Those crazy New Zealanders....whatever happened to thoughts and prayers?

[pmv]

This doesn't have anything to do with New Zealand. Someone put forth the argument that small disorganized resistances would not prevail against large organized armies, for example that of the US. Yet we have examples of exactly such things happening. The fact that you explain how they happened doesn't dilute the point that they did happen.

I truly don't understand progressives sometimes. You (perhaps not literally you, pmv) speak of imminent fascism, style the more fervent among you as the Resistance, and bemoan the fact that Trump is in control of the nuclear codes. If Trump were to erect concentration camps and inter all manner of minorities in service to white supremacy or some other horror, don't you think that would involve exactly the sort of contingency that the 2nd amendment was intended to dissuade? Do you really regard yourself as helpless if that were to happen, since you think a resistance could never prevail against the US army?

If we had to call upon antifa to protect us from real and true fascists, would we want them armed or not?

That's not a terrible point. There certainly are hard-leftists who oppose gun-control for precisely that reason (and indeed some speak about needing guns to defend themselves against the police, never mind the army). But that's a dividing line between the far-left and the moderate-left. Most leftists don't speak in terms of an armed workers uprising violently overthrowing the state.

Don't actually know what antifa's attitude to gun-control is. They certainly like posing with the things, so it wouldn't at all surprise me if they were against it.

Of course, in many cases where revolutions occured it was with the assistance of parts of the military, as in Russia (most notably the Latvian Rifle Regiment) and Iran (parts of the airforce), so they had guns anyway. But those were countries with mass conscription.

 

[Bird222]

This doesn't have anything to do with New Zealand. Someone put forth the argument that small disorganized resistances would not prevail against large organized armies, for example that of the US. Yet we have examples of exactly such things happening. The fact that you explain how they happened doesn't dilute the point that they did happen.

I truly don't understand progressives sometimes. You (perhaps not literally you, pmv) speak of imminent fascism, style the more fervent among you as the Resistance, and bemoan the fact that Trump is in control of the nuclear codes. If Trump were to erect concentration camps and inter all manner of minorities in service to white supremacy or some other horror, don't you think that would involve exactly the sort of contingency that the 2nd amendment was intended to dissuade? Do you really regard yourself as helpless if that were to happen, since you think a resistance could never prevail against the US army?

If we had to call upon antifa to protect us from real and true fascists, would we want them armed or not?

I'm not going to say progressives in general but I'll say anti-gun people. They only seem to want the government to have guns. Notice how the assault weapon (you know those weapons that are only designed for killing lots of people fast) ban proposals have exemptions for the police. So it's fine for your local police to have these 'mass killing' weapons??? [gov't]Show me your papers.[/gov't] smh

 

[Veliko]

This doesn't have anything to do with New Zealand. Someone put forth the argument that small disorganized resistances would not prevail against large organized armies, for example that of the US. Yet we have examples of exactly such things happening. The fact that you explain how they happened doesn't dilute the point that they did happen.

And how is the example of Vietnam, where the 'defeated' side was a reluctant invader, relevant to domestic gun ownership?

 

[JSt0rm]

This doesn't have anything to do with New Zealand. Someone put forth the argument that small disorganized resistances would not prevail against large organized armies, for example that of the US. Yet we have examples of exactly such things happening. The fact that you explain how they happened doesn't dilute the point that they did happen.

I truly don't understand progressives sometimes. You (perhaps not literally you, pmv) speak of imminent fascism, style the more fervent among you as the Resistance, and bemoan the fact that Trump is in control of the nuclear codes. If Trump were to erect concentration camps and inter all manner of minorities in service to white supremacy or some other horror, don't you think that would involve exactly the sort of contingency that the 2nd amendment was intended to dissuade? Do you really regard yourself as helpless if that were to happen, since you think a resistance could never prevail against the US army?

If we had to call upon antifa to protect us from real and true fascists, would we want them armed or not?

i agree. Russia would arm the alt right

 

[SMOGZINN]

So it's fine for your local police to have these 'mass killing' weapons???

I am not sure just how prevalent my attitude is among progressives, but I don't agree that there should be exemptions for the police. I've argued recently on here that the police are already too militarized and that they should be nearly completely disarmed and retrained to use methods other than deadly force for most situations, and have the ability to call in force only as a last resort.

 

[brycejones]

I am not sure just how prevalent my attitude is among progressives, but I don't agree that there should be exemptions for the police. I've argued recently on here that the police are already too militarized and that they should be nearly completely disarmed and retrained to use methods other than deadly force for most situations, and have the ability to call in force only as a last resort.

I would argue that the police need access but that would probably be limited to more highly trained responders and not your typical beat cop.

 

[thilanliyan]

Of course you can't see it. No one in their right mind would foresee such things happening. Yet they have happened.

