Guns, Guns Times Five = 10

[lupis42]

I don't think it is as much an issue of them them going a legit, as it is in murder not being an inherent part of other illegal activities in the same way it is part of the drug trade. A lot of other crime is more individual and less gang-oriented.

Sure, but my point is that I don't see any reason to assume that most drug dealers would pursue other avenues of crime - which would, effectively, be a career change - when their career becomes less risky.

A few might, if they're more connected to a gang, actually prefer a violent high-risk lifestyle, or can't handle the competition, but I'd bet the majority would probably try to make a go of their existing careers, and use the relationships they already have to keep selling drugs - they'd just hire lawyers instead of fighting turf wars.

Also, this should probably be moved to the drugs thread.

[Shryke]

PPP's newest national poll finds that the NRA's image has declined over the last three weeks following Wayne LaPierre's controversial press conference the week before Christmas.

The NRA now has a negative favorability rating, with 42% of voters seeing it positively while 45% have an unfavorable view. That represents a 10 point net decline in the NRA's favorability from the week before the press conference when a national poll we did found it at 48/41. Its image has taken a hit with both Democrats (from 29/59 to 22/67) and Republicans (71/19 to 66/18).

The NRA's focus on putting more guns in schools is likely what's driving the decline in the organization's image. Only 41% of voters support the organization's proposal to put armed police officers in schools across the country, with 50% opposed. Democrats (35/57) and independents (38/51) both oppose the push and even among Republicans only a narrow majority (52/39) supports it.

On the broader issue of giving teachers guns, only 27% of voters are supportive with 64% opposed. There's bipartisan opposition to that concept with Republicans (35/50), independents (31/59), and Democrats (19/77) all standing against it. Gun owners (37/52) oppose it as well.

The holidays and the fiscal cliff took a lot of the spotlight off gun control measures, but in general 53% of Americans say they support stricter gun laws with 40% opposed.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/01/images-of-nra-congressional-republicans-on-the-decline.html

[TerraPrime]

Re: Tormund

You mean California's assault weapons ban, magazine size restrictions, and carry ban did not prevent someone from taking a gun to school? Crazy.

Compared to the documented cases where gun violence committed against others had been avoided due to the ban this incident certainly serves as good counterpoint.

Re: FLoW

I guess I trust the U.S. government's checks and balances system more in this case. If Obama does over-reach, then there'd be Constitutional challenges. In fact, there'd be challenges either way, knowing the NRA. So let the SCOTUS sort it out. If it's truly unconstitutional, we'll find out and the Executive Order will be rescinded. If it is, on the other hand, Constitutional, then well, yay. It's not like if Obama had abused the system it'd simply go unrectified forever.

Still, I get that from the perspectives of a supporter for less scrutiny and fewer regulations to own more types of firearms this prospect is not entirely reassuring.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

I guess I trust the U.S. government's checks and balances system more in this case. If Obama does over-reach, then there'd be Constitutional challenges. In fact, there'd be challenges either way, knowing the NRA. So let the SCOTUS sort it out. If it's truly unconstitutional, we'll find out and the Executive Order will be rescinded. If it is, on the other hand, Constitutional, then well, yay. It's not like if Obama had abused the system it'd simply go unrectified forever.

Well, the problem is that there is the "political questions" doctrine where the Supreme Court is reluctant to get involved in inter-branch squabbles regarding the limits of authority. So they sometimes decline/duck those cases, saying that Congress should just change the law if they don't like what the President is doing. Or, it takes such a long time to make it up there that you end up with the law being in place for years anyway. And, of course there is the possibility that if just one vote changes on the Court, they may conclude that the individual right to bear arms isn't protected anyway. So counting on the Court to sort out a dispute over legislation or executive regulatory authority isn't much of a consolation prize to gun owners compared to simply stopping the legislation in the first place.

And again, a great many gun owners believe that the right to keep and bear arms exists regardless of what the government says. I'm personally in that camp, as is Tormund. I do not recognize the government's right to deprive law-abiding citizens of their weapons, whether that represents majority will or not. So again, the checks and balances aren't much comfort. But I think this is a mindset that a lot of people don't really understand.

I would, though, support making the background check system available to private citizens who choose, voluntarily, to use it. As long as it is done in such a manner where there is no record of the weapon that is the subject of the transaction, and no government agency is given statutory rule-making authority. If I didn't believe that the government would try to convert this into a tool to mass deny or delay applications, I wouldn't mind if it was mandatory. And I'd support measures to better integrate mental health-related behavioral issues with that database.

