The yet another mass shooting thread
- Thread starter Lt_Storm
- Start date
Yes, @Shavano, that is indeed closer to the bullseye.
I'm sorry @Technarch, it's been an eventful weekend.
I'm sorry @Technarch, it's been an eventful weekend.
Yep, it's the guns.
Like the one that contains 6 185gr Hornady Critical Defense .45ACP rounds in my pocket, because I'm out on the town. One in the chamber, ready to fire DA because if it comes to it I won't have time to rack the slide before I die. This stuff y'all are arguing in a vacuum? It's the condition of my life. The normal expectation, the thing you lay plans for just like a flat tire, includes the potential for lethal force in my life.
Because this topic you're clinically discussing here is objective reality for me. I have to go home later, and it's quite possible that someone might shoot me during that process. I live in a place where people shoot each other a lot. I'm kind of into killing those people before they kill me, if it comes to that.
They already have the guns. Until we live in a dictatorship, they will have the guns. Pandora's box is open, fifty years' since, and it ain't closing. It's way, way too late for "proactive." Given that additional regulation (in certain forms) is perfectly acceptable - can we close the fucking loopholes, please? - it should be stipulated that the reality is the reality.
Very few countries have more guns in their entire populace than the USA has in the hands of the lawless. Hell, Philly alone could probably conquer Canada, and I know those guys are pretty good shots so I say it with consideration.
Pandora's Box is open. It can't be closed. There are more guns than humans. Regulating the guns is no longer possible. This is the reality. What do you regulate, without becoming a totalitarian state?
Go ahead and argue it, because people have to have discourse, but the fundamental change which could actually change the status quo doesn't have anything to do with guns.
I'm curious as to which lawless country you live in, and why you choose to live there.
Where did they get them?
Where did they get them?
I'm sure it's not a coincidence that the gun lobby benefits financially from this defeatist attitude. Regardless, stay safe, and I hope your personal situation improves in the near future.
Where do you live that you have no fear of being shot while just going about your daily business?
As Dave said the box was opened a long time ago. Wither they were had legally or illegally they are there.
And people use them. Responsibly or not.
I have number of friends and acquaintance's who were murdered by legal weapons. In a place that used to be considered safe.
edited for: I do not believe everyone needs or should have a firearm.
As Dave said the box was opened a long time ago. Wither they were had legally or illegally they are there.
And people use them. Responsibly or not.
I have number of friends and acquaintance's who were murdered by legal weapons. In a place that used to be considered safe.
edited for: I do not believe everyone needs or should have a firearm.
So out of curiosity, how many people have you killed while walking in your area? How many people you non-fatally shot? How many times have you discharged your weapon but not shot someone in "self defense"? How many times have you drawn your weapon and pointed it at someone?
I'll give anecdotes as well.
I used to go to school in Newark, NJ, in the late 80s and very early 90s, so at the height of gun violence and drug crime. I commuted in on trains and would take the city subway. I also spent much time at the dorms and attended many local frat parties, so I would have to walk to the main train station downtown late at night (about 3/4 of a mile) multiple times per week.
I never once felt the need to be armed. And this is as a guy about SD's height and not too much heavier. I also looked soft and not capable of putting up a fight.
I had fewer issues there than I did in my prep school locker room. I find it hard to put myself in the headspace of a person that feels the need to walk around armed, especially with violent crime rates being so much lower now.
I used to go to school in Newark, NJ, in the late 80s and very early 90s, so at the height of gun violence and drug crime. I commuted in on trains and would take the city subway. I also spent much time at the dorms and attended many local frat parties, so I would have to walk to the main train station downtown late at night (about 3/4 of a mile) multiple times per week.
I never once felt the need to be armed. And this is as a guy about SD's height and not too much heavier. I also looked soft and not capable of putting up a fight.
I had fewer issues there than I did in my prep school locker room. I find it hard to put myself in the headspace of a person that feels the need to walk around armed, especially with violent crime rates being so much lower now.
On the one hand, obviously nowhere is 100% safe if my kids are spending school days in active shooter drills. On the other hand, statistically I'm probably better off worrying about shark attacks. Moreover, the data shows that my purchase of a gun only increases the likelihood that my kids or I would be shot.
I dislike national statistics - the US varies much more by state or city than many countries do to each other in events like property crime and violent crime. There are some parts of Philadelphia that have extremely high levels of violent crime. Everywhere I've lived has been closer to 'shark attack' territory, but not everywhere in the US is like that. That gun purchase statistic on purchasers being far more likely to be shot is easily dismissed by GRAs due to being very biased by suicide, mental illness, and negligent storage around kids, and nobody thinks they're going to be the ones to self-inflict like that (even if they later are.)
