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sirlynchmob wrote:


why worry about distracted drivers though, they kill less people than people with guns

I'm waaaay more worried about someone running me the feth over with a car than I am about getting shot, and I'm a gunless person living in a red state with super lenient gun laws.

 sebster wrote:

It will, hopefully, make people realise that all the talk about how they'll totally be badass resistance fighters if they come for our guns is just a bit of fantasy roleplay.

They would be so useless as a "tyranical goverment throwers" not even funny.

Maybe idea was good when rifle was pinacle of weapons. Not these days. It's outdated idea that bunch of civilians with rifle could throw out goverment that has army with it.

And even having gun doesn't make you soldier. Not even training shooting accurately makes you a soldier. Civilian with gun, even if he spends 10 hours a day on a shooting range, is still going to be outclassed as a soldier. Even if goverment would play it "fair" and limit itself to ONLY infantry with rifles civilians would still loose. And you think tyranical goverment is going to limit options to just soldiers?

Real way to deal with tyranical goverment is for army to not obey. They are the ones that can ACTUALLY throw down tyranical goverment and the support they can get.

tneva82 wrote:

 sebster wrote:

It will, hopefully, make people realise that all the talk about how they'll totally be badass resistance fighters if they come for our guns is just a bit of fantasy roleplay.

They would be so useless as a "tyranical goverment throwers" not even funny.

Maybe idea was good when rifle was pinacle of weapons. Not these days. It's outdated idea that bunch of civilians with rifle could throw out goverment that has army with it.

And even having gun doesn't make you soldier. Not even training shooting accurately makes you a soldier. Civilian with gun, even if he spends 10 hours a day on a shooting range, is still going to be outclassed as a soldier. Even if goverment would play it "fair" and limit itself to ONLY infantry with rifles civilians would still loose. And you think tyranical goverment is going to limit options to just soldiers?

Real way to deal with tyranical goverment is for army to not obey. They are the ones that can ACTUALLY throw down tyranical goverment and the support they can get.

Kinda odd saying rifles in the hands of civilians are useless, when a single guy with civilian grade arms just ambushed and murdered 50 people. What he did was absolutely deplorable but it shows what can be done with planning and not needing military grade weapons. Civilians with guns certainly aren't going to win a fight in stand up battle against soldiers, but if they engage in ambushes and hit and run attacks they can seriously slow and erode an armies ability to function. Ambush soldiers then upgrade by taking their weapons. A lot of civilians fighters would die in the process but there's way more of us than the army and as we found out in Vietnam and have been reminded in the middle east the civilian resistance tends blend with the rest of the population where soldier do not.

tneva82 wrote:

 sebster wrote:

It will, hopefully, make people realise that all the talk about how they'll totally be badass resistance fighters if they come for our guns is just a bit of fantasy roleplay.

They would be so useless as a "tyranical goverment throwers" not even funny.

Maybe idea was good when rifle was pinacle of weapons. Not these days. It's outdated idea that bunch of civilians with rifle could throw out goverment that has army with it.

And even having gun doesn't make you soldier. Not even training shooting accurately makes you a soldier. Civilian with gun, even if he spends 10 hours a day on a shooting range, is still going to be outclassed as a soldier. Even if goverment would play it "fair" and limit itself to ONLY infantry with rifles civilians would still loose. And you think tyranical goverment is going to limit options to just soldiers?

Real way to deal with tyranical goverment is for army to not obey. They are the ones that can ACTUALLY throw down tyranical goverment and the support they can get.

Wrong.

Even the most tyrannical government can't go scorched earth on its own cities and civilians. There is no point being king of the ashes. And eventually your own soldiers will stop obeying, because they're also citizens of your country.

You can only go scorched earth on a foreign populace that you are occupying, you can't do it to your home turf. You'll lose all ability to function. The worst oppressive governments in history haven't done this, even when there is open rebellion. It's simply not possible.

The various insurgencies the US has been fighting over the last 50-60 years has shown that a world class military can be held in check by opposition only armed with small arms and the occasional bomb/grenade. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and all the various smaller conflicts the US has been involved in.

An Airforce doesn't do much when you're trying to fight an insurgency in your own country. There aren't easy targets to just bomb the crap out of, again because you can't go scorched earth otherwise you'll definitely lose everything. You might occasionally hit a point of resistance, but it's going to be a losing battle. Especially if your airstrips are getting hit with hit and run attacks, fuel deliveries are harassed, etc... The US is also huge. If there was a place that the airforce was called to do an airstrike on, most likely by the time any planes showed up the fight would be over. The rebels fading back into the general populace or countryside.

 Grey Templar wrote:
You're incorrectly assuming a total ban on something. When really that's actually very rare to totally ban something.

