Las Vegas Shooting

[Simon_Jester]

So why is it possible for law enforcement to be sufficiently adequate in other countries that gun-ownership is not required to keep yourself safe? Is the US somehow incapable of matching the Australian law enforcement? Is it not possible for the law enforcement in the US to be improved?

There could be many reasons. There could even be different things going on in different countries.

In Country One, maybe the population is culturally uniform, cultural values act to limit crime, and economic inequality is very low, so that the crime rate is so low that even bad police can keep people safe enough that they don't complain.

In Country Two, maybe the inequality/poverty rate is high but the culture is very effective at keeping this from turning into criminality.

In Country Three, maybe the police force really is just that good.

In Country Four, maybe the crime rate is high and people genuinely would be safer with more civilian gun ownership, but it just never comes up because owning guns is not normative in that society, or because the society has a recent history of dictatorships that rounded up a lot of the guns and shot the owners on suspicion of being rebels.

The point here is that reducing things to a simplistic answer like "Australia has this problem solved, just do everything Australia does and it'll work out fine" is almost certainly not going to give correct answers. Whatever is working for Australia is part of a complex matrix of factors including Australia's ethnic makeup, geography, resources, and institutions. Copying one part of the Australian system into another system may well be much harder than it seems, and even if it isn't, it still takes time. Before that time is spent, it's hard to justify saying "well, if Australia is doing X with their system Y, why aren't you doing it with your identical copy of that system?"

Maybe rural Japan and the rural UK have lower violent crime rates than certain parts of the rural United States.

I mean, suppose a Canadian and a Guatemalan are arguing about building codes in Nigeria. The Canadian says that the Guatemalans need to enact stricter, more rigorous codes about insulation and heating to keep their buildings warm in the winter. The Guatemalan protests that winter in Guatemala is not very cold, and that Canadian building codes would result in dangerously overbuilt, stuffy, overheated, and uncomfortable buildings by Guatemalan standards.

Is this "Guatemalan exceptionalism?" No, it's basic common sense. If a problem does not exist in my country, I do not need to take special measures to protect against it. Conversely, it is not "Canadian exceptionalism" for the Canadians to feel the need for laws or rights that people in other countries do not desire so strongly, that address specific issues of Canadian climate and culture.

Is it that heretical to just listen to people who live in an area, or have close family that lives in an area, when they say "the needs of this area include XYZ, and do not include things that you, a city-dweller on the literal other side of the world, think are necessary?" Or when they say "your proposed changes to our society would be actively harmful to us, you don't know enough about our society?"

I mean, follow this pattern far enough and you wind up tearing down whole cities to rebuild them in accordance with your rectangular grid fetish, and that's such a passe, twentieth-century obsession.

The problem is when you apply the needs for a more rural community onto a more urban city as if there won't be any major consequences. Massed shooting in America has to my limited knowledge, caused by relatively easy access to guns. So what works for a more rural environment can cause huge potential risk and danger to a more urban population. So the question is whether easy access to guns for rural communities is worth the harm caused to an urban population?

Which is precisely the point at which rural and urban voters (and the suburban voters caught in between) start compromising on the issue in a process most democratic nations call "politics" and most autocracies call "rule by edict with periodic peasant uprisings."

I am totally on board with the US gun policy winding up as a compromise intended to minimize harm in the cities while still respecting the perceived rights and needs of rural communities.

What I am not on board with, and am trying to argue against, is the mindset of "I don't see why anyone thinks that access to guns is even slightly a good thing, and am in favor of totally banning it, and the people who think that bearing arms is a right are just wrong and dumb and should go away." Which may be a strawman version of the average gun control advocate... But people with that basic attitude are alive and well and occasionally post on SDN, so I'm stuck with them anyway.

Before resorting to easy access(relative to other countries) to guns as the primary solution for self-protection for people living in more rural areas, the question is whether it is possible to improve law enforcement that you could potentially not over-rely on guns and self-protection in the first place.

History is a factor here. The rural areas in question had fairly high gun ownership even going back to times when law enforcement consisted of "uh, we elect a sheriff and he randomly deputizes a few big guys he can trust if he needs extra muscle." From their point of view, the question could be turned around: "Before resorting to an expensive expanded and heavily retrained police department, the question is whether it is possible to just keep doing what we've been doing for a hundred years, carrying pistols and posting "TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT" signs, and not getting robbed or beaten up."

Rural areas whose local history dated back to being medieval peasants who had to answer to feudal lords or a Confucian bureaucracy might have a different view of this question.

I see it as American exceptionalism because other countries with similar geography like Canada or Australia managed fine with more restrictive gun laws and the people still feel that they can rely on the police force.

Yes, but Canada and Australia may differ from the US for reasons besides geography, you know. This is not a trivially simple question, and should not be trivialized.

And if you think that the problem lies with American being more naturally violent than others, how is adding guns into the equation better for people?

Gun Control Guy would say that this is because the guns aren't the cause of the high background rate of violence, they just redistribute the violence, while exercising a deterrent effect by increasing the potential lethality of the violence.

Speaking for myself, the causes of the high background rate of violence are things that I would very much like to fix, and I try to support every social policy I can that does something useful about them. But I'm not at all sure gun control is such a policy.

---

That's still no real argument why gun ownership ought to be a right. All you did is to argue about the harms of taking away rights, but not about actually defending or defining why gun ownership ought to be one in the first place.

Yes, I do that later on, or rather build up to it later on. The part of my explanation you're directly responding to is intended to point out that we should be cautious about removing a right just because its purpose is not immediately obvious to us.

For example, I might ask "why should a criminal defendant not be required to go up and testify whether or not they committed the crime, then get charged with perjury if they lie? What do the innocent have to worry about from that?" It turns out there are several very good answers to that question. But if I don't know much about constitutional law and the courts, I may not know those answers. It would be a grave injustice for me to say "I don't know why criminals have a right not to incriminate themselves on the stand, I don't see the use of it" and vote to end the right to not incriminate yourself.

I might, if I'd led a sheltered or clueless enough life, ask "why would a woman want the right to marry another woman?" If I somehow didn't know lesbians were a thing, or didn't understand sexuality and love very well, that might seem pointless to me. It would be a grave injustice for me to campaign against gay marriage because I don't see the use of it, due to my own ignorance.

A similar argument applies to gun control. The argument is not sufficient to justify preserving gun rights all by itself, but it does justify caution if we're talking about casually erasing them because they seem useless.

So what's stopping people from randomly declaring anything they want to do as a "right"? What is the difference between a "right" and merely a "want"?

If you had continued reading, you would find my answer to that question.

Any functioning societies require restricting things from individuals. The idea of the state existing in the first place requires it to monopolize violence. Determining how much access people have to violence is pretty much one of the very basic purposes of the state. States that couldn't monopolize violence cease to exist in any functional way.

So it boils down to what are the thing people cannot live without? What is the baisc, primary necessities that everyone wants to have? What are the trade-off people have to make?

Does one-party system provide the things that people want? Perhaps, but that comes at a trade-off in giving up free speech. If people think that democracy is fundamental, then the structure of the society have to take that into account to make such a system work in the first place...

The notion of autocratic rule is not in itself unacceptable. The question is what sort of society people are happy to live in. There are people that are happy to trade freedom of speech for greater security (be it perceived or real). Freedom of speech is needed for democratic society to function, which is different from society itself.

The decision to basically forgo freedom of speech lies in the idea that giving up that would ensure greater security, or in a way allow people to access other basic rights such as sufficient food, proper housing, and safety.

And yet, this runs counter to the idea that freedom of speech is a universal right. We routinely criticize governments for not respecting the freedom of speech, but on what basis do we do so, if it isn't denying them something that is essential for life?

My argument is that this question is easy to answer if we think in terms of rights as being the things that provide not only for a person's basic physical security from hunger and violence and so on, but also for their ability to live with dignity and autonomy.

I don't feel you have satisfactory answers to these questions, so I propose an alternate definition of "rights" that DOES answer them.

Rights exist to ensure the security, dignity, and autonomy of the individual...

