I’d like 100 on “Shit Takes”
The sub-headline of the article claims there is no purpose for “assault weapons” other than killing people.
each designed with a single purpose — to kill lots of people as fast as possible
Is this article trying to tell me I’m using mine wrong? Because I use mine only for things that don’t involve killing people.
What do you use it for?
I think the idea trying to be conveyed is that guns are indeed meant to kill. People use guns for good, like defense, but it is undeniable that the purpose of a gun is to cause death.
Can you tell me what an assault weapons purpose is that isn’t killing
people? Edit: just killing, damage.They are useful for defending a medium sized area, versus pistols which are useful only for defending a small area. They are simply more effective defense machines.
Can I get one of those defence rifles? All I see is assault rifles.
I explained it well enough already. But since you want to be pedantic about it, defense would be using the rifle to eliminate threats to your life or the lives of others.
Defending an area by doing what?
I explained it well enough already. But since you want to be pedantic about it, defense would be using the rifle to eliminate threats to your life or the lives of others.
My question was to illustrate that the positive use of guns, defense, is done through the use of destruction.
I am not trying to fight you.
Guns are built for the purpose of destroying a target. There is no positive impact on society.
Saying that guns kill people that want to hurt society is the benefit of guns is still saying that death is the benefit. What if society didn’t isolate and disenfranchise the people? Our world, overflowing with resources, is choosing guns to defend their stuff and ignoring how we wouldn’t have to defend ourselves from our neighbors if we actually shared.
Not even thinking of “forgotten money” which is money that people dont even think about because they don’t have to, how much money is sitting in bank accounts as emergency funds because a hospital can destroy your life? The money sitting around could help a homeless family get their apartment deposit. Will you get equal returm from ot? Maybe. Our world is our home. Isn’t it our duty to see our whole family is taken care of?
But society says you’re on your own (usa) if you’re in trouble. No wonder people don’t share wealth. One broken ankle can lose your home. Must make sure to have money in case i am hurt, because my society will not help.
We are all doing fine as for me and mine, so you have no need to worry about us. The overall society is something I have zero control or influence over, so it’s basically none of my concern.
You seem to be looking at the big picture like you’re meditating on it from Cloud 9 and imagining the way things could be if you had the powers of a magical genie to reform everything into a peaceful Zen tranquility. That’s simply not reality, it’s wishful thinking.
Flying was wishful thinking. Being able to stay underwater for 3 hours was wishful thinking. Talking to your friend when they are 300 miles away was wishful thinking.
Wishful thinking is what improves society.
Target shooting? Pretty sure more ammo is spent putting holes in paper every day than ammo spent trying to kill someone. So yea…common use says, target practice.
more ammo is spent putting holes in paper every day than ammo spent trying to kill someone
That’s probably true, but what percentage of that shooting range ammo is used in preparation for shooting people (whether offensively or defensively)?
Hold on I did some similar math to this the other day…
How many gun owners become mass shooters? Lets see, 333,287,557 people, 50% (generous, it isn’t quite 50 but for easy math) ownership for 166,643,778.5 people owning guns, and I’ll be generous and include gang shootings (because I know the number) at 547 for the year, turns out, 547 is 0.00032824507756826% of 166643778.5, meaning 0.00032824507756826% of gun owners are likely to pull off a mass shooting in any given year.
S’not exactly what you asked but we have almost no way to ever figure out the answer you seek. We’d need to know how many range trips they make and count their ammo off video surveillance, assuming we can get the angle, and they never shot off camera on private land or something. Or look at their ammo purchases, find a roundcount from their shooting, find out what’s at home, and the difference is the estimation. That stuff just isn’t tracked like that.
How many drunk drivers end up killing people? Considering how often I see the parking lots of bars full, I’d say the vast, vast majority don’t. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make drunk driving illegal.
I don’t think guns should be illegal, but that’s not a good argument.
Of course, murder is illegal, I wasn’t suggesting we legalize it. I’m saying we don’t need to ban alcohol simply because some people drive drunk, and we don’t need to ban guns because .0003% of people who have them “mass shoot.”
And I’m saying we regulate cars and part of that regulation is taking away people’s right to use a car when they do reckless things with it. That is becoming less true of guns with virtually every high court ruling. I would say that most Americans do not want guns completely banned, we want them to be out of the hands of people who would go out and kill innocent people with them. And that can be mitigated with regulation.
Your making this into an argument about what the legal status of guns should be, and that is a good and separate argument to have, but the entire point of my original comment was just pointing that the article’s use of the words “sole purpose” is opinionated and inflamatory (and objectively wrong). “Sole” means “one and only” and so that’s obviously ludicrous given that the vast majority of gun owners aren’t using them for their supposed “sole purpose”.
Way way way less than .00000001%
People don’t practice suicide at the range
Cops who on average kill 1k civs a year also practice very little
And gangs and drug violence is the same… you’re not seeing them go to the range.
More paper is used for practicing sketches than the paper used for museum displayed art.
Target shooting is valid in its own way. It is a sport of accuracy. So is archery. And basketball. And video game. And corn hole.
Lawn darts were banned due to danger.
Dangerous things should be banned/regulated/controlled to minimize any danger.