I personally don't expect the "ban on bump stocks" to actually be a ban. It will just classify Bump Stocks as automatic weapons. Meaning it's still very much possible to legally acquire them via expensive licenses. And existing bump stocks will be grandfathered in.

Money was clearly not in short supply for this guy, so even if this legislation all went through decades ago, he still had every means to acquire the gear he had.

And if push came to shove, thumb and a belt loop would accomplish the same thing as a bump stock.

You've shifted the question. Here's whembly's actual statement "no amount of laws would've stopped him for acquiring any weapons". Notice what whembly said - 'no amount of laws'. But you've tried to answer as if whembly had said "a weak form ban just on bump stocks that will be grandfathered would not have stopped him".

Now, in terms of the question you actually answered, I agree with you - the law that will likely be passed would have done nothing to stop this guy if it was in place before the attack, and will do nothing to stop the next guy. But that is a million miles away from a claim that no gun laws could possibly stop this happening, which is what whembly had claimed.

 Grey Templar wrote:
If there was a place that the airforce was called to do an airstrike on, most likely by the time any planes showed up the fight would be over. The rebels fading back into the general populace or countryside.

Except in any realistic scenario the general populace that voted in the oppressive government hands over the resistance, if the vigilante mobs don't just kill them instead.


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 stanman wrote:
Kinda odd saying rifles in the hands of civilians are useless, when a single guy with civilian grade arms just ambushed and murdered 50 people. What he did was absolutely deplorable but it shows what can be done with planning and not needing military grade weapons. Civilians with guns certainly aren't going to win a fight in stand up battle against soldiers, but if they engage in ambushes and hit and run attacks they can seriously slow and erode an armies ability to function. Ambush soldiers then upgrade by taking their weapons. A lot of civilians fighters would die in the process but there's way more of us than the army and as we found out in Vietnam and have been reminded in the middle east the civilian resistance tends blend with the rest of the population where soldier do not.

A massacre is NOT the same thing as an effective military attack. The single guy with civilian arms murdered 50 innocent victims that were standing there helplessly with no way to fight back. And, in the end, what did he accomplish? 50 people are dead, and no greater objective was achieved. Killing random people does not win a war.

tneva82 wrote:
Real way to deal with tyranical goverment is for army to not obey. They are the ones that can ACTUALLY throw down tyranical goverment and the support they can get.

The best weapon to use against a tyrannical state today isn't a gun. Fighting a state with guns is fighting it at its own game, a losing proposition. The most successful resistances have been carried out relying foremost on bombs. They can cause a lot more damage than a gun. They can be armed and activated remotely. They can be built into just about anything. They leave visible scars that can't just be brushed over or aside. They are a lot harder for the complacent elements of the population to ignore. They can be scrapped together from the contents of a general store if you know how. The people waging wars against powerful states haven't had a lot of success doing it with guns these days. The people who have achieved the most success have done so with bombings and propaganda.

But propaganda is a bad word, so the fantasy resistance people dream of wouldn't dare use it (which is ironic and hypocritical but w/e). Bombings are for cowards and terrorists, so the fantasy resistance people dream of wouldn't dare use it.

Which is how you know that the fantasy resistance is all just a lot of hot air from people with more dreams than sense. They honestly seem to think that their patriotic spirit will carry the day like in some Hollywood action movie, which is also ironic because Hollywood is for liberals or something like that (I hear), but there really are people like the Bundy's out there who have a massively inflated sense of their own importance and capacity to achieve an end with nothing more than their ego and a weapon that a cynical man might suggest is just compensating

 stanman wrote:
Statistically accidents involving distracted drivers are far more frequent than shooting and result in hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage and medical bills. (if not ranging into the billions) A quick google search is listing cell phone usage causing an estimated 1.6 million accidents in a year with about 3,400 fatalities.

This is true, but you know what the thing is? The number of accidents caused by drivers distracted by their phones has increased as the number of people with cell phones has increased. As those phones have become more functional and used for more than just calls and texting, then the number of distracted drivers has increased as well.

No-one anywhere would disagree that the increased supply of phones is a factor in the increased number of distracted drivers. But anytime I say that the increased stock of guns is a factor in the increased rate of gun homicides, gun suicides and gun accidents, people argue against then endlessly.

There's an easy autofix for cell phone driving and that would be for the phone companies to disable texting and calls anytime the system detects a phone moving more than 5mph, but if you dare make that suggestion people will absolutely lose their minds cause 'mah rights to texting can't be infringed! feth anybody else that's on the road with me.

No, it's because there can be more people in the car than just the driver.

I think so long as someone is out there with a will and desire to hurt others they will find a way. Whether this person has guns or not. You can mitigate the access to things they can use to harm others. But at the end of the day this person is going to hurt people. And a person like that is not going to care about obeying any laws either.

