*sighs, turns over "DAYS SINCE LAST MASS SHOOTING IN AMERICA" sign to 0*

[blotsfan]

Well, if you think about it, is killing 30,000 of our citizens a year really that high a price to pay for FREEDOM?

I assume not since gas doesn't like it when I call deaths from school shootings "acceptable losses."

 

[GasBandit]

It needs to be addressed. And it can be.

What's funny is arguing that disarming the populace would make that number go down. With a straight face.

 

[Tress]

As I've pointed out before, your comfortable discomfort at current problems with law enforcement doesn't mean you know what a police state actually is. Hint - not us. And you have the second amendment to thank for that.

Well, I would argue the other 9 from the Bill of Rights are a big part of why we don't have a police state too.

 

[Null]

It needs to be addressed. And it can be.

What's funny is arguing that disarming the populace would make that number go down. With a straight face.

Well, just because it worked in the rest of the developed world...

 

[figmentPez]

Well, if you think about it, is killing 30,000 of our citizens a year really that high a price to pay for FREEDOM?

That's bullshit logic and you know it. I'm for better gun control, but this statement is flawed for so many reasons.

1. You know damn fucking well that even if the US were to successfully make all guns illegal that there would still be gun deaths. (Let's not even get into how difficult such legislation would be.)

2. You don't know how many of these gun deaths would just become deaths by other means. Especially since I'm assuming that 30,000 number includes suicides. I don't even know if guns make suicides more likely to succeed but people who want to die are still going to find a method, and some of them will succeed.

3. You know damn well that Gas is in favor of making changes that would reduce the amount of gun deaths in the US.

In conclusion, 30,000 as the "price of freedom" is a bullshit number you're citing for shock value alone. https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion

 

[blotsfan]

I don't even know if guns make suicides more likely to succeed

Gun suicide attempts succeed at a significantly higher rate than other methods.

 

[GasBandit]

Well, I would argue the other 9 from the Bill of Rights are a big part of why we don't have a police state too.

The 2nd is the final guarantor of the rest.

 

[blotsfan]

The 2nd is the final guarantor of the rest.

But you wouldn't pull a trigger until you're directly targeted, so what good are you?

 

[GasBandit]

But you wouldn't pull a trigger until you're directly targeted, so what good are you?

The beauty is, I'm not the sole determiner.

I guess the real question then, is, if you believe we're currently in the middle of such a dire constitutional crisis, why aren't YOU?

I suspect the real answer (and not the snarky one you're about to give) is that, deep down, you know we're not.

 

[blotsfan]

Because I know that I'm not going to take down the US Military.

 

[Null]

That's bullshit logic and you know it. I'm for better gun control, but this statement is flawed for so many reasons.

1. You know damn fucking well that even if the US were to successfully make all guns illegal that there would still be gun deaths. (Let's not even get into how difficult such legislation would be.)

2. You don't know how many of these gun deaths would just become deaths by other means. Especially since I'm assuming that 30,000 number includes suicides. I don't even know if guns make suicides more likely to succeed but people who want to die are still going to find a method, and some of them will succeed.

3. You know damn well that Gas is in favor of making changes that would reduce the amount of gun deaths in the US.

In conclusion, 30,000 as the "price of freedom" is a bullshit number you're citing for shock value alone. https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion

And?

 

[GasBandit]

Because I know that I'm not going to take down the US Military.

That's something that you guys bring up often, but recently, my father and uncle got into a discussion that brought this scenario up (if I might be forgiven for slightly diverting the conversation away from the "no u" "NO U" dynamic we've worked so hard to build)-

Apparently there was this very question posed on Quora, about "Would the troops turn on the civilian populace if so ordered." Among the answers, many of them from current and former military, there was actually a citing of an analogous precedent - the Philippines.

Sorry for the TLDR:

The Philippines were colonized by Spain in 1521 after their discovery by Ferdinand Magellan, and then acquired by the US after the Spanish-American War in 1898. After two more-or-less simultaneous insurrections -- by the initially US-installed provisional government which demanded immediate independence, and by the Muslim minority separatist population in the southern region of the islands -- the US Congress legislated gradual and transitional provisions for eventual independence. The Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 set the date for independence as July 4, 1946, the 170th anniversary of US independence from Britain.

Despite the Japanese invasion and three years of occupation with intense guerrilla warfare and then even more intense fighting and destruction when US forces returned, the US and Philippine Commonwealth governments were determined to meet the original date for independence less than a year after the war ended.