Better ban alcohol then, it kills more people than rifles of any kind used in homicides by around 5xs the numbers…knives as well, since they kill around 2 times what rifles of any kind do… hilarious that you bring up lawn darts though…do you want to wrap everyone in bubble wrap? Let’s keep all drugs banned as well since they kill basically more people than anything else.
Living life to it’s fullest can be dangerous…if you want to live in a nanny way, do it to yourself but leave the adults the fuck alone.
I am trying to have a conversation and you are insulting me for talking about gun safety.
Edit: Oops. This post got cut off weird. But I see no need to remain in this conversation. I tire of conversations where the goal against me is submission. I won’t bend. Bye.
I mean, what are you practicing for?
I shoot long range mainly, it’s a lot of fun trying to hit a small target at hundreds of yards. It’s not easy at all. It’s a hobby, people shoot bows for hobby as well, or slingshots or air rifles.
I also hunt and own a farm. I keep an AR10 in the utv Incase of wild boar, which are fucking scary… I’d rather face a bunch of pissed off coyotes than a single wild bore.
I use a butter-knife to open paint cans with, but that’s not what it’s for.
What is the gun equivalent of that experience?
Edit, to be specific: what is the gun equivalent of using a butter knife to open a paint can in which a gun is the best option.
Shooting down a tree limb to recover a stuck ball or boomerang or drone from up high. A small bore shotgun like a .410 is pretty good for taking down tree limbs like that.
Or use a long stick? A ladder? Embarrasing.
I’m talking about higher up than any stick or ladder reaches you goof. Embarrassing is you not being able to imagine that.
I was imagining a stick that is long enough. “Embarrassing” was rude of me. Sorry. I still don’t see how shooting a branch down is a positive solution. It is still destruction of life.
“Destruction of life” - we are talking about a branch or two on a tree, so what? Trees get trimmed and pruned all the time out of necessity of landscaping.
Imagine the countless microorganisms that live and die each day, whose cellular membranes could be disrupted by the soap you bathe with. There could be billions or more living things that you murder on a daily basis by washing yourself. Imagine if your house was infested with roaches and fleas and you had to hire an exterminator to exterminate those lives.
Death and taking of life is simply a part of life, and we are inherent members of the food chain which perpetuates it, so it’s not productive to worry about every minuscule effect that every action has as a result.
Hey, you’re right. I also use my butter knife for a lot of things other than butter, such as: brie, jelly, jam, nutella, spreading mayo, cutting my over-easy eggs, etc. Yeah, it turns out it’s useful for a lot more than just butter. It’s almost as if it’s a multipurpose tool that has many different and acceptable uses. I think you’re on to something.
Get back to me when a butter knife hurts someone from a range more than 50 feet. We’re not talking about butter-knife-to-paint-can people; we’re talking about “shoot the lock” types.
I’m surprised the ar15 is so light. My c7 was 7lbs.
Okay, you named six alternatives there to butter.
What are the six uses of your semi-automatic rifle that don’t involve the threat of killing people? Because I can think of two- target shooting and hunting. And neither of those require the sort of rifles or handguns used in most modern mass shootings.
Please define your new take in the interpretation of the word “sole”.
The actual sole purpose of what most people refer to as an “assault rifle” is just to be a modern, reliable, modular platform that can be customized to fit the needs and use cases of the owner. It’s good at that, and so it’s good at being customized for a lot of different uses.
The hunting argument you make is dumb. You would need to turn around and argue that any advancement of any produce anywhere that allows it to perform even marginally better than absolutely necessary needs to be undone. The fastest posted speed limit in the united states is 85mph, and yet every modern vehicle can exceed that by a lot…some of them by double. It doesn’t mean the sole purpose of the car is to break speed limits.
If you break it down by time used for any one specific purpose, then the primary use case of an assault weapon is to be stored in a box or a case, unused (that is what the vast majority are doing the vast majority of time). I would argue the primary purpose is synonymous to the use case of an insurance policy (something you have in case you need it but don’t actually ever use it). The next most common use (by time spent performing in the role) is to exist solely as a show-of-force without even being fired -and that seems to work pretty well because just imagining the appearance of one tends to get people upset and agitated. For the rifles that actually get used regularly, practice is another common use (using it to maintain proficiency with marksmanship skills) and also shooting for fun (which isn’t always/necessarily practice) is a common use case. In the past, I have used mine for both hunting and for protection against potentially dangerous wile animals while hiking through the vast wilderness of the pacific northwest - I personally don’t like the idea of having to mess around with a clumsy bolt action in the event I might need to fire multiple shots.
From the gun manufacturer’s perspective, the ‘sole purpose’ of “assault rifles” isn’t to “kill people as fast as possible”, it’s to: sell weapons and make profit. The “sole purpose” of a thing is defined by the user…and at least in the united states that means a lot of things other than killing people.
I didn’t say anything about purpose. I specifically said use. As did you. So that’s all irrelevant. You named six uses for a butter knife. You have not for a gun. I wonder why?
I don’t care whether you said “purpose” or not. RTFA - “sole purpose” came from the article, and that is what I my original top level comment was challenging.
Will you honor the question? What are 6 different uses for guns?
I already replied to a similar comment hours before you posted this one. In summary, you are moving the goalposts of the specific comment chain I replied to, and in any case pretending these are not weapons designed to kill doesn’t strengthen your argument, it makes it look disingenuous.