This is a tough situation cause even if people in the audience had proper guns and could fire back during the panic. They would be firing at a hotel full of hundreds of innocent people in their rooms all around the shooter.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
If there was a place that the airforce was called to do an airstrike on, most likely by the time any planes showed up the fight would be over. The rebels fading back into the general populace or countryside.

Except in any realistic scenario the general populace that voted in the oppressive government hands over the resistance, if the vigilante mobs don't just kill them instead.

Not necessarily true. There is a reason "seized power" is a thing that is said to occur. Generals or politicians who get a substantial portion of the armed forces on their side can install themselves as dictator without the population being fully on-board, though they generally at least have to have the general population be at least not bothered enough to object immediately.

The population can also change their mind over time. It might have seemed a good idea to elect Mr Despot president for life at first, but things aren't as cool as you thought they would be.

Rigged elections are also a thing. Plus in the US anyway barely half of eligible voters actually vote anyway, so it's quite possible for someone to get elected without support from even a majority of the actual population.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Rigged elections are also a thing. Plus in the US anyway barely half of eligible voters actually vote anyway, so it's quite possible for someone to get elected without support from even a majority of the actual population.

This was unintentionally hilarious.

 Thargrim wrote:
I think so long as someone is out there with a will and desire to hurt others they will find a way. Whether this person has guns or not. You can mitigate the access to things they can use to harm others. But at the end of the day this person is going to hurt people. And a person like that is not going to care about obeying any laws either.

This is ultimately the crux of it. Limiting the means a person has to cause harm is ultimately not a solution. You need to focus on why they want to cause harm in the first place, focusing on the tools they used is wasted effort.

This is a tough situation cause even if people in the audience had proper guns and could fire back during the panic. They would be firing at a hotel full of hundreds of innocent people in their rooms all around the shooter.

Well yeah, nobody is arguing that that would have helped this specific situation.


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 Ouze wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Rigged elections are also a thing. Plus in the US anyway barely half of eligible voters actually vote anyway, so it's quite possible for someone to get elected without support from even a majority of the actual population.

This was unintentionally hilarious.

It definitely wasn't unintentional

 cuda1179 wrote:
with 60% of all rapes occurring during such crimes.

Yeah, this is a stat that gets passed around by companies selling all kinds of personal security stuff, from guns to cameras to private patrols. In case you couldn't guess, stats passed around by companies that need you to be afraid to buy their products are rarely a very reliable source of crime statistics. And shockingly enough, this particular claim just happens to be one of the sillier efforts. It's actually a doubling down on bs, because it relies on both myths around home invasion, and myths around rape. In around 2/3 of rapes the attacker is known to the victim, and in most cases there's no overt physical force used at all, pressure and implied threat is used. That's a sad and sobering reality and is important for peopel to understand for us to make real steps in preventing rape.

But there's stuff like the above, playing on the silly old myth that rape mostly strangers breaking in to your house to hold you down while you scream and fight.


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 stanman wrote:
Kinda odd saying rifles in the hands of civilians are useless, when a single guy with civilian grade arms just ambushed and murdered 50 people. What he did was absolutely deplorable but it shows what can be done with planning and not needing military grade weapons. Civilians with guns certainly aren't going to win a fight in stand up battle against soldiers, but if they engage in ambushes and hit and run attacks they can seriously slow and erode an armies ability to function. Ambush soldiers then upgrade by taking their weapons. A lot of civilians fighters would die in the process but there's way more of us than the army and as we found out in Vietnam and have been reminded in the middle east the civilian resistance tends blend with the rest of the population where soldier do not.

Attrition tactics are very effective against an overseas occupying power with whom you will eventually hit a time and dollar limit that they will not want to pay. But when its your own government those tactics have a much more limited value. An evil domestic government isn't going to give up because you ambushed some soldiers with IEDs and small arms.

"Now I have dismantled congress, executed the Supreme Court justices and burned the constitution, the USA is mine to rule with an iron fist! What's that, a series of ambushes on military convoys killed 100 soldiers over two weeks? I can't have that on my conscious. Call the whole evil empire off. Give them back their country. I'm just gonna raid Fort Knox and escape in a rocket to the moon."


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Even the most tyrannical government can't go scorched earth on its own cities and civilians. There is no point being king of the ashes. And eventually your own soldiers will stop obeying, because they're also citizens of your country.

You probably need to do some reading on Cambodia. There's others, but that's a good place to start.

The various insurgencies the US has been fighting over the last 50-60 years has shown that a world class military can be held in check by opposition only armed with small arms and the occasional bomb/grenade. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and all the various smaller conflicts the US has been involved in.

No, none of those militaries were held in check. In each case the US took control of every part of the country it wanted to control. What the insurgencies did was cede that land, and engage in small scale raids and ambushes, aiming to cause enough attrition that the US got tired of the time, money and lives paid.

