Senate Gun Control

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/05/us-usa-shooting-colorado-idUSBRE90408W20130105

Jesus...Aurora again?

 

Time to blame movies/video games/music/books/lepers/the ice age/the Harlem Globetrotters/[insert whatever offends you here]. Anything but the gun. See, he would've done this anyway with a knife/car/hands/book/knife I mention knives twice because they're extra-lethal. No. Let's not blame the tools for these mindless rampages. Let's blame everything but the tool which gave them the means with which to carry out their plan. Or they were crazy. Yeah, well there's tons of people that have mental disorders as well and they don't all go on bloody rampages.

 

Come on... couldn't they at least wait until the JLA film came out?

WE CAN ONLY MAKE BATMAN MOVIES SO FAST, PEOPLE.

 

KK, I don't think anyone has suggested you/others weigh the lives of others over yours. What some have said is weighing your property rights over the lives of others seems skewed *if* your own life is *not* in danger.

 

And where have I weighed my property rights over someone else's life?

The closest you could claim is when I said that I would be willing to use lethal force in the event someone was trying to steal food, fuel, etc from my family in an emergency situation (on the level of the Katrina or Sandy aftermath), and that is a situation where my life would potentially be in danger.

As for the Aurora situation, the police are still trying to determine a lot of key facts (such as whether the shooter killed himself or whether the police shot him). I strongly recommend jumping to any conclusions until there are some verified facts available.

Remember, in the first day or so after any major news event, there's very little accurate information available. After the Oklahoma City bombing, many people were blaming the bombing on Islamic extremists. With the DC snipers, people were looking for a white van. Until we actually know anything, jumping to conclusions can cause a lot more harm than good.

 

KK, here (what I was responding to)

You weren't (apparently) referring to "food/fuel" in that response.

 

what conclusions are you worried people will jump to?

 

Nobody needs your recommendation. There will be damn plenty jumping to uninformed conclusions.

 

Kimball, based on your strong recommendation I'm concluding the shooters were Apple fanboys who experienced a rare moment of self-awareness.

I was under the impression you were a British common law country to a point, i.e. where it stopped being compatible with US law?

If so, then the UK statutes imposing limits on gun ownership would have some relevance.

Not what I'm saying. And let's politely and discreetly not address how precisely you would be able to differentiate an intent to menace you through scowls vs an intent to actually kill you in a fight-or-flight scenario...

 

Aliens.

 

Oh, like that overused meme? How clever and original.

 

Dude, you don't like fido... we get it. You don't have to snipe at his every word, though... take the high road, or something. sheesh.

Plus, he's already said he's got you on ignore, so you're wasting your breath, etc.

 

I haven't commented on anything he's said in like... pages, Harps. thanks, though, for your contribution. I think I speak for everyone, including people in remote parts of Burma, when I say that.

EDIT: Though, to be fair, I'd forgotten he'd put me on ignore and every time he's posted something that's idiotic I've called him on it. Which, as it's 100% of the time he posts here, would make it seem like he is being sniped at. If he could stop the faux edgy posts (if you eat the chip on your shoulder, it's obvious there's no anger anymore) and try thinking about something then posting, it would be nice for all and sundry Harps. Like we get that he thinks he's irreverent and tries so hard to cultivate that image, but nobody believes he is so could he just try and post something that shows he has thought about it first? It wouldn't kill him.

 

Look, of course it's ridiculous to think that someone is going to play one violent video game, or listen to one violent song, or watch one violent movie, and then go shoot up a school.

But that's not what we're talking about. It's not an individual effect - it's cumulative and collective. We're talking about young people who are surrounded by, who are bathed in, a culture that ceaselessly bombards them with messages that show extreme violence being a workable solution to people's problems, and often even a salubrious one. This does have an effect, and on some people who were already close to the edge for whatever reason, it can give them a shove them in some very bad directions.

I'm not saying that the government should come in and start banning things. But maybe it's time we had a national conversation about what we watch, listen to, and play; and to think about whether it's time to tone it down a little.

There's a popular atheist argument that says that they're terrified of Christians and their belief in Heaven and Hell because it implies that the only thing restraining Christians from rape, murder, robbery, theft, and arson is the belief that Invisible Sky Man will throw them into a mythical lake of fire after they die if they do do those things.

Related: Gun-grabbers terrify me - especially ones from countries that claim they they're "civilized" because they've banned guns - because their assertion implies that the only thing keeping them from having sky-high crime rates and frequent school massacres is that their governments no longer trust them with guns.

Doesn't sound too "civilized" to me.

The thing is, blaming guns is the easy thing to do because they're an inanimate object, and blaming an inanimate object means taking no personal blame upon ourselves. It's easy - but like most easy answers to persistent problems, it's bullcrap. I've lived in a culture that is markedly less violent than America. You could parachute-drop a crate of AK-47s onto every streetcorner in Japan, and the Japanese wouldn't shoot each other at appreciably greater rates than they do now, because their culture simply isn't one that glorifies violence and presents it as a suitable solution to people's problems at the scale that American culture does. And yes, yes, I know - there are violent Japanese movies and anime programs and video games - but again, I'm talking about scale, about context, and about place in the larger culture. I'm talking about taking a drink of something rather than taking a bath in it.

Again, I'm not talking about having a bunch of guys in jackboots raid Gamestop and start burning discs. I'm talking about us having a national conversation on whether we ought to walk all this back a little. Or maybe even a lot.

 

P.S. Culture does matter. And ours at best trivializes violence and the tragedy it creates (at worst it downright glorifies and celebrates it). Don't think so? I took this at my local grocery store 20 minutes ago:



And there it is - titillating us on the front page of the National Enquirer, right up there with the latest celebrity gossip about Tom Cruise.

