PyroPlazma
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Posts posted by PyroPlazma
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Quote
You're saying this like politicians back in the day weren't in the same boat on their own hot-button issues. Hence why I'm seriously questioning your stance.
They were? What's wrong with my stance then?
QuoteIronically, that POTUS you so despise is the one that's not going to restrict your guns (his voter base would be unhappy).
Actions speak louder than words. POTUS has done absolutely nothing to strengthen gun rights.
QuoteBut still, voting is powerful -far more than guns, which is why I think it's a little odd that you're so fixated on guns.
You make it sound as if I'm advocating for a violent revolution over peaceful elections. I like having an armed population that in theory (most likely won't these days) could help if the government oversteps it bounds. But that's going into other territory.
QuoteYeah, because THEY DIDN'T EXIST WHEN THE CONSTITUTION WAS WRITTEN. So bringing that up as a "nuh-uh it isn't in the Constitution" is mentally dishonest.
What's stopping them from writing cars into the constitution?
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1 minute ago, eclipse said:
You're saying this as if humanity suddenly took a huge downward spiral or something. News flash: it didn't.
IMO voting is a much bigger threat to politicians than firearms are. One of these can legally get rid of them.
You know what else requires a license, insurance, test, and is also responsible for a lot of deaths? Cars. Yet we don't bat an eye at those regulations.
Humanity never took a downward spiral because it's always been at the bottom of the barrel anyway (call me cynical) But the founding fathers where in a much better place due to the circumstances to right a document of supreme governing authority for the people. Do you really have faith in our politicians to act in good faith? A sizable portion of them don't even believe in climate and actively fight to deny science and potentially ruin the earth for future generation.
I'm all for voting first and foremost. Given the state of the American electorate these days being brain washed by a giant fake news media outlet (fox news) and tons of independent host (clowns like Rush Limbaugh) I wouldn't put much faith in them either. Regardless of voting or not I'd still like to hold on to my guns. Especially when our current POTUS is literally held up and supported by ethno state pushing white nationalist bigots who they themselves are often armed to the teeth that our government refuses to classify as terrorist groups.
Ah yes it was only a matter of time before the car false equivalence showed up
1. Cars are NOT a constitution right, if they were rest assured I'd be against their continued licensing
2. You don't need a license to drive a car, you only need a license to drive a car on public roads. Government buys and builds those roads so you have to play by their rules to drive on them. You absolutely don't need a license if driving around on private property.
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Just now, eclipse said:
Figurative sense, of course. Given the religious leanings of the ones that wrote it, attributing that to the Christian God would be utterly insulting.
I think I remember something way back in my studies about how the Constitution was meant to be changed as times changed or something like that (hence why no source). . .yet here we are.
I always say this in regards to changing (more specifically updating) the constitution.
Yes the constitution is 200+ years old and very out date.
It needs to be updated, but at the same time it doesn't need to be updated
The founding fathers are long gone and the people at the helm now have far worse agendas then ever before
Any attempt at a convention for the updating the constitution would end up with us being far worse off than we already are
Like I don't have a problem with the principle of requiring a license to own a firearm until you realize how certain states handle it and just how many politicians don't believe in private citizens owning firearms. If you gave the government the power to control licensing for firearms you'd see a similar situation with regards to early voter suppression of minority voting through poll taxes, dumb literacy test, inconvenient polling locations/tomes etc.
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10 minutes ago, eclipse said:
So, you two. . .how's the wars in the Middle East going?
I think you're married a little too hard to the idea that the Constitution is the word of God. Which. . .it isn't.
If you're saying God in a theocratic sense, then I must inform you I'm not religious.
If you're saying God in a figurative sense, then you're right. The constitution is the supreme authority of the land. It's been heavily gutted and undermined in recent history by power hungry politicians exploiting a fearful politically apathetic population.
