Mass shooting at Oregon college: 15+ dead...

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Say you walk into a store, and there are two similar products sitting side by side. One costs 50% more than the other. Which one do you buy?

This is the problem with libertarianism, and communism for that matter. They both look good on paper, but as soon as you introduce the human element both philosophies fall apart. The world is so much more complicated than that. For one thing there is deceptive advertising and near monopolies in this country. We pay more for internet, phone service and healthcare in this country than nearly every other first world countries because of corporate lobbying and advertising.. So yeah people buy overpriced crap that they don't need all the time. Have you ever been to Whole Foods? That's their entire business model.

I used to shop in the Whole Foods in Berkeley when I lived in the S.F. Bay area, and there again too, I excercised my judgement. I bought what they had that I couldn't get elsewhere and bought other things where I could get them at a better price and of sometimes of better quality. We are not children; we do not need the government, or anyone else for that matter, telling us what to do.

Glebel
That's not entirely true. We need to live by rules and laws in this world and our government is just supposed to be a tool the people use to establish those rules. Too bad that right now it's largely been taken over by corporate influences. Besides there are plenty of people in this world that are basically children in adult bodies.

There are reasonable laws that govern human behavior in this country and so it makes perfect sense that corporations are subject to reasonable regulations as well.

Oh and the CEO of whole foods is still a multi-millionaire despite not having you as a customer. So I guess that not everyone acts the same way.

This is sort of a logic fail, unless you honestly don't believe there's a legitimate market for an upscale grocery shopping experience and people willing to pay for it. That's not a market failure, that's a personal preference and an entrepreneur filling a niche. You really see those forces at work in the restaurant business, where a dollar menu item from a fast food joint might get you just as full as a much more expensive prepared meal at a nice place, but no one argues that the two are the same or that only fools would choose the pricier option.

Because it wasn't promoting the message that you'd prefer? It was a very simple graph accurately showing two sets of data over a period of time, illustrating a point I was making; all the sourcing was above board and displayed on the graphic. Perhaps that word, propaganda, doesn't mean what you think it does.

Also, is your standard for demanding rigor really the physical size the data is displayed? That's...odd.

I also have to disagree with this statement. Judging everyone else by your own standards only works if they also choose to be respectful to others and their environment. There is a significant number of people who need rules in place to govern them and the threat of punishment to ensure they don't take too many liberties.

You'd have to have been following the issue long enough to remember when the anti-gun groups had more honest names, like the Coalition to Ban Handguns, now the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, or Handgun Control Inc, now the Brady Center, and the more extreme positions they took when their views were more mainstream. Going back even farther, elements of the National Firearms Act and Gun Control Act where enacted as the vanguard of a planned push to ban handguns, specifically by making it a federal crime to shorten a rifle or shotgun to create a de facto handgun. There's a lot more there if you read between the lines, but the real proof is looking at what's happened to countries that have adopted many of the proposed regulations, specifically registration, which is greatly diminished if not entirely abolished firearms rights for their citizens.

Incidentally, Feinstein apparently wasn't so traumatized by the Milk assassination that she personally swore off guns, obtaining a virtually impossible for the unconnected California carry permit and the gun to go with it when she felt she'd been threatened. She's far from alone in this hypocrisy either; Dennis Kucinich had a handgun ban as a plank in his abortive presidential run some years back, despite his own concealed carry during a union dispute back in his mayoral days, and every anti-gun celebrity and politician seems to have their own entourage or armed bodyguards. Somehow guns make everyone less safe except famous people who are surrounded by them?

You'd have to actually understand the issue and how pointless and cumbersome most of the proposed laws are, especially when we're still fighting to get previously established burdensome and unhelpful laws changed. Why is the length of my rifle barrel a federal matter? Why can attaching a device that makes my pistol more accurate get me years in prison? Why are simple devices that reduce the report of firearms to make them less likely to damage hearing regulated more strictly than the firearms themselves? On and on, and then something like this happens, and well meaning but emotional and clueless about guns folk can't figure out why we're not receptive to their foolish and/or unworkable ideas.



You're entirely missing the self defense, competitive shooting, and military deterrent angles, among others, but good on you for at least trying a bit, more than we usually get in these threads.



