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Then there simply are not enough of you responsible gun owners compared to those who are irresponsible
While I have no statistical data to back this up (other than considering just how many guns there are in the country, gun violence is comparatively low), I think (from what I've seen on various gun forums) that there are far more responsible gun owners than not...
Further, I think that what you're seeing with cases such as Nugent and Yeager is that these are a "vocal minority" that like to speak louder than the rest...
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The beauty of the Second Amendment: It doesn't matter until government tries to take it away.
And while the "gun control" crowd may fervently wish that the Second Amendment wasn't created to provide the citizenry with the power to resist their government when that government ceases to be legitimate, you may want to brush up on the writings surrounding the ratification of the Constitution, specifically the Federalist Papers.
But tread carefully, because such revelations might cause the carefully constructed house of cards upon which you place your argument to come crashing down.
You may now resume your bantering about how much better you are because you wish to take away liberty from people who happen to disagree with you.
Then there simply are not enough of you responsible gun owners compared to those who are irresponsibleWhile I have no statistical data to back this up (other than considering just how many guns there are in the country, gun violence is comparatively low), I think (from what I've seen on various gun forums) that there are far more responsible gun owners than not...
Further, I think that what you're seeing with cases such as Nugent and Yeager is that these are a "vocal minority" that like to speak louder than the rest...
You're correct on both accounts (I'll just assume, since I don't actually know what proportion of gun owners are responsible towards their ownership of firearms) but the "a few bad apples" adage applies here. Conservatives (and gun rights advocates in general) need to vocally condemn as strongly as possible the nut-cases who advocate killing liberals, or overthrowing the government, or whatever. These are people with disturbed fantasies about committing righteous violence with guns, and they purport to speak on your behalf. And they are tolerated for this.
Owning a gun is dangerous, makes you dramatically more likely to kill yourself, makes you more likely to be injured or killed in a violent crime, has not been shown to be significantly more effective in dissuading criminal activity than other, far less dangerous options, and oh by the way facilitates events like mass school shootings.
That is what the evidence says. That's not what we just came up with out of thin air. We're not scared of the idea of guns.
Except the studies that claim these things are no more objective than those that oppose them. They point to a study that says people are more likely to commit suicide if they have a gun and I see a study that shows that some people commit suicide with the most convenient means available (which often happens to be a gun). A study claims that gun owners die more often in violent crimes and I see the study just proves that criminals and other people with violent enemies often keep guns around. They claim that I'm more likely to be killed by a gun than use a gun defensively and I see that they defined using it defensively as killing some guy. They fail to distinguish between the hazards facing drug-using ex-cons and the general public, then tell me their statistics prove that guns are dangerous.
I know that anecdotal evidence isn't evidence, but personal experiences have regularly contradicted the claim that not having a gun is safer than having one. I've brandished guns to prevent criminal activity, my friends have brandished guns to stop criminal activity, and my relatives have brandished guns to stop criminal activity. Strangely, none of us felt the need to shoot anyone. On the other hand, some of the most frightening experiences of my life have happened when I was in areas where gun possession was prohibited.
I know that these experiences aren't evidence, but they left a strong impression in my mind of guns as potent tools for protecting people and preventing evil.
The beauty of the Second Amendment: It doesn't matter until government tries to take it away.
Your ability to own guns doesn't matter until someone tells you that you can't own guns?
Did you think about this one, before you typed it out?
And while the "gun control" crowd may fervently wish that the Second Amendment wasn't created to provide the citizenry with the power to resist their government when that government ceases to be legitimate, you may want to brush up on the writings surrounding the ratification of the Constitution, specifically the Federalist Papers.
This is a debate that's been raging for decades. I prefer not to wade in. I don't care what the founding fathers thought about firearms ownership. They did not have the foresight to understand the realities of modern firearms, or the incredible increase in the ability of the modern United States military to effectively project force far, far in excess of what any organized group of civilians can hope to achieve. The founders' opinions on the topic are interesting as a matter of history, but no longer relevant to modern policy discussions.
But tread carefully, because such revelations might cause the carefully constructed house of cards upon which you place your argument to come crashing down.
I'm not sure what you think this is. Do you think you're being cryptic, here? Or prophetic? Like, you hold the keys to what the founding fathers really thought?
