Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

some want to disarm the police (?)

this is not that outrageous a demand except on its own

May be worth starting a “Las Vegas shooting and it’s aftermath” thread as things get bonkers. Not prone to conspiracies, but ready to believe that...well, let’s see...

What does that mean?

So long as any legalese makes it difficult for anyone, no matter how rich or motivated, to purchase a weapon capable of killing dozens before law enforcement can intervene, or weapons modifications that accomplish the same, I'd be content. I agree with the gun experts that the old assault weapons ban focused on cosmetic aspects, and just caused the manufacturers to cosmetically modify their designs. Focus on measurable quantities like "muzzle energy x rounds per minute when fired by a competent firer". Fix the threshold value so that typical hunting weapons like 1+4 round shotguns or bolt action rifles, or smaller ammunition capacity self-defense handguns, are permitted, but semi auto rifles or submachine guns with higher ammunition capacity, can't. The legislation is a soluable problem.

Would that still permit most gun homicides and suicides? Yes, and that's tragic. But it would prevent murder sprees on the scale of Sandy Hook or Mandalay Bay.

^ should read: "semi-auto versions of military assault rifles and submachine guns with..."

ay be worth starting a “Las Vegas shooting and it’s aftermath” thread as things get bonkers. Not prone to conspiracies, but ready to believe that...well, let’s see...

― Eazy, Tuesday, October 3, 2017 11:01 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What does that mean?

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.)

i don't know, but you know they'll be cranking out conspiracies for this one. someone upthread mentioned the absolute horror of sandy hook and how it might have prompted more conspiracies than normal. on one hand you have the people making shit up to try to counter what they believe will be an event that could turn people against their precious 2nd amendment, and on the other you have people subconsciously searching for any sort of explanation other than the real one, that their fellow co-humans are capable of unleashing madness and mayhem on children while everyone around them does literally nothing in response. the same applies to las vegas. the bogeymen of "islamic terrorism" or mythic evil immigrant violence is absent and you have people like jimmy kimmel tearfully addressing the situation and speaking out about it honestly, so those who stand for the 2nd amendment will find another story to tell themselves and they'll find an eager audience that wants to hear any other story other than the one that actually happened.

when i catch a glimpse of alex jones i begin to morph into a guy with bandaged knuckles who says "...i got mad and punched a wall", so i can't bear to check, but i'm assuming today he talked about everything in las vegas except for what actually happened

Whats transpired btw with ISIS trying to claim this one? I mean people claim all sorts of rubbish but is it confirmed theirs was rubbish?

Alfred very OTM here. Gun advocates take full advantage of the lack of information of (many) on the other side to simply paint them as ignorant and alarmist. As a dude who grew up with guns and was a high level competitive shooter as a teen that now has not a single firearm in the home and only technically owns them because of a collection of antique handguns that is stored in a locked location at my mothers house with no available ammunition, I'm happy to clarify things for anybody that wants information. AMA I guess?

Some starter hints - learn the distinction between automatic and semi-automatic weapons, and be careful about using the terms. I've seen hundreds of posts/tweets about how automatic weapons should be illegal, followed by immediate "they are u dumb lib" shutdowns. We can't open the conversation that way anymore.

(Oh and to flappy bird, magazines=clips. It's the removable/replaceable piece of a semi-automatic (or automatic) that allows for how many rounds can be fired before you need to reload the gun. Higher capacity=more shots that can be fired before replacing the magazine. Pedantically yes, bolt action rifles can also use magazines. Revolvers (which is your usual old school film noir/"six-shooter"/cowboy handgun, still heavily used today) can't. "Tactical" shotguns can, pump-action or double barrel/single shot shotguns can't. Yes, there are semi-automatic shotguns, because hey, what a wonderful world we live in. No automatic ones though.)

Yeah, there's a lot of technical information a person can learn about firearms, including not just highly specific details regarding every part of the weapons and their ammunition, but also the forces generated by firing and how or if they can be damped, how to sight in a scope, gun cleaning and maintenance, plus all the accessories - holsters, gun safes, trigger locks. It is a whole world of details heaped upon details and hobbyists and enthusiasts eat that stuff up and never tire of it.