That's a great way of winning a war against a foreign occupier, but it's a hopeless strategy against a domestic government. A government has a price point where it will abandon some overseas geopolitical aim and bring its troops back home, but no such price point exists where it will give up trying to be a government inside its own borders.


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 LordofHats wrote:
The best weapon to use against a tyrannical state today isn't a gun. Fighting a state with guns is fighting it at its own game, a losing proposition. The most successful resistances have been carried out relying foremost on bombs. They can cause a lot more damage than a gun. They can be armed and activated remotely. They can be built into just about anything.

It is rather telling that people who insist that they need guns in order to fight in case the government goes bad seem to have no concern about the extremely tight controls on explosives, which as you say would be the key weapon in any resistance.


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 Thargrim wrote:
I think so long as someone is out there with a will and desire to hurt others they will find a way. Whether this person has guns or not. You can mitigate the access to things they can use to harm others. But at the end of the day this person is going to hurt people. And a person like that is not going to care about obeying any laws either.

The problem with this argument is you either have to believe that Americans are more likely to decide they want to go and kill a whole bunch of random people, or that maybe accessibility to weapons makes it more likely to happen.

Again, see the cell phone thing. No-one on earth would claim that while we have many more distracted drivers around than 20 years ago, that cell phones are just a tool and if drivers want to distract themselves then they will find a way to do it. That the increase in distracted drivers is totally unconnected to the rise in cell phones. It's just plain obvious to everyone that putting distracting devices in everyone's cars has made it more likely for people to use those devices to distract themselves. It is no different with gun proliferation.

 sebster wrote:

 stanman wrote:
There's an easy autofix for cell phone driving and that would be for the phone companies to disable texting and calls anytime the system detects a phone moving more than 5mph, but if you dare make that suggestion people will absolutely lose their minds cause 'mah rights to texting can't be infringed! feth anybody else that's on the road with me.

No, it's because there can be more people in the car than just the driver.

But if we can prevent a handful of deaths then clearly the rest of the population should have to be treated like criminals in order to protect against the few who can't seem to abide by the laws already in place.

When it comes to the cry for stricter gun regulations and even bans what it translates into is that there's millions of of lawful, non-criminals who use their guns in perfectly a safe and responsible manner, but they should suffer restrictions because some single d-bag out of millions decides to be a criminal and do something terrible. It's a "think of the children" response that's not grounded in actual numbers. If people really want to save lives as much as they claim they do, they'd be willing to accept something as simple as waiting a few minutes to get that next text. Somehow people made it through a hundred years of driving without needing access to a phone in the car, they'd wait until the next stop and pull over if they needed to make a call. Seems like perfectly sensible situation to disable phones during transit, but protectin' mah rights! will always supersede safety concerns of what happens to others. The sad part about human nature is that we are completely self centered and only care about the things that personally impact our individual life, what happens to anybody else is their problem. I want my guns unrestricted, if anybody dies oh well. I want my phone unrestricted, if anyone dies oh well. I gotta read that YOLO & winky face text cause it's that important.

Are you comparing texting to shooting in the ridiculous hope to make a concise point? Because, you know, one is an insturment made to kill - that most people use to feel cool and more protected and shoot at paper targets once in a while, and the other is not.

 sebster wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
with 60% of all rapes occurring during such crimes.

Yeah, this is a stat that gets passed around by companies selling all kinds of personal security stuff, from guns to cameras to private patrols. In case you couldn't guess, stats passed around by companies that need you to be afraid to buy their products are rarely a very reliable source of crime statistics. And shockingly enough, this particular claim just happens to be one of the sillier efforts. It's actually a doubling down on bs, because it relies on both myths around home invasion, and myths around rape. In around 2/3 of rapes the attacker is known to the victim, and in most cases there's no overt physical force used at all, pressure and implied threat is used. That's a sad and sobering reality and is important for peopel to understand for us to make real steps in preventing rape.

.

Actually, what I did was misquote a Government statistic. The correct statistic is that 60% of FORCED rape occurs in home invasions.

 stanman wrote:
But if we can prevent a handful of deaths then clearly the rest of the population should have to be treated like criminals in order to protect against the few who can't seem to abide by the laws already in place.

Yeah I get the analogy. And I agree that the analogy works pretty well as an argument against anyone who says that any and all limitations on guns must be applied to ensure safety. But against an argument for limited restrictions that balance the rights of gun owners against the safety of the population the argument fails.

