Another Day, Another Mass Shooting, What else is new?

[Tsing Tao]

Not insults, statements of fact. ARs are marketed as products like fast cars and big trucks to men, they are made to want them like any other toy.

A buy back like Australia or the UK did. Perhaps some could keep them provided they passed some actual extreme vetting. fMRI scanning of the brain would reveal a lot for example and could become cheap/good new industry to replace some lost revenue though this is just an ideal world notion.

Make getting an AR an expensive process, 5-10k+ application fee and use the money to clean up the existing over time?

The FBI guys make it clear that everyone having guns is ALSO not a solution.

OK, there are tens of millions of ARs on the street. There is no way to know who owns all of them because there is no national database. A large percentage of those have transferred ownership once or more, requiring no documentation submitted to any national authority. How would you ensure these guns are bought back? How would you fund such a program when you're talking hundreds of billions of dollars? Do you think those who own illegal weapons would be willing to come forward and turn them in?

Any expensive fee you put in place of registration would only see the street price skyrocket and encourage illegal ownership of firearms.

 

[Slartibartfast]

OK, there are tens of millions of ARs on the street. There is no way to know who owns all of them because there is no national database. A large percentage of those have transferred ownership once or more, requiring no documentation submitted to any national authority. How would you ensure these guns are bought back? How would you fund such a program when you're talking hundreds of billions of dollars? Do you think those who own illegal weapons would be willing to come forward and turn them in?

Any expensive fee you put in place of registration would only see the street price skyrocket and encourage illegal ownership of firearms.

Maybe, maybe not. The cost of the buy back would be less than many unnecessary military programmes.

But the US is in a serious Catch 22 now. The person who benefits from this kind of discussion is Wayne La Pierre. He was too good at his job and has managed to get us all arguing about things that won't help. The idea of just accepting mass shootings as a cost of doing business is becoming normalised.

Do you know his history for a start with the NRA? I assume so but perhaps stopping the lobbying monstrosity of the NRA would be a good first step. Maybe forget the guns, accept the killings but work on making congress less susceptible to the toxic lobby industry.

 

[Tsing Tao]

Maybe, maybe not. The cost of the buy back would be less than many unnecessary military programmes.

But the US is in a serious Catch 22 now. The person who benefits from this kind of discussion is Wayne La Pierre. He was too good at his job and has managed to get us all arguing about things that won't help. The idea of just accepting mass shootings as a cost of doing business is becoming normalised.

So you know his history for a start with the NRA? I assume so but perhaps stopping the lobbying monstrosity of the NRA would be a good first step. Maybe forget the guns, accept the killings but work on making congress less susceptible to the toxic lobby industry.

Do you really think the political will exists anywhere in congress to push a program that costs about $100B for a buyback in firearms? I'm asking honestly here, we're having an honest discussion. Do you believe those firearms wouldn't make their way back into circulation somehow? All you would do is get people who wanted some cash for their firearms. You wouldn't be able to make it mandatory (for reasons previously mentioned). Voluntary would not make any impact.

Instead of focusing on the shootings as a matter of the weapon, focus on the driving reasons why shootings are occurring. That is the only possible way out of this.

You will have the same luck stopping the NRA as you would the bank lobby.

 

[Covertibility]

 

[Slartibartfast]

Do you really think the political will exists anywhere in congress to push a program that costs about $100B for a buyback in firearms? I'm asking honestly here, we're having an honest discussion. Do you believe those firearms wouldn't make their way back into circulation somehow? All you would do is get people who wanted some cash for their firearms. You wouldn't be able to make it mandatory (for reasons previously mentioned). Voluntary would not make any impact.

Instead of focusing on the shootings as a matter of the weapon, focus on the driving reasons why shootings are occurring. That is the only possible way out of this.

You will have the same luck stopping the NRA as you would the bank lobby.

Nope, I don't think it does. I think if we had people who might take it on (pick anyone) President Warren and VP Franken or vice versa they would be assassinated.

But that just means we accept massacres.

Focusing on the reasons, yes though I don't think the reasons are that difficult to understand.

It could be that a certain class of medication is connected to a large % of mass shootings. This has happened before. Worth looking at, I know that I'm literally dangerous if I take a certain class of sleeping tablet a few days in a row. All of this is worth looking at but the NRA.. really worth a shot taking them down.

I imagine that unchecked the NRA would be marketing poison gas as even better than an AR. They are pretty close to actual evil but a symptom of a very broken system.

Right now it seems to me that a cycle of escalating copy-cat go-out-in-glory killings is in force. Will it peak and drop off soon? hopefully. It is also important to separate 'commercial criminal'? gun crime (usually cheap hand guns) from lunatic killing sprees. They are different animals.

Australia fixed it's growing massacre problem, so did the UK. That is something solid to work from. Both have unstable men who would shoot up a church given a chance this very moment. The difference is they don't have the guns and getting them illegally is more effort that 99% would go to. I imagine getting enough bullets for an illegal gun would be an even bigger headache in the UK/OZ.

 

[TreeFrogTrader]

Nope, I don't think it does. I think if we had people who might take it on (pick anyone) President Warren and VP Franken or vice versa they would be assassinated.