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1 minute ago, Jotari said:
Well the government could, they shouldn't, very probably won't and legally aren't allowed, but they still could, and that's precisely what the second amendment was created to prevent. My point is that the the spirit of the second amendment, that being the people militarily empowered to take on a tyrannical government, simply isn't possible to follow in the modern world (or well, at least modern USA; Iceland is probably exactly what the writers of the constitution would want) due to how powerful military grade weapons now are. A government will always have way more force, knowledge and experience at hand than a citizenry can muster against unless the government elects to just not have an army at all. The closest thing you could probably reasonably get in America (and I say reasonably because with having a military based in every second country in the world it's highly unlikely) would be state militarizes instead of a centralized army (and well the whole civil war fiasco would be enough to convince people that that's not a good idea). So long as the USA remains a major military power in the world the spirit of the second amendment is not being fulfilled (and let's face it, the USA has garnered so much influence and power in the world that they literally couldn't stop being a heavily militarized nation at this stage).
That's a massive oversimplification of what would in reality be a very complex situation. That's why I don't like talking about this, too many unknowns and variables to deal with. But just so you know armed uprisings/revolutions do still happen in the modern day.
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10 hours ago, eclipse said:
I'm looking at this purely from the Second Amendment standpoint.
Yeah, it means that you've made quite the logical leap.
The crux of the gun control issue in America is that it's in the Bill of Rights. So to completely remove guns means that the Constitution needs to be amended. Yet it's also a good idea to make sure that the laws of the land make sense in the given context, because at one point in time, it was illegal to have alcohol. So taking those two facts into account:
1. No, America in its current state can't fully get rid of guns.
2. However, it may not be a bad idea to revisit that amendment, and see if it can be updated such that the spirit is intact, but the constraints are more in-line with current times.Sure you can legally amend the constitution, but good luck with that. It's intentionally designed to be hard to admit. Bringing up 18th in reality is a terrible example, because the entire basis of that amendment was someone exercising his personal agenda against alcohol on the whole country. Never mind the fact it was a complete and utter abject failure (just like the war on drugs today) and that it objectively caused far more problems than it ever solved. Lets also not forget the method to push the 18th amendment was hilariously shady and anything but legitimate (just like what gun grabbers do today in regards to getting rid of gun rights).
QuoteYou look at what countries are doing different. You account for the relevant differences in country conditions. And then you look at what results you're getting vs. what results they're getting. Thats how you analyze policy.
Except every time this argument is presented that never happens. It's always a elementary correlation implies causation case. Oh look Britain basically banned all private gun ownership following a massacre in 1996 therefore gun control works!
-Ignoring the fact that the U.K. has never had high rates of gun homicide within its history.
Or the famous "But what about Australia!"???
-Ignoring the fact that Australia also never saw particularly high rates of gun homicide minus a anomalous period around the nineties and was already beginning a steady decline downwards around the time the 1996 law was passed and studies show that said laws had no discernible impact in gun homicide rates.
For more information look here NOTE: Some of those links are broken/no longer exist as a result of time so be prepared to find them yourself.
Quote(This is illustrative of the deficiency in how American gun enthusiasts think about this issue--the You have absolutely zero evidence to back up this notion of more gun control=less gun homicide argument invariably just boils down to dismissing the rest of the worlds experience with this issue as unusable or invalid.)
If you account for all the relevant differences between America and these "developed nations" then you to acknowledge you're no longer comparing on even terms and alot of Americas differences contribute great to its higher gun homicide levels. Likewise other "developed nations" have reasons besides gun policy as to why they have lower gun homicide.
QuoteAnd then you have--what--an 18th century American piece of theocratic political doctrine that posits everybody should have unregulated access to firearms because God wills it as your counterpoint???
No just any document, our nations founding document and one of these longest lasting founding documents in the world! Also "God" is never mentioned once between having the freedom to practice Christian via the 1st amendment so I don't know why you're calling it "theocratic"
QuoteSome types of guns have no legitimate non-military use, and shouldn't be accessible to the civilian populace. Some people shouldn't have guns because of their mental health and criminal histories. Lawful gun owners should have to pass licensing exams, register their firearms, and should have their licence revoked if they commit a particularly egrigious unsafe operation offense.
1. Who put you in charge of defining what guns have "no legitimate non-military use"? What is your basis for determining this? I have carried and fired M4's in the Army and personally own an Ar-15, what difference does it make that I own a functionally identical firearm to the one I use in the military?
2. Criminals/mentally Ill individuals ALREADY AREN'T ALLOWED TO OWN GUNS
3. Why do I have to pass a licensing scheme to exercise a constitutional right? How is it even a right at that point? It's not, I'd be a privilege. At which point the government would overtax and put in overly strenuous requirements to obtain licenses effectively making it impossible for regular citizens to own firearms.