In general, all the 'intangible' rights work far better when viewed as necessary protection for the security, dignity, and autonomy of the individual, than they do when viewed as "things we can't live without." Freedom of speech, freedom from torture, freedom of religion, due process rights, the right to privacy, the right to travel... There are a huge number of such rights, many of them very well recognized by (for example) the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

To justify why we "cannot really live without" these rights requires tortured arguments full of epicycles. The sad reality is, all these are things we can live without. Most of humanity lived without them for most of history. Many of these rights are things we could theoretically make society "more functional" by selectively ignoring.

But we cannot ignore them and preserve security, dignity, and autonomy for everyone.

Thus, security, dignity, and autonomy of the individual are a much firmer grounding for whether or not something is a "right" than the standard you propose would be.

Ok. So how does gun ownership falls into that? Why is gun ownership fine, but the right to form a private army not allowed? Where do you draw the line between what is allowed and what is banned?

I'm getting there. I just want to be clear, you're with me up to this point?

You consider it a valid and reasonable argument to say "Legal Right X is important to ensuring (one or more of) the security, dignity, and autonomy of the individual, therefore it is fitting and proper that people have Legal Right X?"

Because if you're with me up to that point, or at least willing to grant it for the sake of argument, then I, Gun Rights Guy, can finish things up by presenting my argument for why bearing arms should be a right.

[Simon_Jester]

With genuine apologies to Jub, I honestly do not have the frame of mind or the patience to hack through his Big Honking Wall tonight. If tomorrow goes well, I may be up to it then.

My main objections are to the brick wall of “fuck dead children” in response by the gun lobby to the attempt to prevent crazies and criminals (or to at least make it harder) to get their hands on firearms and to put reasonable limits on magazine capacity because the only honest argument against the latter is “But I don’t want to have to reload ammo into my 10-12 round magazine when target shooting because it hurts my thumbs!”

You see the same argument in this thread with the push right now by the gun industry to ease restrictions on suppressors/silencers because “I don’t want to have to buy ear plugs for target shooting!” To which my response is: “Then go deaf.”

I actually think the argument for allowing silencers is better than the argument for allowing big magazines.

There aren't a lot of valid reasons to own a gun for which a five-round magazine (or, say, ten for a self-defense handgun) isn't enough. It may take a little more work on your hands, but it's not that big of a deal.

But the muzzle suppressor that reduces gun noise for target shooting? Yeah, that's actually a significant health issue. And it doesn't seem like there have been any shootings I can think of that would have been significantly deadlier with a suppressor on the gun. It doesn't make the guns undetectable somehow or anything.

To me, this stuff is all about costs and benefits and numbery things. Big magazines are for shooting a lot of bullets at once without taking several seconds to reload, which isn't really a need. And the potential for abuse is large. Suppressors used for protecting someone's hearing do in fact address a physical need that people may have while engaging in a legitimate activity. And while the theoretical potential for abuse is large, the practical potential seems small.

I’m not for mass confiscation except maybe for fully automatic weapons if someone who jumped through the miles of hoops to qualify and the following miles to maintain the permissions to possess them legally went bugfuck and killed dozens (or Gods forbid, hundreds) of people. And even then...

That said, I can fully understand how somone from a modern industrialized nation that already outlawed the kind of firearm possession we have here can look at us and say “They’re a bunch of crazy fuckers, we haven’t had a classroom lit up like The Matrix in 40+ years, they should get with the times!”

It’s easy enough for people who live within US culture to feel like mass confiscation is the way to go, so for somone on the outside looking in... It really doesn’t offend me. But I get how you and others can find it offensive, especially after
What we had yesterday.

It's not offensive when it comes from people who just don't know American politics.

It's offensive when it comes from people for whom it's very obviously some kind of fetish, and is not the only place where they show blatant, total disregard for practicality and the consequences of their policy proposals, as long as it forces the world to obey their sense of order.

I don't mind people saying "just confiscate all the semi-automatic rifles in America" as if that were a good idea.

I mind people jacking off over the idea of confiscating all the semi-automatic rifles in America. Or sneering at the people who try to point out why it's a bad idea. Or openly avowing that if they were put in charge of things they would lie to the public and secretly take actions intended over the long run to lead to confiscating the rifles, even when the public clearly did not want them to do that or the Constitution said not to.

Ok, so it’s the just victims of gun crime that cannot seek legal recompense if a criminal gets their hands on a gun. Thanks for the clarification everything I read on it was pretty murky.

The problem with opening up the creators for illegal use is you essentially open flood-gates. Now, I've got more than a few bones to pick with gun lobbyists and the NRA. But you can't let companies get sued for people using their products illegally (provided they aren't enabling), especially when it's up to law enforcement to stop illegal use of an otherwise legal item.

The floodgates would lead to shit like Ferrari getting sued because their cars can do 150MPH. So, when some dumbass wrecks his into a schoolbus full of nuns, Ferarri has to pick up the tab. Or imagine the guy who coded P2P file sharing (read: torrents) getting sued by the RIAA because other people used his code to pirate music. It's just bad news all around.

It wouldn't even just be Ferrari. My beat-up old Ford can go ninety miles an hour, and I don't think there's a single place within a thousand miles of my home where it can do so legally.

You'd also have knife manufacturers being sued when their knives are used to stab people, things like that. In the US litigation culture, where lawsuits are the only way to cover long-term expenses associated with injury, every kind of manufacturer would be open to lawsuits.

The problem with opening up the creators for illegal use is you essentially open flood-gates. Now, I've got more than a few bones to pick with gun lobbyists and the NRA. But you can't let companies get sued for people using their products illegally (provided they aren't enabling), especially when it's up to law enforcement to stop illegal use of an otherwise legal item.

The floodgates would lead to shit like Ferrari getting sued because their cars can do 150MPH. So, when some dumbass wrecks his into a schoolbus full of nuns, Ferarri has to pick up the tab. Or imagine the guy who coded P2P file sharing (read: torrents) getting sued by the RIAA because other people used his code to pirate music. It's just bad news all around.

Like Metallica v Napster?

Yes. Basically, all the industries will be getting hammered as badly as peer-to-peer music sharing, forever. And since peer-to-peer music sharing basically got crushed into a black market by sheer weight of lawsuits, that should give an idea of what would happen to the rest of the economy.

[Flagg]

With genuine apologies to Jub, I honestly do not have the frame of mind or the patience to hack through his Big Honking Wall tonight. If tomorrow goes well, I may be up to it then.

My main objections are to the brick wall of “fuck dead children” in response by the gun lobby to the attempt to prevent crazies and criminals (or to at least make it harder) to get their hands on firearms and to put reasonable limits on magazine capacity because the only honest argument against the latter is “But I don’t want to have to reload ammo into my 10-12 round magazine when target shooting because it hurts my thumbs!”

You see the same argument in this thread with the push right now by the gun industry to ease restrictions on suppressors/silencers because “I don’t want to have to buy ear plugs for target shooting!” To which my response is: “Then go deaf.”

I actually think the argument for allowing silencers is better than the argument for allowing big magazines.

There aren't a lot of valid reasons to own a gun for which a five-round magazine (or, say, ten for a self-defense handgun) isn't enough. It may take a little more work on your hands, but it's not that big of a deal.

But the muzzle suppressor that reduces gun noise for target shooting? Yeah, that's actually a significant health issue. And it doesn't seem like there have been any shootings I can think of that would have been significantly deadlier with a suppressor on the gun. It doesn't make the guns undetectable somehow or anything.

To me, this stuff is all about costs and benefits and numbery things. Big magazines are for shooting a lot of bullets at once without taking several seconds to reload, which isn't really a need. And the potential for abuse is large. Suppressors used for protecting someone's hearing do in fact address a physical need that people may have while engaging in a legitimate activity. And while the theoretical potential for abuse is large, the practical potential seems small.

I’m not for mass confiscation except maybe for fully automatic weapons if someone who jumped through the miles of hoops to qualify and the following miles to maintain the permissions to possess them legally went bugfuck and killed dozens (or Gods forbid, hundreds) of people. And even then...