I specifically said American soil. Has it happened on American soil?

You really believe the American gov't could lose to a small militia group staging a coup for example ON American soil? As I said, I don't see.

 

[SMOGZINN]

I would argue that the police need access but that would probably be limited to more highly trained responders and not your typical beat cop.

I would agree, and would add it should also require that they be experienced and trusted members of the force. I am not crazy, we need armed police, we just don't need every police officer armed.

 

[Veliko]

I'm not going to say progressives in general but I'll say anti-gun people. They only seem to want the government to have guns. Notice how the assault weapon (you know those weapons that are only designed for killing lots of people fast) ban proposals have exemptions for the police. So it's fine for your local police to have these 'mass killing' weapons??? [gov't]Show me your papers.[/gov't] smh

Yes, that's how pretty much every other developed nation on the planet does it.

 

[Jhhnn]

I'm not going to say progressives in general but I'll say anti-gun people. They only seem to want the government to have guns. Notice how the assault weapon (you know those weapons that are only designed for killing lots of people fast) ban proposals have exemptions for the police. So it's fine for your local police to have these 'mass killing' weapons??? [gov't]Show me your papers.[/gov't] smh

So you've gone from civilians needing such weapons to defend their property to cops not needing them to defend the peace?

Shee-it, Sherlock. The only reason the cops have been allowed to up-gun is that the bad guys already have. Just say Thanks, NRA!

Nobody in the US is really calling for such weapons to be turned in but rather to quit selling them & the parts to make them. Gun control advocates would be lucky to get that far anytime rsn. The Kiwis may well see it more like the Aussies & it's fine by me if they do. Their heritage & attitude about firearms is much different than our own. They are a free people & it's their country.

 

[brycejones]

So you've gone from civilians needing such weapons to defend their property to cops not needing them to defend the peace?

Shee-it, Sherlock. The only reason the cops have been allowed to up-gun is that the bad guys already have. Just say Thanks, NRA!

Nobody in the US is really calling for such weapons to be turned in but rather to quit selling them & the parts to make them. Gun control advocates would be lucky to get that far anytime rsn. The Kiwis may well see it more like the Aussies & it's fine by me if they do. Their heritage & attitude about firearms is much different than our own. They are a free people & it's their country.

No one is free if they can't pick up bazooka's on every corner. MAGA!

 

[UglyCasanova]

I specifically said American soil. Has it happened on American soil?

You really believe the American gov't could lose to a small militia group staging a coup for example ON American soil? As I said, I don't see.

I haven’t followed the conversation closely but this caught my eye. Why would it not? You use the word "small" as a safeguard but if the government decided to truly go to war against its citizens the militia I don’t think would be all that small. You’d end up with an insurgency like we saw in Iraq but many times that due to the amount of weapons and resources available in the US. There is no way for the gov to win against guerilla warfare against the US. Their domestic supply chains would be disrupted/destroyed and it would only be a matter of time before the giant machine ground to a halt. It would be bloody as hell but fighter planes don’t matter when your enemy is all around you and they’re your fellow citizen that you can’t tell apart from anyone else.

 

[Jhhnn]

I haven’t followed the conversation closely but this caught my eye. Why would it not? You use the word "small" as a safeguard but if the government decided to truly go to war against its citizens the militia I don’t think would be all that small. You’d end up with an insurgency like we saw in Iraq but many times that due to the amount of weapons and resources available in the US. There is no way for the gov to win against guerilla warfare against the US. Their domestic supply chains would be disrupted/destroyed and it would only be a matter of time before the giant machine ground to a halt. It would be bloody as hell but fighter planes don’t matter when your enemy is all around you and they’re your fellow citizen that you can’t tell apart from anyone else.

Yeh, spread the FUD. Tell the delusional wannabee revolutionaries they might win. Shee-it. They don't even know why they'd start one, for real, let alone how to finish it.

 

[Pipeline 1010]

source for that number?

It is difficult to pinpoint the exact number because I don't believe records that specific to the exact gun type are reported at a national level. However, the FBI keeps records on gun murders by general gun type (handgun, rifle, shotgun, etc...). In a normal year, 200-300 people are murdered by ALL types of rifles, assault or otherwise. That establishes an upper bound for us of 200-300 possible assault rifle murders. 2016 seems like an outlier and hopefully it is not a trend, since it was almost 400. I don't know where to find data on 2017 and 2018.

There are various methods to estimate how many of these 2-300 murders used an actual assault rifle. One study compared the ratio of illegally owned assault rifles that were seized by police in a state to the number of illegally owned non-assault rifles. It showed that non-assault rifles were discovered and seized at a rate 5x that of the assault rifles. Extrapolating that to murders is a huge leap, but likely points to a possibility that the number of assault rifle murders may be far less than the total number of gun murders. I've seen estimates of anywhere between 100-250.