If you want to argue in favor of gun rights, be as honest as the other guy. You are arguing for the right to kill people in specific situations. I’m not saying there isn’t some merit to that argument, I’m saying be honest about it, because this whole “nuh-uh they weren’t really designed to kill people” thing is dishonest and doesn’t serve your purposes.
Cutting eggs? What, you don’t have a chainsaw in the kitchen for that?
Interesting philosophical debate. Is it not for whatever I’m using it for, regardless of its designated purpose? If I have a lighter, and someone asks “what’s that thing for,” and I answer “lighting candles,” am I wrong because the bic was designed with tobacco smokers in mind? Would I have to have answered “to expend and ignite butane” to be correct? If I have a bottle of booze and someone asks what for, am I wrong if I say “Tom’s party” instead of “consumption and subsequent expellation?” I say that butter knife is “for opening paint cans.”
Also, do you have a designated
pooppaint knife, or do you use a random one every time? If it is designated I’d argue that is yet another reason to say it is for opening paint cans.The fact that I have found an alternative purpose for the butter-knife does not satisfy this phrasing from the comment you replied to:
each designed with a single purpose — to kill lots of people as fast as possible
My butter-knife was designed to cut and spread soft food that does not require anything sharper to work with. Those guns are designed and marketed to kill.
By the way, I’m not anti-2A nor anti gun. But I am anti-deflection, among other things. An AR-15 is designed to kill people. Pretending it’s not doesn’t strengthen your position, it makes your argument seem disingenuous.
Oh well my actual argument is “some people need killin’ it’s called self defense.” But I’m more interested in if things are “for” something other than their designation if they’re being used for it and are now designated for it by it’s actual end user.
Thanks for your honesty.
For sure no problem. I’m definitely a proponent of the right to self defense, but also a proponent of imbibing on whatever substances please you so long as you don’t hurt others. Substances which may or may not make one interested in pondering on things like fate even concerning inanimate objects, I suppose.
An AR-15 is a completely modular rifle platform so that you can build it for your needs. Of which yes, building one for killing people is one. But it is definitely not the only one.
Are you telling me this hammer is built for pounding lots of nails? I only use mine for pulling nails and securing staples that have come loose.
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Let me start by saying I may be more liberal but I grew up in WV so I’ve been around guns all my life. I like shooting them, but not necessarily hunting because I can buy all the food I need. But I could do it in a heartbeat if I was hungry.
To me the best way to address stuff like this is to educate people. I’m sure you know but not everyone does is that the AR is AR-15 stands for ArmaLite Rifle. Most people just assume the AR means assault rifle or automatic rifle. Now the AR-15 does use the 7.62×51mm NATO round which was and still is primarily used for war, i.e. killing things. This round is verify similar to a .308 Winchester, and its slight longer cousin, the .30-06, or as any deer hunter would call it a 30 ought 6. Now I guarantee you’d never hear of a .30-06 being described as an assault rifle. But guess what, the .30-06 was designed specifically as a military round.
So as my debate couch told me in high school, it all comes back to definitions. How do you define assault rifle? And I ain’t touching that one 😀
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But most civilians can’t get full auto in the first place. And having fired full auto on several occasions they are damn near useless anyway. It’s a waste of ammo because they absolutely suck at being accurate because of the recoil and muzzle jump. Burst fire is a different story.
Now was the full auto fun? Hell yes it was.
So anyways, if most civilians can’t get full auto, then most can’t get an assault rifle. The definition isn’t complicated, and the writer I’m sure knows that too.
Now the AR-15 does use the 7.62×51mm NATO round which was and still is primarily used for war, i.e. killing things.
Uh. No. No, it does not.
The AR-15 uses (primarily) the 5.56x45mm NATO bullet, although you can also use .300Blk, 7.62x39mm, and a whole bunch of other intermediate cartridges by swapping out your barrel, bolt, and possibly buffer spring/weights.
The AR-10 uses the 7.62x51mm NATO (e.g., .308 Win) cartridge. (And also the 6.5 Creedmoor.) 99% of the time, .308 and 7.62x51mm are interchangeable, much like 5.56x45mm NATO and .223 Rem.
Yeah you’re right. It’s basically the .223 right. I misread the article I was referring to.
It’s all good.
.223 and 5.56 are a little different, but it’s mostly in case capacity and o/a cartridge length. Once can be higher pressure than the other, but I can’t recall which without consulting one of my reloading manuals. In almost all situations, they’re interchangeable. You can get into some other differences with o/a length when you’re talking about hand loading for bolt-action v. semi-auto, but that’s more of a specialty difference rather than a general purpose difference.
FWIW, the AR-10 came first, because Eugene Stoner was trying to directly compete with the M-14. It really didn’t go anywhere at the time, and it’s only become somewhat popular in the last 20 years or so. And it’s still not popular because 7.62x51mm is significantly more expensive to shoot than 5.56. But a 6.5CM AR-10 can be incredibly accurate to a very long range; it makes a great longer range hunting rifle.
Interesting take on the subject. I can’t wait for the book to be released.