But very little of that massive heap of facts has any real bearing on whether one can understand the basic issues addressed by proposed gun control laws.

while i get how being gun-conversant can be helpful for establishing credibility with the pro-gun advocates, i do think that sane gun policy really shouldn't require knowing the difference between a revolver and a semi-automatic, or, like, a .338 Lapua or .308 winchester. this i think serves the interests of the gun lobby by making gun safety about the lethal capabilities of guns in the hands of a "trained" shooter and not, say, an angry domestic abuser or suicidal person. in those situations, the rounds per minute or stopping power or w/e are largely irrelevant. gun violence in the US is largely banal, and gun legislation should reflect that.

xp

whoa people still use revolvers? cool

if the focus is on how to limit the lethality of johnny trenchcoat by making large volume magazines and suppressors illegal (both of which: make them illegal!) and not on making garden variety handguns difficult to obtain (they're not!), we're missing the trick imo

i'm all for the demystification of guns as 'violent objects' if it serves an end result that is: fewer guns, fewer people enamored with them. i worry, a little bit, that an emphasis on the correct understanding of the mechanical details subserves the idea that "guns don't kill people, people do". i realize that i didn't always post that way on here, times change, do not @ me

i'm just astonished at people who think silencers make gunshots completely silent

goldeneye has a lot to answer for

I'm right there with you in general gbx (esp in the way that I've been an endless broken record about the mistaken idea that lethality is linked to gun type on here before) but but if we want to reach rational gun owners, the ones that are largely in favor of workable restrictions and can be turned against the NRA we need to look reasonably educated and informed about the issue. Also we need to avoid the terrible pitfalls of cosmetic assault rifle legislation which I am now convinced set us more steps back than forward and I'm still pissed at weak willed NRA petrified dems for selling that half-measure bullshit instead of actual functional things that might have not only stood up to scrutiny but actually, you know, worked. That political capital could have been spent on closing the goddamn gun show loophole, but yet here we are.

I am curious how many people (not going to speak for gbx but I count myself in this number) have crossed that line of growing up with guns, not being afraid of guns as object or w/e, but ending up mortified and terrified by the way guns function culturally in the modern day. Also, it's terrifying how many of the new culturally identifying pro-gun people are wildly ignorant about the realities of guns - AR15 worship is fucking stupid on a purely logical level. AR15 mod worship is ten times as stupid, and the dudes that fetishize flash suppressors and folding stocks ought to be looked at by hunters the same way car nerds look at those rolling coal assholes. No one with a basic understanding of how this shit works should or does believe in the good guy with a gun myth. I'd like to think there's a whole quiet chunk of people with my background that are ready to get flipped, but maybe that's optimistic/delusional.

OT and XP jjustin: Some gun nuts will be pedantic about magazines ≠ clips. The magazine is the box from which rounds are fed, and most magazines on modern firearms are detachable. However, in some older rifles (Russian Mosin–Nagant, British Lee–Enfield, German Mauser K98k, US Springfield M1903, Soviet SKS) the magazine is fixed, and rounds are fed into it on a clip.

That's true.

I'm not mortified or terrified by guns but the gun culture itself has gone 0-60 nutso since ~2010-11 (there was always a present right-wing element, definitely post-2008 but it kicked into overdrive with the tea party/mainstreaming of survivalist culture) where I have basically no interest in being around other shooters at gun ranges or competitions and have sold all but the last couple of guns (which I'm just too lazy to drive to Cabela's to sell).

Also since a black guy was let run some things

Yeah, there's a lot of technical information a person can learn about firearms, including not just highly specific details regarding every part of the weapons and their ammunition, but also the forces generated by firing and how or if they can be damped, how to sight in a scope, gun cleaning and maintenance, plus all the accessories - holsters, gun safes, trigger locks. It is a whole world of details heaped upon details and hobbyists and enthusiasts eat that stuff up and never tire of it.

But very little of that massive heap of facts has any real bearing on whether one can understand the basic issues addressed by proposed gun control laws.

― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, October 4, 2017

If a person doesn't know what the hell he wants banned or regulated, then he's not understanding "the basic issues addressed by proposed gun control laws."

Do potatoes make guns totally silent???

I grew up around a lot of guns, mostly for hunting, but also large "collections" of various firearms that seemed to serve no purpose other than being decorations in our trailer gun cabinets. Now pretty much mortified. Ban them and go into people's houses and take them away. I don't care how unfeasible that is.

Or just get Luke Cage to go in and bend all the barrels.

Less 'unfeasible' and more 'high body count'.

But the right ppl, perhaps

This guy had a whopping 47 guns ("to protect himself from the gummint" obv), right? Is there even a max limit on how much you're allowed to own?

