Political Roundtable Part XVIII

[Pointgod]

Like why are automatic weapons banned? Isn't that alone quite an admission of something? Why were guns banned at the RNC in 2016?

People argue in bad faith!

so much for the tough guy RNC members

[I_Like_Dirt]

The concept you are overlooking here is deterrence. There's a reason why there are so many school shootings and nearly as many mall shootings or town festival shootings.

Bad guys know that everyone in a school is a sitting duck. Just the possibility that there are two or three teachers who are trained and armed may prevent a shooting from happening in the first place.

But, I mean, given gun ownership rates, they already don't know if some random person on the streets or in the mall or at a festival or whatever is going to have a guy, and it's a reasonable bet that one of them does. Other countries don't even have that level of disincentive and still don't have the same issues to the point where they're considering even greater "deterrence."

And there are other logistical issues, particularly where school shootings happen. For one, even on the ridiculous notion of somehow preventing a shooting with a gun, that gun has to be easily accessible given the nature and spontaneity of said shootings. If the teacher has to go to another room and unlock a safe or something, it becomes entirely beside the point, and if it's accessible, the potential for accidents far outweighs any potential to stop someone who's decided to go on a shooting spree in the first place from doing so just because they might get shot, as though that thought hadn't dawned on them previously or they aren't mentally ill and don't care. And beyond that, it would be basically impossible to keep which teachers had guns or access to guns quiet. Given that the shooters are generally students or former students, they would know and would go for those people first.

Ultimately, this is all just avoiding the obvious choice, or rather making the choice by pretending like there is a third choice when there actually isn't. You either are interested in trying to stop these kinds of shootings, or you are willing to suffer such atrocities in order to keep your guns. And let's be honest, the time to overthrow the government is a thing of the past. Drones, airplanes and modern military techniques make that impossible. We just went through a period where a large portion of the population thought the president was the antichrist or something awful, followed by a period where a large portion of the population thinks the current president is some variation of Hitler. If the government was going to be overthrown, it would have happened by now.

[cammac]

Like why are automatic weapons banned? Isn't that alone quite an admission of something? Why were guns banned at the RNC in 2016?

People argue in bad faith!

so much for the tough guy RNC members

If I remember correctly they had a army of REPUGNANT MILITIA carrying ASSAULT RIFLES protecting the godly Representatives of the Party! Keeping the truth out as they manipulated the Party Platform helping there Russian friends on response to the Ukraine.

[gtn130]

Why are bombs banned? It's my right as an American Patriot to defend my land from foreign invaders.

My assault rifle can only mow down a handful of neighbors invaders whereas converting my yard into a mine field could deter a small army!

[cammac]

Why are bombs banned? It's my right as an American Patriot to defend my land from foreign invaders.

My assault rifle can only mow down a handful of neighbors invaders whereas converting my yard into a mine field could deter a small army!

You are forgetting about Heavy Artillery get them early!
Tanks to crush there Prius damn electric cars!
Machine Gun emplacements cross fire to get those liberal asses.
If all is lost use cyanide capsule embedded in your tooth!

[nate33]

1. America will always have guns. There are 300 million guns already out there, and in rural areas, guns are needed for self defense because the cops are too far away.

This isn't remotely true. A buyback program would remove 99% of guns.

Year 1: government buys back guns at 2x market value
Year 2: government buys back guns at 1.5x market value
Year 3: government buys back guns at market value
Year 4: most guns are illegal

2. With guns available at least in some places in America, bad guys will always have access to guns. Gun control legislation will only be heeded by good guys. As much as you liberals think that new laws will change this fact, it won't. States and municipalities with more strict gun control laws tend to have higher homicide rates.

What?

“Within the United States, a wide array of empirical evidence indicates that more guns in a community leads to more homicide,” David Hemenway, the Harvard Injury Control Research Center’s director, wrote in Private Guns, Public Health.

3. So the best way to reduce these incidents is deterrence and intervention. For deterrence, we should allow good guys to have guns in more places. For intervention, we need to take steps to investigate incidents where mentally disturbed individuals do alarming things that indicate they are on a path of destruction and intervene before they can do real harm. Clearly in this case, the signs were evident that Cruz was a mentally disturbed individual.

Yes, here we go. Mentally disturbed individual who is also a perfectly rational actor and will make game theory optimal expected value calculations when deciding which public space to gun down. LOGIC

Sigh. Every time, we see the same disinformation. Gun deaths is not a useful category. Of course there will be fewer gun deaths if there are no guns available. Also, these charts include suicides. What you worry about is total homicides. You compare gun ownership to overall homicide.


Negative correlation.

To be fair, DC is an outlier. I've see other charts that show essentially no correlation:

[gtn130]

Yeah, Nate, you'll be floored to learn that gun control had little effect on the homicide rate in Aleppo.

[nate33]

The concept you are overlooking here is deterrence. There's a reason why there are so many school shootings and nearly as many mall shootings or town festival shootings.

Bad guys know that everyone in a school is a sitting duck. Just the possibility that there are two or three teachers who are trained and armed may prevent a shooting from happening in the first place.

But, I mean, given gun ownership rates, they already don't know if some random person on the streets or in the mall or at a festival or whatever is going to have a guy, and it's a reasonable bet that one of them does. Other countries don't even have that level of disincentive and still don't have the same issues to the point where they're considering even greater "deterrence."

