Oh by the way, someone shot and killed an 8 year old (of course it's USA)

[HexMachina]

4 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

The problem you have, Scot, is that reasonable gun owners acknowledge and uinderstand what many gun control advocates either do not, or are unwilling to acknowledge.  Namely, that proposals for new and more restrictive gun controls up to and including outrright bans are going to continue to be demanded.

If you get, for example registration (and I can't believe in light of the discussions around Muslim registration that people are still proposing this) the next time there's a mass shooting, then what? Are gun control advocates going to say 'Well, we tried registration, nothing more we can do here in terms of gun control'?  Or do you think it's more likely they will demand more?

When you couple that reality with the fact that none of the proposed 'reasonable' gun regulations move the needle at all really in terms of prevention, there is no logical reason for gun owners to compromise, because compromise is incremental capitulation, with essentially no benefit.

 

 

A distinction without much meaning.  How do you propose we get to 'gun ownership is a rare exception'?

Why are you equating registering based on your religion with registration for owning something? The two are substantially different, surely. Gun registration would be more analogous to something like vehicle registration, I would think. Whereas registering based on your religion is an attempt to monitor and police your thoughts and beliefs...

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 minutes ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Why are you equating registering based on your religion with registration for owning something? The two are substantially different, surely. Gun registration would be more analogous to something like vehicle registration, I would think. Whereas registering based on your religion is an attempt to monitor and police your thoughts and beliefs...

 

HEM,

Here's the catch, while I think registration is reasonable.  Licensure, generally, is associated with circumstances where government license is needed before an individual is allowed to do something, like driving (see the extensive discussion of that in my recent thread).  That would be one of the objections raised to such registration... that it is a form of licensure.  Then again, registering to vote is not being given license.  It is simply a record of who has and has not voted to prevent double voting.

[King Ned Stark]

5 state manhunt for Facebook Murderer.  Guess some guy in Cleveland posted video of himself killing someone.

[Swordfish]

1 hour ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Why are you equating registering based on your religion with registration for owning something? The two are substantially different, surely. Gun registration would be more analogous to something like vehicle registration, I would think.

 

I'm equating them because they are similar, and because they should be opposed for the same reasons.

 

Quote

Whereas registering based on your religion is an attempt to monitor and police your thoughts and beliefs...

but... it's just registration, right?  I mean, how can being required to register as a muslim be considered thought policing?

 

 

Quote

Here's the catch, while I think registration is reasonable.  Licensure, generally, is associated with circumstances where government license is needed before an individual is allowed to do something, like driving (see the extensive discussion of that in my recent thread).  That would be one of the objections raised to such registration... that it is a form of licensure.  Then again, registering to vote is not being given license.  It is simply a record of who has and has not voted to prevent double voting.

Registration is neither reasonable, nor effective.

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Gun registration would be more analogous to something like vehicle registration, I would think.

But why would anyone who owns a gun or supports people who do agree to this? This type of registration is effectively an extra tax on the item being registered. Do you know where the vehicle registration fees go? It completely depends on the state and even county in question, but here is the first Google result. In this example, the lion's share goes to the local schools, but the rest is split among many other places.

Any such registration scheme almost certainly results in waste (if not outright corruption) and many will allocate the money to completely unrelated causes. We tolerate this for cars because cars are expensive objects the routine usage of which involves fees (tolls, tickets, etc.) so ironclad identification of ownership is important, but I can't see it gaining traction for any other object except for punitive purposes.

In the specific case of guns, it would not solve the problem with shootings and is in fact a sneaky partial circumvention of the Second Amendment in that while it does not abolish the right to bear arms, it makes the practicalities impossible to afford for a subset of potential gun owners. As far as I can tell, it is only implemented in a few strongly Democrat states and even then only for some types of guns.

[Swordfish]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Swordfish,

I do understand your point.  However, given that the most fundamental right citizens of the US have, voting, is keyed to a registration of voters I do not believe a registration of gun owners, without more, will qualify as a violation of the 2nd amendment.  It is a prime example of the "Slippery Slope" fallacy.

I am frankly quite stunned that you are holding up voter registration as the gold standard here, given all the issues that exist around voter registration.

I would suggest to you that voter registration is a good argument AGAINST gun owner registration.

Aside from that, your argument is... disjointed... at best.

I have not suggested that registration would be a violation of the second amendment, and even if i had, I don't see how your claim that it would not violate the second amendment makes it a 'slippery slope fallacy'.  These two things seem to me to be more or less unrelated.

As for slippery slopes in general, I'm not sure why it became fashionable to simply dismiss arguments of incremental change as 'slippery slopes' out of hand, when we see these kinds of changes all the time.

So Scot, rather than the nonsensical tangent you posted above, why don't you go ahead and answer my question.  What do you think would happen if national gun registration were implemented, the next time there's a shooting that takes the nation by storm?  Do you think there would be demands for stricter regulation or not?  because if you think there would be, then it's not a 'slippery slope fallacy', it's just a 'slippery slope'.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

 

So Scot, rather than the nonsensical tangent you posted above, why don't you go ahead and answer my question.  What do you think would happen if national gun registration were implemented, the next time there's a shooting that takes the nation by storm?  Do you think there would be demands for stricter regulation or not?  because if you think there would be, then it's not a 'slippery slope fallacy', it's just a 'slippery slope'.

 

Yes, there would be demands for more regulations. The problem with this argument is that you're assuming they'll be acted upon and that it will obviously lead to a total ban. I just don't think that would happen. And it's possible to see a scenario where this could become a self fulfilling prophecy where refusal to act on moderate regulations leads to cries for more aggressive regulation and/or an out right ban. 