And you didn't comment on my point that everyone is able to acknowledge that increasing the number of phones in circulation has increased their negative use in distracting drivers and therefore increase the number of accidents, and yet somehow it's still debated that increasing the supply of guns might not have an effect on the number of homicides and suicides. I take it you agree with the point, both that gun proliferation increases gun homicides and suicides, and that it's weird that so many people pretend this isn't true.

 cuda1179 wrote:


Actually, what I did was misquote a Government statistic. The correct statistic is that 60% of FORCED rape occurs in home invasions.

By definition isn't all rape forced? I don't think I've ever heard somebody say they were willingly raped?

 cuda1179 wrote:
Actually, what I did was misquote a Government statistic. The correct statistic is that 60% of FORCED rape occurs in home invasions.

And that additional word changes everything. And given there's already been one error, can we get a source for the corrected version?


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 stanman wrote:
By definition isn't all rape forced? I don't think I've ever heard somebody say they were willingly raped?

Forced rape means using direct physical force to hold the victim down. It's what most people think of when they think of rape, but it's actually very small share of the total. The vast majority involve implied force, or heavy social pressure, or taking advantage of someone who is not capable of consent.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Generals or politicians who get a substantial portion of the armed forces on their side can install themselves as dictator without the population being fully on-board, though they generally at least have to have the general population be at least not bothered enough to object immediately.

First of all, that isn't very plausible in the US since we have a military that recruits from a broad range of the general population. It's incredibly unlikely that we'd have such a divergence of opinion between the military and the rest of the country that the military could launch a coup and install a dictator without the rest of the population supporting the move. Second, apathy from the general population means death to the resistance. If the average person doesn't really care that there's a dictator in power then they aren't going to risk their own life to give aid and concealment to the resistance. They're going to be good citizens and report any terrorists to the police.

The population can also change their mind over time. It might have seemed a good idea to elect Mr Despot president for life at first, but things aren't as cool as you thought they would be.

If the US gets to the point of electing a president for life it's a safe bet that democracy has already failed and the revolution is not going to happen. It's just so far from reality that thinking about it is pointless.

Rigged elections are also a thing.

They are, but rigged elections alone don't get to the point where violent revolution is morally justified. If an extremist party wins a rigged election and gives the order to start shipping people off to the death camps the rest of the country is going to say "WTF, no" and refuse to comply. The only way the people elected in a rigged election are going to have any power is if they don't diverge too far from mainstream positions and retain a large degree of support. IOW, a rigged election can turn a 49/51 loss for a republican or democrat into a 51/49 win. It can't give a literal Nazi with 0.00000001% of the legitimate vote a win that anyone is going to respect.

Plus in the US anyway barely half of eligible voters actually vote anyway, so it's quite possible for someone to get elected without support from even a majority of the actual population.

This is only true because we aren't at the point where violent revolution is morally justified. People can afford to be apathetic and stay home because they don't feel that either party is that awful. But if you have a party that is trying to do things that would justify a violent revolution one of two things is almost certainly going to be true: either people are going to get out and vote against the clear evil, or the evil party is going to have widespread support cheering them on.

 sebster wrote:
No-one on earth would claim that while we have many more distracted drivers around than 20 years ago, that cell phones are just a tool and if drivers want to distract themselves then they will find a way to do it. That the increase in distracted drivers is totally unconnected to the rise in cell phones. It's just plain obvious to everyone that putting distracting devices in everyone's cars has made it more likely for people to use those devices to distract themselves. It is no different with gun proliferation.

Actually I argue all the time that drivers who are incapable of discerning when it is or isn't safe to use a mobile phone are just bad drivers. Have you never been in a car with a driver who manages to distract themselves without using a phone? I've been in the car with people who have almost had a smash because they were fiddling with the colours on their radio, one guy who managed to distract himself talking to me sitting next to him and almost swerved in to a truck and don't get me started on mothers reaching back to tend to their kids while driving (I've actually seen the aftermath of one of those accidents, luckily no one was hurt). And do you have any statistics to say drivers are more distracted today than they were 20 years ago? It sounds like a statistic that would be impossible to record.

I've long been a proponent of better driver training and education over demonising the phone for our poor skills and poor discernment. Melbourne drivers feel like they're zombies driving on autopilot these days.

Anyway, that's a completely off topic tangent to the point of this thread. That's why I hate analogies, I end up arguing the analogy instead of the point

How do you get so many people get killed in vehicles?
Your roads are super wide and you have a speed limit?

In Germany people go 100mph on "tiny" roads and they have less than half as many death per million citicens.

In this case, stop the gun discussion and get proper driving training for everybody. That will save way more lives than than a ban on bump stocks.

 sebster wrote:

 stanman wrote:
But if we can prevent a handful of deaths then clearly the rest of the population should have to be treated like criminals in order to protect against the few who can't seem to abide by the laws already in place.

Yeah I get the analogy. And I agree that the analogy works pretty well as an argument against anyone who says that any and all limitations on guns must be applied to ensure safety. But against an argument for limited restrictions that balance the rights of gun owners against the safety of the population the argument fails.