That said, I can fully understand how somone from a modern industrialized nation that already outlawed the kind of firearm possession we have here can look at us and say “They’re a bunch of crazy fuckers, we haven’t had a classroom lit up like The Matrix in 40+ years, they should get with the times!”

It’s easy enough for people who live within US culture to feel like mass confiscation is the way to go, so for somone on the outside looking in... It really doesn’t offend me. But I get how you and others can find it offensive, especially after
What we had yesterday.

It's not offensive when it comes from people who just don't know American politics.

It's offensive when it comes from people for whom it's very obviously some kind of fetish, and is not the only place where they show blatant, total disregard for practicality and the consequences of their policy proposals, as long as it forces the world to obey their sense of order.

I don't mind people saying "just confiscate all the semi-automatic rifles in America" as if that were a good idea.

I mind people jacking off over the idea of confiscating all the semi-automatic rifles in America. Or sneering at the people who try to point out why it's a bad idea. Or openly avowing that if they were put in charge of things they would lie to the public and secretly take actions intended over the long run to lead to confiscating the rifles, even when the public clearly did not want them to do that or the Constitution said not to.

Ok, so it’s the just victims of gun crime that cannot seek legal recompense if a criminal gets their hands on a gun. Thanks for the clarification everything I read on it was pretty murky.

The problem with opening up the creators for illegal use is you essentially open flood-gates. Now, I've got more than a few bones to pick with gun lobbyists and the NRA. But you can't let companies get sued for people using their products illegally (provided they aren't enabling), especially when it's up to law enforcement to stop illegal use of an otherwise legal item.

The floodgates would lead to shit like Ferrari getting sued because their cars can do 150MPH. So, when some dumbass wrecks his into a schoolbus full of nuns, Ferarri has to pick up the tab. Or imagine the guy who coded P2P file sharing (read: torrents) getting sued by the RIAA because other people used his code to pirate music. It's just bad news all around.

It wouldn't even just be Ferrari. My beat-up old Ford can go ninety miles an hour, and I don't think there's a single place within a thousand miles of my home where it can do so legally.

You'd also have knife manufacturers being sued when their knives are used to stab people, things like that. In the US litigation culture, where lawsuits are the only way to cover long-term expenses associated with injury, every kind of manufacturer would be open to lawsuits.

The problem with opening up the creators for illegal use is you essentially open flood-gates. Now, I've got more than a few bones to pick with gun lobbyists and the NRA. But you can't let companies get sued for people using their products illegally (provided they aren't enabling), especially when it's up to law enforcement to stop illegal use of an otherwise legal item.

The floodgates would lead to shit like Ferrari getting sued because their cars can do 150MPH. So, when some dumbass wrecks his into a schoolbus full of nuns, Ferarri has to pick up the tab. Or imagine the guy who coded P2P file sharing (read: torrents) getting sued by the RIAA because other people used his code to pirate music. It's just bad news all around.

Like Metallica v Napster?

Yes. Basically, all the industries will be getting hammered as badly as peer-to-peer music sharing, forever. And since peer-to-peer music sharing basically got crushed into a black market by sheer weight of lawsuits, that should give an idea of what would happen to the rest of the economy.

The problem with suppressors is that they are made to make it harder to determinine where the gunfire is coming from. That’s why snipers use them. So if crazy shooter is in a building shooting up the place and you want to run away from it so as not to die, they make it harder. And they sell foam earplugs in bulk at every Wal-Mart and they are dirt cheap. Likely cheaper than a suppressor even over time.

And if the gun industry goes out of its way to make its products more lethal (they do) while fighting for less regulation (they do) why the hell shouldn’t they be liable if their product kills a sleeping toddler 2 blocks away from someone firing their product who without their obstructing legislation would not be able to get their hands on one? If the companies in question acted responsibly they wouldn’t need special protection from lawsuits that other industries do not get. For instance, armor piercing rounds that may go through a wall and into a toddler 2 blocks away that “regular” rounds do not?

Remember, knives and cars have uses other than “weapon to kill”.

[TheFeniX]

Like Metallica v Napster?

If memory serves, Napster got burned by the court solely because their servers were hosting pirated content. After the ruling, they shut down their own hosting servers and stuck with tracking servers since POINTING to illegal content is ok for some reason.

But as pointed out, holding a company responsible for the illegal use of their product is just not a good idea. Imagine spray-paint manufacturers getting sued by parents because the local store didn't check ID and their dumbass kid died from huffing paint.

EDIT: for more hilarity, Dell and Microsoft get sued because the Unabomber used a Dell PC to plan his attack and Word to write his manifesto. You could possibly write laws specifically targetting firearms, but it's unlikely to hold up and would be abused either way.

[SCRawl]

As has been discussed, it's practically impossible to obtain automatic weapons legally.

Why does everyone believe this?

It's not impossible. Just merely expensive and time consuming.

https://dealernfa.com/product-category/ ... hine-guns/

"Excellent condition"

If you're okay with your gun looking like a beat up POS, knock off a few thousand or so.

Market price is fixed due to a limited number being available (pre 1986 manufacture) for sale to private citiizens, and the number of people who want one increasing each year while inventory slowly decreases due to house fires, etc.

All right, but my understanding was that being on the receiving end of that transaction means that an extremely thorough set of vetting had to be done. Is this not the case?

[SCRawl]

Let's say that there can be more or less universal agreement among legislators about what is and not "too dangerous", and that it does more than just duplicate the "ugly gun" laws of the past. The rank and file firearm enthusiast might not agree, but I'm completely discounting their opinions here for the sake of argument.

What, all the legislators agree? Your scenario has now diverged far enough from reality that it no longer addresses my question.

Oh, it was always a scenario from fantasy land. But without something like a bipartisan agreement on what "too dangerous" means, and having it match something that would be meaningful, no subsequent action would ever take place. So I took it as a given and went on from there, even though it's just as fanciful as me and my snapping fingers getting the job done.

[TheFeniX]

All right, but my understanding was that being on the receiving end of that transaction means that an extremely thorough set of vetting had to be done. Is this not the case?

It's become easier (under Obama no less). Used to be, the county sheriff had to sign off, that isn't so much the case anymore, but local LEOs could cause a stink and hold up the process. Or just hassle the shit out of you after the fact.

Essentially, trusts are much easier to setup these days. Once created, purchasing more controlled weapon is as easy as paying the fees and registering the firearm. You have to pass local and federal background checks and register with the ATF.

But at a basic level, if you can buy a firearm legally, you can own pre-ban hardware. The difference is the amount of paperwork, timeframe (the paperwork can hold up your purchase for months, even if it isn't your first NFA purchase), and fees and that the ATF and local law enforcement knows exactly what you own and can demand to see the weapons and paperwork at damn near anytime. Same with silencers.

Silencers are also weird IIRC as you can make homemade ones (or have them custom made), but you have to register them to legally own them. You CANNOT do the same thing with even a pre-1986 firearm (as in, convert an old semi-auto to full-auto). I mean, you could. But you get a boot up your ass.

[SCRawl]

The only thing for it would be to call up the military, and that wouldn't end well.

People often say this, but the idea that the US military would participate in a large scale suppression of US civilians in the cause of violating one of the basic constitutional rights of said citizens, given the members of the military are overwhelmingly of the opinion it is a constitutional right, is absurd. Both of the primary characteristics of such an order would be repellent to most of the military, namely the use of military force on domestic civilian citizens AND violating the constitution they are first and foremost sworn to protect. This would at the very least lead to most lawfully refusing to obey such orders along with mass resignation and or garrisoning (refusing to leave garrison until the leadership is changed). At worst you would throw the military in such chaos it is useless for anything, along with a good portion going over to the other side.

I can think of very few circumstances where I would follow an order to attack US citizens. Its vanishingly small, and usually involves insurrection, and even then massively violent insurrection. Anything involving forcibly confiscating the weapons of law abiding citizens is definitely not one of them.