[Swordfish]

12 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Yes, there would be demands for more regulations. The problem with this argument is that you're assuming they'll be acted upon and that it will obviously lead to a total ban. I just don't think that would happen. And it's possible to see a scenario where this could become a self fulfilling prophecy where refusal to act on moderate regulations leads to cries for more aggressive regulation and/or an out right ban. 

Apply this same logic to the opposition to, say,  registration of muslims, and let me know if it passes muster.

I mean, they probably won't be rounded up and placed in camps, so what's the big deal, right?

Or how about anti voter fraud regulations... I mean, we all agree voter fraud is bad, right?

The bottom line here is that there is no rational reason for gun rights groups to agree to regulations that are unlikely to serve much of a purpose(which are, in fact, largely based on getting votes and not so much on reducing the impact of guns), and that move us closer to a ban, regardless of whether or not you think such a ban is likely, particularly given the already falling rates of violent crime.

 

 

 

 

[TerraPrime]

5 hours ago, Swordfish said:

A distinction without much meaning.  How do you propose we get to 'gun ownership is a rare exception'?

It's a distinction worth making because the difference there is what separates the reasoning behind the two identical outcomes. 

 

There are no Constitutionally sound way of doing it. The culture won't change. So, we will continue to have shootings like this, and Columbine, and Aurora, and Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook, and all the phenomenally high success rate of men committing suicides, and toddlers killing their siblings and parents, and parents killing their own children, etc. These dead people, children and adult alike, are the price we pay for the gun culture we want. 

[WillWork4NinjaPowers]

About a third of my son's school was absent today because of a threat.  Real cool, 'merica.

[TerraPrime]

1 minute ago, WillWork4NinjaPowers said:

About a third of my son's school was absent today because of a threat.  Real cool, 'merica.

Soon enough teachers will do lesson plans with float days to accommodate this, like they do for snow days in very cold regions. 

[Altherion]

8 minutes ago, TerraPrime said:

Soon enough teachers will do lesson plans with float days to accommodate this, like they do for snow days in very cold regions. 

The snow days are disappearing because of global warming so it will all work out in the end.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

3 minutes ago, TerraPrime said:

Soon enough teachers will do lesson plans with float days to accommodate this, like they do for snow days in very cold regions. 

Or perhaps we can just start teaching Fire Arm Safety, Maintenance and Repair in Schools...

 

Welcome to Introduction to Firearms 101! My name is Professor Humungous! Kindly push your safetys to the on position and we can begin

[TerraPrime]

2 hours ago, Altherion said:

The snow days are disappearing because of global warming so it will all work out in the end.

In some areas. Miami for instance will probably have to add flood days. 

[butterbumps!]

12 hours ago, Swordfish said:

I'm equating them because they are similar, and because they should be opposed for the same reasons.

 

but... it's just registration, right?  I mean, how can being required to register as a muslim be considered thought policing?

I don't understand how religious registration and registration of weapon ownership are "similar."  They strike me as fundamentally different circumstances.   Can you explain why you see these as analogous?  

[Swordfish]

8 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

I don't understand how religious registration and registration of weapon ownership are "similar."  They strike me as fundamentally different circumstances.   Can you explain why you see these as analogous?  

The purpose of registration in each case is to attempt to protect the public from actions carried out by an extremely small percentage of the registered groups members by registering all members of the group.  it also has the similarity of being almost wholly ineffective at accomplishing it's stated goal, which is one of the key reasons to oppose it, but certainly not the only one.

Of course, in the case of gun ownership, it also has the added 'benefit' of being a cash cow for government agencies, which appeals to the statists and the bureaucrats, but doesn't do much in terms of actually providing any benefit to the populace.

[Swordfish]

17 hours ago, TerraPrime said:

It's a distinction worth making because the difference there is what separates the reasoning behind the two identical outcomes. 

 

There are no Constitutionally sound way of doing it. The culture won't change. So, we will continue to have shootings like this, and Columbine, and Aurora, and Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook, and all the phenomenally high success rate of men committing suicides, and toddlers killing their siblings and parents, and parents killing their own children, etc. These dead people, children and adult alike, are the price we pay for the gun culture we want. 

Right.  because the only path to reducing, say suicide, is making guns exceedingly rare.  

Might as well just throw in the towel and accept it, MIRITE?

[Pebble thats Stubby]

4 hours ago, Swordfish said:

Right.  because the only path to reducing, say suicide, is making guns exceedingly rare.  

Might as well just throw in the towel and accept it, MIRITE?

Well the US is not exactly that enthusiastic about investing in Mental health either.

[Swordfish]

Just now, Pebble said:

Well the US is not exactly that enthusiastic about investing in Mental health either.

 

 

I do not disagree.

 

[TerraPrime]

5 hours ago, Swordfish said:

Right.  because the only path to reducing, say suicide, is making guns exceedingly rare.  

Might as well just throw in the towel and accept it, MIRITE?

So are you convinced that accessibility to guns impact on the success rate of suicide, or not? Because you can work to reduce the factors that lead people to attempt suicide, but as long as they have ready accessibility to guns, we're still going to see a high rate of success for those who do attempt it. 

 

By all means, work on mental health infrastructure to reduce the frequency of people committing suicide. But that's not the part that is impacted by the gun culture. The part that gun culture contributes to suicide is the ease of success when people do make the attempt. So I don't know that your retort actually addresses the point, which is that we are, as a society, going to have to live with increased success rate of suicide attempts as a result of our unwillingness to restrict access to firearms in an effective way. 

 

 

Edit to add: 

 

Also, reducing access to firearms is indeed the only way to solving some of the other problems, like toddlers shooting people and themselves to death. Last year when I was keeping count there were about 260 of these cases where a toddler (4 or below) shot and killed someone. Any of the legislative measures we are can impose to make a dent in that statistic would be overly intrusive under our 2nd Amendment.