost-benefit analysis while counting the purported 'benefit' of increased chance of being able to fend off an armed attacker, without factoring in the greater detriment of the increased chance that you're gonna at some point in the course of going about your daily life encounter an armed attacker in the first place.

If "Country A" has 3 gun related attacks in a given time span and no one is able to defend against the attacker until after the police arrive.

And "Country B" has 400 gun attacks in that same span of time, and something like 10% of the attackers are thwarted by the fabled good guy with a gun (and honestly, thats probably being crazy over-optimistic as to how often you actually get that outcome)

..."Country B"  isn't safer then "Country A" because in Country B,  if you're attacked with a gun u can shoot back.... (thats not a "benefit"; thats mitigation of damages. The safer country is the one where you're much less likely to ever get shot at in the first place)

And yet this is what we are asked to accept as sound reasoning when told that the answer to gun violence is more guns. 

Edited March 17, 2020 by Shoblongoo

[XRay]

Jesus Christ. And this guy was telling me off about using Wikipedia and he does not even bother to cite or anything.

1 hour ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

Remember that time a mass shooter attacked some church in Texas, and was immediately stopped and shot by some old man with a big iron on his hip? A Sig Sauer, if I recall the Big Iron parody song sung about him correctly. Just one good man with a gun shot the criminal, saved every life at that church. Nobody had to wait for the cops to show up because at least one good person with a gun was already there.

Remember that time a gay nightclub called Pulse got shot up by a homophobe in Orlando, Florida? Omar Mateen. His name is remembered because he successfully killed people. And if one person in that club had a gun, that one person could have shot the criminal and saved the day.

Sure, I agree with that argument. But that is pretty much it.

1 hour ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

Gun stores don't get robbed, but helpless and defenseless stores do.

Google exists, use it.

1 hour ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

No compromises made with the anti-gun lobbyists will ever make them happy, because they will never stop trying to chip away at America's second amendment rights. A law against guns with more than 11 bullets here, a law against guns with more than 9 bullets a while later, all to disarm good people so the increased crime rates they cause can be blamed on gun rights by anti-gun lobbyists for clout.

Read the Second Amendment.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

I appreciate that conservative judges are trying to interpret the Second Amendment loosely to make it sounds like individuals have the right bear arms, but anyone with half a brain and an understanding of English knows that the right to bear arms is coupled with the responsibility of being a part of some organized security force.

I agree with my conservative counterparts on the position that people should have the right to bear arms regardless of being part of a militia, but dragging the Constitution into it, literally ignoring half the Amendment, and twisting its words to mean something else is not right. If they had half a brain, they would have amended the Bill of Rights years ago to remove the language on militia to change the Second Amendment to give individuals the right to own guns.

1 hour ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

No amount of draconian laws will ever allow the government or its police to stop all crime, or all sales of illegal firearms. When cops are called, they typically show up long after most of the bodies have cooled. All gun control laws do is disarm law-abiding citizens and make it easier for criminals to prey on them. The war on drugs has been more successful than the government's war on guns, and if you know how badly that has gone, that's saying something.

If you think the mass incarceration of minorities and the proliferation of drugs means the War on Drugs is successful, you really need to expand your news sources beyond right wing media.

You are starting to sound like those people who thinks it is okay for white people to abuse addictive Opioids, but the second a black man smokes weed he deserves to be in jail. As a civic nationalist, I despise ethno nationalists because they give us a neoliberals and neoconservatives a bad reputation, and we already have an image problem to deal with.

51 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

I believe the individual freedom to own and operate a firearm is more important then the public health and safety downside of widespread gun violence, and should be protected as a higher priority of public policy.

8 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

We know what works.

We know what doesn't work.

I think we need stronger background checks and licensing requirements. I personally think it is worth it to keep guns around despite the public health risks involved, but if we have stronger gun ownership requirements and can enforce those laws, I think we can still have the best of both worlds where law abiding citizens can have all the guns they want and the public will still be safe, as Switzerland and other countries show that it is possible.

Banning guns oversimplifies the problem in my opinion, and I think there are better solutions than that while still maintaining as much freedom as possible.

[Shoblongoo]

21 minutes ago, XRay said:

Read the Second Amendment.

See Again (And I use the phrase 'modern take on gun control laws,' because the American opposition thereto is primarily steeped in 18th century political theory. Which the 'gun rights' crowd purports to be infallible and something we can never update or advance beyond, no matter how society develops and the needs of public policy change)  

We've made major changes to the Constitution as necessary to correct founding-era deficiencies before. (Slavery. Women's Suffrage. Birthright Citizenship. Etc.) 