The biggest problem with the confiscation fantasies ist hat there is nobody you can reliably tap to enforce it. Law enforcement and the military are stalwart bastions of 2nd amendment sentiment.

The second amendment can't possibly be meant to be absolute. So it's just a matter of degrees. If, I don't know, rocket launchers had been legal for civilians to own for the last fifty years, but then too many planes started getting shot down, so Congress decided that owning rocket launchers was too dangerous for civilians and passed a law that they all had to be handed in or else be confiscated, would enforcing such a law be repugnant to you (and extension your colleagues)? If not, why not? And if rocket launcher confiscation isn't a bridge too far, just how far is that bridge?

[Gandalf]

Like Metallica v Napster?

If memory serves, Napster got burned by the court solely because their servers were hosting pirated content. After the ruling, they shut down their own hosting servers and stuck with tracking servers since POINTING to illegal content is ok for some reason.

Weirdly, no. All of the files were on people's computers, and not at Napster servers. All Napster did was index those files and point people to those files on each other's computers in a way that was far easier than ever before.

[Adam Reynolds]

On the issue of American gun culture, I would say that the real problem is that guns are toys* most of the time, and the features that make them dangerous in cases like this also make them more fun. While there are clearly cases in which they are used in defense, that does not represent the majority of usage. Especially considering that you are significantly more likely to be the victim of gun violence if you own one, and suicide is the far largest risk of gun ownership.

Though I would still agree that Simon is probably right about the fact that anything resembling an outright gun ban is a political impossibility in the US, and that unfortunately the attention is likely better spent elsewhere on other solutions to the underlying problems of gun violence and at chipping away at the margins. I wish this weren't so, but it is what it is.

* Hunting is also entirely recreational at this point in society, so that counts there as well.

You all realize that the perp had a private pilot's license until a few years back?

All he had to do to equal this was get a nice big plane, a twin prop/turboprop job; fly into Vegas, and then call an inflight emergency and abort to McCarran; and once there, just kamikaze into the crowd with a nearly full load of fuel.

Money was not apparently a problem with him, as he apparently booked other rooms around Vegas with views leading up to this event, probably trying to find the perfect shooting spot.

Given that he no longer has said license, that is hardly true. It likely expired in 2010 or 2013*. He was also only ever certified to fly a single engine aircraft, which would have probably done less damage than his 23 rifles did.

* While I have no idea about this site, I checked the FAA website and found the same record under the listed name. Also, while the link I gave claimed expiration in 2013, this site indicates that it would have expired in 2010 based on the shooter's age.

[Korto]

This guy feels that these systems are legal, which, if true, leads to the question: If automatic fire weapons are so restricted to be almost banned, why would you allow a device that effectively simulates automatic fire?

Because you can make these devices in a cave with a box of scraps or any machine shop can churn them out easily. Here is a video showing the basic idea and demonstrating the results. Two pieces of plastic and a tension arm and the recoil of the gun makes the device pull the trigger again. It's the gun equivalent of tying down a controller with rubber bands to hold the run button down. Not hard to make, dead easy to 3d-print and you can mount or unmount it in under five minutes, and I've seen similar devices have all sorts of secondary civilian use.

I can appreciate how, if something's very difficult to enforce, you may prefer not to make a law about it. As a parent, one of my personal rules is "Don't engage in unnecessary battles", but sometimes the battle is necessary. I'm a bit flummoxed coming up with legitimate civilian uses for this on a gun--it makes your fire less accurate, so it seems no good for hunting, target shooting, or even self-defense. It's only purpose seems to be fucking around spraying large amounts of dollars in (vaguely wave's hand) that direction.

Lonestar: You are actually right, OK? For an individual, if they are attacked--by a mugger, rapist, political surveyor, whatever--a gun immediately in your pocket is a lot more more use to you than the cops ten minutes down the road. And a gun IS the great equaliser; an eight year old girl can take down a twenty-eight year old man with a single (albeit lucky) shot. Can we please not argue over these basic points?
The problem is that while the gun may be good for the individual, I suspect it's not good for the population at large. I suspect that for every one of YOU--competent, careful, and has actually encountered a situation where the gun has been helpful (because if you don't actually encounter a situation where the gun helps, then the gun has never been a help), there are more than one who are stupid, careless, or have anger management "issues".
So I suspect that if Q came down and somehow got rid of all your guns, while a few more people would die because they were unable to defend themselves, a lot more would live because they would no longer be shot in the back by their toddler while driving.

Why is bearing arms a right? Is it a human right? Because if so, then it should be universal throughout the world. Is it a right for a democratic country to function? I don't think so considering many other democratic countries can function without necessitating guns.

You are opposed to the "right" being taken away, while never really showing why is it considered a "right" in the first place. To me, a right is something human beings or society cannot function without. It is a necessary part of your daily lives. Food, shelter are basic human rights. Freedom of expression are rights that are tied to a functional democratic society.

For something to be a right, it has to be universal in some form, that society as a whole cannot function without it. Freedom of speech, for instance, might not be exercised by everyone, but a democratic society cannot really function without it.

Just because you are brought up to believe it is a right doesn't mean it is a right. I await your argument why it is even a right in the first place.

I don't agree with your interpretation of what a "right" is, as I understand from this. A "right" is not something inborn, that is essential to your functioning, and it certainly doesn't have to be world-wide or universal. A right is something someone decided they themselves had, or someone else had, and they had the power to defend that decision against anyone who disagreed. Americans have the right to bear arms because Americans gave themselves that right, and there's no one able to take that right away from them.


You know, I don't really think, from what I've heard, this shooter's too useful for the gun-control debate. He didn't have a criminal record, I haven't heard he was flagged for anything. This thing was thought-out. I don't think there's any reasonable law changes (while maintaining the law-abiding citizen's right to bear arms) that could have stopped him.

[ray245]

There could be many reasons. There could even be different things going on in different countries.

In Country One, maybe the population is culturally uniform, cultural values act to limit crime, and economic inequality is very low, so that the crime rate is so low that even bad police can keep people safe enough that they don't complain.

In Country Two, maybe the inequality/poverty rate is high but the culture is very effective at keeping this from turning into criminality.

In Country Three, maybe the police force really is just that good.

In Country Four, maybe the crime rate is high and people genuinely would be safer with more civilian gun ownership, but it just never comes up because owning guns is not normative in that society, or because the society has a recent history of dictatorships that rounded up a lot of the guns and shot the owners on suspicion of being rebels.

The point here is that reducing things to a simplistic answer like "Australia has this problem solved, just do everything Australia does and it'll work out fine" is almost certainly not going to give correct answers. Whatever is working for Australia is part of a complex matrix of factors including Australia's ethnic makeup, geography, resources, and institutions. Copying one part of the Australian system into another system may well be much harder than it seems, and even if it isn't, it still takes time. Before that time is spent, it's hard to justify saying "well, if Australia is doing X with their system Y, why aren't you doing it with your identical copy of that system?"

It's not about copying their system, but whether the US has truly exhausted all other available options before defaulting to gun ownership as the only way to be safe. That is not a debate I've seen from any major participants from the gun ownership debates in the US. Frankly, I feel that the opposition towards gun restriction is the same as the American attitude towards Universal Healthcare. The belief in the notion of American exceptionalism seem to have done the US more harm than good, in which other valid options are not even considered in the first place.

It's the overall American culture that makes me sceptical about whether the pro-gun rights group truly believe that all other options have been explored. Because if the US is a society that is perfectly willing to let people go bankrupt over health issues by rejecting Universal healthcare, I don't have much faith that many in the US have seriously looked at what sort of culture the US wants to maintain.

Which is precisely the point at which rural and urban voters (and the suburban voters caught in between) start compromising on the issue in a process most democratic nations call "politics" and most autocracies call "rule by edict with periodic peasant uprisings."

I am totally on board with the US gun policy winding up as a compromise intended to minimize harm in the cities while still respecting the perceived rights and needs of rural communities.