 

[Pipeline 1010]

It is not about the total number of deaths. If that was the case there are all sorts of things more dangerous than guns. It is about the specific type of danger they represent. It is a danger that there are almost no ways for an individual to mitigate. It is a danger that causes a lot of secondary social problems. It creates fear, it causes us to feel insecure, and that robs our society of reason.

The danger that mass shootings represent to our collective psyche is worth mitigating.

I'm stating a personal preference that I'd like to focus on preventing 1000's of murders instead of preventing a number than would be more like a few dozen. If it is social fear and insecurity problems you are worried about, perhaps we can stop telling people how scared they need to be of a weapon that doesn't kill that many people and focus on actually preventing murders. You intentionally instill irrational fear in people and then demand we ban the thing that you caused them fear.

We are working on that solution as well. Legislation has been proposed. We are having a national debate. Why do you think we can have only one conversation?

You know what? We are already having only one conversation and everyone here seems fine with it. Look at CNN.com. Look at ATPN. Look at anywhere. What are the discussions? What were they 6 months ago? What were they a year ago? It's all about banning assault rifles combined with a smattering of banning all guns. Who is advocating ending the war on drugs as a method of reducing gun violence? Is this really an actual national debate?

Also because when we are talking about preventing 1000's of deaths at no cost vs possibly preventing a few deaths by forcing millions of non-violent people to decide between giving something up that is valuable to them or else become felons, there's only one conversation that matters. Let's fix that THEN work on getting those 150 assault rifle deaths down to 142.

Also because something the left has utterly failed to do is convince the right that decriminalizing drugs Portugal style would give the right their ultimate wet dream: fewer druggies, fewer kids using drugs, less drug violence, less money spent (lower taxes bros!), less HIV, more people getting off drugs and becoming successful (less welfare bros!), fewer gun murders, and fewer violent people. That's a win-win-win-win-win wet dream for both sides. And you can do it without taking anything away from anyone.

So no, I don't think there is a ton of value in the assault rifle ban discussion right now or any other discussion until we've fixed a massively larger portion of the problem at exactly no cost.

 

[sdifox]

Ask the Viet cong.

Do you understand the difference between a war half way around the world and one on home turf?

 

[UglyCasanova]

Do you understand the difference between a war half way around the world and one on home turf?

Home turf has a helluva lot more guns and supplies and full of a whole bunch of people that would use them if the fed gov declared war on the US. Soldiers wouldn’t follow orders when you are bombing your fellow countrymen. They can’t hide the truth of what is happening like they could in the 60s our in the jungle. The being on home turf makes it much less likely the government comes out on top.

 

[Paratus]

This doesn't have anything to do with New Zealand. Someone put forth the argument that small disorganized resistances would not prevail against large organized armies, for example that of the US. Yet we have examples of exactly such things happening. The fact that you explain how they happened doesn't dilute the point that they did happen.

I truly don't understand progressives sometimes. You (perhaps not literally you, pmv) speak of imminent fascism, style the more fervent among you as the Resistance, and bemoan the fact that Trump is in control of the nuclear codes. If Trump were to erect concentration camps and inter all manner of minorities in service to white supremacy or some other horror, don't you think that would involve exactly the sort of contingency that the 2nd amendment was intended to dissuade? Do you really regard yourself as helpless if that were to happen, since you think a resistance could never prevail against the US army?

If we had to call upon antifa to protect us from real and true fascists, would we want them armed or not?

The thing your missing in that scenario is the majority of gun nuts would be the ones putting on their brown shirts, grabbing their ARs and helping put grandma in a camp.

They would do it to “protect their way of life”, “prevent the socialists from taking their guns”, etc.

 

[K1052]

Do you understand the difference between a war half way around the world and one on home turf?

Also that the VC and NVA relied on a veritable endless river of modern military supplies from China and the Soviet Union. It wasn't a bunch of farmers with old stolen French or Japanese bolt actions they kept at home.

 

[K1052]

Home turf has a helluva lot more guns and supplies and full of a whole bunch of people that would use them if the fed gov declared war on the US. Soldiers wouldn’t follow orders when you are bombing your fellow countrymen. They can’t hide the truth of what is happening like they could in the 60s our in the jungle. The being on home turf makes it much less likely the government comes out on top.

This seems like a pretty wrong idea given the government's willingness and success at putting down insurrections and that little spat we had in the 1860s. Any argument that we are not willing to kill huge numbers of each other under the right circumstances isn't supported by history.

 

[SMOGZINN]

I'm stating a personal preference that I'd like to focus on preventing 1000's of murders instead of preventing a number than would be more like a few dozen. If it is social fear and insecurity problems you are worried about, perhaps we can stop telling people how scared they need to be of a weapon that doesn't kill that many people and focus on actually preventing murders. You intentionally instill irrational fear in people and then demand we ban the thing that you caused them fear.

