"Guns don't kill people, people kill people"

General Discussion
#10

Having been on the giving AND receiving end of flying bullets (War in Croatia) Im personally not too keen on guns. I dont have any interest in them, i don’t own any. I dont give a fuck either way.

My problem is more the being controlled by the government. Stop telling me what i can and ant do in the “free” world.

Its like motorcycle helmet / seat belt laws.

The only time i drove my bike without a helmet was ONCE in NH on my way to Laconia. Rode for about 30 minutes until i pulled over and put it back on. On a speed bike doing 6-70 MPH with no helmet is not just scary… mosquitoes hitting your forehead feel like 3/4" gravel pieces!!!

Is it dangerous to ride without one? Fucking right it is… Do we need a law for it? NO!

Let fucktards ride without helmets and kill themselves… One less retard in this world. Same goes for seat belt laws.

The following expresses how i feel about all these controlling laws, and what the outcome could be.

Let natural selection take its course!

http://www.explosm.net/db/files/Comics/Matt/A-natural-disaster-is-headed-right-for-us!-Quick,-grab-the-camera!.png

#11

I love that bit in Family Guy lol.

Regarding helmets and bikes, whether you need a law or not depends on how your healthcare system is funded. If it’s publicly funded like here in Canada or in the UK, then you definitely need a helmet law. If you fall off and die, that’s ok. It’s those with severe brain damage. They’re a long term drain on healthcare cash and therefore the taxpayer. Cynical but true.

Having said that, there’s no easy way of preventing neck injuries though.

I’m not sure about Canada, but there have been cost-benefit analyses in the UK and kids can get free helmets for their push bikes as that was cheaper than however many brain damaged kids could be prevented by one helmet. Same thing with condoms - free condoms for all!

Going back to booze related/driving deaths: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_driving_in_the_United_States#Statistics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States#Homicides

So around 18,000 people died in 2006 in alcohol related collisions according to the NHTSA.
And around 10,000 people were killed by a firearm in 2005.

Another interesting stat regarding firearm homicide rate:

  • US: 3 intentional homicides per 100,000 people (In the US there are 70 million guns in pop of 300mil)
  • Switzerland: 1 per 250,000 (1-3 million guns in a pop of 8 million!)

Sure it’s a bunch of wikipedia stats, likely flawed. Not sure how this contributes to the thread, but interesting nonetheless. Here’s an Australian drink drive commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b69J_bMoYk

#12

Life in America would certainly be “interesting” if the bad guys with guns outnumbered the good guys with guns. And that’s exactly what’d happen if the second amendment went away. As it stands, good, level headed armed Americans prevent crimes from happening every day. Police primarily RESPOND to crime. Nobody pulls out a gun in Florida because everybody has one.

#13

This ^

+1

#14

Nobody pulls a gun where I live because nobody has one…

#15

I find gun ownership and gun rights to be a very complicated issue that I can never argue satisfactorily. I own guns. I legally carry a pistol virtually every day that I can. I enjoy target shooting, and have been hunting a time or two. I would say I have more training than most in various types of weapons and I have no qualms about owning guns and don’t have a problem, generally, with others owning guns.

All of that being said, I have a big problem with how readily available guns are to individuals who should not be allowed a sharp stick never mind a gun. This is partly where I find the debate becomes difficult for me. Guns are definitely too easy to come by. I would have no issue with longer waiting periods and extensive background checks. Gun registration isn’t a terrible idea. But it doesn’t seem to me that any of this will really fix the problem.

I honestly believe that the biggest problem we have is that violence and specifically gun violence has become so popularized and normalized by the media, movies, entertainment, and video games that we have created people who are not afraid to kill. Killing has become easy. And not simply because they have a gun.

If you look at killing in history, most soldiers historically would not kill anyone even during war time. Many wouldn’t even fire their weapons at all. And those who did would purposefully aim to miss their foes. Most people have a severe revulsion to killing, which is a natural reaction. It is only when you get passed this revulsion to killing either by training, learned behavior, exposure, or mental defect… only then can you readily and easily take ANY weapon and kill another person. The US military all but perfected this type of training and behavior modification during the Vietnam years, and it came at a massive price for the soldiers and society of that time. I don’t know that the reputation of the military has yet recovered from that hugely unpopular war. Our veterans paid for that war in ways that most of us would never be able to comprehend because of the toll of repeatedly having to overcome their natural human revulsion to killing.

To kill at the range this person did in CT, he had absolutely no revulsion or qualms about killing, and from what I have heard it was probably due to mental defect. He more than likely would have killed with or without a gun. He shot those poor, innocent children at almost point blank range. Shooting someone at that range has a level of intimacy which all but negates the “distance” effect that gun control advocates use to argue why guns are so influential in promoting murder.

I think people need to change. I think that our society has to change. This infatuation with guns and violence is an epidemic that seems to be spreading at a terrible rate and with devastating consequences. Guns have been in homes for many many years, and have been a part of American life since colonization. Why are we only recently seeing gun violence so prevalent in this civilized society? Is it actually more prevalent or is it just that we hear about it more quickly and more often because of how quickly news and information travel now?

People are the problem, not guns. BUT, guns do make it easier.

#16

lol

You need to read the news maybe. Or just watch an episode of “first 48’”

#17

Great post…lots o Good insight.

Noam Chomsky talks about how we are systematically desensitized from young age to accept death. We should vomit at seeing someone die, but reality is that we don’t even blink. By the time we are ten years old we have seen thousands of dead bodies .

