United States Gun Control Megathread

[Meplat]

11 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

 

Please tell me more of your machine gun stories, Uncle Meplat.

You're kidding, right?

How about the Costa-Mesa AR-18 i bought from J. Curtis Earl for 1000 dollars? (when it was worth 800).

 

(I mean, I have more. Like the guy at the swap meet in Prescott Valley who wanted to sell me an unpapered M1A1 Thompson, New in cosmo, or the guy who was selling slices from a block of C4 as "camping fuel".

 

10 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

 

That's the spirit! 

 

Please make sure you post it on YouTube.

I'll run to the nearest British embassy and claim asylum, having been influenced by John Cleese...

[Meplat]

I'll be blunt. If some of you cannot figure it out, I believe that all people  have the right  to posess whatever means they want to defend themselves.

If that mean a fucking  Davy Crockett, well, you best be treading lightly round that man. Personally I'd have a half dozen Nike /Sprint missiles as lawn ornaments...

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Believe it or not, I totally agree, it's a little trickier to expedite over here however.....

[Meplat]

54 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Believe it or not, I totally agree, it's a little trickier to expedite over here however.....

It shouldnt be. I know (knew, many have passed on) enough Brit expats who remember when it wasn't that way.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Dude, I remember when it wasn't this way (I'm fast approaching fifty, months away, not years).....I also remember (albeit somewhat hazily I must confess) the peculiar sequence of events (mass shootings) that brought about the change.

 

Might it be worth revisiting those events in the UK thread to see if we can draw any parallels?

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

Did Twitter warn her or something?

 

[Toxn]

http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/31/in-search-of-missing-us-suicides

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

11 hours ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

Did Twitter warn her or something?

 

Twitter banned her for this message but has done nothing about the thousands of death threats she has received. 

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

3 hours ago, Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect said:

Twitter banned her for this message but has done nothing about the thousands of death threats she has received. 

 

So they allow ISIS  but not blond pro gun peope...

Twitter is cancer.

[Donward]

I still see her Twitter page. Looks like they just banned that particular post. 

 

https://twitter.com/KaitMarieox

[Sturgeon]

California man tries to register guns, gets charged with 12 felonies.

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

1 hour ago, Donward said:

I still see her Twitter page. Looks like they just banned that particular post. 

 

https://twitter.com/KaitMarieox

Doesn't make it all that much better.

[Sturgeon]

10 hours ago, Toxn said:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/31/in-search-of-missing-us-suicides

 

That seems like a bunch of logical leaps daisy chained together, to me. He cites a couple academic articles - as far as I can tell, they aren't even studies themselves - then comes up with this idea that if the US had no guns, it would have an extremely low suicide rate. That may be true, but nobody can really know, certainly not on the basis of the seemingly thin evidence SSC is presenting here.

 

The articles he is using as sources themselves cite many, many studies. So many, that there's no practical way for the reader to vet the information for themselves. If, for example, one study cited in one article is strong evidence for the article's thesis, but ten others are misquoted or misinterpreted, then that article has a pretty low veracity overall. So any reader must read all papers to verify the content. Yet SSC does not help us do that, probably because he himself has not bothered to do the reading.

 

 

[Sturgeon]

Like, basically, suicide rate is an enormously multi-factorial problem. Gun ownership is a phenomenon with many, many second- and third-order effects. How this guy thinks he can boil that down in 800 words with a couple hyperlinks is totally beyond me. Typical SSC shit, though.

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

34 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

California man tries to register guns, gets charged with 12 felonies.

Rewarding compliance? Naw fuck em.

[Donward]

37 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

California man tries to register guns, gets charged with 12 felonies.

 

Perfect case to overturn California's anti-gun laws via a court case based not only on the Second Amendment, but the Interstate Commerce Clause and - this is the clincher - the Equal Protection Clause via the 14th Amendment. 

[Toxn]

32 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

Like, basically, suicide rate is an enormously multi-factorial problem. Gun ownership is a phenomenon with many, many second- and third-order effects. How this guy thinks he can boil that down in 800 words with a couple hyperlinks is totally beyond me. Typical SSC shit, though.

 

You should read the reader responses he occasionally publishes. Some of them are glorious put-downs.

 

I'd also say that a confounder he hasn't considered is that not all guns are suicidally equal. The old joke about not being flexible enough to use your toes is crude, but might actually capture a relevant distinction in sidearms vs. long arms.

 

Overall I'm not throwing this one out there as some sort of definitive argument or anything. But suicide is one of the public health aspects of gun ownership that I think is potentially still up in the air*. So seeing discussions of any sort is useful.