And you didn't comment on my point that everyone is able to acknowledge that increasing the number of phones in circulation has increased their negative use in distracting drivers and therefore increase the number of accidents, and yet somehow it's still debated that increasing the supply of guns might not have an effect on the number of homicides and suicides. I take it you agree with the point, both that gun proliferation increases gun homicides and suicides, and that it's weird that so many people pretend this isn't true.

Every year there's more guns and more people, so numerically more people even if the actual percentage rate stays the same or declines simply because the population keeps getting bigger and bigger. There's instances where the crime or murder rate per every 1000 people could be dropping, but over time the actual count of instances goes up because the population is exploding so it's not something that can be broken down simply.

If you have a 100 gun murders one year then ten years later you have 180 on the surface that looks like it's increased significantly but if the population doubled in that time it's actually a decrease. I think that more people and more guns can potentially create more opportunity for violence but it's not linear, there's a lot of very complex factors that go influence things much more heavily, what type of drug and crime culture, economic depression all of these things can really impact how much violence occurs. Well off rich communities may not to experience a lot of gun violence because they don't have the same social pressures as a greatly depressed urban area riddled with drugs and hopelessness. I think that if you limit guns it may reduce the total instances of gun specific deaths but I think those will just tend to shift into other forms of fatalities like stabbings, or blunt force. People always find ways to kill each other regardless of if they have guns or not and from what I've read places that get rid of gun see a spike in other forms of violence that replaces it and even grows to eclipses the prior gun violence. The only significant impact seems to be on frequency of the of mass shootings, but the overall violence level is still very much present.

You could reduce the mass shootings like Europe but then people move onto other forms of mass killing like bombings, gas attacks, or running people over with cars and even then mass shooting do still happen but they are just less frequent. People wanting to commit mass carnage won't ever be removed from society, so it'll continue in one form or anther. I think that part of why we see shootings in the US more frequently isn't so much much that it's any more or less violent than a bombing but it has to do with the psyche of the attacker in that they want to see the effect of their rage unfold even if it's for a short duration. A lot of the mass shootings seem to be a way of working out their pent up rage and by being the hand and mind directing the shots they gain a sense of control that they wouldn't feel the same manner if they were leaving a bomb or chemical behind. The choice of picking targets probably grants a sense of power as it's a directed focus. As much as they want to act out their rage they also want to be in a state of control that they've been missing in other areas in their lives.

If somebody points gun at you it's personal and directed only at you and just a tiny flick of the finger takes a life which is a highly symbolic gesture of a godlike being smashing lessers without effort, with an explosive it's indiscriminate and treats the bomber on the same level as everyone around them and doesn't appeal to the ego quite the same way.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Actually I argue all the time that drivers who are incapable of discerning when it is or isn't safe to use a mobile phone are just bad drivers. Have you never been in a car with a driver who manages to distract themselves without using a phone? I've been in the car with people who have almost had a smash because they were fiddling with the colours on their radio, one guy who managed to distract himself talking to me sitting next to him and almost swerved in to a truck and don't get me started on mothers reaching back to tend to their kids while driving (I've actually seen the aftermath of one of those accidents, luckily no one was hurt).

Yeah, people have always been able to distract themselves. But putting a device in the car that increases people's temptation to distract themselves is going to make it more likely for each individual to distract themselves.

Anyway, I guess you answered the question. At least one person is willing to argue that putting distracting devices in a car doesn't increase the amount of distracted drivers

And do you have any statistics to say drivers are more distracted today than they were 20 years ago? It sounds like a statistic that would be impossible to record.

I think it's pretty self-evident, it's certainly something a lot of people observe. I agree that there's probably nothing out there to prove it, but for the purpose of an analogy I doubt we need that much evidence.

Melbourne drivers feel like they're zombies driving on autopilot these days.

Spend a week in Perth. You'll return home with a new found appreciation for Melbourne drivers.


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 von Hohenstein wrote:
How do you get so many people get killed in vehicles?
Your roads are super wide and you have a speed limit?

I can't speak for America exactly, but a lot of it is about distance. Having more rural land means transport dollars are stretched further, which means more low quality roads in less populated parts of the country. And when you get accidents in those low populated areas they are much more likely to be fatal because emergency services are 30 minute helicopter rides away instead of 3 minute ambulance rides.


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 stanman wrote:
Every year there's more guns and more people, so numerically more people even if the actual percentage rate stays the same or declines simply because the population keeps getting bigger and bigger. There's instances where the crime or murder rate per every 1000 people could be dropping, but over time the actual count of instances goes up because the population is exploding so it's not something that can be broken down simply.

We measure stuff on per capita levels so this isn't a concern.