As to the whole more happening lately, it is just the same as it always has been. This year feels particularly bad though, but in all likelihood that is just an anomaly. Reversion to the mean will see us have a couple of slow years, like the years before 2012 or those immediately after.

#18

I don’t know. We live in what is historically a rediculously peaceful time and place. Your odds of meeting a violent end in (insert modern developed nation here) are mere fractions of what would have been the norm over most of human history. Actually this even applies globally. Our forebearers would have had a much more familiar connection to death and violent death.

#19

I won’t pretend to know if what you are saying is accurate or not. I have not personally seen information to specifically support or refute it.

My position is not that people now are exposed to violence in person, the exposure is through media, TV, movies, games, etc.

But, for arguments sake, let’s assume you are right. Maybe personal experience with violence was more common back then. However, it would seem the “forebearers” just did not have this general callousness for whatever reasons. I would still say the exposure to violence and death now is exponentially more, but different. Now, children are exposed to extremely graphic violence at a very early age in many other ways that were not factors before. Not necessarily on a personal blood and flesh level, but the effect can actually be more anesthetizing because it allows for a detached sense of reality related to the act of killing and extreme violence, making it again easier to kill/hurt someone because it has the feeling of the surreal. It is easier to remove the personalization and intimacy of the act. It could be argued that the fact our ancestors had a more intimate relationship with whatever violence or killing they did experience, this is why senseless killings and needless violence may have been less common (I’m talking about the actual number of occurrences, not the number of people with personal experience.) When you can separate yourself from the object you are hurting or killing, when you don’t feel a kinship or don’t identify with the humanity of the target, it makes things much much easier. Personal experiences may have been more common, but the the act was not glamorized or perpetuated as it is now.

I would also speculate that the majority of the extreme violence and killing done years ago was done by a very small minority. Now we are seeing every Tom, Dick, and Harry taking to violence for whatever problems they have. And it is a fact that the military forces of our world have become unbelievably more efficient and proficient at killing. It is much easier to get an 18-24 year old to kill someone now than it was years ago.

I’m not asserting myself as an authority on this subject by any means, so please don’t misconstrue my intentions. These are mostly just my thoughts and opinions.

#20

Interesting article from Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/02/21/disarming-the-myths-promoted-by-the-gun-control-lobby/

#21

Certainly is. I find it very interesting that violent crimes have “decrease(d) markedly since 1993”. I wonder how violent crimes are defined for those statistics? How would it compare to the number of crimes in which a gun was used? How many times in crimes where guns are used are those weapons actually fired compared to in previous years?

Like I said, I find this whole issue very complicated.

#22

More interesting news, Wal-Mart and Dick’s sporting goods pull rifles from their shelves in response to the recent CT shooting: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/12/18/walmart-dicks-sporting-goods-pull-guns-from-shelves-in-response-to-ct-massacre/

#23

Yea, Cheaper than Dirt has suspended gun sales and high capacity accessories. Bushmaster major share holder is selling off… Cabellas, Wal-Mart, Dicks, Academy…everyone is playing ultra-cautious in anticipation.

#24

I have to agree with JPO. In the olden days (I’m not talking the 50s here, I’m talking hundreds of years ago and before), death was commonplace. Either from illness or from violence. Human life was not worth nearly as much in people’s minds.

#25

Yes, and while we’re on that topic, let’s not forget that this fascination with gun murders and gun ownership, in the ‘civilized’ world (not the third world), is strictly an American fascination.

People often say ‘America just has a violent history’…but reality is that America has virtually no history (no offense young America…you’re pups in the global scheme of things). And if you really want to compare Germany’s (and Prussia before it, who was constantly at war) history to America’s history, and start to compare violence…well you see what I’m saying. Same goes for Japan.

That fat documenterer, who made Bowling for Columbine, had a theory: American media is constantly filling Americans’ heads with fear. This makes Americans more prone to a fear based violent self-preservation mode. This also backs up Noam Chomsky’s theories.

The mother of the 20 year old kid in Connecticut was a prepper…doomsday prepper. She theorized that the world economy was going to collapse and it would be a free-for-all, so she stockpiled EPIC amounts of ammunition, half a dozen powerful weapons, and apparently, a house full of food. If you’ve seen pics of her house, it’s a fairly massive.

#26

^ I have family doing this very same thing. They are so stubborn and set in their ways so much so that nothing will change their thought process. Its really scary.

#27

I agree with Saki. Law makers (legislators) need to be needed… Fear is great at making them needed. Scary shit sells news… Media gives you scary shit. Law enforcement agencies have a vested financial interest in a public’s perception of the preponderance of violent crime… Crime is horrible I tells ya lock your doors!! Never mind the obvious industry lobbies.

In Canada we get this too but the gun thing is pretty foreign. I literally never think about the need for a gun. Never. The only people I know with guns have a shotgun or rifle that they use to slay the odd duck or a deer.

I took a trip to San Fran one year to meet up with a buddy from school who had moved there. The 1st night I got there we were drinking with some of his friends and his roommate. I jokingly suggested we go shoot some guns, ya!! His roommate says “you want to shoot some guns? I’ve got some guns”. Later we checked out what would best be described as a large cache of guns. True fucking story. The first fucking guy I spoke to had a shit-tonne of guns.

PS we did later drive over to a range in Oakland and blow a few hundreds of dollars on ammo. :stuck_out_tongue:

#28

Try and find out where the bury their gold!

#29

As much as I “enjoyed” shooting assault rifles and light machine guns, it got boring pretty quickly. I don’t quite understand those people that keep going back to their local firing ranges and do the same thing over and over again.

Then again, I found skydiving to be boring so it might just be me.