Here's a fun pro-gun article that appeared in Pravda. It begins with:

These days, there are few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bear arms and use deadly force to defend one's self and possessions....

and just gets better.

http://english.pravd...ericans_guns-0/

[Fragile Bird]

You mean California's assault weapons ban, magazine size restrictions, and carry ban did not prevent someone from taking a gun to school? Crazy.

Tsk tsk, you're smarter than that Tormund, it means he didn't walk in with a banned assault weapon and kill 16 students and 5 teachers, since he only had a shotgun.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Tsk tsk, you're smarter than that Tormund, it means he didn't walk in with a banned assault weapon and kill 16 students and 5 teachers, since he only had a shotgun.

If those were my targets, that would be the gun I would use.

[lupis42]

Tsk tsk, you're smarter than that Tormund, it means he didn't walk in with a banned assault weapon and kill 16 students and 5 teachers, since he only had a shotgun.

Fundamentally, if you take the "assualt weapons are more dangerous" line of reasoning, this guy didn't choose any of the "more evil" options that CA law currently doesn't restrict. He chose a shotgun, and probably (given the nature of the CA ban) a manual action one.

He also, from the report, was targeting a couple of specific people, and was talked down - so basically, entirely different MO.

Of course, CT already had an assault weapons ban too...

[Fragile Bird]

Actually, what I really mean is that the whole line of commentary is goofy. Someone went to a school/anywhere with a gun to kill someone. Period.

And while one of the victims was barely wounded and refused treatment, the other is in critical condition.

[sologdin]

FLoW, that article is so upside-down that it reads like an onion bit.

[TerraPrime]

Here's a fun pro-gun article that appeared in Pravda. It begins with:

These days, there are few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bear arms and use deadly force to defend one's self and possessions....

and just gets better.

http://english.pravd...ericans_guns-0/

This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar. Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns were everywhere, common items. People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered. Fighting knives were a prominent part of many traditional attires and those little tubes criss crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples? Well those are bullet holders for rifles.

Oh, you were so right. :rofl:

[Fragile Bird]

Moscow fell, for example, not from a lack of weapons to defend it, but from the lying guile of the Reds. Ten thousand Reds took Moscow and were opposed only by some few hundreds of officer cadets and their instructors. Even then the battle was fierce and losses high. However, in the city alone, at that time, lived over 30,000 military officers (both active and retired), all with their own issued weapons and ammunition, plus tens of thousands of other citizens who were armed. The Soviets promised to leave them all alone if they did not intervene. They did not and for that were asked afterwards to come register themselves and their weapons: where they were promptly shot.

Nice to see how widespread the support for the NRA position is. Keep strong against Obama, comrades! :commie:

[James Arryn]

I' ve been reading some Scalia...I don't think he reduces things as clearly as people are suggesting. He seems to kind of make some leaps...and he leaves a lot of doors open when people here seem to think he's the closer.

I'll refrain from taking solid positions until I've read more. For now it sounds like the kind of hymn the choir would buy.

[Shryke]

From the latest school shooting:

After the suspect shot one student and missed another, "the teacher at that point was trying to get the students out of the classroom and engaged the shooter –who had numerous rounds of shotgun shells … in his pockets – engaged the suspect in conversation," Kern County Sheriff Don Youngblood said.

“A campus supervisor showed up, was outside the classroom, and together they engaged in conversation with this young man, and at one point he put the shotgun down, and police officers were able to take him into custody,” Youngblood said.

http://news.blogs.cn...chool-shooting/

That is fucking ballsey.

[Fragile Bird]

Lucky for them it wasn't the Newtown shooter.

[Free Northman]

This has probably been suggested before in one or more of the 9 previous versions of this thread, but if an Presidential Executive order was instead issued to ban the US media from publishing the names or faces of these shooters from now on, I reckon the appeal of infamy and publicity will be removed and these types of events will be reduced dramatically.

Surely that is the first step that needs to be considered, as it doesn't infringe on the media's right to report on the matter, it just bars them from naming the suspects. A very small restriction, which could have huge benefits.

[James Arryn]

This has probably been suggested before in one or more of the 9 previous versions of this thread, but if an Presidential Executive order was instead issued to ban the US media from publishing the names or faces of these shooters from now on, I reckon the appeal of infamy and publicity will be removed and these types of events will be reduced dramatically.

Surely that is the first step that needs to be considered, as it doesn't infringe on the media's right to report on the matter, it just bars them from naming the suspects. A very small restriction, which could have huge benefits.

Yes, that is the obvious first step.

Nothing else seems to link these mass shootings together.

Surely.

Someone shoot the elephant over there.

[Free Northman]

Yes, that is the obvious first step.

Nothing else seems to link these mass shootings together.

Surely.

Someone shoot the elephant over there.