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast: Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America
Episode webpage: https://www.spreaker.com/user/16373114/gun-country-audio
Media file: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/57535678/gun_country_audio.mp3
As soon as I see the term “assault weapon” all credibility goes right out the window.
What else is it? Definitely not a defense weapon lol
Semi automatic rifle? You know…what it actually …is
how is it not a defensive weapon?
Well that was easy.
Don’t forget the fearsome “deadlier-than-military-weaponry, AR-15 style assault shotguns”
I spent about two minutes trying to come up with a good joke about this one, but honestly I think it speaks for itself
What’s really funny is that the 12g built off the AR frame doesn’t actually qualify for the “assault weapon” description, so said AR-15 style assault shotgun is a greenlight.
They characterize semi-automatic shotguns like they’re this brand new, evil gun lobby invention, thought up to sell to crazed lunatics who can’t get their kicks just shooting regular bullets into school children any more
Meanwhile, people have been shooting ducks with the Browning Auto-5 since literally the year 1900, and it only stopped production in 1998
But that’s made of wood and doesn’t have the shoulder thing that goes up, so it’s not scary
As soon as I see the pedant arguing semantics, their credibility goes right out the window.
It’s not tho. Use specific terms and u don’t look like an incompetent fool.
Dismissing someone’s argument over semantics is trivial objection that doesn’t engage in the actual argument. You understand perfectly well what the argument is, and that it’s addressing a different issue than categories of armament.
Plus, declaring your opponent an “incompetent fool” to dismiss their argument is a bonus ad hominem fallacy.
It is not semantics. People honestly don’t know what defines an assault rifle vs a semi auto. Also looking incompetent isn’t me saying that to dismiss their argument it is them simply looking like they don’t know what they’re talking about and thus their own actions make them able to be disregarded.
You really don’t understand logical fallacies or how they work it seems.
Well I will agree that one of us does not have a grasp on logical fallacies.
People do not NEED to know the textbook definition of an assault rifle to know that a weapon designed for maximum carnage should be regulated. You also don’t NEED to hear an accurate reference to a specific weapon to understand their argument. You know what they mean.
By outright dismissing them because they haven’t defined a term to your satisfaction, you are not engaging in good faith.
If you really were interested in discussion, you would respond to establish a standard definition and then, based on that definition, provide your counter argument.
Would an attacher be any less credible if they murdered people with a handgun rather than a rifle ? what is the point you’re trying to make ? don’t people still die ? is the ammo type really relevant here ?
I didn’t say anything about ammo type. See this is the problem. You have no clue what you’re actually talking about here.
More “mass shootings” actually DO happen with hand guns, it’s just not part of the agenda the media wants to push.
People who don’t like the term “assault rifle” think it basically means “scary-looking rifle” rather than “particularly deadly rifle”. In New York state law, for example,
Assault weapon means a semiautomatic rifle that has the ability to accept a detachable magazine and has at least one of the following characteristics: (1) a folding or telescoping stock; (2) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon; (3) a thumbhole stock; (4) a second handgrip or protruding grip that can be held by the non-trigger hand; (5) a bayonet mount; (6) a flash suppressor or muzzle break or muzzle compensator or a threaded barrel designed to accommodate a flash suppressor or muzzle break or muzzle compensator; or (7) a grenade launcher.”
So a semiauto rifle in .223 Remington with a wooden stock is a “varmit hunting rifle”, but simply giving it a black folding stock makes it an “assault rifle”.
Honestly, things like NYS’s limits on magazine size makes more sense to me than banning telescoping stocks or a second pistol grip.
It’s a social issue not a gun issue. Shitty parents, shitty economics, shitty education and a shitty social structure are what makes America a higher crime nation in general and a higher gun crime nation specifically.
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What other country, at least Western country, has, per capita, explosives or poisonings or things like that at the level of murder as the U.S.?
Third world shitholes maybe. I’m sure it sucks to live in Syria.
Third world shitholes maybe
Ooof bud goddamn.
Exactly, if a country is filled with rocks there will be more rock related deaths but a country that is filled with rocks but is effectively governed and educated will have fewer.
I imagine people are going to claim me to be against gun control but that isn’t true, I’m for reasonable gun control. License, register educate and own a tank for all I fuckin care, a big part of the issue is they’re less controlled than my what 3000lb Honda Civic that could run through a crowd at 100+ and do the same damage. Most people aren’t going to use their car as a weapon because it’s attached to them, the same would apply to guns.
Sure, just not with the same access and instead other crimes are more prolific and arguably more heinous. How many cases of acid attacks happen in the us every year adjusted to population? Now how many for say India or for instance England.
Nah different. Acid attacks are most normally done towards women as a form of punishment. Not intended to kill.
Obviously violence will happen. But why are you ever arguing to make the violence easier?
If there was one item you could remove from society that truthfully they don’t need, and acid attacks wouldn’t happen. Wouldn’t you do that? Especially since acid attacks are so awful?
It’s one example, notably stabbings are higher in basically every other county by orders of magnitude.
It’s no easier to get a gun than a car, one just happens to be easily and effectively tracked back to the owner.
If we’re doing theoreticals that item would be ignorance.
A knife can kill one person per minute. An AR-15 can kill dozens within that same time.
It’s a false equivalency fallacy.
Not at all true, swords are still an execution method and I can guarantee you it doesn’t take half a minute let alone a minute.