You may now resume your bantering about how much better you are because you wish to take away liberty from people who happen to disagree with you.
Cool.
Except the studies that claim these things are no more objective than those that oppose them.
That's not true.
They point to a study
Studies. Plural.
that says people are more likely to commit suicide if they have a gun and I see a study that shows that some people commit suicide with the most convenient means available (which often happens to be a gun).
So you haven't read the studies, is what you're saying.
Because, if you had, you'd know that they controlled for that. And still found a 200%-1000% increase in suicide incidence depending on demographic.
A study claims that gun owners die more often in violent crimes and I see the study just proves that criminals and other people with violent enemies often keep guns around.
So you haven't read that one either. Because, if you had, you'd know that the study in question used demographically-matched controls to help ensure that exactly what you're talking about didn't affect their results. And that, even if it had, the potential effect size of such a confound wouldn't come close to invalidating the results.
They claim that I'm more likely to be killed by a gun than use a gun defensively and I see that they defined using it defensively as killing some guy.
No, they said that you're more likely to be killed by your own gun than to kill someone else with it. So of course they defined it as killing some guy.
They fail to distinguish between the hazards facing drug-using ex-cons and the general public, then tell me their statistics prove that guns are dangerous.
Because they are. Unquestionably. The evidence is overwhelming, even if you haven't actually bothered to read it (and thus end up posting stuff like the above).
Seriously. We're not making this up. We have real studies, run by multiple research groups, all of which have gone through the peer-review process, many of which have been duplicated for confirmation.
I know that anecdotal evidence isn't evidence, but personal experiences have regularly contradicted the claim that not having a gun is safer than having one.
You're right. Anecdotal evidence is worthless in the face of real evidence.
I've brandished guns to prevent criminal activity, my friends have brandished guns to stop criminal activity, and my relatives have brandished guns to stop criminal activity. Strangely, none of us felt the need to shoot anyone. On the other hand, some of the most frightening experiences of my life have happened when I was in areas where gun possession was prohibited.
I'm sorry for your personal experiences, but that's not the way we develop policy.
I know that these experiences aren't evidence, but they left a strong impression in my mind of guns as potent tools for protecting people and preventing evil.
You have a duty as an intellectually honest individual to be able to overcome the impression given by personal experience in favor of what the evidence tells you to be the case.
I don't care what the founding fathers thought about firearms ownership.
See, you could have stopped typing there, and it would have summed up your entire argument.
And as an editorial aside, "Founding Fathers" is a proper noun, and is therefore capitalized.
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and they purport to speak on your behalf. And they are tolerated for this.
I'm sure many tolerate them, but I think (again, from anecdotal experience) that most simply ignore them, preferring to let them dig themselves into their own hole or put their own foot in their mouth so to speak...
And if I were to hazard a guess, I would say this attitude stems from our [conservative] approach to let others do, achieve, and yes, even fail on their own merits.
Like, you hold the keys to what the founding fathers really thought?
I don't have to, they were kind enough to write down their thoughts. Repeatedly.
And they are tolerated for this.
Kinda like the leftist loons who tweeted about killing NRA members, right?
And they are tolerated for this.Kinda like the leftist loons who tweeted about killing NRA members, right?
And were pounced on by other liberals. We don't let that slide.
See, you could have stopped typing there, and it would have summed up your entire argument.
I don't hold them in unquestionable reverence. They have been wrong before, and will likely continue to be wrong about certain things. This is one of them. They were smart. They were not omniscient.
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If Ted Nugent wants mental health screenings for potential gun owners, I'm positive he hasn't thought it all the way through. After all, he'd have to get screened himself. There's no way he'd pass. I'm pretty sure he'd burst into flames walking through the door to the psychiatrist's office.
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This is a debate that's been raging for decades. I prefer not to wade in. I don't care what the founding fathers thought about firearms ownership.
And this is why nothing you say holds any kind of water, and you should in fact step out of the argument.
Otherwise we can apply your thought process to freedom of speech (and modern technology), right to assemble, right to privacy, etc, as all dismissible or subject to convenient manipulation to the Government/majority du jour, or what you or another group thinks they were "wrong about". If you were intellectually honest and a moral person, you would admit this and your agenda here.