Honestly--if the second amendment at this point serves only to prevent us from having the same legal regulations of firearms that have been successfully implemented in other nations as a remedy to major gun violence.

Then the second amendment no longer has any legitimate function and is bad law. 

[Benice]

Violence doesn't subtract from itself; it multiplies. The problem with the gun law, at least in my opinion, is that it was made at a time where muskets were the firearm of the day. Something like a school shooting would be impossible because a musket can fire once every three minutes or so, and they were incredibly faulty. (And I don't think schools were a big thing back then either; they certainly weren't in europe.) Now we have guns that can fire three HUNDRED times every second, which can evidently do a lot more damage than one musket. It's a law that was made in a time where you couldn't kill a hundred people by pressing a button or two. Now people can; It's time for things to change.

57 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

If "Country A" has 3 gun related attacks in a given time span and no one is able to defend against the attacker until after the police arrive.

And "Country B" has 400 gun attacks in that same span of time, and something like 10% of the attackers are thwarted by the fabled good guy with a gun (and honestly, thats probably being crazy over-optimistic as to how often you actually get that outcome)

..."Country B"  isn't safer then "Country A" because in Country B,  because if you're attacked with a gun can shoot back.... (thats not a "benefit"; thats mitigation of damages. The safer country is the one where you're much less likely to ever get shot at in the first place)

Yeah, this too. Percentage matters little without proportion.

[Hanes]

I remember reading somewhere (like a facebook political meme, so take it with a grain of salt) that Japan allows some of its citizens to have guns but with intense psychological exams and background checks, and as a result of that only 2 people were killed by guns in 2018 or 2019, I don't recall.

Even if that's not true, I agree with what my friend said "I would only accept someone have a gun if they get a good check of themselves AND everyone with proximity to the gun owner (children, wife, nephew, parents, friends, etc.) are checked too" I don't think there's an easy way to say "background check" in spanish so he didn't say that but it was pretty much referred to in context.

And that's the best way in my opinion, I don't think guns should be sold like your average joe's taco stand but I believe that it's better to have a legal regulated market than make it illegal and have a black  market going on for guns.

Also "good guy shots bad guy" isn't a made up story... it really does happen! By just showing your gun to a burglar when they break in, you can usually dissuade them from either shooting you or robbing you, and the OP already lists two times someone based proved why gun ownrship isn't bad.

[Tryhard]

3 hours ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

Remember that time a mass shooter attacked some church in Texas, and was immediately stopped and shot by some old man with a big iron on his hip? A Sig Sauer, if I recall the Big Iron parody song sung about him correctly. Just one good man with a gun shot the criminal, saved every life at that church. Nobody had to wait for the cops to show up because at least one good person with a gun was already there.

Well, there's anecdotes in the other direction, as well. Remember how the armed cop that was at the Parkland shooting stood outside for 48 minutes while he heard gunshots and did nothing to help?

Simple put, a high-intensity situation is easy for anyone to say they would do "the right thing" in, but very few actually would when push comes to shove. In fact, it's quite unreasonable to expect people to, and if anyone proclaims that they would be the hero in such a situation, I would assume them arrogant.

3 hours ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

No compromises made with the anti-gun lobbyists will ever make them happy, because they will never stop trying to chip away at America's second amendment rights. A law against guns with more than 11 bullets here, a law against guns with more than 9 bullets a while later, all to disarm good people so the increased crime rates they cause can be blamed on gun rights by anti-gun lobbyists for clout.

No amount of draconian laws will ever allow the government or its police to stop all crime, or all sales of illegal firearms. When cops are called, they typically show up long after most of the bodies have cooled. All gun control laws do is disarm law-abiding citizens and make it easier for criminals to prey on them. The war on drugs has been more successful than the government's war on guns, and if you know how badly that has gone, that's saying something.

Anyway, that's my two cents. Discuss the topic here, since I got warned for answering someone else's questions about it in the general politics thread.

There's more guns than people in the US. Frankly, it's pretty impossible to stop circulation of weapons at this point.

Here's the problem: there are other countries that don't have a gun culture, most of them banning firearms without a sufficient reason in Europe, and the US compares to them by having a four to five times higher homicide rate. So guns make America safer?