I, nor gun control advocates in general, are spreading the fear. No one would be afraid if it was not for the occasional person walking into a church, or nightclub, or school and killing a bunch of people. In case you didn't notice, we only really have this conversation after people have died. That makes people scared, because they damn well know that next time it might be their church, or they will be the one in line at McDonalds, or their kids will be the next ones gunned down. Fear is irrational, practically by definition.

Telling people 'don't worry, not that many of your kids will be killed for no reason this year' is not going to make anyone feel better.

You know what? We are already having only one conversation and everyone here seems fine with it.

What sort of crazy is this? I am currently posting in 7 different conversations just on this sub-forum. We are discussing gun control, racism, Anti-vaxxers, religious freedom, and a host of other things. Yes. We are having a national debate on Drug control at this very minute.
The Hill
Chicago Tribune
Inside NJ

CNN did like 14 stories on it this week, and Fox did 15, and that is just what came up with the single search for the keywords 'marijuana legalization' If I add pot to the keywords I will probably get more.

Also because when we are talking about preventing 1000's of deaths at no cost vs possibly preventing a few deaths by forcing millions of non-violent people to decide between giving something up that is valuable to them or else become felons, there's only one conversation that matters. Let's fix that THEN work on getting those 150 assault rifle deaths down to 142.

We can and should do both, as well as many other things. We have plenty of bandwidth to do multiple things. Only the simplest minds think you can solve a problem like this with one simple solution, or that you can only do one thing at a time. We are a nation of more than 300 million people, surly we can find someone to focus on the both of these things.

Also because something the left has utterly failed to do is convince the right that

Why the hell is it always the lefts job to convince them to do the right thing? Could we not expect the right to just do something on their own? Why the hell do people keep voting these people into office and the blaming the people they didn't vote for?

So no, I don't think there is a ton of value in the assault rifle ban discussion right now or any other discussion until we've fixed a massively larger portion of the problem at exactly no cost.

Drug legalization does have a cost. It has a cost higher than an assault weapon ban. It is completely disingenuous to say that legalization would be at absolutely no cost to society. Those costs are almost certainly worth what we get out of it, but it is not going to be free.

 

[thilanliyan]

I haven’t followed the conversation closely but this caught my eye. Why would it not? You use the word "small" as a safeguard but if the government decided to truly go to war against its citizens the militia I don’t think would be all that small. You’d end up with an insurgency like we saw in Iraq but many times that due to the amount of weapons and resources available in the US. There is no way for the gov to win against guerilla warfare against the US. Their domestic supply chains would be disrupted/destroyed and it would only be a matter of time before the giant machine ground to a halt. It would be bloody as hell but fighter planes don’t matter when your enemy is all around you and they’re your fellow citizen that you can’t tell apart from anyone else.

I used the word small because I don't believe that the American gov't would go war with a majority of the population ever. If 75% (or some high number) of the people were calling for the gov't to step down, I think the military would likely be on the side of the people so it would never get to all out war. In other countries? Fair game, especially with a dictator at the helm who would maybe bribe generals or something.

Now if it ever got to the point where a small group (say individuals of a certain skin colour who want an ethno-state consisting only of people with that skin colour 😛) decided to go to war to protect their "way of life", I think it would be put down easily by the American gov't.

I don't buy in to the fantasy that some militia group would pose any threat to the gov't inside the US...these aren't the days of muskets and cavalry...the group would probably have armed drones circling overhead before they knew it. 😀

 

[UglyCasanova]

say individuals of a certain skin colour who want an ethno-state consisting only of people with that skin colour 😛

This one ?

https://www.foxnews.com/us/louis-fa...for-black-americans-says-thats-what-god-wants

 

[thilanliyan]

This one ?

https://www.foxnews.com/us/louis-fa...for-black-americans-says-thats-what-god-wants

Sure, that one included. The gov't should quash ANY attempt to create a separate ethno-state (especially by violence), I don't care what skin colour it is that's trying.
America is a land of immigrants (aside from the native indians) and it's better off for it, I'm not sure why that's got lost in all the rhetoric these days. People wishing for a homogenous society in the US...it ain't happening.

 

[Bird222]

I, nor gun control advocates in general, are spreading the fear. No one would be afraid if it was not for the occasional person walking into a church, or nightclub, or school and killing a bunch of people. In case you didn't notice, we only really have this conversation after people have died. That makes people scared, because they damn well know that next time it might be their church, or they will be the one in line at McDonalds, or their kids will be the next ones gunned down. Fear is irrational, practically by definition.

Telling people 'don't worry, not that many of your kids will be killed for no reason this year' is not going to make anyone feel better.

Ok then, why should government policy be based on the irrational?