How is that in the slightest relevant to his point? They exist in the hundreds of millions, and they're very durable goods. I have a perfectly functional, fast shooting lever-action rifle that's 131 years old. Doesn't matter if they came from a triple-checking gun store, a no-check gun show, or the magical gun fairy. They're here, and his point is that getting rid of them would require political and legal changes that aren't possible.
Now, I do think that the culture will slowly change to the point where those political and legal shifts are possible, but it will take time.
The risk of being in a violent crime involving firearms could be 10x higher than the national average and still be in death-by-deer territory.
Owning a gun makes your life more dangerous everywhere.
I hesitate to dismiss statistics out of hand. If there are more granular, consistent, county-level firearm crime statistics out there, I'd love to see them. Last time I checked, though, consistent data at that level was hard to find, on purpose in some areas.
And this is ultimately the problem, IMO. Gun purchasers think they're making themselves safer when in reality they're just endangering themselves and everyone around them. I sympathize to the degree that it's hard to accept.
The point, as I read it, is that there are too many guns in the hands of criminals, so obviously the source of criminal guns is more than slightly relevant. I am inclined to believe that most guns used in crimes are legally owned and that there is no vast, shadowy pool of illegal guns available for the exclusive use of card-carrying criminals. And if there is, it is still driven by currently-legal gun sales.
Certainly there is a difference of scale between the U.S. gun supply and those of other civilizations that have banned guns, such as Australia and the U.K., but that hardly means it's impossible.
Agreed, and all the more reason to start now.
I live in the United States, where having a handgun has beens shown to be statistically ineffective for self defense.
By about 3 times.
I can't say I know much about your life experience, but I hope you realize how unhinged this sounds to the average person. If you told me these were lines from one of Clint Eastwood's newest movies, I'd 100% buy it.
Serious question - if stepping outside actively endangers your life, why are you still there? My friend is a gun enthusiast and he asked me what it would take for me to buy a gun if I started to feel unsafe, and the answer was that if I ever felt that way, I'd fucking move. I'm not an action movie star, I have a family, and if my neighborhood was so unsafe there was credible reasons to fear for my life every time I left my house, or stayed in it, I'd get the hell out of there.
When daily violence is so high where you live, the rational solution isn't to strap a pistol to your hip and hope you can Wyatt Earp all the bad guys, it's to move.
Exactly what I expected from someone who is anti-gun and does not want to solve the problem. The guns are nothing more than a symptom and if you wish to effect a cure you have to do more than treat the symptom. Our problem here is neither side of this issue really wishes to solve the problem. There is to much money for politicians and supporting groups on both sides, ratings for media, votes, FaceTime on TV,Op-Eds and followers on social media.
What we have are several issues such as Social, Economic ,Crime and Mental Health problems that have to be addressed to solve this issue. We need programs to address these areas if we wish to end the violence. So it comes down to this. Do WE solve the problem or treat the symptoms.That is where we find ourselves today.
As we are all well aware, other countries have solved their social, economic, criminal, and mental health problems which is why they have so few gun deaths compared to the US.
I would argue pretty voraciously, that you are not actually doing anything positive.
The US has never been this divided, this partisan. The wealth inequality gap has never been wider, the police are clearing up less crime and mental health, rather than being treated is stigmatised.
You are neither solving the problems or treating the symptoms as far as I can see.
I say this as a gun owner - as a country you are failing to get your shit together in an amazingly spectacular fashion.
Countries all over the world have social and economic and mental health problems as bad or worse than those found in the US. But they don't have US-like mass shooting rates. The difference is specifically American. You only pose these questions as distractions to avoid the conclusion that the obvious difference isn't the operative difference.
The "guns don't kill people; people kill people" dodge is not any more convincing when reworded.
Related, the US Surgeon General declares gun violence as a public health crisis https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/25/health/surgeon-general-gun-violence-advisory/index.html. Mass shootings is one vector of the public health crisis. I completely agree with this, and hopefully there's some political will to elect people into office who will be able to pass laws to ultimately reduce mass shootings.
I keep linking you to the consensus of experts and you keep going quiet. See this link and feel free to address it for a change.
US gun violence is a health crisis with evidence-based solutions, experts plea
Doctors and researchers say the science is clear, and it's long past time to act.
arstechnica.com
Hi, I recently moved to a different state. It cost me roughly $25-30k all told. Out of my own pocket.
