Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

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.

thanks that's what I need today

was thinking about starting an ILX poll to find out how many people have had a brush with gun violence or been close to it or been personally affected by it in some way.

Hint: almost all the Americans

I mean where I live we have an active shooter in some major workplace or another basically every year, never you mind the random pop-offs between gangs like the one right outside the first home I ever bought the month we moved in

having been within one block of three random shootings and the immediate aftermath of a massacre (while the shooter was still on the loose) is as close as i've been. plus the Christmas night confrontation next door to my mom's rural house between a half a dozen extremely high local college kids and the gun-toting guy whose mailbox they backed into which did NOT end badly, fortunately. not sure whether or not to count the time i came upon my aunt's police officer cousin alone on a porch waving a gun around looking depressed and angry when i was 11 or 12.

and all that is nothing whatsoever compared to what so many other people have dealt with either at events like this or just in their day to day lives existing in a fucked up, classist, racist country.

already seeing "multiple shooter conspiracy" posts on FB :(

yeah, the unseen/unknown shooter was obviously a liberal transgender Muslim guy

Is there a point to FB other than letting the absolute stupidest examples of anglophone humanity Dunning-Kruger at each other until they all die of dehydration and skin cancer

no

✅

already seeing "multiple shooter conspiracy" posts on FB :(

the conspiracy theories with this are insane already . it's' so fucking stupid .

i mean we know nothing so it's easy to come up with all type if BS

yeah I just post a link to Occam's Razor, turn off post notifications, and unfollow.

who wants some statistics re: gun ownership and the virtues thereof

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DLOzer5WkAA5Wsg.jpg:large

hmm

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/04/bump-stock-ban-republican-senators-243453

speaking as a total idiot here but i'm all for a sit-in at NRA hq. someone ( Οὖτις?) broached this the other day..

that was Morbius