All-purpose gun legislation thread

[legowarrior]

Can I say, I really like this idea!

It makes training and service part of the gun ownership culture.

[Guap]

Yep, I’m sure that was the founding fathers intention. They needed a force that was well trained and disciplined to call upon to defend the country. Note there was no expensive, professional army like there is today. The 2nd Amendment was the answer to Paul Revere’s ride, come out of your houses and defend our new country. Now that we spend $600 billion a year on a professional army I think you could easily argue 2nd could be reinterpreted and still keep the strict constiutionalist happy. Just argue “well regulated miltia” has come to mean “The Armed Forces” and you are all set. No more private gun ownership, all adhering strictly to the 2nd.

[TimJames]

You’re the first person on the Internet to think of this line of reasoning. Well done.

[Daagar]

@TimJames

You’re the first person on the Internet to think of this line of reasoning. Well done.

Solid counter-argument. Well done.

[TimJames]

Oh I stopped rehashing years ago. It’s an asymmetrical time commitment. I debate it once and the person goes away quietly — never convinced, of course. Then a year later another rando pops up with the same idea. There is no point.

Don’t take it personally. This applies to any controversial topic on the Internet.

[triggercut]

Yes, I can see how “We should do this thing” is ably and skillfully refuted by “Other people have also suggested we do this thing.”

(Here’s a hint: that’s not a very good counterargument.)

[Telefrog]

Here’s the thing. You don’t have to convince @TimJames of the argument. You have to convince the Supreme Court. According to the courts, that interpretation of the “well-regulated militia” does not apply.

[TimJames]

To be fair, I’ll offer a solution that wasn’t buried into the ground a decade ago.

I propose we create a social media app for disgruntled young men to “tell their stories,” just like thus guy wanted. Every day the entire nation pauses to lavish attention on one of these young men. His name and picture are plastered across televisions everywhere. Cut to shots of families crying over his plight. Talk shows will discuss his personal manifesto.

Then the next day we can move on to the next one.

[Strollen]

@TimJames

To be fair, I’ll offer a solution that wasn’t buried into the ground a decade ago.

I propose we create a social media app for disgruntled young men to “tell their stories,” just like thus guy wanted. Every day the entire nation pauses to lavish attention on one of these young men. His name and picture are plastered across televisions everywhere. Cut to shots of families crying over his plight. Talk shows will discuss his personal manifesto.

Then the next day we can move on to the next one.

I like it. But also think we should do with mine. Mass shooting can get no more the 100x the coverage of other deaths. So about ~7200 folks died yesterday. 10 died in the shooting so 100x10=1,000. So for every segment CNN does on the shooting they have to do 7 segments on things that kill everybody else, obesity, heart disease, drugs, cancer etc. Same thing is true for QT3 every post about the shooting needs to be balanced by 7 non-shooting posts.

[ineffablebob]

@Guap

All we really have to do is just uphold the 2nd Amendment. It says right there that only members of a well regulated militia are allowed to have guns. Serve in the National Guard of your state, you can have a gun (issued by the National Guard, probably). Don’t serve? No gun for you. You MUST be part of a well regulated militia to own a gun. The 2nd Amendment does not say unrestricted freedom to own any weapon like the NRA tries to lie and fool people. It’s an argument with a first part and a second part. They both go together.

Here’s a whole podcast about how it came about that this is not the accepted interpretation of the 2nd amendment.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/gun-show/

Reasonable people can disagree on the interpretation of the wording in the 2nd amendment, but the opinion that matters is that of the Supreme Court, and here it is:

The Court held that the first clause of the Second Amendment that references a “militia” is a prefatory clause that does not limit the operative clause of the Amendment. Additionally, the term “militia” should not be confined to those serving in the military, because at the time the term referred to all able-bodied men who were capable of being called to such service. To read the Amendment as limiting the right to bear arms only to those in a governed military force would be to create exactly the type of state-sponsored force against which the Amendment was meant to protect people. Because the text of the Amendment should be read in the manner that gives greatest effect to the plain meaning it would have had at the time it was written, the operative clause should be read to “guarantee an individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.” This reading is also in line with legal writing of the time and subsequent scholarship.

The dissent basically made the same argument as @Guap :

In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the Second Amendment does not create an unlimited right to possess guns for self-defense purposes. Instead, the most natural reading of the the Amendment is that it protects the right to keep and bear arms for certain military purposes but does not curtail the legislature’s power to regulate nonmilitary use and ownership of weapons. Justice Stevens argued that the Amendment states its purpose specifically in relation to state militias and does not address the right to use firearms in self-defense, which is particularly striking in light of similar state provisions from the same time that do so. Justice Stevens also notes that “the people” does not enlarge the protected group beyond the context of service in a state-regulated militia.