4. "particularly egrigious unsafe operation offense."
What the heck does this even mean^
Let me tell you a little something about legal "rights."
QuoteYou have a constitutional right to free speech. (i.e. the government can't punish you for your speech)
...you can still be punished by the government for terrorist threats if your "speech" is telling someone you're going to mail a pipebomb to their house
...you can still be punished by the government for lewdness with a minor if your "speech" is telling a child to perform sex acts on you
...you can still be punished by the government for inciting a riot if your "speech" is running into a crowded theater and shouting "FIRE!!!"1. That's not speech that's making a real world imminent threat to enact physical violence on another person. See how that kinda not the same thing?
2. Children are not full grown consenting adults and traditional laws and tribulations don't apply to them
3. That's not speech that's knowingly and deliberately misusing a call to action to incite mass action and panic in a situation that did not warrant it resulting in demonstrable harm to other people and public/private property
All of these are horrible non examples of speech. There are already laws on the books which cover all three of these topics. This would be the same manner of saying you have a constitutional right to own firearms, but you don't have a right to shoot people unless they're threatening you or another innocent by-standards life.
QuoteImplicit in every right is the understanding that it is subject to reasonable regulation, to the extent necessary to advance competing legitimate interests of law and public policy. (the keyword there being "Reasonable")
And that a regulation is objectively reasonable if it strongly advances a legitimate interest of government in the least restrictive manner that the interest can be advanced.
...thats how the Second Amendment works...1. Who and what defines "reasonable"?
2. "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."
As per DC v Heller
The Supreme Court held:[46]
(1) The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2–53.
(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2–22.
(b) The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation of the operative clause. The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved. Pp. 22–28.
(c) The Court’s interpretation is confirmed by analogous arms-bearing rights in state constitutions that preceded and immediately followed the Second Amendment. Pp. 28–30.
(d) The Second Amendment’s drafting history, while of dubious interpretive worth, reveals three state Second Amendment proposals that unequivocally referred to an individual right to bear arms. Pp. 30–32.
(e) Interpretation of the Second Amendment by scholars, courts and legislators, from immediately after its ratification through the late 19th century also supports the Court’s conclusion. Pp. 32–47.
(f) None of the Court’s precedents forecloses the Court’s interpretation. Neither United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, nor Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252, refutes the individual-rights interpretation. United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174, does not limit the right to keep and bear arms to militia purposes, but rather limits the type of weapon to which the right applies to those used by the militia, i.e., those in common use for lawful purposes.
(2) Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. Pp. 54–56."
Quotei.e. Lawful use and ownership subject to robust government oversight and regulation. With a license and registration process akin to something like how America currently treats driving privileges + lawful ownership and operation of a motor vehicle.
QuoteFor the spirit of the second amendment to be in anyway fulfilled then the USA would need to massively reduce their defense spending. Because no matter how many guns people stock up, there's no way they could take down the United States army if they decided to go full tyrannical on it. Assault rifles are great for killing crowds of people, not so great at taking on tanks, planes and missiles.
This is the can of worms I don't want to go into because it has far too many variables and undermined factors. I'll just say this. If you think the government can just declare martial law the have the military proceed to start indiscriminately committing wholesale slaughter of its own citizens you're as crazy as the guys who claim 100,000,000 gun owners would rise up and march on D.C......
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3 minutes ago, eclipse said:
That's not what I asked. Can you spot the difference in posting styles? This is super-important, because it'll give you clues towards who to write off and who to pay attention to.
You're right that this is another can of worms entirely. But it's also important to understand that the constitutional writers couldn't have predicted the rate that technology advanced, to the point where having consumer-grade guns for a militia looks silly. Or that people would be crazy enough to unload said guns on their community for no good reason. Giving the people a Final Option to defend themselves from a government gone awry is noble, but as it's written, does it do its job?
Why is having "consumer-grade" firearms available to the general public a "silly" idea? People have performing mass killings since the dawn of civilization, firearms are just another way to do it and not even the most effective means. Also today we live in a world of global telecommunications so when these tragedies happen everyone gets wing of it real quick. It's important to remember that the instant week long 24/7 news cycle mass shootings tend to generate total victims account for less than 1% of total firearm homicide victims.