It isn’t, but hyperbole is your path to tread if it makes you happy I suppose.
You are actually proposing that one idiot with a sword can slaughter dozens of people in less than a minute. LOL
It’s time to turn off your video game and touch grass.
we aren’t doing theoreticals? this is about guns.
so you agree then removing guns would help resolve America’s issues with gun violence
If there was one item you could remove from society that truthfully they don’t need, and acid attacks wouldn’t happen.
That sir is a theoretical, and notably not at all about gun violence as you stated it.
You are a moron. Fullstop
Is it even proportionally at the same level? Are you claiming that, adjusted to per capita, acid attacks in India are on par with mass shootings in the U.S.? And if so, are there mass acid attacks on schools at the rate of mass shootings in U.S. schools?
No I’m saying the human monster will use whatever is available. When guns are less available other crimes are more likely, and gun crime persists anyway. For India specifically they have about a third of the gun crime the US has.
Got it. Never make any laws against anything because people might not obey them.
Not at all what I said and actually that’s specifically the opposite of what I’ve suggested.
I’m for registration and licensing, I dunno maybe read a bit before you decide to douche it up for no reason.
So by this logic, do we start blaming the cutlery industry for people making the choice to not put down the fork? This article is written entirely by someone who has no idea how living in a low income area feels. Fucking reeks of privilege.
That’s an idiot argument. Wtf does “put down the fork” even mean? Wielding a fork has hardly ever been of significance in a person’s actions. You can’t compare just anything.
The day forks are used to pick locks and mug folks, sure… I’ll blame the cutlery industry.
You realize knives fall under cutlery, right? Additionally people get mugged with the threat of a hammer to the head, so we banning hammers next too? Also, criminals breathe oxygen, so you want everyone to stop breathing oxygen cause the criminals breathe oxygen too?
The example used in your first comment was “fork”. “Put down the fork”. – @[email protected].
Stay on topic.
I explicitly used the term cutlery to get ahead of incompetent morons that would red herring the argument.
Thanks for being an example of someone that’s being wholly disingenuous or ludicrously incompetent.
Additionally people get mugged with the threat of a hammer to the head,
It’s really hard for an unstable person to go on a mass hammering.
Right, but even if we banned hammers and guns, people would still 3d print them or buy them on the black market. The VAST majority of gun violence is conducted by people who ALREADY should not own weapons according to the laws on the books and bought them from a gun show/black market unregistered.
This is a clear problem of enforcement, not legislation.
The latest mass shooting was conducted by a man who LITERALLY stated weeks prior that he heard voices in his head. Weeks. This is reminiscent of more than 95% of other mass shooters.
Card — who, according to his relatives, had been drinking heavily in the lead-up to last week’s mass shooting in Lewiston — had become so paranoid that people were calling him a pedophile that he’d talked about wanting to hire a lawyer. The Maine National Guard, too, had become so concerned about the US Army reservist that it had urged local authorities to carry out a welfare check because fellow soldiers feared Card would “snap and commit a mass shooting.” Card’s son and his ex-wife had also flagged their concerns about his deteriorating mental health to the local sheriff’s office back in May, an initial incident report shows.
The military and the civilian oversight failed to get this man mental help or restrict his access to firearms while he was lamenting the need to kill people because of the voices in his head and we have the audacity to stand here and blame legal gun owners, the majority of which do in fact follow standard gun safety and etiquette, for crimes committed by people who shouldn’t have access to weapons in the first place.
We pay an exorbitant amount in taxes every single day to have these services and personnel do their fucking jobs and all this ‘blame the gun manufacturers’ is pushed by police unions in order to prevent people from properly pointing out the absolute FAILURES of these departments and officers to actually follow up on tips and issues in the community.
Big irony that these criminals can access weapons from the legal market by gun shops and shows that don’t follow the laws as they stand or directly off a black market arms dealer, maybe two points of contact off from the original manufacturers.
So, if these individuals who shouldn’t have guns can have guns as the laws stand now, what difference is a whole-sale ban going to make?
This is a clear enforcement failure across the entire united states and adding more laws on people who already follow them just incites them against the issue instead of having everyone focus on the crux of the problem which is cost of living, access to healthcare and failure of regulatory oversight on a vast majority of official systems, from policing the streets from violent crimes to regulatory frameworks around the financial services sector, all of the enforcement bodies are understaffed, underpaid, overworked, and abused with intent to push them from the job and rotate personnel to younger/less experienced personnel to allow further lowering of pay and increase of workload which allows larger companies and firms to skirt the rules for fines because these regulatory bodies don’t have the personnel to complete serious investigations of the largest players, so the largest players just get fined for their behaviour and continue to abuse the loopholes and system. Specifically in this case, because of a lack of oversight from the FTC, several companies supply the black market with weapons through merchants of death
We wanna see this industry change? We need to annul police unions and force a national training standard. Every cop goes to the same training facility and learns to be a professional cop, no exceptions, and is then sent back to their local community to work with them. If they do not live in the community, they do not police the community.
Additionally, every individual should be able to access healthcare. We pay way too much in taxes to not have every man, woman and child covered by FULL RANGE medical care. There is no reason in which universal health care should not exist in the USA (aside from the ridiculous number of people who could collapse the system under their obesity, the public would need to begin to care for themselves more so they don’t overburden the systems unnecessarily).