Well off rich communities may not to experience a lot of gun violence because they don't have the same social pressures as a greatly depressed urban area riddled with drugs and hopelessness.

This is a huge factor, alongside education, that has driven the global decline in murder, I think.

I think that if you limit guns it may reduce the total instances of gun specific deaths but I think those will just tend to shift into other forms of fatalities like stabbings, or blunt force.

The problem with this theory is that compared to other developed nations, the US doesn't just have a higher rate of gun murder, the US also has a higher rate of murder overall. And not just a little higher, four or five times the rate of other developed countries.

For your theory to be correct, it would mean that Americans are just an angrier, more homicidal people, and that each new wave of immigrants that's come the US has stepped off the boat with that inherent murderous compulsion inside them. That guns are just a coincidental aside to this amazing national story of an America that has all the wealth and education that's helped to massively reduce murder everywhere else in the world, but not in America where the people are just inherently murderous.

The alternative theory is that Americans are across the whole the same as other developed countries. Similar levels of violent crime (except murder), similar levels of drug use, similar levels of property crime. But people everywhere, the US and overseas, they are susceptible to being in situations where they might have a moment of murderous rage. Having one of these moments is heavily dependent on education, drug use, and other such factors. But thing is, when one of those moments happens, well then it really doesn't help to have a gun within easy reach. This doesn't mean every gun owner is dangerous, because they simply aren't. We're talking about a tiny fraction of a fraction. Nor are gun owners more murderous than anyone else. But I am saying that people make decisions in the spur of the moment, most killings are not pre-meditated, and in that moment, having a device that can kill with a pull of a trigger makes the situation that much more likely to get someone killed.

You could reduce the mass shootings like Europe but then people move onto other forms of mass killing like bombings, gas attacks, or running people over with cars and even then mass shooting do still happen but they are just less frequent.

It seems like you aren't talking about murder in general, but pre-meditated spree killings. Those are a very small portion of overall murders. Though the US still has a massively outsized share of those as well.

 sebster wrote:

Spend a week in Perth. You'll return home with a new found appreciation for Melbourne drivers.

I spend 15month in Perth and never had any bad experience with the drivers there. Just "speeding" is extremly expensive down under. I had to pay 300$ for 119km/h on the highway. 300$!

 von Hohenstein wrote:
How do you get so many people get killed in vehicles?
Your roads are super wide and you have a speed limit?

In Germany people go 100mph on "tiny" roads and they have less than half as many death per million citicens.

In this case, stop the gun discussion and get proper driving training for everybody. That will save way more lives than than a ban on bump stocks.

I think a huge part of it is the lack of driver education that the average US driver gets. I don't know if this is still accurate or not but when my brother was stationed in Germany he said that it costs around 1,000 euros to take your driving test, it was pretty difficult and you were limited on how often you could retest if you failed. Given the cost people take it very seriously. Here in the the fee is something like $25 which is only charged if you get the actual license and I don't think there's any restriction on how often you can retest so people can fail repeatedly into they manage to blunder their way through it. Most kids get their license at 16 where I've heard that in other countries you often need to be an adult and there is something to be said for better maturity levels at 18-20. My grandparents never even had formal classes, back then you just bought a car and figured it on the fly which is something my grandfather proudly brought up many times.

We also have a lot of people from other countries and not to place unfair share of blame on foreigners but every country has different driving practices and styles when it's all mixed on one place it makes for a giant mess. There's a lot of people who can't read road signs in English which can cause issues, heck based on things I've seen happen on the road I think there's a lot of supposed native English speakers that I don't think can read those signs either.

The US also has some pretty relaxed standards on cars, so long as it still rolls you can drive it. It doesn't mater if it's being held together with bailing wire and duct tape, or has both a front and back bumper made from a railroad tie bolted to the frame (which I've actually seen while driving through rural IN) There's sometimes stuff on our roads that's basically ready to fail mechanically and turn into a rolling death trap. A lot of other countries are far more strict on vehicle inspection.

So wouldn't it be far more helpful to spend the energy, wasted on gun discussions, on a discussion "how to improve the skill of the average driver"? You know as long as more people get killed by cars than by guns you could save more lives if you take action here.

 von Hohenstein wrote:
I spend 15month in Perth and never had any bad experience with the drivers there. Just "speeding" is extremly expensive down under. I had to pay 300$ for 119km/h on the highway. 300$!

It's more now. And if you do it on a long weekend the fine is doubled!


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 von Hohenstein wrote:
So wouldn't it be far more helpful to spend the energy, wasted on gun discussions, on a discussion "how to improve the skill of the average driver"? You know as long as more people get killed by cars than by guns you could save more lives if you take action here.