Whether or not the second amendment is doing its job is entirely up to the individual and how they interpret things. Unfortunately the country these days is so divided and with so many groups having their own agendas (another huge can of worms) in many ways it has honestly failed... That being said there are few examples because most countries disarm their populace and all tyrannical governments disarm their populace that should mean something.
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7 minutes ago, eclipse said:
And that's the biggest argument for having some sort of guns IMO. Or a constitutional convention, at a later date (since your average handgun isn't going to be particularly effective against a modern military).
EDIT: Second-biggest is a first-hand account somewhere in this thread.
A constitutional convention would be a terrible idea IMHO. Like I get that the constitution is over 200 years ago and waaay out of date. But it is also the longest lasting constitution in the world! People have WAAAAAAAAY to many agendas for a constitutional convention to ever turn out well. I guarantee you with the corrupt politicians we have today you'd come out of that far worse than what you would be with the constitution as it stands.
Just look at how much the government has undermined the constitution as it stands today!
The whole deal about civilian up risings in the modern in is a massive can of worms that would probably require its own thread.
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1 minute ago, eclipse said:
Generally, if I'm quoting someone, I want them to answer it.
QuoteTwo questions:
1. Why was that little bit thrown in the Bill of Rights?
2. Assuming that we take that passage (the one that's a link) at face value, how can it be done without guns?1. To protect the newly founded state as
A. It didn't have a particular large standing army and at the time the founding fathers were weary of large standing armies
B. So that the people had the means to secure their rights by force if necessary if peaceful means via the first amendment failed.
Can't stress this enough to read the constitution through the lens of the founding fathers who had just done fighting a bloody revolution for their state against a tyrannical mother nation.
2. Short answer, it can't, Why do you think most politicians are pro gun control. They gawk at the idea of regular citizens having that level of power and them not holding a monopoly on the use of force.
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I'm double posting because for whatever reason this editor refuses to save when I try to paste this to the first postQuote
The police issue is related to the gun control issue, insofar as people getting shot and killed by police in numbers unseen anywhere else in the developed world is part of the American gun violence problem. And insofar as knowledge of how prevalent guns are among the general populace in this country is one of the big reasons why American police are so quick to panic and draw their own weapons when confronting suspects. (Police in countries with strong gun control and who almost never encounter suspects that can shoot back are much less inclined to take a shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach to policing)
Americans have a constitutional right to own firearms. So because the cops are paranoid goons who suck at their job and are incredibly trigger happy (thanks in no part to a broken accountability system that often acquits them of blatant wrongdoings) We the regular citizens have to suffer? You're allowed to legally own and in many cases carry a firearm in America, if you can't handle that fact then you probably shouldn't be a cop.
Also alot of the people cops kill (especially minorities) aren't even armed.....
QuoteI am moderate/lean-right on this issue. From my angle, I want a balance between freedom and safety. I am generally against all kinds of weapon bans, so I am siding with the Right on this particular policy; as long as you are not going out there murdering people for no reason, you can own any kind of weapon you want, with exceptions being weapons that may jeopardize national security like nuclear weapons and other things like that. However, I think we could definitely use stronger background checks and more stringent licensing requirements, so I favor these policies from the Left. Instead of banning weapons, I think a good compromise is to replace all bans with stricter licensing and ownership requirements.
Strict licensing requirements to own firearms runs contrary to the fact it's a constitutional right. What you're proposing would be to turn gun ownership into a privilege not a right. At which point state and local governments will over tax and place needlessly stringent requirements on obtaining licenses to make it impossible for regular citizens to own them.
QuoteConservatives argue it is a right as sacred as the freedom or speech. With how it is phrased in the Bill of Rights though, I do not think it is a right for individuals, as it is strongly tied to the responsibility of the militia or some kind of security force. In my opinion, the Right is bending over backwards arguing it is an individual right like the freedom of speech or trial by jury. While I appreciate that they are trying expand the Second Amendment to include the individual right to bear arms, I think the proper way to do it is to simply remove the language on militia and security. Twisting the words of the Constitution and misinterpreting it to this degree just is not proper in my opinion.