The cost of living situation would change overnight if corporations and investors were barred from owning more than 5 residential properties.
Wtf does “put down the fork” even mean?
That means blaming the cutlery problem for obesity, or blaming the food industry for making garbage food, rather than addressing why people are opting for fast food more than good food, dealing with food deserts, and so on. It blaming the tool for the result.
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We license drivers and require training and insurance.
Don’t bother. Check their comment history and just move on. What hurts them most is being ignored like they are in the rest of their life.
Cool…to use the car on public roads…you can also transport them across state lines with no issue.
I can buy a car with cash, from private hands, across state lines, have it shipped directly to me, and I don’t have to insure it nor do I need a license for it…also can buy one at any age.
So trying to compare gun ownership with owning a car is naive.
But you can’t USE that car legally without a license or insurance. Stop being daft.
I mean, I absolutely can. I own track cars, no insurance on them, no license for them, not registered and I trailer them to the tracks. I can also drive them here on my property, I’ve got a old military jeep that isn’t road legal and use it driving around here all the time.
I’m not the one being ignorant of the laws.
A car’s design intent isn’t to kill. A rifle’s is
Tell that to the 40k+ people who are killed every year in the USA from basically negligent people driving (large portion of that being alcohol related). My guns have never taken anyone’s life, and the odds of them doing so is so damn small, that I’d probably win the lottery before they’re used against another human.
Tell that to the 40k+ people who are killed every year in the USA from basically negligent people driving
Drunk driving and our terrible drinking culture is an entirely different crisis altogether. I don’t understand why you’re trying to draw parallels here (no matter how weak)? Both are bad things.
My guns have never taken anyone’s life
Neither have mine but I don’t have my head so far in the sand to not understand that guns are designed to kill things.
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I don’t offer pole-lease a lot of operating room emotionally in the US.
But I do think that pole-leasing in the US must feel different to lots of other places.
Just so many freaking guns with all types of people. And it makes even a traffic stop just as dangerous as going to a domestic dispute or an armed robbery. Fucking guns.
That is not at all true. Being a cop in the US rarely crosses the line into the top ten most dangerous professions. The top ten most dangerous professions include being a fisherman, being a garbage colllector, being a professional driver, things like that. And just for some more fun, the danger levels of these jobs are radically skewed.
Here’s a report on job related fatalities in the US. I’m not sure why fishermen aren’t included in this particular one as they normally top these lists, but it says they selected from about 250 professions so they might have just been excluded.
In any case, the list starts with loggers at over 100 per 100k and airline pilots at over 50 per 100k. Scroll down past farmers, delivery drivers, construction workers, landscapers, and mechanics, and eventually you’ll find police at position 22, with 14 per 100k. These numbers remain pretty constant year to year, with the exception of Covid related fatalities.
The problem is that there is a specific school of training for police that amps up their perception of danger far above what reality actually shows. They escalate encounters which increases both the chance of themselves bringing injured and very much the chance that the person they encounter will be injured or killed.
It doesn’t matter that being a cop is less dangerous than other jobs, it matters that being a cop is more dangerous than in other countries.
Considering guns didn’t protect either Breonna Taylor or Philando Castile and not a single cop was killed in either incident, is it really more dangerous to be a cop in America?
That American liberals focus on rifles in regards to gun violence more than 1/20 as much as they do handguns or 1.75x as much as the president’s recommended shotgun, nevermind the fervor for AWBs, betray the lack of concern and understanding of the issues truly driving America’s culture of violence beyond “big ones are scarier”.
All compounded by their laws’ universal exemptions for police current and former, on-and-off-the-clock demonstrating no fear of arming the most violent among us as long as they swear fealty to minority oppression and dissident suppression in the name of maintaining capital’s status quo, sleeping sound assuming those barrels won’t turn inwards towards them. Hell, that the fight against gun violence now includes banning armor to protect oneself from it shows how important it is that we be obliged to let them indulge.
It’s the same reason the FAA has such stringent safety regulations for aircraft, while tens of thousands of people die in traffic accidents every year: Mass shootings are huge amounts of death and also rare, compared to crimes of passion or suicides by gun.
The problem is that to solve any of these problems will involve two things that Republicans hate: Providing social services and confiscating guns from people who shouldn’t have them. Both of those are far less likely to pass than a simple ban on a small subset of guns.
So until Republicans put up or shut up about “it’s mental health” nothing will get done.
I just read the entire article, and as a left leaning voter, the article was poorly written with factual issues and misinformation.
It now makes me want to buy the Ruger SFAR to protect myself from the violent right wing MAGA morons.
As a progressive Democrat, that’s my #1 reason for being a gun owner.
I don’t want these assholes being the only people armed:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Prayer
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Boys
Which is sad, because the only winners are the gun manufacturers. They want you to fear your neighbors
I WISH they were our neighbors. They are out of towners who come here purely to stir up trouble, AND, in many cases, they’re actively working WITH the police. So it’s not like you can expect the cops to do anything.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/portland-police-proud-boys-training-1290583/
https://theintercept.com/2021/08/23/portland-police-proud-boys-protest/
You forgot
Which once activated will only be stopped by bullets.