The Philippine Constitution that took effect in 1946 was nearly identical to the US Constitution; two notable differences were that the Bill of Rights was an article in the main body rather than a list of ten amendments, and presidential term limits of two four year terms were included in the original article for the Executive Branch in the main body, a full five years before the 22nd Amendment of the US Constitution was passed and ratified with nearly the same provisions.

As no president of the independent republic would win a second four year term until Ferdinand Marcos in 1969, constitutional term limits did not become an issue until the expiration of his second term in 1973 approached. In 1972, over a year before the election for his successor was scheduled to take place, Marcos hyped up a straw-man communist insurgency as an excuse to declare martial law, suspend the constitution, and install himself as a dictator and de facto king. He and his wife Imelda then proceeded to plunder the national treasury, causing a US congressman and Marcos critic to eventually coin a new word, kleptocracy, specifically in reference to the regime.

The Marcoses kept an iron-fisted grip on the country for 14 years, going so far as to having the military assassinate Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, an exiled opposition leader, as he returned to the country from the US and literally stepped off the plane in August 1983.

The assassination was so blatantly a regime plot and Ninoy Aquino so popular that the people rallied behind his widow Corazon, eventually persuading her to run for president when mounting international pressure finally forced Marcos to announce a special election two and a half years after the assassination. The election in turn was so corrupted by blatant ballot stuffing by the regime that members of the election committee and several international poll-watchers walked out in protest. The people took to the streets in outraged but nonviolent protest with civil disobedience and labor strikes.

A faction of reform-minded military officers attempted to seize the executive mansion and unseat the regime, but were arrested. Marcos and the Army chief of staff, General Fabian Ver, then sent the military to squash the protesting masses, but most of the military mutinied en masse and refused to fire on their fellow citizens. General Fidel Ramos, the vice chief of staff of the Army, and several other generals resigned to join the mutineers, with Ramos assuming leadership of the mutineers. The dwindling regime was left with no option but to step down and leave the country, and Corazon “Cory” Aquino, the quiet, unassuming widow of the opposition leader, ascended to the presidency. (Ramos would later succeed her as president.) It could have been a bloodbath with the dictator remaining in power, if the vast majority of the armed forces hadn't ultimately realized that their loyalty belonged to their fellow citizens and not to the regime.

Again, this happened in what had been a US Territory/Commonwealth for half a century, the only one to become an independent republic and whose constitution was nearly identical to that of the USA at the time the president-turned-dictator was elected and took office. The lessons of history, both in how it could happen and what it took to unseat the dictator and how to do that, are there for Americans to learn.

Sadly, the lesson is lost on the vast majority of Americans, most of those under 40 having absolutely no awareness of what happened and most of those over 40 having only a vague recollection of some deposed dictator from Southeast Asia whose wife left behind 3,000 pairs of shoes.

So, food for thought there, for those who think all Trump has to do is snap his fingers and the military will jump to slaughter us all.

 

[Null]

That's admittedly an interesting point.

 

[blotsfan]

So, food for thought there, for those who think all Trump has to do is snap his fingers and the military will jump to slaughter us all.

So what you're saying is that they didn't need random joes with guns?

 

[GasBandit]

So what you're saying is that they didn't need random joes with guns?

The random joes with guns will most likely not face a unified military bent on domestic genocide. Rather, it's likely much of the military will join up with the random joes.

 

[blotsfan]

So then what of your "stop a repressive US government" fantasy?

 

[GasBandit]

So then what of your "stop a repressive US government" fantasy?

Mine is still valid, and has precedent. Your "can't beat the military" anxiety, though, has been shown to be hollow.

 

[blotsfan]

Two scenarios for the US going repressive:

1) they are United around the dictator. They steamroll any resistance.

2) they engage in civil war. Due to their overwhelming power. Random citizens with their guns are irrelevant in the outcome of the conflict.

 

[GasBandit]

Two scenarios for the US going repressive:

1) they are United around the dictator. They steamroll any resistance.

2) they engage in civil war. Due to their overwhelming power. Random citizens with their guns are irrelevant in the outcome of the conflict.

The very textbook example of a false dichotomy fallacy.

 

[jwhouk]

Blots. YDTTA.

 

[blotsfan]

And gas isn't?

 

[Dave]

YABDTTA.

But as this is the political thread, carry on.

 

[Gruebeard]

YABDTTA DABDTTA DOO!

 

[GasBandit]

YABDTTA DABDTTA DOO!

 

[PatrThom]

Because I know that I'm not going to take down the US Military.