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It actually has proven to be pretty pointless to argue with people like you - those who do not believe in individual rights, the law or the philosophy and reason that goes into a law. All you care about is how it makes you feel, laws or individual rights be damned - and that is pretty f'ing scary.
You don't like guns, so stop trying to sound like you have a moderate or reasonable view on the issue - you don't. You are in favor of suspending individual rights and perverting the law, and that puts you in the same company as Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot....see what I did there?
People like you terrify me, and I am glad that Americans currently have the right to own guns so they can keep people like you in check.
Or you could have finished reading what he wrote: That even if they intended the 2nd Amendment as a guard against government tyranny, military technology has advanced so far that personal small arms cannot be used to oppose a standing military in the way they could in the founder's day.
Kinda like how Al-Queda is a relic of the past, right?
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Kinda like how Al-Queda is a relic of the past, right?
Or you could have finished reading what he wrote: That even if they intended the 2nd Amendment as a guard against government tyranny, military technology has advanced so far that personal small arms cannot be used to oppose a standing military in the way they could in the founder's day.In those cases where Al-Qaeda takes on the US military with small arms, Al-Qaeda dies. Usually from air strikes.
Are you advocating for the use of suicide bombs and IEDs? Mostly on soft, non-military, targets.
We've been through this. I posted several times today about this, referencing Syria particularly, since it's the recent example, but both Iraq and Afghanistan apply. None of these cases are of civilians taking up their private handguns and rifles and taking on armies. They are all former militaries or ex-military defectors with access to military gear.
So your argument is that people should not posses private arms (because the are useless), they should instead count on peacefully protest with their grievances to government and when they do actually need to start using weapons it will arrive from the ex-military or military defectors, is that about right?
So populace goes from unarmed non-violent protest, to using military hardware once the military turns against the regime? Got it.
There was another school shooting in California. Kid used a shotgun, guess we should put those on the assault weapon banning list.Given that he was unsuccessful in killing anyone (yet; one student is in critical condition), I'd argue that this is an example of what happens when someone decides to go nuts with a weapon that is not explicitly designed to facilitate the killing of as many targets as you care to engage in as efficient a manner as possible.
Additionally, reports are indicating that an armed sheriff's deputy was on the campus. It's not clear whether this made any difference; that remains to be seen as more details emerge.
Glad to hear it. Many of the talking heads anti-gun folks actually act like this happening on the day of a meeting between NRA and Biden and others was to show how important it was that we address the gun issue. I am glad to see that you don't feel this incident in fact demonstrates that.
And the California shooting was carried out by someone who other students knew was making a hit list. They even knew the shooter's likely target. When students tweeted this information, they got hauled into the principal's office and punished.
So once authorities knew of a troubled teen, they did nothing to intervene, and in fact dissuaded others from speaking up.
But connecting these facts and then offering an opinion will only get me compared to Ted Nugent.
Right, lucky thing people in the US are allowed to own firearms so killers can murder more children. I'm sure the parents of the murdered children in Sandy Hook are thankful that the shooter didn't have a knife.
I'm sure there's a parent who wishes one of the teachers was armed.
All schools in China hire security guards after Henan knife attack.
Good thing China doesn't allow the its citizens the freedom to own a firearm. Someone could have gotten hurt.
You suck at this example thing.
Yes, without guns to defend them, one person with a knife INJURED 23 people.
And. killed. No one.
All 23 kids will be there for new years. All 23 will graduate schools. All 23 can be put to bed by their very relieved parents All 23 will grow up and have a chance at life, unlike the 26 killed because someone the paranoid delusions about defending themselves from the totalitarian atheistmuslim communistfascist regime keep artillery available to anyone with 300 bucks in their pocket.
Yes, I'm for the right to own some kinds of firearms. But when you put it like THAT? You make me want to change my mind.
China, russia, etc have already proven that leftists don't hate guns, only guns in the hands of those that might oppose themAnd they are tolerated for this.Kinda like the leftist loons who tweeted about killing NRA members, right?
Want to see an NRA member make some component pieces for masonry?
Suggest that the occupy wallstreet crowd should all be armed.