What I am not on board with, and am trying to argue against, is the mindset of "I don't see why anyone thinks that access to guns is even slightly a good thing, and am in favor of totally banning it, and the people who think that bearing arms is a right are just wrong and dumb and should go away." Which may be a strawman version of the average gun control advocate... But people with that basic attitude are alive and well and occasionally post on SDN, so I'm stuck with them anyway.

The way I see it, it feels like the law or the gun policy in the US favors the rural community disproportionately to the urban community. Does the security benefits to the rural community outweigh the danger it poses to an urban community? Because right now, there doesn't seem to be any compromise by the rural community.

History is a factor here. The rural areas in question had fairly high gun ownership even going back to times when law enforcement consisted of "uh, we elect a sheriff and he randomly deputizes a few big guys he can trust if he needs extra muscle." From their point of view, the question could be turned around: "Before resorting to an expensive expanded and heavily retrained police department, the question is whether it is possible to just keep doing what we've been doing for a hundred years, carrying pistols and posting "TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT" signs, and not getting robbed or beaten up."

Rural areas whose local history dated back to being medieval peasants who had to answer to feudal lords or a Confucian bureaucracy might have a different view of this question.

Gun ownership was prevalent in other countries, like Australia for example. And frankly, the idea of US history acting as a justification for gun ownership rings a little hollow to me. Fire brigades used to be privatized, instead of a public service. That didn't stop people from reforming it.

Yes, but Canada and Australia may differ from the US for reasons besides geography, you know. This is not a trivially simple question, and should not be trivialized.

Of course. The question is whether there is significant difference that would prevent the US from adopting a system more similar to Canada or Australia.

Gun Control Guy would say that this is because the guns aren't the cause of the high background rate of violence, they just redistribute the violence, while exercising a deterrent effect by increasing the potential lethality of the violence.

Speaking for myself, the causes of the high background rate of violence are things that I would very much like to fix, and I try to support every social policy I can that does something useful about them. But I'm not at all sure gun control is such a policy.

---

I come from the exact opposite. I think every other alternative should be explored before you consider gun ownership as a last resort for safety.

Yes, I do that later on, or rather build up to it later on. The part of my explanation you're directly responding to is intended to point out that we should be cautious about removing a right just because its purpose is not immediately obvious to us.

For example, I might ask "why should a criminal defendant not be required to go up and testify whether or not they committed the crime, then get charged with perjury if they lie? What do the innocent have to worry about from that?" It turns out there are several very good answers to that question. But if I don't know much about constitutional law and the courts, I may not know those answers. It would be a grave injustice for me to say "I don't know why criminals have a right not to incriminate themselves on the stand, I don't see the use of it" and vote to end the right to not incriminate yourself.

I might, if I'd led a sheltered or clueless enough life, ask "why would a woman want the right to marry another woman?" If I somehow didn't know lesbians were a thing, or didn't understand sexuality and love very well, that might seem pointless to me. It would be a grave injustice for me to campaign against gay marriage because I don't see the use of it, due to my own ignorance.

A similar argument applies to gun control. The argument is not sufficient to justify preserving gun rights all by itself, but it does justify caution if we're talking about casually erasing them because they seem useless.

Because mass gun ownership has a significant risk compared things like the right to marriage. Guns are meant to kill. Semi-automatic guns can be used kill innocent. There are a greater harm and threat compared to things like gay marriage. To even compare them is just insulting and homophobic because you are implying gay marriage have social harm.

And yet, this runs counter to the idea that freedom of speech is a universal right. We routinely criticize governments for not respecting the freedom of speech, but on what basis do we do so, if it isn't denying them something that is essential for life?

My argument is that this question is easy to answer if we think in terms of rights as being the things that provide not only for a person's basic physical security from hunger and violence and so on, but also for their ability to live with dignity and autonomy.

And what happens when the right of yours harm the right of someone else to live with dignity and autonomy? Gun ownership in the US actively prevents people can deter people from exercising their right to assemble without fear. My point is I see gun ownership as something on par with car ownership, it's a privilege, not a right. It can be extended and taken away from you.

I'm getting there. I just want to be clear, you're with me up to this point?

You consider it a valid and reasonable argument to say "Legal Right X is important to ensuring (one or more of) the security, dignity, and autonomy of the individual, therefore it is fitting and proper that people have Legal Right X?"

Because if you're with me up to that point, or at least willing to grant it for the sake of argument, then I, Gun Rights Guy, can finish things up by presenting my argument for why bearing arms should be a right.

To me, being able to live in a country where you don't have to fear from massed shooting (specifically massed shooting, since it actively prevents you from going to public spaces) is an important right that ensures the security, dignity, and autonomy of the individual.

Is it not fitting that people deserve that right as well? If your right actively prevents the rights of others, is it valid to consider it a right?

[Simon_Jester]

The problem with suppressors is that they are made to make it harder to determinine where the gunfire is coming from. That’s why snipers use them. So if crazy shooter is in a building shooting up the place and you want to run away from it so as not to die, they make it harder. And they sell foam earplugs in bulk at every Wal-Mart and they are dirt cheap. Likely cheaper than a suppressor even over time.

Okay, that is a fair and valid counterargument about the object-level question "should suppressors be legal?"

And if the gun industry goes out of its way to make its products more lethal (they do) while fighting for less regulation (they do) why the hell shouldn’t they be liable if their product kills a sleeping toddler 2 blocks away from someone firing their product who without their obstructing legislation would not be able to get their hands on one?

Because at that point you're not suing someone for manufacturing a defective or illegal product. You're suing someone for lobbying. If that kind of lawsuit is valid, you've demonstrated that anyone who is harmed by legalizing something has standing to sue people who lobbied to make it legal.

Set that precedent, and now everyone who appeals to the government to change a law can be sued in federal (or state?) court by anyone who can demonstrate financial harm as a result of that change to the law.

I know you're creative enough to think of a wealth of ways that could go horribly wrong.

On the issue of American gun culture, I would say that the real problem is that guns are toys* ...

* Hunting is also entirely recreational at this point in society, so that counts there as well.

If you go far enough out into the sticks, you will probably find exceptions to this rule. Just saying.

Though I would still agree that Simon is probably right about the fact that anything resembling an outright gun ban is a political impossibility in the US, and that unfortunately the attention is likely better spent elsewhere on other solutions to the underlying problems of gun violence and at chipping away at the margins. I wish this weren't so, but it is what it is.

Why wish it weren't so? Even if Americans didn't have ideological resistance to banning or confiscating guns, it would still be a very large amount of logistical burden on society. You'd still be facing objections like "I spent ten thousand dollars on this gun collection, you can't just grab it without compensation" and so on. And 95% or more of the effort would be completely wasted on locating and confiscating guns that weren't going to hurt anyone.

I don't think it's somehow a tragedy if gun bans are impractical and we pursue other angles, any more than I think it's a tragedy when I route around a traffic jam on the freeway.

I can appreciate how, if something's very difficult to enforce, you may prefer not to make a law about it. As a parent, one of my personal rules is "Don't engage in unnecessary battles", but sometimes the battle is necessary. I'm a bit flummoxed coming up with legitimate civilian uses for this on a gun--it makes your fire less accurate, so it seems no good for hunting, target shooting, or even self-defense. It's only purpose seems to be fucking around spraying large amounts of dollars in (vaguely wave's hand) that direction.

My understanding is that such a modification is, in point of fact, illegal.

Making weapons fully automatic with after-market modifications is not legal in the United States. The problem is that it's also not actually that hard to do. There's a good reason the first fully automatic machine gun was invented many years before the first reliable semi-automatic rifles. The hard part isn't making a gun where firing one bullet automatically loads the next bullet. The hard part is making a gun where firing one bullet loads the next bullet, and then stops loading more bullets and stops firing until you pull the trigger again.

Semi-automatic is mechanically harder than fully automatic, not easier.

Lonestar: You are actually right, OK? For an individual, if they are attacked--by a mugger, rapist, political surveyor, whatever--a gun immediately in your pocket is a lot more more use to you than the cops ten minutes down the road. And a gun IS the great equaliser; an eight year old girl can take down a twenty-eight year old man with a single (albeit lucky) shot. Can we please not argue over these basic points?