I had to sell my house, and convince my employer -who didn't have a remote work policy for out-of-state- to let me do it. My children had to switch schools and lost all their friends. We parents lost most of our friends/social circles.
I had to take three weeks of PTO to actually move, too.
I'm a well-paid executive at a big place. For people who work retail jobs and/or don't have $10k+ in savings (i.e. most Americans) and an understanding employer, doing this requires a truckload of debt or is just straight-up impossible in any realistic way Or people who can't abandon family and friends - what do they do?
Sure, moving is possible in a "technically correct, best kind of correct" Futurama meme sense, but isn't feasible for a huge number of people. This is just a way to handwave legitimate concerns away. Wouldn't it make more sense, say, to NOT endanger your life every time you step outside?
At the very least, with minimal belongings, a person needs transportation for their stuff, probably temporary storage, and rent and security deposit for a new place.
I know some of SD's story and how he wound up where he is, and his current location is BETTER for him than where he used to live. I don't judge his life decisions. I was only confused at the need to be armed and in the mindset to use it when being out and about.
I know some of SD's story and how he wound up where he is, and his current location is BETTER for him than where he used to live. I don't judge his life decisions. I was only confused at the need to be armed and in the mindset to use it when being out and about.
The issue is gun may not make you safer. Guns are not cheap. To properly protect yourself, you need to be mentally ready and practice. Ammo prices have since gotten higher. I have to wonder would a pepper spray and whistle be a better option than gun.
Oh god, she’s still going! It is very, very simple: countries where guns are banned for pretty well all non-sporting purposes simoly don’t have gun violence problems. The UK, Ireland, Australia To name but three. I know you won’t accept this and will witter on about bad people still getting guns, but the fact is that, for the most part, they don’t.
To further underscore this sentiment—in Europe, where there is much more stringent gun control, stabbings are more prevalent. Sure, a dedicated individual can wreak quite some damage, but the fallout from such an attack pales in relation to a shooting indecent. It's also much easier—and less risky to subdue a knife wielder than a gun wielder.
Also, if only the bad guys have guns, it's pretty easy to identify the bad guys — they're the ones with guns. When an armed response unit shows up to an incident in the UK, it's usually pretty easy for them to work out who they're supposed to shoot.
That "Yeah, but people will just use knives if you ban guns" thing drives me insane. In the London Bridge attack in 2019, it took eight minutes from the attack being reported to armed police turning up and killing the three men responsible. Five people were stabbed, and two of them died. Let's run those eight minutes again with three guys using AR-15s and tell me there is any kind of equivalence between knives and guns.
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If knives were just as deadly as guns we'd issue them to our troops instead of, not in addition to, the rifles and save fucktons of money.
Thing is, you can solve for everything else, and still have "crime of passion" moments. Guns dramatically lower the barrier for those to turn into fatal incidents. There's a very good reason why nations with better mental health infrastructure than the US still have strict gun laws.
We do ban lawn darts….
Absolutely, I'm not trying to say that pulling up stakes and moving is somehow cheap or easy, but seriously, if the alternative is almost literally playing Russian Roulette every day and watching every corner for somebody who might just murder you out of the blue, it's the only alternative that makes any sense. There's a reason why people walk to the US from Guatemala to flee the cartels, and it's not because they're avid hikers.
If SuperDave is trapped in such a place, I do honestly really feel for him, but when the choices are between potentially losing your stuff, or losing your life, that's an easy calculation. Like I said, I've got a family, I'm not going to gamble my or their lives on whether I can anticipate and mitigate threats to my life, assuming it's as dire as he makes it out to be. I hope I am never put in that place, but I meant it - the second carrying a gun becomes a rational choice I'm working out how to leave, because I can afford to lose money but not my life.
I have 3 points to make about that.
1) If your life is in danger every time you leave the house because of where you live, all the rest of that is in the noise.
2) The financial cost of moving is proportional to how much stuff you have. The seriously poor can move for the cost of gasoline or a bus ticket.
3) If for practical reasons you can't move, the rational response isn't carry a gun, because having a gun increases your danger.
On the other hand it is a fair point to say it's a long, hard road to get to their kind of mass shooting rates from where we are, because so many Americans don't want to give up their guns and there's not enough people with a mind to force them.
Stabbings are what people talk about when there's not a lot of shootings. Can you give us some examples of a first world country where mass stabbings are as common as mass shootings in the US?