That’s the truth, a 2nd Trump term will result in a literal civil war.
Where’s John Titor when you need him? ;)
Now THIS is attitude all the super left anti gunners on Lemmy should have !!
We are waaaay psst the point of even trying to get rid of guns. You might as well leverage their existence agaisnt the ones who already picked them up and swole violence/allegiances to that traitor.
I can’t actually tell if that’s meant to be satire, but I doubt the people upvoting you can either. So just to be safe…
Congratulations, you’ve fallen for the same idiot hero fantasies as the right-wing gun cultists have. The gun lobby wrote a version of them just for you and you swallowed it without a single critical thought.
Do you know who is going to win when you and the MAGA morons face off with your cool guns?
Whoever is the biggest piece of shit, just like always.
Is anyone who becomes law enforcement falling for hero fantasies?
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So then who can defend you from an attack?
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Of course, so maybe you should be able to defend yourself?
Or fantasies of being judge, jury, and executioner.
Which differs from “I bought a gun to kill anyone who tries to break into my suburban home and steal my iPad” how exactly?
But I don’t want to be Judge Judy and executioner!
The ones who last do, yeah. All the good ones I’ve met are ex-police.
But they became police in the first place, meaning they fell for the hero fantasies.
Is anyone who becomes law enforcement falling for hero fantasies?
Pretty sure nowadays they are power and domination fantasies.
Do all gun owners in America work in law enforcement?
No thankfully, since CCW holders are statistically more accurate, fire less shots in encounters, and commit less crime than the US police (by convictions), who barely even get convicted due to qualified immunity which CCW holders don’t have.
Probably because CCW often requires getting a permit that demands actual knowledge of safe handling, storage, de-escalation and demonstrated ability to hit a target, in some kind of half-assed approximation of functional gun laws (which I guess is why the pro-gun community opposes CCW permits).
Of course, that doesn’t stop them from routinely executing their partners or any nearby cashiers when they lose control of their emotions, leaving their guns in public toilets or arming criminals by leaving handguns in sock drawers and gloveboxes.
And unlike police reforms, they also have zero positive, measurable impact on crime rates, so they’re really asking a lot from society in return for intervening in 3% of mass shootings (and always after people have been killed already).
You’re right, the multiple white supremacist militia groups that have been charged with seditious conspiracy for their attempt to overthrow the government at the behest of the previous president trying to desperately cling to power is just a boogeyman created by the gun lobby
If you think it’s the gun lobbyists who’re making the right wing extremists look like violent, dangerous fascists, you really really have not been paying attention
I really enjoyed this comment. Not because it was in any way insightful or entertaining, but because you couldn’t actually create a logical link from my comment to your own, but you were so desperate to push exactly the propaganda I was talking about that you went ahead and posted it anyway.
You’re right, the multiple white supremacist militia groups that have been charged with seditious conspiracy for their attempt to overthrow the government at the behest of the previous president trying to desperately cling to power is just a boogeyman created by the gun lobby
Yet here you are, leaping to the defense of the companies (and laws they’ve written) that sell those groups all the semi-automatic weapons their black little hearts desire.
I wonder who is the most grateful for your service?
The violent, dangerous far-right extremists that are responsible for the majority of mass shootings and actively target minorities with them?
The gun lobby members banking record profits even as mass shootings, domestic homicides and impulse murders surge?
The Republicans who have been enjoying $16 million a year in open bribes ever since Sandy Hook doubled them, plus a small army of single-issue voters who will tolerate any amount of bigotry, stupidity, oppression and exploitation as long as gun safety remains optional?
Or the minorities who are told “If you don’t want to be murdered then buy more guns and carry them with you everywhere and be ready to kill another person at any moment”, like that’s an existence aspired to by anybody except bloodthirsty gun-owners (and one that isn’t a requirement in any other wealthy, progressive country with functional gun laws)?
Nobody outside of a deeply stupid, easily manipulated and heavily astroturfed pocket of social media believes you’re helping anybody besides extremists, greedy psychopaths and yourself.
You won’t go down in history with the likes of climate change deniers, you’ll go down in history with the people who claimed that “I only want what’s best for black people and that’s actually being enslaved by white men”.
I wrote a bit of a response to this, but I honestly can’t really be bothered, I’m sure your waxing poetic will save you from the wall if they take power though
But you’re going to shoot them all with your cool guns if they try right?
You’re just waiting for the perfect moment that for some reason – despite you openly acknowledging the danger of them – isn’t now nor when there were high profile state executions of unarmed minorities nor any other time in the last decade.
Or is the idea that they’re supposed to be intimidated? Because with America far closer to the brink of fascism than comparable countries with gun control, it looks like it was nothing more than yet another slice of unfit-shifting pro-gun bullshit.
But you’re going to shoot them all with your cool guns if they try right?
That’s the idea, and hopefully anyone else who believes in things like democracy and civil rights.
At the end of the day, ideals will only look good on our epitaph (if we’re even allowed one in this scenario), might makes right, and if you also care about those sorts of things, you better damn well make sure your side’s got more of it.
You’re just waiting for the perfect moment that for some reason – despite you openly acknowledging the danger of them – isn’t now nor when there were high profile state executions of unarmed minorities nor any other time in the last decade.