Heard a replay of this on the radio this morning. From April this year:

(CNSNews.com) – President Donald Trump pledged to never infringe on the 2nd Amendment during a speech at the National Rifle Association’s meeting in Atlanta, Ga., on Friday.
“We all took an oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States, and that means defending the 2nd Amendment. So let me make a simple to every one of the freedom-loving Americans in the audience today: as your president, I will never, ever infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms – never, ever,” Trump said. "Freedom is not a gift from government. Freedom is a gift from God,” he added.

cos God wants you to have guns

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/52/10/d0/5210d0d2a9bb78c5d2be5c16057ab396.jpg

He might have set aside some for killing a lot of people, hard to know.

if god didn't want us to have guns then why did he give us trigger fingers, think about that

Come on, God has always wanted you to kill people, He loves dead people, the more the merrier.

the defeatism and apathy in this thread and on the left in general on this issue depresses me

A lot of defeatism perhaps but apathy no

It's depressing, I agree. When the massacre of young children isn't enough to effect a change, I honestly don't know what it would take. We'll probably have to wait until the majority of Americans have been personally affected by something like this, because mass shootings are still a thing that only happens to Other People.

I am curious how many people (not going to speak for gbx but I count myself in this number) have crossed that line of growing up with guns, not being afraid of guns as object or w/e, but ending up mortified and terrified by the way guns function culturally in the modern day.

This is pretty much me - my grandfather was a crazy paranoid gun nut who always, ALWAYS, had a loaded gun nearby. When he lived with us for a while he kept a Mossberg police shotgun (shortest legal barrel, highest capacity) in the closet, kept an unlicensed handgun in his desk at work, and probably always had a loaded pistol under his car seat. He went to gun shows, never hunted, hated the IRS, and I'm sort of glad he never lived til the Fox News era because it would have really soured my memories of him.

That shit was super fun when I was 13 (and, admittedly, probably still would be) - shooting targets and beer cans and clay pigeons with pistols and semi-autos with large magazines and shotguns can be viscerally thrilling, and I see why people get way into it. But being able to enjoy that activity vs. repeated mass murder of innocents isn't even a fucking contest - I'm happy to deprive everyone of their ability to do this forever because it's a dumb, pointless hobby and you can find something better to do with your time.

I think it's true that there is an opportunity to separate the gun nuts from sane, reasonable hunters - people who see guns as toys or some sort of "fuck you you can't tell me what to do" political/paranoid expression vs. people who use guns as a means to an end. I know my inlaws are horrified by gun violence and asshole gun fetishists and the NRA but they love to walk in the woods and hunt birds and deer and eat what they shoot, store their guns unloaded and locked up, and they would have no problem paying insurance to own a gun or to have limited capacity firearms. You don't need a 30 round magazine to shoot a deer.

yeah and it's depressing that this point seems to be such a nonstarter. I posted a tirade about this on FB and the response I kept getting was "guns can't kill if people don't pull the trigger, the problem is not guns". to which it's like...well you ain't necessarily wrong there but personally I prefer MY murderous lunatics to be wielding a knife or a six-shooter instead of something which can fire a hundred bullets in under a minute.

especially since this is the same crowd who loves the idea of the border wall. you point out "what's this gonna reduce illegal immigration by, 5%?" and their response is, "that's good enough for me. it's something". hmmm. ya don't say.

I think it’s past time to stop calling gun collecting a hobby. Table top games and woodworking and reading and playing instruments = hobbies.

If I bought cadavers and butchered them in my garage I doubt my neighbors would think of that as a hobby. And it would still be a universe removed, in terms of harmfulness to life, from gun collecting.

but is owning Clue or Monopoly a right recgonized by the Supreme Court?

Fuck the Supreme Court.

Anyone who thinks guns are not the problem should be shot with one.

Just in the hand, though.

Brand the NRA as a terrorist org, imo. An intermediate step but an important one.

lotta good posts here today that I kinda wish were on the gun control thread, thanks y'all

Fuck the Supreme Court.

― El Tomboto, Wednesday, October 4, 2017 11:03 AM

That's what I'm saying. Lib activists should be as honest as the right is: "Let's get presidents elected who nominate justices that don't see a personal right to possess a firearm in the Second Amendment."

until the majority of Americans have been personally affected by something like this

They have!

And the majority prefers stronger gun regulations. And the majority elected Hillary. And the majority etc etc etc. This country is fucked up because IT IS NOT DEMOCRATIC AT ALL

Gor-suck will reward his masters by voting to protect gerrymandering, rest assured, thus preserving our undemocratic republic.