We are a nation with a sick culture, and yet we are surprised when the symptoms of this sickness show up, like a five-pack-a-day smoker wondering why he coughs for five minutes every time he tries to climb a flight of stairs.

 

But by your reasoning, aren't games merely a symptom of the disease?

There was a chart posted earlier that compared video game "consumption" (for want of a better word) to violent crime. Although it's more suggestive than definitive, there's a strong case to be made in favour of games being utterly irrelevant to violent crime and I appreciate you're suggesting that - I'm just not sure about your last points where you say you're not suggesting burning discs from gaming store, but rather having a conversation about scaling the violent culture back (i.e. are you suggesting games, films etc be included in that?)

 

Looking at that reminds me why I stopped reading that trash years ago.

Look, yes, reforming our culture is important and, much like mental health reform, there's no easy or short - term answers, however, I state again, I do not see any rational reason in the short term why people absolutely need relatively easy access to assault weapons that can tear a person to pieces (like in Aurora and Sandy Hook). Especially not average civilians. I don't see why we can't restrict access to those types of weapons, who's only function is to kill as many people as possible, while we struggle to find answers to our other societal problems.

 

TOM CRUISE CANCER NIGHTMARE

 

He whines about what happened in the past like a little child. 'Wah my reputation on an online forum took a hit.' I explained my side of it and that's that. If he continues to be a child about the whole thing then that's on him.

/again, still on ignore.

To the cultural aspects: I think that while some people may be influenced by it that blaming any sort of entertainment is just silly. Or at least bannings of it and whatnot. Yes, we have incredibly violent entertainment, but there's also the erection most Americans have for guns--an unhealthy obsession.

If you limit the tools to commit the crimes then you may reduce the impact of such atrocities. As it is anyone can get a gun so long as there's no criminal record. Most of these crimes are done with legally owned firearms. Sooo...don't blame the availability of guns? Mental health is one thing and it needs to be fixed in this country starting by adding more funding to mental health programs, but you also need to limit the availability of firearms. As it stands now all you need is a pulse and a clean record and you're good.

 

You guys need couples counseling.

 

It's something of a feedback loop. A more violent society becomes more inured to violence in media, which further presents violence as a solution to our problems, which contributes to making us more violent, and so on...

Related to this is the reason why pornography continually gets more graphic, and involves acts that are more taboo, humiliating, or even painful. In another thread I posted an example of the kind of pornography which got Irving Klaw thrown in prison on obscenity charges in the 1950s - which mostly were of Bettie Page in a bra and granny panties bigger than what many women wear to the gym as outergarments. As we got desensitized to that, we wanted more, and more, and more, and the cycle continued, until we're where we are today.

Correlation and causation are difficult there. You have to figure in the fact that people who spend a lot of time gaming are also going to be people who tend to be a little better off economically, and thus who will be less inclined to commit common street crime. So cultural stuff gets mixed up with socioeconomic stuff, and it all becomes more than a little muddled.

I'm in the middle of reading the nonfiction book on the history of Atlantic City on which Boardwalk Empire was based. There was a quote in it from one of the people in AC's vice industry back in the early 20th century: “If the people who came to town had wanted Bible readings, we’d have given ‘em that. But nobody ever asked for Bible readings. They wanted booze, broads, and gambling, so that’s what we gave ‘em.”

So what am I suggesting? What if we all, or at least some large portion of us, stopped buying the hyperviolent stuff that Hollywood/New York puts on the table for us. If we stop buying it, sooner or later they'll stop serving it. And if we don't, well, then who do we really have to blame but ourselves?

Don't count on that though - we are not a people given to blaming our failures on our own faults.

 

Although I posted that chart, I do believe there's a correlation between American culture and the excessive violence. But the 2nd Amendment remains the key. The 2nd Amendment is the forge, the vigilante fixation is the gunpowder. I have the sneaking suspicion that many an American gun enthusiast likes to imagine himself with a Superman suit under his shirt.

 

If the vigilante fixation were the cause wouldn't these killers be more likely to go after drug dealers? I think it's more that we tend to make celebrities out of murderers. In which case you could blame the news media more than any sort of comic book, video game, or movie.

 

Narutakikun; you raise some really interesting points but I think the main issue I have is that I think you might have it backwards? In that, I don't think if we stopped buying violence society would change (though I appreciate your point is more to break the loop) but rather, if society changed then the media would reflect that.

I don't want to quote a Christian scholar if I can avoid it, but:

"Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision" - GK Chesterton.

 

There are a few answers to that, but here's one of them, and it's honest.

In a sense, liberals have no one but themselves to blame for this. It's a symptom of an extremely successful strategy they've pursued for decades; one of incrementalism. Instead of having one big revolution (either of the violent of nonviolent variety), they've pushed a large number of sweeping social and legislative changes through largely slowly and in pieces over the course of years - from feminism and gay rights to the secularization of society to all manner of regulations on who you can't or must hire, what you can't or must offer your employees in compensation, and, of course, via Political Correctness, what you can't or must say to whom.

The problem is that if every time you give someone an inch they end up taking a mile, they shouldn't be surprised if sooner or later you aren't very inclined to give them an inch anymore. Slippery slope is not always a fallacy, and one is often wise to not allow a foot in the door. One of the unintended consequences of incrementalism is absolutism; when the other party no longer believes that you're negotiating in good faith or that you plan to stop only at the arguably-reasonable things you're asking for - and worse, when you've given them good reason not to trust you - then if they slam the door in your face, draw a line in the sand, and say "We aren't giving a single inch of ground", really it's your own damn fault.