Because (despite the Republican’s best efforts) we still nominally live in a democracy governed by the rule of law, and our institutions, while definitely damaged as of late, are still intact
A democracy will naturally have some turbulent periods, but as long as it’s still actually a democracy, things are always recoverable non-violently through one of the first three boxes (soap box, ballot box, jury box). It’s only once it’s clear that we live in a democracy no longer that the fourth box comes out (the ammo box), and even then, the last stopgap before all out civil war would be the civilian leadership of the military and the top officers + soldiers who serve choosing a side.
Or is the idea that they’re supposed to be intimidated? Because with America far closer to the brink of fascism than comparable countries with gun control, it looks like it was nothing more than yet another slice of unfit-shifting pro-gun bullshit.
Honestly who in their right mind would be intimidated by the Democrats? Fascists don’t care about peaceful protests and Rolling Stone articles, they only know violence, and we can’t make the mistake of not being ready and willing to speak their language. America is clearly very politically sick, I honestly think it’s incredibly silly to some how blame that solely on gun lobbying of all things.
But you’re going to shoot them all with your cool guns if they try right?
That’s the idea, and hopefully anyone else who believes in things like democracy and civil rights.
🤣
Arms manufacturers pushed more than 24 million assault weapons onto the American streets, one for every 10 adults, each designed with a single purpose — to kill lots of people as fast as possible
And there’s the very first problem, right there. The point of all arms is efficiency. Stone spear points were developed because they were more effective than flame-hardened wood. Atlatls were invented to throw spears farther than an arm. Swords were more effective than clubs. The first guns were more effective than bows. From the first matchlock rifles, we get wheel locks, then flint locks, and then percussion caps. By the time of the US Civil War, cartridges were being developed, and you had revolvers so that you could shoot more people without reloading. Winchester Repeating Arms Co. made the lever action rifle wildly popular because you could ‘load it in the morning and shoot all day’, and they were widely used by cavalry. When The Great War rolled around, we wanted even more effective arms, and switched to bolt action rifles with five and ten round magazines loaded far more powerful bullets than existed in the era of black-powder lever action rifles. When WWII rolled around, we started using autoloading rifles with stripper clips–the venerable M1 Garand–because bolt actions were just too slow to load and fire. By Vietnam, we’d switched to the detachable box magazine fed M14, only to discover that a full-power battle rifle cartridge in a wooden-stocked machine gun in the jungle was not a winning combination, and adopted a military version of the AR-15 with it’s plastic stock and lightweight 5.56mm cartridge. Since the 1960s, the AR-15 has changed very, very little; the rifle of the 60’s is still nearly identical 80 years later.
All weapons in human history have been designed to kill as many things as quickly as possible. All tools are refined to get better at their job over time. The car that I drive now is far, far more efficient than straw sandals, a horse, or even the first cars. It is less efficient than the mass transit systems that are used in many large cities.
With all the guns around in US I am genuenly surprised that most of these shooters just go on random killing sprees instead of political assasinations. In japan a DYI gun was enough to kill former prime minister Shinzo Abe so would think country so divided as United states would have far more of these cases.
Guess the people on top truly are untouchable at least for most of the time.
Most people like their politician. When they are polled about Congress and rate it unsatisfactory, it’s because they want all of Congress to be like their rep (or exactly their rep’s opposite, if they’re a minority voter in the area).
It’s a lot easier to assassinate your local rep than it is to shoot a senator from West Virginia or whatever, so the impulse to kill them is lower. Add in their significantly greater security and you can see how this lessons the odds of attempted assassinations.
They may like their politician but that still leaves out a lot of the congress who they may dislike and target with their radicalized outrage.
But yeah the fact that these people are protected by greater (armed) security the chance for failure is far greater.But still quite surprised how little actions or lack of have backfired on people in power.
Guess things will need to get way worse for more shit to start piling on their backyards.I don’t disagree, I was just offering my best explanation. With the way rhetoric is accelerating, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more political violence as 2024 approaches.
Also likely that it just comes in waves - bigger cycles will mean a higher chance at crazy.
American politicians tend to be heavily guarded.
Yall seem to have forgot that the right to bear arms as originally written, was also the responsibility to bear arms. They didn’t have cops. The real root of all these mass shootings is nobody shoots back, all you fuckers are supposed to be armed.
I seem to recall a whole bunch of armed people at Uvalde and it didn’t do much good.
I wholeheartedly reject the Maine mass shooting is a product of gun manufacturers. Maine literally already has yellow flag laws where this guy should have been separated from his firearms when he was admitted to the psych hospital. The Maine mass shooting was a failure of the state and people do not want to accept that. The Sheriff that should have stepped in did not do so and THAT is unacceptable. I’m so over people using tragedies to prove their unrelated points. If gun manufacturers were really the problem we’d see millions of domestic murders based on the fact that there’s like 100 million more guns in circulation than there are citizens of the US.
red flag laws cut suicides and murders. I feel like I read 10% reduction once. That’s… not a lot. Also, Maine’s yellow flag law is weak
At this point I’ll take 10% reduction over 0%. And I think I highlighted the weak point of Maine’s yellow flag law. There was literally a person who could have created distance between the person and his guns, and they didn’t. What would you like to have happen?