Edited March 17, 2020 by Tryhard

[Captain Karnage]

Gonna lock this until I get some time to decide what to do

Decided to reopen the topic. 

Edited March 18, 2020 by Captain Karnage

[Johann]

Continuing from the other thread--

15 hours ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

Do you understand why what you just said is laughably wrong?

"A "good guy with a gun" is actually really, really bad for something like an active shooter situation." indeed. Christ, that's right up there with "If you kill your enemies they win".

You look at the two examples I brought up and tell me if the police showed up in time to save anyone. Then you tell me if the straws you're grasping at have any worth.

Gun control laws don't stop gun crime, they just make life worse for law-abiding citizens. Stop supporting gun control laws, and stop trying to make life worse for law-abiding citizens.

I'm literally explaining to you the best practices used by police nationwide, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI; when the situation involves a random person running around with a gun, the last thing you want is another random person also running around with a gun. The police and other responders can't tell if this "good guy" is a good guy or actually another shooter. They have to treat anyone with a weapon as another shooter.

The example you brought up of the old man at church is an outlier, not the norm. He was the church's head of security, not a random guy who happened to bring his gun to the service. Also, the gunman had already killed two people before being stopped. With some very basic gun laws, it's very likely that the gunman wouldn't have been able to get a gun in the first place, while the old man who saved the day would likely still have his.

In a nightclub, if a person starts shooting, it doesn't matter if other people have guns, nightclubs are too crowded to get any kind of accuracy. A "good guy with a gun" who actually takes a shot in a nightclub will more than likely end up hitting another innocent person.

[Strullemia]

Changing laws isn’t the only thing that need to change in America, their gun culture also needs to change.

 

Switzerland also “loves guns” and has their own gun culture but they don’t have a mass shooting problem like America.

[Jason-SilverStarApple]

6 hours ago, Strullemia said:

Changing laws isn’t the only thing that need to change in America, their gun culture also needs to change.

 

Switzerland also “loves guns” and has their own gun culture but they don’t have a mass shooting problem like America.

Yeah, about America's so-called mass shooting problem...

You realize there's only about one every few years, right? That's why the mainstream media makes such a big deal out of one, whenever it does happen. Then the anti-gun rights extremists inflate their phony statistics by including ordinary gun violence and gang-on-gang violence as mass shootings.

 

22 hours ago, XRay said:

Jesus Christ. And this guy was telling me off about using Wikipedia and he does not even bother to cite or anything.

Sure, I agree with that argument. But that is pretty much it.

Google exists, use it.

Read the Second Amendment.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

I appreciate that conservative judges are trying to interpret the Second Amendment loosely to make it sounds like individuals have the right bear arms, but anyone with half a brain and an understanding of English knows that the right to bear arms is coupled with the responsibility of being a part of some organized security force.

I agree with my conservative counterparts on the position that people should have the right to bear arms regardless of being part of a militia, but dragging the Constitution into it, literally ignoring half the Amendment, and twisting its words to mean something else is not right. If they had half a brain, they would have amended the Bill of Rights years ago to remove the language on militia to change the Second Amendment to give individuals the right to own guns.

If you think the mass incarceration of minorities and the proliferation of drugs means the War on Drugs is successful, you really need to expand your news sources beyond right wing media.

You are starting to sound like those people who thinks it is okay for white people to abuse addictive Opioids, but the second a black man smokes weed he deserves to be in jail. As a civic nationalist, I despise ethno nationalists because they give us a neoliberals and neoconservatives a bad reputation, and we already have an image problem to deal with.

I think we need stronger background checks and licensing requirements. I personally think it is worth it to keep guns around despite the public health risks involved, but if we have stronger gun ownership requirements and can enforce those laws, I think we can still have the best of both worlds where law abiding citizens can have all the guns they want and the public will still be safe, as Switzerland and other countries show that it is possible.

Banning guns oversimplifies the problem in my opinion, and I think there are better solutions than that while still maintaining as much freedom as possible.

Could you stop insulting me?

Your side doesn't want stronger background checks, your side hates gun rights and want them gone. How many times must I say "I challenge you to justify California's insane and arbitrary limitations on how good a gun can be before the public is no longer allowed to own it" before one of you will actually try to justify that?

You're twisting the words of the amendment by pretending it only applies to militias, while forgetting that militias are made up of people. The Constitution was written to grant rights to the American people. What's next, are you going to tell me you think the second amendment only applies to muskets, or that the first amendment (the right to free speech) only applies to newspapers?