Some people keep debating this for some demented reason. Because they just cannot acknowledge any thing that could lead to a pro-gun argument in any way shape or form, y'know?

The problem is that while the gun may be good for the individual, I suspect it's not good for the population at large. I suspect that for every one of YOU--competent, careful, and has actually encountered a situation where the gun has been helpful (because if you don't actually encounter a situation where the gun helps, then the gun has never been a help), there are more than one who are stupid, careless, or have anger management "issues".

So I suspect that if Q came down and somehow got rid of all your guns, while a few more people would die because they were unable to defend themselves, a lot more would live because they would no longer be shot in the back by their toddler while driving.

You are free to suspect this, but:

1) It is definitely a question that can be subjected to rigorous statistical analysis.

2) There is a valid argument that the rights of competent, responsible people to do things should not be curtailed because of the incompetence of ignorance, irresponsible people.

I don't agree with your interpretation of what a "right" is, as I understand from this. A "right" is not something inborn, that is essential to your functioning, and it certainly doesn't have to be world-wide or universal. A right is something someone decided they themselves had, or someone else had, and they had the power to defend that decision against anyone who disagreed. Americans have the right to bear arms because Americans gave themselves that right, and there's no one able to take that right away from them.

This trips over the is-ought distinction.

The legal rights of citizens of a given country are what the government of that country has established in its constitution, as a direct result of the history of that country.

The question is, what those rights ought to be? SHOULD gun ownership be a right in the US, or anywhere else? Ray and me are engaged in a discussion on that very subject, even if right now I lack the time and opportunity to pursue it further than to say this.

[The Romulan Republic]

The shooting has already been badly politicized.

October 02, 2017 - 03:49 PM EDT

CBS executive fired after saying Las Vegas victims didn't deserve sympathy

CBS fired a legal executive Monday after she wrote on Facebook that she was not "sympathetic" to the victims of the mass shooting in Las Vegas.

“I’m actually not even sympathetic [because] country music fans often are Republican gun toters," former executive Hayley Geftman-Gold wrote.

At least 59 people were killed and more than 520 were injured after a gunman opened fire at a country music festival in Las Vegas on Sunday night.

"This individual, who was with us for approximately one year, violated the standards of our company and is no longer an employee of CBS," the network said in a statement Monday.

"Her views as expressed on social media are deeply unacceptable to all of us at CBS. Our hearts go out to the victims in Las Vegas and their families,” the network wrote.

The Daily Caller first flagged Geftman-Gold's post Monday morning.

“If they wouldn’t do anything when children were murdered I have no hope that Repugs will ever do the right thing," wrote Geftman-Gold, who served as vice president and senior counsel of strategic transactions at CBS.

The post quickly went viral, with Geftman-Gold's name and "CBS Exec" both becoming top trending topics on Twitter.

Okay, fuck her. Both for being a callous asshole who believes people deserve to be murdered not only for their political affiliations, but simply for listening to music that has associations with certain political views. And for giving the Republicans a talking point to paint liberals as callous, hypocritical assholes.

Good going their. She just gave fuel to the people she hates.

[Simon_Jester]

Okay, I have a LITTLE more time than I thought...

It's not about copying their system, but whether the US has truly exhausted all other available options before defaulting to gun ownership as the only way to be safe. That is not a debate I've seen from any major participants from the gun ownership debates in the US. Frankly, I feel that the opposition towards gun restriction is the same as the American attitude towards Universal Healthcare. The belief in the notion of American exceptionalism seem to have done the US more harm than good, in which other valid options are not even considered in the first place.

It's the overall American culture that makes me sceptical about whether the pro-gun rights group truly believe that all other options have been explored. Because if the US is a society that is perfectly willing to let people go bankrupt over health issues by rejecting Universal healthcare, I don't have much faith that many in the US have seriously looked at what sort of culture the US wants to maintain.

History is a factor here. The rural areas in question had fairly high gun ownership even going back to times when law enforcement consisted of "uh, we elect a sheriff and he randomly deputizes a few big guys he can trust if he needs extra muscle." From their point of view, the question could be turned around: "Before resorting to an expensive expanded and heavily retrained police department, the question is whether it is possible to just keep doing what we've been doing for a hundred years, carrying pistols and posting "TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT" signs, and not getting robbed or beaten up."

Rural areas whose local history dated back to being medieval peasants who had to answer to feudal lords or a Confucian bureaucracy might have a different view of this question.

Gun ownership was prevalent in other countries, like Australia for example. And frankly, the idea of US history acting as a justification for gun ownership rings a little hollow to me. Fire brigades used to be privatized, instead of a public service. That didn't stop people from reforming it.

My reply to your first quote is basically "why do you think of gun ownership as something that has to be 'tried' after all other options have been tried?"

You seem to model societies in a state of nature as having, by default, certain specific institutions. Then they say "okay, let's try improving the police force." "Let's try having better mental health care." "Let's try this." "Let's try that." And if and only if all those other institutions didn't work to solve a problem, are they allowed (by whom?) to say "Let's try gun ownership."

The thing is, that is not how it works. This isn't unique to the US, either. In any given democratic country, the burden of proof is on the people who want to change existing state policy to justify why the policy in question is an improvement. Justifying such a change may be very easy, as for example in the case of public fire brigades instead of just private ones. But you still have to make your case for doing something, rather than just saying "well, by default this is illegal, so you shouldn't have it be legal unless you've done a bunch of other things first."

That is a terrible argument for illegalizing anything.

This isn't just an argument of the form "this is how we've always done it, so we should always do it this way." It's simply that if you're going to take a service that was once legal, and make it illegal, you need to respect some standards about the burden of proof and who is obliged to defend what. Talking about how you shouldn't "try making guns legal" may make sense in some kind of abstract SimCity game where it's just a matter of clicking a checkbox on a list of city ordinances to 'ban guns' or 'not ban guns.' But it doesn't match well with the underlying realities in the US.

Could the US decide to confiscate masses of guns? Yes, this is a thing that could happen. But you can't treat this as the default state, the thing that should be done unless others can specifically prove it shouldn't be done. Taking away billions of dollars worth of property belonging to tens of millions of people, the vast majority of whom have never committed any crimes with the property and never even considered doing so, is not a thing you do "by default."

The way I see it, it feels like the law or the gun policy in the US favors the rural community disproportionately to the urban community. Does the security benefits to the rural community outweigh the danger it poses to an urban community? Because right now, there doesn't seem to be any compromise by the rural community.

I don't feel sufficiently well-versed in US gun control to say this with confidence. One thing that IS true is that many gun control laws exist at the state level, and that states dominated by the largest cities in those states tend to have much stricter gun control laws than states where the rural population holds relatively more political power.

(Not coincidentally, these same states tend to be Democrat-dominated "blue states")

For instance, New York (the state) politics is dominated by New York (the city), and Illinois politics is dominated by Chicago. Both states have relatively stricter gun control laws than some of the surrounding states; New York in particular has had them for roughly a hundred years.

[I may be mistaken or mis-remembering details of those examples, but the trend is valid as a whole]

I come from the exact opposite. I think every other alternative should be explored before you consider gun ownership as a last resort for safety.

1) Obviously, this is based in part on the fact that you do not consider 'bearing arms' to be a right citizens have. You presumably wouldn't think of "free speech" as a last resort for, say, combating political corruption after all other options have been tried- precisely because free speech is a right you agree people should always have. So to an extent, this discussion collapses back to the debate of whether gun ownership is a right, on which more later.

2) You still seem to be viewing this as an ahistorical question. It doesn't matter to you whether the policy of gun ownership is now or historically has been marked "allowed" or "not allowed," at least that's how it appears. You seem to be saying that policies should be enacted without reference to the history and culture and existing institutions of the society that enacts them. I've already linked to that book review on Seeing Like a State twice so I won't do it again, but basically I want to point out that this approach works VERY BADLY in most other fields of law and government. I don't think gun control is an exception. You cannot willfully blind yourself to how a society has worked, and talk about them as if they are "trying" gun ownership as an experiment, when in fact there has never been a time when gun ownership was not a routine feature of that particular culture. Not while preserving intellectual honesty.