Pardon me, apologists? Here I am, trying to keep this civil, and you've got to go throw some insulting loaded language in there, since I guess you felt your argument needed the additional punch of little name calling. I mean really, it's you who should be apologizing for wasting my time with the same unworkable proposals I've had to put up with for years from people who know nothing about guns but have strong opinions on them anyway, but I digress.

To answer you though; why compromise or negotiate with ignorant and wrong? I've been looking for a smart and knowledgeable anti-gunner for going on a decade here with no success; I strongly suspect that everyone who actually learns about guns and gun law ends up on my side, it's the only explanation that fits.



He could do many things if he wasn't so concerned about the guns, ending the drug war alone would save millions of lives both directly and indirectly, and likely reduce violent crime much more than any form of gun control would. This isn't about saving lives though, this is about control and personal antipathy towards guns and their owners, hence the tunnel vision.



No. As, as far as I know the only person with gun design experience on this board, and likely the only one you'll ever have a conversation with, that's crap. Design parameters of firearms are things like weight, reliability, modularity, ease of use and manufacture, ergonomics, etc, and things like target shooting, hunting, self defense, etc as uses. "Killing people" isn't a design goal, and if you really want to get technical, is really more a function of how the bullet is designed than the gun itself. Still, guns are weapons, and the thing about weapons is that they are force multipliers, and can be used for good or ill, though in the States the numbers are prettt overwhelmingly for good.



You might see a slight decrees in murders and matching uptick in attempted murders as less effective weapons were substituted, but you'd wouldn't see the dramatic drop you're imagining, even if you could magic wand all the guns away tomorrow. A gun in the hand might make committing a murder easier, but it doesn't make a person murderous, that takes other factors not addressed by gun controllers.

Incidentally, if your magic wand doesn't work, I wouldn't want to be one of the poor SOBs sent out to try and roundup the 300 million plus guns out there, I don't see that going well for them.

Are there any reliable estimates of how many illegal guns are in circulation in the US?

Dox47
There was no failure in my logic, I'm just saying there are plenty of people that buy overpriced crap that they don't need. There is a reason why people jokingly refer to whole foods as "whole paychecks."

One question though Dox47 as I know none of us will ever change your mind on anything. What do you think can be done to reduce the number of mass shootings in this country?

This is the fault of modern society as a whole. When I was growing up in Upstate New York, people respected each other and each others' property. There was minimal law enforcement and minimal government interference in our lives because these weren't needed. Now we have all these 'me first' types who don't care about others and this attitude is pimped by the government, mass media, and the entertainment industry.
By expecting and wanting the government to enforce morality, you are opening the door to dictatorship. You may be O.K. with this, I am not.
I have lived in a community that was caring and respectful of others, and I know it can work. But first you need to make a difference, not expect someone else to do it for you.

A government that acts lawless and violent should expect lawless and violent citizens, it's pretty funny how we always blame movies or video games or whatever but never how our government conducts itself domestically and overseas. Most of my life has been war and ever growing police state, it was war even during the 'peace dividend' time I was born. The violence in our media is just a reflection of our poisoned wicked society governed by violence, it's an outlet not a cause.

Okay, so what are you doing about it. If you don't like what is going on, just talking about it is not going to cut it; you need to do things as simple as being considerate of other people or volunteering in your neighborhood. YOU need to make a difference.

I'm not sure what the point is trying to turn it back on me, it seems like a more nuance way of saying "if you don't like America, you can geeeettttt out!"

If I had the means to do something I probably would, I look at Donald Trump sort of enviously but also with frustration thinking if only I was put in that position. You don't even have to be a billionaire, I look at these Democratic nominees in the south that get nominated completely randomly and think the same thing, Alvin Greene or that truck driver now down in Mississippi nominated for governor. Imagine if somebody actually spoke truth to power in one of these positions.

Americans are largely powerless, there is an elite class that has ruled this country since before it was even a country, the longer this goes on the further Americans will go in looking for somebody that will bring real change. Real change means burning down the establishment, nobody ever offers real change.

I didn't mean you when I said 'you', I meant people in general. Sorry if I gave that impression.
What I meant was that you hear so much talk about this and that problem, but you never see anyone doing anything. This really tweaks my tail. If there is a problem, don't you correct it?