It is a sacred right dude. You do realize the definition of a militia (per the militia act of 1903 is all able bodied men between 17-45 years of age) is that of armed body comprised of regular citizens right? In 2008 the Supreme Court upheld that the second does indeed protect the individual right to own firearms in America.
It's a very easy right to understand within context. The colonist had just finished fighting a bloody revolution to establish their new/own country. The straw that broke the camels back in this case was when the British tried to seize a munitions depot in concord! Not to mention all the other grievances the colonist faced such as unfair taxation, or forced quartering of British troops.
If you actually interpret the constitution within the context of the colonist having just liberated themselves from Great Britain everything makes tons of sense.
They made the first amendment for citizens to legitimately and legally protest the government if they so choose, and then they made the second amendment so that the newfound freedom may be protected by force if necessary!
You're actually the one reading and interpreting it all wrong!
QuoteTwo questions:
1. Why was that little bit thrown in the Bill of Rights?
2. Assuming that we take that passage (the one that's a link) at face value, how can it be done without guns?Are you actually asking us this, or posing this to the other guy?
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9 hours ago, Shoblongoo said:
^^^
This.
...this is true... (See again the Top 3 Predictors of Gun Violence in a Given Country are: [1] Poverty Rates; [2] Education Levels; [3] Gun Laws)
However, the need to address [1] and [2] does not discount the importance of [3].
And while it is true that to bring down America's insane levels of gun violence, we need to be improving education and reducing poverty (and by extension tackling things like healthcare costs and mass incarceration of non-violent drug offenders as public policy problems that are driving up our poverty rates)
...once you've addressed poverty and education, if you wanna get those gun violence stats down to the levels of other developed nations with comparably progressive policies in healthcare and education and the like...
You still have to do some form of gun control.
You have absolutely zero evidence to back up this notion of more gun control=less gun homicide besides broadly comparing America to other countries based on being "developed" (despite this being a massively flawed way to categorize nations as this article breaks down)
You haven't even stated what kinds of measures from said countries you want to implement. Or maybe that's because in most of these "developed" countries which usually just means Europe+Japan+Australia they effectively ban all private/recreational usage of firearms.
It's also worth nothing to the fact that many of these nations (such as the U.K.) have NEVER throughout their entire history seen high levels of gun homicide at any particular point.
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But Wendy/Gwendolyn is the best unit in FE6! /s
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Scarlet- Love Wyvern riders and has a cool upbeat personality, they did her wrong in revelations lol
Reina- I like her character design especially her "X" scar also has a cool class
Elise/Sakura-Really sweat personalities
Effie- Her personality is really cool, I just dislike her character specifically in regards to her armor though
Arthur-Whats not to love here?
Oboro-"You're gonna need stitches!"
Xander-What I want to be
Sakura-what I actually am
Beruka-I love wyvern riders but she scares me
Camilla-Very attractive but her clear mental issues scare me
Selena-Cool design bad/aggresive personality is off putting though
Hana-She seems like an all around good/stand up person
Ryona-Lobster Lord
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7 hours ago, eclipse said:
1. It is painfully obvious when things are copy-pasted. Please don't, and link to the actual source instead.
2. The little plus sign next to Quote enables Multiquote, so I don't have to give out warnings for double-posting.1. I quoted (copy paste lol) relevant things while ALWAYS providing the citations. Plus I always use quotation marks to indicate those as such.
2. Only double posted because the first one was so long in its own right, But if there's a strict no double posting here then I understand.
23 minutes ago, Johann said:Thought we got rid of the gun rights troll, is this a new one?
You're just going to call me or anyone else who disagree with your general sentiment regarding gun control a troll? I laid out a pretty well reasoned argument against the notion of gun control. At least actually go through the trouble of addressing my points individually.
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Quote
I'm relatively neutral on gun control overall. One, because I kinda feel like the cat's out of the bag; the US has had a dysfunctional gun-loving culture for years and that obviously has had an adverse effect on it, but you can't easily fix that with legislation now (maybe a slow change of the culture but that'll take generations). And two, I feel other approaches to reducing crime are more productive: reducing income inequality, increasing the quality of education, having a jusitce system focused on rehabilitation rather than punishment, and increasing mental health awareness... all not only reduce crime but have other merits besides.