No need for sarcasm. From a practical perspective anything else will involve a huge fight to get implemented, while simply witholding the name of the suspect from media reports can probably be achieved with minimal effort.

So in terms of cost benefit, this can provide some immediate returns with minimal investment of time and effort.

[James Arryn]

No need for sarcasm. From a practical perspective anything else will involve a huge fight to get implemented, while simply witholding the name of the suspect from media reports can probably be achieved with minimal effort.

So in terms of cost benefit, this can provide some immediate returns with minimal investment of time and effort.

Unless you think that trying to fix the mass part of mass shootings is ultimately dumb, in which case this will simply give another decade or so of more mass shootings with fingers pointed to painted goats or whatever, before people say 'wait, we have by far the most guns and by far the most shootings. I don't know about you, but I see a possible link.' Nd stop trying to fix human nature or whatever because you think it fits in better with an interpretation of a document already proven very fallible.

Or, let's rewind and have this discussion about slavery or women's rights or whatever, There are always going to be easier legal solutions than fixing the problem if you have people invested enough in its sustenance. How that makes for a rational profession, though, I don't see.

I'll give you the sarcasm. I get a bit peeved about this whole children dying thing. That will sound like sarcasm but isn't, really. I am actually agreeing with your point about that, I'm just still in the peeved frame of mind that produced the original sarcasm.

[Free Northman]

Unless you think that trying to fix the mass part of mass shootings is ultimately dumb, in which case this will simply give another decade or so of more mass shootings with fingers pointed to painted goats or whatever, before people say 'wait, we have by far the most guns and by far the most shootings. I don't know about you, but I see a possible link.' Nd stop trying to fix human nature or whatever because you think it fits in better with an interpretation of a document already proven very fallible.

Or, let's rewind and have this discussion about slavery or women's rights or whatever, There are always going to be easier legal solutions than fixing the problem if you have people invested enough in its sustenance. How that makes for a rational profession, though, I don't see.

I'll give you the sarcasm. I get a bit peeved about this whole children dying thing. That will sound like sarcasm but isn't, really. I am actually agreeing with your point about that, I'm just still in the peeved frame of mind that produced the original sarcasm.

I understand that you're peeved. All I can point out is that you're trying to address the issue from an ideological perspective then, whereas my suggestion was simply a low hanging fruit, practical proposal for some immediate progress in perhaps saving some lives.

Since the ideological perspectives on this thing differ widely, your approach is merely going to polarize the whole issue, while practical, neutral suggestions will probably achieve the greatest immediate short term benefits by focusing on steps that all parties can reasonably agree to.

[James Arryn]

It's not just ideological to me, though. In fact less so.

Okay, let's go one step deeper. Conservatism is intellectually bankrupt. it's only foothold is in ideals. It remains as it was at its inception as a political movement, reactionism.

Follow it through to its end and you have a static situation.

I should pause and ask if you agree with me here.

Moving on, socially and politically it is a desire to retain certain elements it

believes hold primacy over other kinetics, but both socially and politically that has always proven to be too subjective to ever retain. And, more, not only is it impossible to achieve in the here and now, it was never achieved in the when that is vaguely romanticized to be the ideal.

Both politically and socially, conservatism as a concept is like trying to take a single snapshot of weather.

It appeals to that universal human element which believes that a preservation of certain things will make us safer, when ultimately it might just temporarily make us feel safer. There is a quote about how all the change coupled with the crap values of the younger generation are going to lead to destruction. It was Confucius.

So this idea that we need to redress other elements before tackling guns simply because they are fixed in a document is an extension of that. Fear of the fluidity makes us reach for that, not logic. Past behaviour has shown us that reaching for that as a single payer solution is horribly destructive. We are trying to construct fantastic ways in which the American psyche and culture explains the inordinate amount of gun crime when, even if it were wrong, the first logical solution would be to look at the equally inordinate number of guns.

It's this idea that the Hippocratic Oath should somehow be used on the legal system...a belief premised in the idea that it is itself premised on a belief, conscious or not, that the current system is impermanent and needs to be preserved as is or else will be lost forever, like a life. But the very fact that we have these discussions means it works both ways. Unless it has another kind of momentum, nothing that is changed can't be unchanged if it proves ineffective. Prohibition.

Unless you decide that it is essential to the means of asking those questions, and there I say that time, if it was ever true, has clearly passed. No sane person believes their 9mm is standing between themselves and tyranny when tyranny has nukes and stealth bombers and smart bombs. And if it is, rocket launchers and flame throwers and the like are better.

So we return to the idealistic basis for the continuation. And the degree to which so much of the reasoning per Scalia et al is Original Intent, which is, as I say, intellectually bankrupt.

None of this is new to you, I know. I am just intellectually venting, which is not the same as being idealistic.