Not with that attitude, you won’t.

Now, to be as dry and icy as a caribou carcass for a moment, the only way we’re really going to find out whether it’s plausible is for it to become necessary. And I, for one, do not want us to reach a point where it becomes necessary, because that’s the sort of thing that might result in over 7 million deaths, if history is any indication.

—Patrick

 

[Tress]

Not with that attitude, you won’t.

Now, to be as dry and icy as a caribou carcass for a moment, the only way we’re really going to find out whether it’s plausible is for it to become necessary. And I, for one, do not want us to reach a point where it becomes necessary, because that’s the sort of thing that might result in over 7 million deaths, if history is any indication.

—Patrick

7 million seems low.

 

[PatrThom]

7 million seems low.

The last time, it was right around 2% of the total population. I got to 7mil by padding that to 2.25%.

—Patrick

 

[@Li3n]

Because, despite what all the yellow journalism would have you believe, random mass shootings are among the least likely risks.

Ah yes, obviously, there no point in reducing a risk unless it's one of the most likely ones... i mean, what's even the point of saving 10-20 more lives a year any way?

Won't do that either.
Just disarms the law abiding.

This never gets old:

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

 

[mikerc]

Ah yes, obviously, there no point in reducing a risk unless it's one of the most likely ones... i mean, what's even the point of saving 10-20 more lives a year any way?

Probably a lot more. You take a lot of the guns out of the equation & maybe the cops are going to be less likely to think "Is this guy armed? I need to be ready to pull my gun out at the slightest provocation just in case he is & looks like he might be about to pull his out."

 

[GasBandit]

Ah yes, obviously, there no point in reducing a risk unless it's one of the most likely ones... i mean, what's even the point of saving 10-20 more lives a year any way?

At the expense of hundreds of others to armed criminals, plus the whole unarmed populace being easier to oppress thing.

Look, you know we're just going to go round and round on this like always.

 

[jwhouk]

That's the problem with the gun debate - we go round and round and round, and then there's another shooting.

 

[AshburnerX]

At the expense of hundreds of others to armed criminals, plus the whole unarmed populace being easier to oppress thing.

Firearms were used and pulled in self-defense against crimes at a rate of .9% of crimes, per findings from a metanalysis of gun violence statistics done by Harvard of the years 1993-2011. The head of that research states that "The average person... has basically no chance in their lifetime to use a gun in self-defense." You COULD argue that some uses go unreported because people don't want to be investigated by cops, but the widely toted study by Kleck & Gertz (which claims it's much, much higher) relied entirely on self-reporting. That's pretty shitty science; it's well known (and taught) in research that simply asking people if they've ever engaged in an incredibly rare event is a sure fire way to get overestimates... and none of this accounts for the very basic fact that most people who DO carry fire arms for self-defense aren't properly trained to use them in that manner.

I'm all for people owning firearms responsibly, as is their right, but lets not pretend we got action heroes running around. Most people who own defense firearms never have to use them and those that do often do so poorly. There is no minimum standard for training people to use them in self-defense, something that SHOULD be mandatory for the acquisition of a concealed carry permit.

 

[GasBandit]

Firearms were used and pulled in self-defense against crimes at a rate of .9% of crimes, per findings from a metanalysis of gun violence statistics done by Harvard of the years 1993-2011

And what is that in absolute numbers? Hundreds? More than @li3n's 10-20, I'm guessing.

I'm all for people owning firearms responsibly, as is their right, but lets not pretend we got action heroes running around. Most people who own defense firearms never have to use them and those that do often do so poorly. There is no minimum standard for training people to use them in self-defense, something that SHOULD be mandatory for the acquisition of a concealed carry permit.

I know I'm a broken record at this point, but I think we should be having firearm safety training as part of high school mandatory curriculum. But I know that, at least in Texas and Colorado, there IS training required to get a CCP.

And additionally, the deterrent factor is impossible to measure on top of all else. Who can say how much more emboldened an armed criminal would be if he could be relatively certain his target was unarmed?

 

[Eriol]

And additionally, the deterrent factor is impossible to measure on top of all else. Who can say how much more emboldened an armed criminal would be if he could be relatively certain his target was unarmed?

What percentage of mass shootings happen in "gun-free" zones?

 

[GasBandit]

What percentage of mass shootings happen in "gun-free" zones?

Well, every single one that ever happened in a school, we know that much. But apparently it's difficult to pin down in total, given a number of factors (not the least of which is the ever-changing definition of what constitutes a "mass shooting."