 

 

*FWIW, my read of the international comparative data is the following:

Murder rate - no correlation (positive or negative) 

Violent crime rate - no way to sort the data out.

Intensity of violence in crime - no way to sort the data out.

Suicide - weak positive correlation overall, but causation still indeterminate.

Governmental stability - nobody has even attempted an analysis.

[Sturgeon]

I agree with that assessment.

 

I've been conditioned to get a headache every time I see an SSC URL, though.

[Toxn]

8 hours ago, Sturgeon said:

I agree with that assessment.

 

I've been conditioned to get a headache every time I see an SSC URL, though.

That is fair enough.

I get value out of some of it (clever-for-the-sake-of-being-clever arguments appeal to me), but that dude is really prone to internet-autistic cluelessness.

[Sturgeon]

Doesn't look like this has been posted here, yet.

 

WHY I JOINED THE NRA AFTER WRITING GUN CONTROL ARTICLES

[Lord_James]

On 6/1/2018 at 3:52 AM, Toxn said:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/31/in-search-of-missing-us-suicides

 

On 6/1/2018 at 2:41 PM, Sturgeon said:

 

That seems like a bunch of logical leaps daisy chained together, to me. He cites a couple academic articles - as far as I can tell, they aren't even studies themselves - then comes up with this idea that if the US had no guns, it would have an extremely low suicide rate. That may be true, but nobody can really know, certainly not on the basis of the seemingly thin evidence SSC is presenting here.

 

The articles he is using as sources themselves cite many, many studies. So many, that there's no practical way for the reader to vet the information for themselves. If, for example, one study cited in one article is strong evidence for the article's thesis, but ten others are misquoted or misinterpreted, then that article has a pretty low veracity overall. So any reader must read all papers to verify the content. Yet SSC does not help us do that, probably because he himself has not bothered to do the reading.

 

I don’t think getting rid of guns will significantly lower the suicide rate, as there are MANY other ways to kill yourself. Ironically, the gun is one of the more humane ways someone could kill themselves, above hanging and plastic-bag-over-the-head, IMO. I’m not advocating or excusing people whom commit suicide, but there are more (and cheaper) ways someone can take their own life than a handgun. 

 

This also seems like another of those “feel guilty” articles, where they point to something other than the root cause of the issue. In this case, suicides. (un)Humorously, I believe the roots for suicides could lie in a similar place to why there is gun violence: mental health. Not so much like autism, but depression, anxiety, and paranoid schizophrenia (among others). How in hell we’re suppose to fix or mitigate those issues, I haven’t the foggiest idea, but the “ban guns” approach will NOT solve it. 

[Ulric]

4 hours ago, Lord_James said:

 

 

I don’t think getting rid of guns will significantly lower the suicide rate, as there are MANY other ways to kill yourself. Ironically, the gun is one of the more humane ways someone could kill themselves, above hanging and plastic-bag-over-the-head, IMO. I’m not advocating or excusing people whom commit suicide, but there are more (and cheaper) ways someone can take their own life than a handgun. 

 

This also seems like another of those “feel guilty” articles, where they point to something other than the root cause of the issue. In this case, suicides. (un)Humorously, I believe the roots for suicides could lie in a similar place to why there is gun violence: mental health. Not so much like autism, but depression, anxiety, and paranoid schizophrenia (among others). How in hell we’re suppose to fix or mitigate those issues, I haven’t the foggiest idea, but the “ban guns” approach will NOT solve it. 

 

Suicide is most certainly a mental health issue, with depression being a very common factor in it, but that is simply a precursor. The tipping point is essentially the feeling of being backed into a corner with only one way out. If there are other ways to get away from what is causing your problems, most people with take them. It's only when they feel that all other solutions are exhausted that they decide to rage quit, and who can blame them?

 

But this is just an anecdotal example from my own experience, it most certainly varies from person to person and their own circumstances.

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

14 minutes ago, Ulric said:

 

Suicide is most certainly a mental health issue, with depression being a very common factor in it, but that is simply a precursor. 

 

 

 

Unless it's because they are a pedophile, then Suicide is the right thing to do and should be encouraged.  Maybe society could do an ad campaign, "have pedophile feelings? Come in and volunteer to be euthanized, and we'll use your organs to save people! Instead of being a vile worthless human, you could be a hero pedophiles, sign up today!"

[Sturgeon]

I think suicide is predominantly a male-linked phenomenon, and is genetically driven by an ancestral fitness advantage where the perpetrator improves the propagation of his genes by... Dying.