It’s not inconceivable that the decision could be reversed at some point, but until it is, I agree with @TimJames…there’s no point in continuing to discuss it except in the context of obtaining such a reversal.

[ineffablebob]

@TimJames

I propose we create a social media app for disgruntled young men to “tell their stories,” just like thus guy wanted. Every day the entire nation pauses to lavish attention on one of these young men. His name and picture are plastered across televisions everywhere. Cut to shots of families crying over his plight. Talk shows will discuss his personal manifesto.

@Strollen

But also think we should do with mine. Mass shooting can get no more the 100x the coverage of other deaths. So about ~7200 folks died yesterday. 10 died in the shooting so 100x10=1,000. So for every segment CNN does on the shooting they have to do 7 segments on things that kill everybody else, obesity, heart disease, drugs, cancer etc. Same thing is true for QT3 every post about the shooting needs to be balanced by 7 non-shooting posts.

I know these are tongue-in-cheek but let me address them seriously, because I think the reasons why these kinds of suggestions wouldn’t work is part of the root of the issue.

It’s true that part of the reason for these lone wolf attacks is a desire for attention. But they also want to change their own circumstances. Sometimes that takes the form of suicide at the end of the attack, sometimes it leads them to go on the run, sometimes it means they target specific people/places important to them. Regardless, simply giving a platform to these people that would quickly become just another blip in our modern sea of information isn’t going to address the change component. Likewise, ensuring limited coverage of attacks won’t stop someone who is motivated not just by the attention, but also by making a swift and permanent change in that person’s own circumstances.

Edit: And let me just add that I really like @Strollen’s idea particularly, no matter how infeasible it may be. I’m as tired as everyone else of the repeating media feeding frenzy and would love to see it limited. I just don’t think it would help stop most of the shootings.

[TimJames]

The other idea I had is public torture and execution.

Since we’ve removed the concept of an afterlife from society, I don’t think there is enough real-world disincentive to filter through the broken minds of sociopaths. When these young men see past killers, they only see the crying victims (the result of their power fantasy) and a stoic shooter being quietly led away by the police. The shooter disappears into jail, where his struggles are never seen again. Or he’s killed quickly, which is a bonus for some of them.

With my idea, a potential shooter is faced with the thought of being captured and then tortured in public. Instead of a calm mugshot, everyone will see his agonized face as flesh is whipped away from his naked body until he slowly dies from exposure.

There are two reasons why this probably wouldn’t work. One problem is that it might cause sympathy toward the shooter, and of course we don’t want that. The other problem is that it would incentivize a potential shooter to kill himself at the end.

Perhaps we could still mutilate the corpse? Just brainstorming solutions here.

[Menzo]

@TimJames

Just brainstorming solutions here.

There’s no easy solution. But as a country we’ve been able to make change. We’ve made smoking totally uncool. We’ve made drunk driving uncool. What we need is a society-wide effort to make mass shootings uncool, because right now they are seen by some as a cool way to make a statement.

I’m still for reasonable (and hell, even unreasonable) changes to gun laws, but that wouldn’t have stopped this kid. There’s no proposed gun law that would have stopped him from getting his hands on his dad’s shotgun and handgun. Both are legal and would continue to be legal under any realistic scenario.

[Lloyd_Heilbrunn]

@Menzo

There’s no proposed gun law that would have stopped him from getting his hands on his dad’s shotgun and handgun.

Sure there is, you can make it illegal for people with children to own guns. Might help both with gun deaths and over population!

[Menzo]

@Lloyd_Heilbrunn

Sure there is, you can make it illegal for people with children to own guns. Might help both with gun deaths and over population!

Like I said, nothing like that has ever been proposed and it would never get taken seriously, unfortunately.

[John_Doyle]

@Menzo

There’s no proposed gun law that would have stopped him from getting his hands on his dad’s shotgun and handgun.

Sure there is. Your weapon must be locked up in a gun safe and the ammunition stored separately. If not, you are liable for any damage caused by the weapon. That’s the law in Canada, weirdly low on school shootings.

[Soapyfrog]

@TimJames

The other idea I had is public torture and execution.

To stop psychopaths you need to become a psychopath? I am not so sure…

[RichVR]

@John_Doyle

Your weapon must be locked up in a gun safe and the ammunition stored separately.

If you’re a responsible gun owner you already do this. It should be the law here as well.

[Strollen]

@John_Doyle

Sure there is. Your weapon must be locked up in a gun safe and the ammunition stored separately. If not, you are liable for any damage caused by the weapon. That’s the law in Canada, weirdly low on school shootings.

IRRC,the Sandy Hill killer killed the mom and took the key to her gun safe.

[legowarrior]

Using your logic, we shouldnt bother with vaccinations or laws of any sort since nothing is going to be 100% effective.

The perfect is always the enemy of the good but morons and schills will always truly to use these sorts of arguments to sabotage any ideas or progress.