They're not mutually exclusive, and the reason that you don't see improvements in driver training are entirely unrelated to the energy put in to debating gun control.

stanman wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 sebster wrote:

It will, hopefully, make people realise that all the talk about how they'll totally be badass resistance fighters if they come for our guns is just a bit of fantasy roleplay.

They would be so useless as a "tyranical goverment throwers" not even funny.

Maybe idea was good when rifle was pinacle of weapons. Not these days. It's outdated idea that bunch of civilians with rifle could throw out goverment that has army with it.

And even having gun doesn't make you soldier. Not even training shooting accurately makes you a soldier. Civilian with gun, even if he spends 10 hours a day on a shooting range, is still going to be outclassed as a soldier. Even if goverment would play it "fair" and limit itself to ONLY infantry with rifles civilians would still loose. And you think tyranical goverment is going to limit options to just soldiers?

Real way to deal with tyranical goverment is for army to not obey. They are the ones that can ACTUALLY throw down tyranical goverment and the support they can get.

Kinda odd saying rifles in the hands of civilians are useless, when a single guy with civilian grade arms just ambushed and murdered 50 people. What he did was absolutely deplorable but it shows what can be done with planning and not needing military grade weapons.

He murdered a bunch of people without a care in the world at a big party with no security or defence. Not massively common events held by people who are aware that insurgents are actively trying to kill them.

daedalus wrote:

sirlynchmob wrote:


why worry about distracted drivers though, they kill less people than people with guns

I'm waaaay more worried about someone running me the feth over with a car than I am about getting shot, and I'm a gunless person living in a red state with super lenient gun laws.

I'm curious about these numbers - I'd have thought the number of car deaths would have outstripped firearms deaths by a much more significant distance. How does vehicle ownership per capita stack up against gun ownership per capita?

 sebster wrote:

The problem with this theory is that compared to other developed nations, the US doesn't just have a higher rate of gun murder, the US also has a higher rate of murder overall. And not just a little higher, four or five times the rate of other developed countries.

For your theory to be correct, it would mean that Americans are just an angrier, more homicidal people, and that each new wave of immigrants that's come the US has stepped off the boat with that inherent murderous compulsion inside them. That guns are just a coincidental aside to this amazing national story of an America that has all the wealth and education that's helped to massively reduce murder everywhere else in the world, but not in America where the people are just inherently murderous.

The alternative theory is that Americans are across the whole the same as other developed countries. Similar levels of violent crime (except murder), similar levels of drug use, similar levels of property crime. But people everywhere, the US and overseas, they are susceptible to being in situations where they might have a moment of murderous rage. Having one of these moments is heavily dependent on education, drug use, and other such factors. But thing is, when one of those moments happens, well then it really doesn't help to have a gun within easy reach. This doesn't mean every gun owner is dangerous, because they simply aren't. We're talking about a tiny fraction of a fraction. Nor are gun owners more murderous than anyone else. But I am saying that people make decisions in the spur of the moment, most killings are not pre-meditated, and in that moment, having a device that can kill with a pull of a trigger makes the situation that much more likely to get someone killed.

Part of it could be cultural differences, if I could pin point things exactly I'd write a best selling book and make a fortune in criminal profiling. I know that there's a stereotype that Americans are lazy Homer Simpson types, but US workers put in a very significant amount of time at work and commuting which places them under a huge amount of stress that other countries may not experience in the same manner. We have a tremendously high work output but are constantly being told by management that it's not enough and to work longer and push harder, people can only endure so much before they start to break and unfortunately when some people snap it can be a very violent affair.

Americans have always prized themselves on their individuality and "cowboy" independent spirit which is in a lot of conflict in the modern industrial workforce that just wants a factory or office drone and tries to grind away any sense of self worth out of the worker. Material wealth is seen as the measure of success in the US and far too many people are digging themselves into soul crushing debt to have that big house, fancy car and other toys so they can keep up with their neighbors. It seems like people in other countries are more grounded and find a way to balance those things much more practically than what we are doing which I think creates a sense of satisfaction or positive outlets that we don't really allow ourselves in the US. I think that so many Americans are caught up in the consumerism culture that they've lost touch with their ability to enjoy the basics of life or interactions with other people. People are losing the ability to communicate on a personal human level and feeling more isolated which is constantly adding to the underlying stress. I see articles mentioning similar issues of work related stress occurring in Japan and people cracking although their reaction and outlet are often different because of different family expectations or cultural norms.

I think that they really need to try studying the impact of guns in spur of the moment violence and crimes a bit better and really take a good look at all the factors like poverty, economic stress, and mental depression and see how those fit in as well. I think even pro-gun people agree that finding solutions to reducing violence is good, the million dollar question is how is it best achieved? Unfortunately there's no easy answers and there's an incredible range of varying view points to try and work through in order for people to find common ground.