---

Because mass gun ownership has a significant risk compared things like the right to marriage. Guns are meant to kill. Semi-automatic guns can be used kill innocent. There are a greater harm and threat compared to things like gay marriage. To even compare them is just insulting and homophobic because you are implying gay marriage have social harm.

No, I'm saying that some person might honestly believe that. I can think they'd be wrong to believe that, without pretending that the belief cannot or does not exist. People have believed violent video games cause social harm, that comic books cause social harm, that having X% of people in your society be veterans of the military causes social harm for surprisingly small values of X, and so on.

People make mistakes.

My point is, you shouldn't just take people's rights away as soon as you believe those rights are causing harm, until such time as you have a clear understanding of why those rights were enacted, why they are important, and so on. Because it is very much possible to see (correctly or incorrectly) reasons why something is bad, not know the reasons why others might think it is good, and therefore destroy it recklessly.

I'm not even arguing that rights should never be removed here, I am specifically arguing for restraint, when we propose to remove a right we do not understand.

And yet, this runs counter to the idea that freedom of speech is a universal right. We routinely criticize governments for not respecting the freedom of speech, but on what basis do we do so, if it isn't denying them something that is essential for life?

My argument is that this question is easy to answer if we think in terms of rights as being the things that provide not only for a person's basic physical security from hunger and violence and so on, but also for their ability to live with dignity and autonomy.

And what happens when the right of yours harm the right of someone else to live with dignity and autonomy?

Excuse me, are you going to dispute my argument THAT rights are based on providing security, dignity, and autonomy for individuals?

Or are you just going to be impatient about asking me to get to the point? Because in all seriousness, I need to establish this point before I go on. I've already explained this. Can you accept this point? Yes, or no?

Gun ownership in the US actively prevents people can deter people from exercising their right to assemble without fear. My point is I see gun ownership as something on par with car ownership, it's a privilege, not a right. It can be extended and taken away from you.

Yes, you've said that several times, and you haven't even heard me present arguments for why it would be a right. You're repeating yourself.

Do you, or do you not, accept that rights are based on preserving the dignity, autonomy, and security of individuals? Or do you still stick to the frankly rather inconsistent "only things that are necessary" definition of rights? The one that you have to craft exceptions to for things like 'free speech' and 'privacy' that we can clearly live without, and even live fairly happy lives without, under a dictatorial government?

To me, being able to live in a country where you don't have to fear from massed shooting (specifically massed shooting, since it actively prevents you from going to public spaces) is an important right that ensures the security, dignity, and autonomy of the individual.

Is it not fitting that people deserve that right as well? If your right actively prevents the rights of others, is it valid to consider it a right?

We can have that discussion shortly, but I'm asking you to hear me out first.

Yes or no: do you accept that rights are based on preserving the dignity, autonomy, and security of individuals?

[Jub]

@Simon:

Not to bog things down further but most non-US nations care far less about the induvidual and far more about the cohesive good of the community. So from this view point and discussion of rights already has the added clause of 'Is this right beneficial to the public at large while not overly onerous on the induvidual?' Hence why many nations with similar economic standards as the US have higher taxes and greater social programs to go along with greater restrictions on things like guns and self defense. We already answered the question you're posing to such a degree that Ray may never have consciously realized it needs explanation.

[ray245]

Okay, I have a LITTLE more time than I thought...

My reply to your first quote is basically "why do you think of gun ownership as something that has to be 'tried' after all other options have been tried?"

You seem to model societies in a state of nature as having, by default, certain specific institutions. Then they say "okay, let's try improving the police force." "Let's try having better mental health care." "Let's try this." "Let's try that." And if and only if all those other institutions didn't work to solve a problem, are they allowed (by whom?) to say "Let's try gun ownership."

The thing is, that is not how it works. This isn't unique to the US, either. In any given democratic country, the burden of proof is on the people who want to change existing state policy to justify why the policy in question is an improvement. Justifying such a change may be very easy, as for example in the case of public fire brigades instead of just private ones. But you still have to make your case for doing something, rather than just saying "well, by default this is illegal, so you shouldn't have it be legal unless you've done a bunch of other things first."

That is a terrible argument for illegalizing anything.

This isn't just an argument of the form "this is how we've always done it, so we should always do it this way." It's simply that if you're going to take a service that was once legal, and make it illegal, you need to respect some standards about the burden of proof and who is obliged to defend what. Talking about how you shouldn't "try making guns legal" may make sense in some kind of abstract SimCity game where it's just a matter of clicking a checkbox on a list of city ordinances to 'ban guns' or 'not ban guns.' But it doesn't match well with the underlying realities in the US.

Could the US decide to confiscate masses of guns? Yes, this is a thing that could happen. But you can't treat this as the default state, the thing that should be done unless others can specifically prove it shouldn't be done. Taking away billions of dollars worth of property belonging to tens of millions of people, the vast majority of whom have never committed any crimes with the property and never even considered doing so, is not a thing you do "by default."

My point is that states exist because they've managed to monopolise violence. It's the idea that any violent action has to be arbitrated by a state, and the right to be armed is up to the state prerogative. States gets to dictate what is acceptable in terms of violence and what's not. Even the idea of self-defense is something granted as a concession by the state, as opposed to a natural right.

The absence of a state being able to monopolise violence is a stateless, anarchical society. It's not about whether the state is illegalising anything, I am questioning whether the 2nd amendment should ever be written in the first place. Those are the result of US being a settler society in a region where the conflict between natives and settlers often erupt into all-out war. And the ramifications of allowed armed citizens helped to enable the destruction of most native American societies.

I'm not merely debating whether what is the burden of proof being required for a policy change. I am questioning the whole set-up of American society. The question is whether the founders made a mistake in making that a right in the first place, and if they did, then it should not be seen as a right.

Please note I am not arguing for a complete ban on guns, or the need to confiscate every gun from gun owners. I'm arguing that gun ownership should be seen as a privilege that is extended by the state, as opposed to a natural right of free citizens.

I don't feel sufficiently well-versed in US gun control to say this with confidence. One thing that IS true is that many gun control laws exist at the state level, and that states dominated by the largest cities in those states tend to have much stricter gun control laws than states where the rural population holds relatively more political power.

(Not coincidentally, these same states tend to be Democrat-dominated "blue states")

For instance, New York (the state) politics is dominated by New York (the city), and Illinois politics is dominated by Chicago. Both states have relatively stricter gun control laws than some of the surrounding states; New York in particular has had them for roughly a hundred years.

[I may be mistaken or mis-remembering details of those examples, but the trend is valid as a whole]

The whole point is moot if it is easy for someone in a rural area to basically bring tons of guns into a more urban area. But more importantly, the problem is not that people have or don't have guns. It's the sheer amount of guns circulating in the US. The higher the circulation, the higher the chances of guns being misused.

This is about reducing the overall gun circulation in the US. People own fewer guns, lower chance of misuse.

1) Obviously, this is based in part on the fact that you do not consider 'bearing arms' to be a right citizens have. You presumably wouldn't think of "free speech" as a last resort for, say, combating political corruption after all other options have been tried- precisely because free speech is a right you agree people should always have. So to an extent, this discussion collapses back to the debate of whether gun ownership is a right, on which more later.

Because the notion of owning weapons has always been central to the idea of the state itself. States can function in a variety of form, but one thing they have in common is always the monpolisation of violence.

2) You still seem to be viewing this as an ahistorical question. It doesn't matter to you whether the policy of gun ownership is now or historically has been marked "allowed" or "not allowed," at least that's how it appears. You seem to be saying that policies should be enacted without reference to the history and culture and existing institutions of the society that enacts them. I've already linked to that book review on Seeing Like a State twice so I won't do it again, but basically I want to point out that this approach works VERY BADLY in most other fields of law and government. I don't think gun control is an exception. You cannot willfully blind yourself to how a society has worked, and talk about them as if they are "trying" gun ownership as an experiment, when in fact there has never been a time when gun ownership was not a routine feature of that particular culture. Not while preserving intellectual honesty.