And there are other logistical issues, particularly where school shootings happen. For one, even on the ridiculous notion of somehow preventing a shooting with a gun, that gun has to be easily accessible given the nature and spontaneity of said shootings. If the teacher has to go to another room and unlock a safe or something, it becomes entirely beside the point, and if it's accessible, the potential for accidents far outweighs any potential to stop someone who's decided to go on a shooting spree in the first place from doing so just because they might get shot, as though that thought hadn't dawned on them previously or they aren't mentally ill and don't care. And beyond that, it would be basically impossible to keep which teachers had guns or access to guns quiet. Given that the shooters are generally students or former students, they would know and would go for those people first.

Ultimately, this is all just avoiding the obvious choice, or rather making the choice by pretending like there is a third choice when there actually isn't. You either are interested in trying to stop these kinds of shootings, or you are willing to suffer such atrocities in order to keep your guns. And let's be honest, the time to overthrow the government is a thing of the past. Drones, airplanes and modern military techniques make that impossible. We just went through a period where a large portion of the population thought the president was the antichrist or something awful, followed by a period where a large portion of the population thinks the current president is some variation of Hitler. If the government was going to be overthrown, it would have happened by now.

I don't really disagree much with this. I'm saying if that you want to use gun control as your method to reduce homicides, you need to go all the way. We need to get guns in the country down to zero. Half-measures are likely to make things worse because they take guns from the law abiding, not the criminals.

And getting our gun rate down to zero isn't gonna happen.

I know everyone is frustrated. I understand the desire to "DO SOMETHING". But if that "something" is going to make things worse, then it is better to do nothing. We have data on this stuff. Gun control in America, wherever it has been tried, has not proven to be effective. Look at DC and Chicago as case studies.

[gtn130]

Why are bombs banned? It's my right as an American Patriot to defend my land from foreign invaders.

My assault rifle can only mow down a handful of neighbors invaders whereas converting my yard into a mine field could deter a small army!

You are forgetting about Heavy Artillery get them early!
Tanks to crush there Prius damn electric cars!
Machine Gun emplacements cross fire to get those liberal asses.
If all is lost use cyanide capsule embedded in your tooth!

Yeah, it's my god-given right that my HOA can pool resources to buy an F-16. We need to be able to call in an airstrike whenever a threat emerges!

[FAH1223]

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

[nate33]

Yeah, Nate, you'll be floored to learn that gun control had little effect on the homicide rate in Aleppo.

Gun control works great in Honduras too:

[bealwithit]

Gun control in America, wherever it has been tried, has not proven to be effective.

Please stop saying this until you provide sources with data. I posted earlier what I could find.
Gun ownership totals =/= strict gun laws

[gtn130]

Yeah, Nate, you'll be floored to learn that gun control had little effect on the homicide rate in Aleppo.

Gun control works great in Honduras too:

Nate, your argument here is an embarrassment. Think about why those countries have high homicide rates and why they aren't comparable to the US.

[nate33]

3. Deterrence only does so much. It creates a perception of safety for a one or a few teachers to be armed in a school and could theoretically help in some situations, despite all of the issues with the idea that I laid out a couple posts ago of which you never responded to. I still don't feel like it is a realistic or effective solution. Deterrence still does not prevent a mentally unwell person from doing a shooting, because they are not going to care. They are not thinking clearly or rationally. This is the key.
And of course, people who could be on the path to do something like shoot up a school should be flagged and monitored closely.

I think you make a fair point about the limited use of deterrence. It's plausible that having a few armed teachers wouldn't make any difference. I think it's worth a try, but I cede that it may prove ineffective.

[nate33]

Yeah, Nate, you'll be floored to learn that gun control had little effect on the homicide rate in Aleppo.

Gun control works great in Honduras too:

Nate, your argument here is an embarrassment. Think about why those countries have high homicide rates and why they aren't comparable to the US.

But your Aleppo argument was sound reasoning as an apples to apples comparison. Whatever dude. You bring nothing useful to this debate. You are just a troll.

[FAH1223]

Read on Twitter

[bealwithit]

Read on Twitter

WOJ NUCLEAR SNOWFLAKE BOMB AHHHHHHHH

[nate33]

Gun control in America, wherever it has been tried, has not proven to be effective.

Please stop saying this until you provide sources with data. I posted earlier what I could find.
Gun ownership totals =/= strict gun laws

John Lott has done a ton of research on this. I don't have time to present all of his arguments, but here's a summary.

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2016/11/16/already-late-gun-control-work

[TGW]

If Trump really thinks that the best defense against bad people with guns is to "arm the good guys", he should walk the walk and allow guns in the Whitehouse. By his logic, if someone tries to assassinate him, he should be able to defend himself by shooting back.

[gtn130]

But your Aleppo argument was sound reasoning as an apples to apples comparison. Whatever dude. You bring nothing useful to this debate. You are just a troll.

No, you just didn't understand the point lmao

I guess I have to spell it out for you: comparing homicide rates to gun ownership among impoverished, crime-ridden, war-torn countries with extremely weak institutions is incontrovertibly stupid.

Laws aren't effective in those countries across the board because the governments are weak and the countries are poor. Analyzing the effectiveness of gun laws in Honduras is only slightly less silly than doing the same for Syria.

Maybe read a book or something?