If you did these things the gun issue would solve itself. Guns are merely the implement to enact violence in the first place.
QuoteThe only gun control beliefs I hold to strongly are that that civilians don't need to have weapons which can fire multiple times per second (a feature nearly useless for hunting and self-defence, but extremely useful for mass murder), and that guns should be registered in a similar manner to cars (both useful tools capable of killing others if mishandled).
How are you defining "multiple times per second"? You make it sound the only basis or owning anything other than a hunting is committing mass murder. The deadliest mass killing in recently history didn't even involve a gun.
Why should I have to register my own private property that I have a constitutional right to own? Are you aware of the fact that if you got rid of the second amendment (would have to be done in order to implement national registries and licensing) and gave the government that kind of unilateral control over firearms they'd simply make it impossible for regular citizens to own them via excessive taxing and inconvenient means to acquire licenses as some states already do?
edit: On the subject of national firearm registries post facto, they simply would not work. No one would bother registering them, Canada tried it at the national level and it was so ineffective they got rid of it.
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2 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:
Because ethnic diversity and geography are not remotely predictive of crime rates, while economic development / poverty rate is. So the US is rightly compared to nations with similar economies (i.e. Western Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, etc.), and it does not look good in those comparisons. That big graph you posted includes only one other nation which is truly in a similar position to the US, and that's Canada, which is far lower, but whoever made that graph is hoping you get distracted by the presence of failed state Venezuela which balloons the y-axis.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1477370818775294
"Many scholars argue that diverse preferences and coordination failure stemming from high ethnic diversity results in high social frictions, leading to socio-political failure. Criminological theories suggest that crime is driven by very similar processes. The specialized literature on civil war, however, reports a diversity dividend, arguing that when two large groups (polarization) make up a society, the risk of armed violence is increased. Using data on global homicide rates from the period 1995–2013 for over 140 countries, we find that ethnic heterogeneity is associated with homicide rates in an inverted U-shape relationship. Measures of ethnic polarization confirm these results directly. The results suggests that ethnic polarization and ethnic dominance rather than diversity are what matter for personal security measured as homicide rates. The conditional effect of high diversity and income inequality is associated with lower homicide rates, results that reject the view that societal heterogeneity and income inequality drive social dislocation. Several possible intervening variables, such as unemployment among males and youth, ethnic exclusion and discrimination, good governance and institutional quality, as well as several demographic and political variables, do not affect the basic results. It seems that the heavy emphasis placed on ethnic diversity for explaining social dislocation and violence, in so far as it relates to a country’s homicide rate, seems to be misplaced."
African Americans and other minority groups have long been the victim of white generational wealth and manipulation along with institutional racism.This in turn can lead to things like being unable to pay for education, not getting care and attention from parents as both are busy working barely making ends meat, dead beat parents, lack of positive role models to look up to.
In other words all of the factors that are often huge red flags for not passing school let alone going to college and becoming a criminal. Now this the part where the white nationalist start selling you on their oh so precious ethnostates, but fuck those guys (seriously fuck them). Pretending Like this isn't an issue in America is asinine. Smaller ethnically homogeneous countries don't have to deal with these issues the same melting pots like America do.
This is also why just broadly comparing countries based on their relative levels of wealth is a also terrible. Yeah America may be the richest country on the planet at face value but look at how that wealth is distributed. The distribution of wealth here is horrible! wages are stagnant, rent is insanely expensive with more younger people living their parents than ever before! Health Care cost are insane and many are uninsured or underunsiurred.
Yes other countries have their own sets of Issues, but American has many issues that are largely unique to itself. So just taking Country A and Country B and comparing them side by side without controlling for any other factors is massively disingenuous unless the two countries in question are intrinsically similar. America has way more in common with its southern neighbor mexico than it does a small ethnically homogeneous island nation like Japan. But according to lots of gun control proponents you can just compare America and Japan at face value.
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8 hours ago, Sunwoo said:
I know people have already discussed this, but in regards to "good guy with a gun", I just want to leave this here.
Regular citizens armed with firearms have absolutely stopped mass shootings. You just never hear about it in main stream media because that runs counter to their narrative. Just look at the way they covered the texas church shooting that was stopped with a regular citizen armed with an AR-15 or that recent church shooting.