---

I'm separating policy from the more philosophical nature of rights if I get what I am trying to say. I am saying you have gun ownership in a society that doesn't see it as a right, but merely a privilege. Generally speaking, we don't consider car ownership an inevitable right, because we actively restrict access to minimise any possible harm. So if you have a history of misusing your car, such as speeding, your driving license will be taking away. You cannot complain that your rights are being taken away from you.

The 2nd amendment can be removed while ensuring gun ownership are still possible in the US.

No, I'm saying that some person might honestly believe that. I can think they'd be wrong to believe that, without pretending that the belief cannot or does not exist. People have believed violent video games cause social harm, that comic books cause social harm, that having X% of people in your society be veterans of the military causes social harm for surprisingly small values of X, and so on.

People make mistakes.

My point is, you shouldn't just take people's rights away as soon as you believe those rights are causing harm, until such time as you have a clear understanding of why those rights were enacted, why they are important, and so on. Because it is very much possible to see (correctly or incorrectly) reasons why something is bad, not know the reasons why others might think it is good, and therefore destroy it recklessly.

American society used to believe in the notion that slavery was still within the rights of an American. This was later changed because it conflicted with notions of people having equal rights. I think much of the tragedy could have been avoided if a very different approach was taken in understanding the notion of rights.

I see the history of American ideas about right as something causing far more harm to society and people that benefit. Rights need a very good reason to exist because if not, it can be easily used to cause greater harm.

I'm not even arguing that rights should never be removed here, I am specifically arguing for restraint, when we propose to remove a right we do not understand.

Americans' restraint resulted in America being one of the slowest western countries to abolish slavery. I don't see it as a good thing.

And what happens when the right of yours harm the right of someone else to live with dignity and autonomy?

Excuse me, are you going to dispute my argument THAT rights are based on providing security, dignity, and autonomy for individuals?

Or are you just going to be impatient about asking me to get to the point? Because in all seriousness, I need to establish this point before I go on. I've already explained this. Can you accept this point? Yes, or no?[/quote]

I don't see how hard it is to get to a very basic principle argument.

Yes, you've said that several times, and you haven't even heard me present arguments for why it would be a right. You're repeating yourself.

Do you, or do you not, accept that rights are based on preserving the dignity, autonomy, and security of individuals? Or do you still stick to the frankly rather inconsistent "only things that are necessary" definition of rights? The one that you have to craft exceptions to for things like 'free speech' and 'privacy' that we can clearly live without, and even live fairly happy lives without, under a dictatorial government?

So does people in Australia live a less dignified, autonomous and secure life than Americans? More importantly, I have seperate the distinction between states and democractic states. The fact you are deliberately making me lump them together when I said I am not doing this, makes me feel you are a little dishonest in this debate.

We can have that discussion shortly, but I'm asking you to hear me out first.

Yes or no: do you accept that rights are based on preserving the dignity, autonomy, and security of individuals?

Yes, those can be preserved without making gun ownership a right. Let's me clear here. I am not asking for a ban. I am asking for a fundamentally different, and non-American way of looking at the idea of gun ownership and whether it is a right.

The way you approach the entire argument seemed to be in a very standard American approach. You place the burden of proof on the people denying it is a right more than having to prove it in the first place. This intellectual position privileged historical actors far more than current actors. In other words, the ideas of the founding fathers, flawed as they might be, are valued higher than the intellectual position of current people.

I see the intellectual setup in US history a fundamentally flawed approach in many ways. Instead of having to prove people in the past are wrong today, people need to defend that the actions of the people in the past were right. In essence, this is a very intellectually conservative idea. It's basically saying because things shouldn't change because it was this way in the past, and you have to wait for people to demonstrate that this is harmful before you enact change.

Instead, you should always be pressed to justify whatever thinking you have, and existing policy or rights even deserve to be kept.

@Simon:

Not to bog things down further but most non-US nations care far less about the induvidual and far more about the cohesive good of the community. So from this view point and discussion of rights already has the added clause of 'Is this right beneficial to the public at large while not overly onerous on the induvidual?' Hence why many nations with similar economic standards as the US have higher taxes and greater social programs to go along with greater restrictions on things like guns and self defense. We already answered the question you're posing to such a degree that Ray may never have consciously realized it needs explanation.

I am aware of that. What I am asking him is to basically defend the American way of life and thinking.

[Mr Bean]

I'm a bit flummoxed coming up with legitimate civilian uses for this on a gun--it makes your fire less accurate, so it seems no good for hunting, target shooting, or even self-defense. It's only purpose seems to be fucking around spraying large amounts of dollars in (vaguely wave's hand) that direction.

To explain a bit more I mean the device itself is featured on many non-gun related things. A recoil operated spring is very common in machines.

[MKSheppard]

All right, but my understanding was that being on the receiving end of that transaction means that an extremely thorough set of vetting had to be done. Is this not the case?

In addition to the Fingerprinting (lol that was high tech in 1934), the Chief Law Enforcement Officer (CLEO) of your locale has to sign off on your Form. Basically, your county sheriff.

In many locales, the CLEO simply refuse to sign off Class III paperwork.

This is why Trusts became so big, once the internet de-mystified a lot of the mysteriousness behind a trust -- you could use the Trust to bypass the CLEO sign off; and by adding officers to the Trust, you could let others use or inherit your Class III weapons without having to do a transfer/signoff/fingerprinting all over again.

[MKSheppard]

ITT, we see people who don't understand the logarithmic scale of noise in decibels.

[Broomstick]

You all realize that the perp had a private pilot's license until a few years back?

Unless he did something to get his license pulled (and if he had, the media would have found it) he still had a private pilot's license. They don't expire. He might have let his physical lapse if he wasn't actively flying, but he was still a licensed pilot.

All he had to do to equal this was get a nice big plane, a twin prop/turboprop job; fly into Vegas, and then call an inflight emergency and abort to McCarran; and once there, just kamikaze into the crowd with a nearly full load of fuel.

The way the crowd was packed shoulder-to-shoulder? >snort< Not even something that large. Hell, he owned two aircraft as it was. Fill one up with explodium and have at it. Wouldn't even need to call an in-flight emergency, or file a flight plan if he was flying VFR.

Money was not apparently a problem with him, as he apparently booked other rooms around Vegas with views leading up to this event, probably trying to find the perfect shooting spot.

Nope, money was not an issue. Neither was time and planning, it seems. This was not done on a whim. He put a lot of thought and resources into this.

[Broomstick]

Given that he no longer has said license, that is hardly true. It likely expired in 2010 or 2013*.

That was his MEDICAL - pilot licenses do not expire. Even after his medical expired he'd still be legal to fly quite a few small, lightweight aircraft (sport pilot and ultralights). Getting a new medical certificate requires making an appointment with a certified FAA medical examiner, filling out a form, paying the doctor for his time, and getting your completed form. The last two times I had to re-up my form I picked up the completed new one on my way out the door of the doctor's office. For someone with no medical problems and money to spare getting it is trivial.

He was also only ever certified to fly a single engine aircraft, which would have probably done less damage than his 23 rifles did.

I don't think you know as much about aircraft as you think you do. I don't really care to elaborate on how to turn a single-engine airplane into a terrorist weapon, but, given the way the crowd was packed together and what I know of that category of airplane I think he could have achieved similar results if he had really wanted to go that route.

[Gandalf]

ITT, we see people who don't understand the logarithmic scale of noise in decibels.

Weirdly, people seem to lose their shit about logarithms as though they're some sort of calculus done in cuneiform.

Fucked if I know why.

[MKSheppard]

So what turned Lonestar into a firebreathing no compromiser?

[Kon_El]

* Hunting is also entirely recreational at this point in society, so that counts there as well.

I know people who live out in the mountains who get a large portion of their meat from hunting. In parts of the country hunting is still food on the table.