In other news it seems gun advocate Kieth Ratliff (aka FPS Russia) has been murdered. I hope this is a hoax because it plays out like a wet dream for those on the gun control side . . . I mean if FPS Russia couldn't defend himself I'm not sure any gun owner could.
Well except, you know, the woman that shot some guy 5 times in the face. But besides her, yeah, probably no gun owner could ever defend themselves.
Turns out the intruder in the original story didn't have a gun. Apparently the person (or persons) responsible for the murder of Kieth Ratliff did.Well except, you know, the woman that shot some guy 5 times in the face. But besides her, yeah, probably no gun owner could ever defend themselves.In other news it seems gun advocate Kieth Ratliff (aka FPS Russia) has been murdered. I hope this is a hoax because it plays out like a wet dream for those on the gun control side . . . I mean if FPS Russia couldn't defend himself I'm not sure any gun owner could.
So your statement should have read:
I mean if FPS Russia couldn't defend himself [from someone with a gun] I'm not sure any gun owner could.Though I am not sure if the only reason gun owners want a gun for self defense is to protect themselves EXCLUSIVELY from people with guns. I'm guess people with crowbars or other weapon that could bludgeon them to death, they'd also like to be protected from.
You suck at this example thing.
. . .
Yes, I'm for the right to own some kinds of firearms. But when you put it like THAT? You make me want to change my mind.
You didn't go to the second link, did you?
If you're willing to change your mind so quickly, best just go ahead and do it.
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I didn't say all gun owners would admit to it.I think your statement is horrible speculation and not at all helpful to the debate.
Sorry, not here to help. I just like to poke the bear. Of course I have often found the best way to advocate for gun control is to let those advocating against it keep talking.
Guns are a tool of violence. As long as we want to keep enshrining violence as a right, violence is going to be a problem.No, guns are a tool for self-preservation and they preserve the right to revolt (while safeguarding our other rights).
Some soft-ball gun advocates will make the argument about the need of guns for personal self-defense, hunting, etc - and these are all peripheral to the main point. The right to bear arms exists so I have the preserved ability to revolt and resist my government if need be, as silly and Red Dawnish it may seem. This right helps preserve our other rights - the Founders saw the Government as a potential threat so they built some safeguards...
How would you use it as a tool for self-preservation? By balancing it on the butt and planting a flower in the barrel?
More likely I'm guessing you would either shoot someone or threaten to shoot someone. Those are both acts of violence. You can argue about whether violence is justified or not, but violence is still violence. It doesn't matter if you paint your gun pink and attach streamers to it, it's still a 'tool' that is only 'useful' for killing people. I've been asking for over 6 months to provide a utilitarian purpose for a gun that doesn't involve harming a person or animal, or threatening to do so.
Range practice is just honing your skill to be better at those things. Competition shooting is an end unto itself, so it doesn't serve a utilitarian purpose, or it's practice to be better at shooting living things.
Guns are a tool of violence. You can't build a house with it.
And this is why nothing you say holds any kind of water, and you should in fact step out of the argument.
Because I don't slavishly believe that everything the people who wrote the Bill of Rights more than two centuries ago applies just as much today as it did then?
Don't strain your head overmuch.
Otherwise we can apply your thought process to freedom of speech (and modern technology), right to assemble, right to privacy, etc, as all dismissible or subject to convenient manipulation to the Government/majority du jour, or what you or another group thinks they were "wrong about". If you were intellectually honest and a moral person, you would admit this and your agenda here.
The rights that you highlight - freedom of speech, freedom from invasion of privacy, freedom of assembly, etc. - all stand on their own. It isn't the fact that the founding fathers said they were a good idea that made them a good idea. These rights are a good idea because there are clear reasons for protecting them - reasons which continue to hold true today. Mind you, even these rights have been curtailed or adjusted as times have changed - your right to privacy, for instance, has been altered significantly as the realities of the 21st century world have required.
What do you think my agenda is, exactly? I'm not being cagey or coy. I want to see more restrictive firearms legislation and better screening processes applied to the license process. I'm also a (moderate) liberal with very little sympathy for modern American conservatism, and even less sympathy for those who insist on defending its tenets even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are faulty.
So really, I'm curious as to what my hidden agenda is. Am I secretly a communist? A mutant? An alien intent on stamping out your rights so I can steal your oceans?