Thanks to a recent FBI report, we have more data on 2016-17. The FBI found 50 shootings throughout the U.S. that it labeled "active shooter incidents"—"one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area." Of those, four involved situations where the FBI believes that "citizens possessing valid firearms permits successfully stopped the shooter." (Four others involved "unarmed citizens [who] confronted or persuaded the shooter to end the shooting.")
See attached file for FBI report
You'll find multiple reports just with a basic google search
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6 hours ago, eclipse said:
Yeah, empirical data please. Read through the entire thread to see why.
Well first off the "20 decades" was meant to read 20 years or 2 decades.
Statement: America is some lawless shooting gallery
Actuality? It's hit historic lows and in only recently began rise but not nearly to levels seen in the 80s. NOTE: Most graphs top out around 2011-2014 (since it takes a long side to fully gather this data) so If you wan't more recent years you'll have to get he numbers directly from the FBI or other crime bureaus.
Statement: America's gun problem is a result of high gun ownership
Actuality?: The numbers just flat out don't support this presumptive correlation
Statement: America is the mass shooting capital of the world. *warning wall of text incoming*
As Investor’s Business Daily noted on these findings, “Yes, the U.S. rate is still high, and nothing to be proud of. But it's not the highest in the developed world. Not by a long shot.”
If this is true, how did the narrative that the US leads the world in mass shootings become the conventional wisdom? The myth, it turns out, stems from University of Alabama associate professor Adam Lankford.
Lankford’s name pops up in a montage of media reports which cite his research as evidence that America leads the world in mass shootings. The violence, Lankford said, stems from the high rate of gun ownership in America.
“The difference between us and other countries, [which] explains why we have more of these attackers, was the firearm ownership rate,” Lankford said. “In other words: firearms per capita. We have almost double the firearm ownership rate of any other country.”
Lankford’s findings show that there were 90 mass public shooters in America since 1966, the most in the world, which had a total of 202. But Lott, using Lankford’s definition of a mass shooting—“four or more people killed”—found more than 3,000 such shootings, John Stossel recently reported.
Who is to say Lankford doesn’t have it right and Lott is wrong? There’s just one problem: Lankford isn’t talking.
When findings do not mesh, scholars, in pursuit of truth, generally compare notes, data, and methodology to find out how they reached their conclusions. After all, who is to say Lankford doesn’t have it right and Lott is wrong? There’s just one problem: Lankford isn’t talking.
Lankford refuses to explain his data to anyone—to Stossel, to Lott, to the Washington Post, and apparently anyone else who comes asking, including this writer. (I emailed Lankford inquiring about his research. He declined to discuss his methodology, but said he would be publishing more information about mass shooting data in the future.)
“That’s academic malpractice,” Lott tells Stossel.
[Editor's Note: Lankford has since published his research. It can be found here.]
Indeed it is. Yet, it doesn’t explain how one professor’s research was so rapidly disseminated that its erroneous claim quickly became the conventional wisdom in a country with 330 million people."
https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-the-us-leads-the-world-in-mass-shootings/
Does Lankford’s paper also have that problem?
A new report from the Crime Prevention Research Center, which one of us heads, has just finished collecting cases using the same definition of mass public shootings used by Lankford.
We know of no way to discover most of the cases where four people have been shot to death in an incident in Africa or many other parts of the world during the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s or even 1990s, and that is the reason the new study just looked at the last 15 years from 1998 to 2012 of the 47 years he examined.
Lankford’s data grossly undercount foreign attacks. We found 1,423 attacks outside the United States. Looking at just a third of the time Lankford studied, we still found 15 times as many shooters.
Even when we use coding choices that are most charitable to Lankford, such as excluding any cases of insurgencies or battles over territory, his estimate of the US share of shooters falls from 31 percent to 1.43 percent. It also accounts for 2.1 percent of murders, and 2.88 percent of their attacks. All these are much less than the United States’ 4.6 percent share of the population.
Of the 86 countries where we have identified mass public shootings, the US ranks 56th per capita in its rate of attacks and 61st in mass public shooting murder rate. Norway, Finland, Switzerland and Russia all have at least 45 percent higher rates of murder from mass public shootings than the United States.
When Lankford’s data is revised, the relationship between gun ownership rates and mass public shooters disappears.