I compared your side's war on gun rights to the war on drugs because they are both bad things. That's pretty obvious. And you decided to believe I'm a racist who thinks only white people should be allowed to do drugs? What are you smoking? You're starting to sound like a crazy person.

Tell me, if you really "Just want more background checks" and don't think banning guns is the way to go, why aren't you arguing with the lefties who said nonsense like "The pro-gun lobby is successful because there are still guns in America and I think that should be changed"? Is it because gun-fearing extremists like that are useful for the anti-human rights cause? The constant erosion of civil rights is a bad thing. Speak out against it!

While my opinions on drugs are irrelevant here, "Dread Pirate Roberts and his Silk Road did more good for the world than America's failed war on drugs ever did. With the Silk Road, dealers can sell their product to anyone out there without having to have gang wars over territory. No innocents will get caught in the crossfire of gang wars if there are no gang wars. And those who sell sub-par products get low scores for it, while trusted and successful dealers get high scores. You also can't buy drugs on The Silk Road without already having the money, so you won't end up getting in debt to drug sellers. No drug deal can end in a mass shooting on the Silk Road because it's all done online and over the post. It's a good thing, and that's why Big Government tried so hard to destroy it and imprison its creator and rob him blind. I'm a Libertarian, that means I believe in human rights. Including gun rights. You're never going to eliminate all drug use, no matter how hard you try. So you should organize and legitimize it, while forcing standards and taxes onto it. Suddenly, drug deals gone bad end in civil court cases instead of shootouts. And you're never going to end all gun crime in America, just as you're never going to end all crime in any country. And you are never going to "Remove all guns from the country" no matter how hard left-wing media outlets try to slander gun culture and its role in American culture. All you can do is let people keep their right to defend themselves from anyone who wants to kill/rape/rob them, instead of trying to take away a little bit more of that right every year.

Also, Civic Nationalism will always "have an image problem" for as long as far-left media megacorp monopolies sponsored by far-left politicians see a profit in convincing millions of easily-duped people to hate themselves, hate their country, hate their nation's ideals, hate their basic human rights, and most of all, hate everyone who likes those things. Politicians who hate America and want to rob it blind see a profit in convincing idiots that they should hate Americans and blindly trust in anti-American politicians.

Edited March 18, 2020 by Jason-SilverStarApple

[Etrurian emperor]

41 minutes ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

Also, Civic Nationalism will always "have an image problem" for as long as far-left media megacorp monopolies sponsored by far-left politicians see a profit in convincing millions of easily-duped people to hate themselves, hate their country, hate their nation's ideals, hate their basic human rights, and most of all, hate everyone who likes those things. Politicians who hate America and want to rob it blind see a profit in convincing idiots that they should hate Americans and blindly trust in anti-American politicians.

Have you considered that the other side has the same beliefs about the side that you belong to?

Most critics of Trump don't just hate what he stands for but they also see his presidency as a scam designed for the profit of himself and his cronies. Like you they also see the supporters of this politician they dislike as being easily duped. Those on the other side see Trump  as the one who wants to rob America blind, they see Fox News and Breitbart as shady megacorps who are deceiving easily duped people and they see the NRA or CEO's who obstruct the fight against climate change as corrupt people who find their personal profit more important then the common good. 

 

[Shoblongoo]

43 minutes ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

About America’s so-called mass shooting problem; you realize there’s only one every few years, right?

You’re either lying or so uninformed about this topic, you probably should have educated yourself about it before making this thread 

Edited March 18, 2020 by Shoblongoo

[XRay]

48 minutes ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

Could you stop insulting me?

Your side doesn't want stronger background checks, your side hates gun rights and want them gone.

Cause you are not listening to the other side nor multiple sides of the argument. You fail to distinguish the difference between moderates and the left. You are throwing buzzwords out there with no idea what it means. You ignore information presented to you. You do not cite your sources.

I have more faith in the truthfulness of a high schooler's essay even if all sources the student cited was Wikipedia, because at least I know the student is not making stuff up and I can always trace the information of where Wikipedia got their information from.

54 minutes ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

You're twisting the words of the amendment by pretending it only applies to militias, while forgetting that militias are made up of people. The Constitution was written to grant rights to the American people. What's next, are you going to tell me you think the second amendment only applies to muskets, or that the first amendment (the right to free speech) only applies to newspapers?

