Senate Gun Control

The worst of all outcomes!

 

Haha dammit Ender, I knew someone would do that.

 

That's unnecessarily defeatist. You have to strive to make your country better!

 

It depends on what ones vision of better is though. Many in our society think lack of guns wouldn't make us better but vulnerable, to tyranny as well as hardened criminals.

 

Yeah but they're a bit silly. You can't take that nonsense seriously!

 

How? There are so many gun crazies in this country.

 

Look at what happens: there's a shooting and gun sales go up. It happens over and over. Obama makes even the tiniest suggestion of gun control and gun sales skyrocket.

After the mass shooting in Australia years ago, that country was shocked to the cultural core correct? They made changes.

I'm not sure we can be shocked like that at all.

 

Of course not. And I would say the primary difference is the rights based culture. I've said it a number of times, but the right for you to own a gun (as an example) is greater than anyone else's right to live their life unmolested by bullets.

 

We were shocked yes but I wouldn't say that we were shocked to our "cultural core". We had mass shootings before and we have a pretty healthy gun culture as well (remember a nation founded by convicts and felons). The difference is that Australia simply does not have a fundamental right to bear arms enshrined in its constitution and we don't have a bill of rights. So when we as a nation decided "OK, enough is enough" the legal framework was there to do what was necessary. The move wasn't universally supported and there were many who went all hysterical but culturally we don't suffer under any misapprehension that guns are there to prevent the tyranny of gubment.

edit: also for Jabberwalkie's benefit I'd to clarify that my point has never really been about metal detectors it's been about my fatalistic view that gun "control" is probably not possible anymore so instead it has to be about gun "protection" but even that is not going to be possible because nobody wants to be inconvenienced by it. It's like gun violence is so bad and something has to be done so long as it doesn't cost me anything or inconvenience me or threatens ma free-dams. I like all of your solutions but they're all a waste of time really because of the guns which are already there, to be plucked like the low hanging fruit they are.

 

But see I think the differences in our founding documents points to cultural differences too. I think they're interlinked. During the framing period, we even threw out suggestions of a parliamentary system because it reminded us too much of the mother country.
And you pointed out Australia doesn't equate guns to protection against government tyranny. So it sounds like Australia has a healthy sports gun culture. We have that too……but much more and it's linked historically backed to our founding.

I just don't think that type of event can impact us in the same way as it did you.

 

Yeah I'd agree with that.

 

Yes, the Second Amendment as currently interpreted is a major hurdle. But it's pretty obvious that the gun industry and its lobbying bodies such as the NRA are primarily responsible for the lack of any meaningful Federal gun control legislation. Hell, I'd say the industry is most likely responsible for the liberal interpretation of the Second Amendment by the USSC. While the "right to bear arms" has always been in the founding document, U.S. gun culture hasn't always been this way and the NRA wasn't automatically hostile to every proposal to curb gun violence.

 

We live in a literal police state.

 

I thought we Australians did, because we had almost no guns and those with guns are subject to compliance checks by the police, who represent gubmint oppression?

 

Every time someone in the JCC uses the word "gubmint" or any variation thereof, a gun is illegally acquired by a random United States citizen.

 

Every American should be required to take their guns, gather them in a huge, nationwide pile of guns and burn them in a massive bonfire. Destroy all the guns. All of them.

 

Even when done in mockery of people of very limited intelligence who speak this way?

Mocking the way in which the American mutilates the English language should never be discouraged.

"I done'd speak bad."

 

Yeah, good luck with that.....

 

I also think sometimes a citizen acquires a gun and then farts.

 

Oh God, I had a day dream in my head just now about a horrible gun enthusiast version of Its A Wonderful Life complete with hypocritical messages about all life being sacred.

 

Well, Ender Sai, you convinced me of your position. Granted, Australia was the first foreign country I visited. When I was 18 I had this discussion about guns since I was in New South Wales during Independence Day. I worked quite a while at Pizza Hut to save up for the trip, and a few years later I was mugged delivering pizzas. Wasn't looking, a punch to my jaw, my tubby Kansas arse on the ground, my Clark Kent glasses flying away. In that second I was so angry if I had access to a firearm I would whipped out my nine to put those idiots in line, for $50 worth of pizza and buffalo chicken. Ridiculous to want to put a bullet in a person over a disgusting corruption of Italian food.

I find this applicable because I talked to the father of a classmate of mine; a fifth degree black belt fifty years older than me who could break me in half. He told me if someone punched him from behind then he would go down. This popped in my head when one of my friends went, "So, Ripley, when are you going to buy a gun?" Mind you he knows about my extreme jumpiness and my somewhat argumentative relationship with gin. My friend, while I love him deeply, is another person who wants people holding guns in theatres, who wants teachers in school to be armed. A man wants to take his children out hunting? I have no issue. Driving around hammered while shooting semiautomatics at stop signs (many cousins of mine have done that, including several cops)? Silliness. I don't comprehend.

Might be a little rambling, but I want to give credit where credit is due to America's bizarre love affair vis-a-vis firearms. I just do not see how I am suffering a major reduction in liberty when I cannot have an arsenal in my house.

 

Lol at you guys, still doing your darnedest to convince Americans they should up and quit their love affair of guns. I just moved right down the road from where the theatre shooting occurred, and I'm convinced that we will either never change our fondness for firearms, or it'll be a long ways off. In fact, after the shooting much of the anger was directed where it should be, at the nutjob who committed the crime.

As far as buybacks, if I'm a gunowner that wanted to give up my guns for $$$, I could head on down to the pawnshop, gun show, or private sales. If those aren't options, that would mean I would to have a change of heart in regards to gun ownership, to intentionally want to eliminate the firearm from ever being used again. Anyone really think that there's a that many gun owners about to change their mind because some cash is dangled in front of them?

I think gun regulations that we currently have are fine, and pretty darn effective. Especially in comparison to other laws and they're effectiveness. Apparently, a majority of Americans also think along the same lines.