How could that be? One possibility is that guns don’t just enable mass shooters; gun owners can also deter and prevent such shootings. Another is that culture — not gun ownership — is a bigger factor in shootings.
The media should be wary of any researchers who fail to let others look at their data. At least on this point, the intellectual base for liberal thunder about mass public shootings is wrong.
https://nypost.com/2018/08/30/america-doesnt-actually-lead-the-world-in-mass-shootings/
Statement: America is the only "developed" nation with high gun homicide.
Actuality: Developed nation is a fairly pointless label that is often arbitrarily applied and doesn't account for the fact that even if two countries are "developed" that still doesn't mean they're intrinsically similar enough to just broadly compare crime statistics in a vacuum.
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Prejudice about the "Developed World" vs "the Third World"But these are the only countries the US shall be compared to, we are told, because the US shall only be compared to “developed” countries when analyzing its murder rate and gun ownership.And yet, no reason for this is ever given. What is the criteria for deciding that the United States shall be compared to Luxembourg but not to Mexico, which has far more in common with the US than Luxembourg in terms of size, history, ethnic diversity, and geography?"
If you're just going to actually broadly compare countries based on total gun homicide without controlling for any significant factors then America consistently ranks past 10th place in the worldObservation: People talk about mass shooting the casually throw in the entirety of American gun homicide with them.Actuality: Mass shooting victims (I'm using the FBI definition) account for less than 1% of gun homicide victims. That's not to dismiss the events the entirely, but if you're argue on the basis of mass shootings then stick to just mass shootings.If you want to argue for dumb measures like magazine bans or banning arbitrarily defined firearms like "assault weapons" (made up term btw) we can address that separately. -
Fully pro gun rights here.... Gun homicide in the U.S.A. fell for almost 20 decades before stabilizing recently as gun proliferation has risen. If politicians realistically wanted to deal with the "gun issues" they'd enact social reform like better healthcare, ending the war on drugs and legalizing prostitution, education reform mainly in regards to accessibility from a financial standpoint, increased wages, increased workers right ETC.
But nah it's easier to just blame guns the instrument of violence rather than address the violence itself, because all of that would require the rich to get less richer.
I feel that legalizing drugs and legalizing prostitution/fully legitimizing the sex industry would do more than anything to stop police shootings. Police would be hard pressed to kill people if they barely had any reason to stop people or randomly kick down their doors to begin with. Better screening of cops would also go a long way but unfortunately that's pretty unrealistic. Last thing is cops need their own independent tribunals specifically for handling cases involving them shooting people. The standards courts are to comprised and buddy buddy with them.
Shooting from the hip right here. If anyone wants to respond I will bring empirical data next time.
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23 hours ago, BergelomeuSantos said:
Welcome (again?)!
Be careful with what you wish ya'know. Can you imagine needing to have Armorslayer weapons every time just because you can't even chip them with anything?
That's exactly what I'd like. They already move incredibly slow. The fact that they get eviscerated by magic doesn't help that case. Not to mention the presumable permanent introduction of great knights has truly made them redundant.
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Yeah I'm pretty sure I use to have an account here lol.
Been lurking this site for many years since at least around 2010/2011. Actually found my old SUB drive with my GBA emulator on it. Realized I never beat Sacred Stones although I'm literally at the last part lol. Also just recently beat Zephiel in FE6 so I've only for 3 more chapters in that one too!
I wish Armor Knights/Generals had high resistance to actually make them useful...
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Go to the gym...
USA Gun Rights/Gun Control Discussion Thread
in Serious Discussion
Posted
Yeah I'm pretty positive they won't make the constitution better they'll only make it objectively worse at this point.
Oh so any gun law is fine as long as I own a gun on paper? You are aware that sufficient and proper gun can effectively ban certain types of firearms in their entirety right? The NFA alongside the 1984 law effectively bans automatic weapons from 95% of the population.
It's perfectly feasible depending on the circumstances, it's America is a thing today. People thought the revolutionary war would never be won by the colonist. Your theory of revolution needs to change, it doesn't consist of random people defeating their entire military in a large pitched battle over open ground generally.
I'm against a broad convention to try to rewrite and update the constitution. I could care less about individually trying to amend it.