Militias are an organized group sanctioned by the government. If the right to bear arms was meant for individuals, there would have been no need to mention militias as a vital component to protecting the government.

The best way to protect gun rights is to remove the language on militias.

59 minutes ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

I compared your side's war on gun rights to the war on drugs because they are both bad things. That's pretty obvious. And you decided to believe I'm a racist who thinks only white people should be allowed to do drugs? What are you smoking? You're starting to sound like a crazy person.

You were saying the War on Drugs was more successful than the War on Guns. The War on Drugs is a failure. There is mass incarceration and drug addiction and overdose is still rampant. The War on Guns on the other hand is still a success for gun rights, as fire arms are still easily accessible, and if you do not like your state's law on guns, just go buy it from another state and bring it back to your home state.

1 hour ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

Tell me, if you really "Just want more background checks" and don't think banning guns is the way to go, why aren't you arguing with the lefties who said nonsense like "The pro-gun lobby is successful because there are still guns in America and I think that should be changed"? Is it because gun-fearing extremists like that are useful for the anti-human rights cause? The constant erosion of civil rights is a bad thing. Speak out against it!

I have already argued with them. Because they actually listened and acknowledged my arguments, I do not have to keep arguing with them over and over again, even if we still disagree. They also do not pull crap out of their ass pretending they are facts.

1 hour ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

Also, Civic Nationalism will always "have an image problem" for as long as far-left media megacorp monopolies sponsored by far-left politicians see a profit in convincing millions of easily-duped people to hate themselves, hate their country, hate their nation's ideals, hate their basic human rights, and most of all, hate everyone who likes those things. Politicians who hate America and want to rob it blind see a profit in convincing idiots that they should hate Americans and blindly trust in anti-American politicians.

If you are not trolling, you need to seriously think about the crap you are saying here.

You have no idea on how politically diverse the media industry is. You have no idea what monopolies are. You have no idea what politicians on the left are saying. You have no idea on the beliefs of the people on the left. You have no idea on the beliefs of moderates either. You have no idea what basic human rights are.

[Benice]

...Wow, this thread went the wrong way fast. Perhaps we could try to be a bit more respectful, people?

8 hours ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

What's next, are you going to tell me you think the second amendment only applies to muskets,

Honestly, it really should. Muskets have the off-chance of killing one person in three minutes. Modern guns can kill about 500 people in a minute, since machine guns are legal for ownership in texas as long as they've been registered. I'd say that this is a problem. 

Plus, what the heck would any civilian use a machine gun for? A pistol or something to defend your family, sure, if you'vepassed tests and stuff. A machine gun? With few regulations? Why? Nothing good could come from that.

https://www.britannica.com/technology/machine-gun. 

https://www.gunstocarry.com/gun-laws-state/texas-gun-laws/

That said, I do think BOTH SIDES need to be a bit more repectful to one another. We're all humans.

Edited March 18, 2020 by Benice

[eclipse]

3 hours ago, Jason-SilverStarApple said:

You realize there's only about one every few years, right?

Source this.  If you can't/won't, I'm going to assume that you're arguing in bad faith.

[Tryhard]

14 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Source this.  If you can't/won't, I'm going to assume that you're arguing in bad faith.

I suppose it depends on your definition of 'mass shooting'. Most official sources classify it as four victims or more being injured, fatally or otherwise, including the shooter.

The video he posted seemed to think this was an unreasonable metric for a claim of a mass shooting. I don't really see the problem with it being defined as four or more to be honest.

Edited March 18, 2020 by Tryhard

[eclipse]

2 minutes ago, Tryhard said:

I suppose it depends on your definition of 'mass shooting'. Most official sources classify it as four victims or more being injured, fatally or otherwise, including the shooter.

The video he posted seemed to think this was an unreasonable metric for a claim of a mass shooting. I don't really see the problem to be honest.

Without a basis to judge what a "mass shooting" is, bringing it up as a counter-argument is utterly pointless.  Hence why he needs to define it, and needs to be precise about it.

[Shoblongoo]

Imagine living in a country where mass shootings are so common you argue they should just be called “regular gun violence,” and thinking that somehow counters the point that your country has a problem with gun violence.

 

[Benice]

For the mass shootings every few years thing... Uhh... Well, I'll just leave a few websites here.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/oct/02/america-mass-shootings-gun-violence

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mass-shootings-2019-more-than-days-365/

https://www.vox.com/a/mass-shootings-america-sandy-hook-gun-violence