.

Note that we just had a rightwing nutjob try to assassinate a group or republicans playing softball.

Oh wait. Correction. He was a Bernie supporter but Bernie disavowed his actions so it's okay now.

 

[Tsing Tao]

Nope, I don't think it does. I think if we had people who might take it on (pick anyone) President Warren and VP Franken or vice versa they would be assassinated.

But that just means we accept massacres.

Focusing on the reasons, yes though I don't think the reasons are that difficult to understand.

It could be that a certain class of medication is connected to a large % of mass shootings. This has happened before. Worth looking at, I know that I'm literally dangerous if I take a certain class of sleeping tablet a few days in a row. All of this is worth looking at but the NRA.. really worth a shot taking them down.

I imagine that unchecked the NRA would be marketing poison gas as even better than an AR. They are pretty close to actual evil but a symptom of a very broken system.

Right now it seems to me that a cycle of escalating copy-cat go-out-in-glory killings is in force. Will it peak and drop off soon? hopefully. It is also important to separate 'commercial criminal'? gun crime (usually cheap hand guns) from lunatic killing sprees. They are different animals.

Australia fixed it's growing massacre problem, so did the UK. That is something solid to work from. Both have unstable men who would shoot up a church given a chance this very moment. The difference is they don't have the guns and getting them illegally is more effort that 99% would go to. I imagine getting enough bullets for an illegal gun would be an even bigger headache in the UK/OZ.

We're going to have to disagree on the whole "good/evil" thing. Do I believe the NRA is evil? No more or less than any other cartel, be it banking, sugar, big pharma, etc. The NRA isn't killing people. Criminals are killing people, as they always have. If you banned the NRA tomorrow, criminals would still kill people, with guns and anything else they had available.

Australia and the UK are brought up often. The difference is that neither had hundreds of millions of firearms on the street already when they enacted their ban. Hell, the US has more illegal firearms than Australia had in totality.

Getting bullets for an illegal firearm is easy. You just need a reloading kit and your spent casings.

Additionally, now that you can 3d Print a firearm, what will you do then?

I will say that if there were some way of getting rid of all firearms, then I would give up mine gladly. You think I want my kid growing up in a world of guns? Of course not. But you can't assure me the bad guys will be without guns, so I'll continue to fight to keep mine. But I'm not one of these guys that thinks we own guns to stop the government or some silly thing like that. If the government wants to get you, no guns you own are going to stop that.

 

[Slartibartfast]

We're going to have to disagree on the whole "good/evil" thing. Do I believe the NRA is evil? No more or less than any other cartel, be it banking, sugar, big pharma, etc. The NRA isn't killing people. Criminals are killing people, as they always have. If you banned the NRA tomorrow, criminals would still kill people, with guns and anything else they had available.

Australia and the UK are brought up often. The difference is that neither had hundreds of millions of firearms on the street already when they enacted their ban. Hell, the US has more illegal firearms than Australia had in totality.

Getting bullets for an illegal firearm is easy. You just need a reloading kit and your spent casings.

Note that we just had a rightwing nutjob try to assassinate a group or republicans playing softball.

Oh wait. Correction. He was a Bernie supporter but Bernie disavowed his actions so it's okay now.

I'm getting to the point where I'd pay for you to see a shrink about your mindless whataboutism.
Additionally, now that you can 3d Print a firearm, what will you do then?

I will say that if there were some way of getting rid of all firearms, then I would give up mine gladly. You think I want my kid growing up in a world of guns? Of course not. But you can't assure me the bad guys will be without guns, so I'll continue to fight to keep mine. But I'm not one of these guys that thinks we own guns to stop the government or some silly thing like that. If the government wants to get you, no guns you own are going to stop that.

Well we agree on parts. 'Evil' was a bad choice but I do think the NRA represents a type of toxic & inherently psychopathic corporation that thrives in the US.

The NRA engineered and implanted the relativism argument that makes it seem looking at them will not help. I accept you see it that way, I don't buy it.

The movie 'Thank you for smoking' should be played for a week after each such massacre perhaps.

The NRA is up there with the smoking lobby. Personally I think ARs serve no useful purpose, they are used in few (commercial) crimes, not good for duck hunting and I personally believe that genies can get put back into bottles. But that is me, hopeful as ever.

 

[Slartibartfast]

Note that we just had a rightwing nutjob try to assassinate a group or republicans playing softball.

Oh wait. Correction. He was a Bernie supporter but Bernie disavowed his actions so it's okay now.

I'm getting to the point where I'd paid for you to see a shrink about your obsessive whataboutism.

So would most of the conservative guys here.

Anyone want to chip into a fund to pay for TreeFrog's psychotherapy?

 

[Tom B]

3% that wouldn't have happened if they weren't there is still 3%. Likely this is higher, but probably not much.

Criminals primarily attack the weak. Committing heinous acts in an area where someone else is likely to have a gun isn't conducive to heinous acts, so this has something to do with it.

Do me a favor, since you're out there pulling stats. Please pull how many concealed carry citizens have ever committed a crime.

The lives saved by the 3% are grateful.