Stop insisting that you should have the rights you have because the founding fathers said so. That's just passing the burden of proving their worth on to a bunch of guys who died 200 years ago. You should be able to eloquently defend those rights on your own, using your own arguments instead of the arguments of people who lived in a world so far removed from our own that they would scarcely recognize it or be able to comprehend how it functions.
Also, tone down your "nothing you say holds any water" rhetoric. It's transparent, and doesn't do you any favors. I back up what I say with evidence that I spend altogether too much time tracking down so that people like you can be exposed to it for (what I imagine must be) the first time.
It actually has proven to be pretty pointless to argue with people like you - those who do not believe in individual rights, the law or the philosophy and reason that goes into a law.
I believe in individual rights aplenty. We just disagree on what those rights are.
I can also nearly guarantee you that I have more familiarity with the law, the political process, and what is judicially accepted than you do.
All you care about is how it makes you feel, laws or individual rights be damned - and that is pretty f'ing scary.
How it makes me feel? I've spent three entire threads sifting through the internet to find reliable facts and debunk idiot-mill conservative nonsense.
You don't like guns,
That's not even true. I don't like the idea of untrained private citizens with no assurance of sound mental health having guns. Is that too nuanced of a view for you to deal with? Too bad. This issue deserves nuance. In fact, you could use some of it yourself.
so stop trying to sound like you have a moderate or reasonable view on the issue - you don't.
Compared to you and those like you, nearly everyone has a moderate view on the issue.
You are in favor of suspending individual rights and perverting the law, and that puts you in the same company as Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot....see what I did there?
Yes, I do see what you did there. Do you think that you are clever? You are not the first person in history to compare someone you're arguing with on the internet to Hitler. My favorite part? "There is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress."
People like you terrify me, and I am glad that Americans currently have the right to own guns so they can keep people like you in check.
You're not keeping me in check, and you won't play any role in keeping me or anyone like me in check until you pull a trigger. The idea that you feel you need a gun to keep people whose politics you disagree with in check is the whole point. You style yourself a dictatorial protector of what is right, and you will kill people to enforce your imagined dictatorship.
I'll repeat myself: you, and those like you, will kill people whose politics you disagree with. Democracy be damned, you will kill people if the rest of your country doesn't agree with you.
"Keep people like you in check," ahahahahahahaha good lord. If gun rights nuts actually had the balls to keep the people they believe are trampling their rights in check, we'd have an epidemic of politically-motivated murders on our hands.
Sorry, not here to help. I just like to poke the bear. Of course I have often found the best way to advocate for gun control is to let those advocating against it keep talking.I didn't say all gun owners would admit to it.I think your statement is horrible speculation and not at all helpful to the debate.
"I always made one prayer to God, a very short one. Here it is: 'O Lord, make our enemies quite ridiculous!' God granted it."
Sorry, not here to help. I just like to poke the bear. Of course I have often found the best way to advocate for gun control is to let those advocating against it keep talking.I didn't say all gun owners would admit to it.I think your statement is horrible speculation and not at all helpful to the debate.
Which reminds me. Did anyone see that wackadoo Alex Jones unhinge and let all the crazy flow on Piers Morgan?
I mean, Piers Morgan is a dick, don't get me wrong, and he's really a bad spokesperson for the pro-gun control side in that he's kind of inept at it. But Alex Jones is absolutely wackadoo.
Sorry, not here to help. I just like to poke the bear. Of course I have often found the best way to advocate for gun control is to let those advocating against it keep talking.I didn't say all gun owners would admit to it.I think your statement is horrible speculation and not at all helpful to the debate.Which reminds me. Did anyone see that wackadoo Alex Jones unhinge and let all the crazy flow on Piers Morgan?
I mean, Piers Morgan is a dick, don't get me wrong, and he's really a bad spokesperson for the pro-gun control side in that he's kind of inept at it. But Alex Jones is absolutely wackadoo.
It's probably the only time in my life I've felt sorry for Piers; no one should have to live through that!
In other news it seems gun advocate Kieth Ratliff (aka FPS Russia) has been murdered. I hope this is a hoax because it plays out like a wet dream for those on the gun control side . . .
It seems very unlikely that it is a hoax; the New York Times is reporting on it, including statements from local law enforcement.