Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

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

“I’m a Second Amendment man,” said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). “I’m not for any gun control, OK? None.”

“I don’t think we ought to punish 80, 90 million gun owners who have a right to own a weapon under the Constitution because of the act of one idiot,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “Just like I don’t think we ought to condemn all Muslims because of the act of one jihadist.”

go fuck yourselves

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

Because if ordinary people were to accept that just one deranged person with the right guns can really kill 59 and injure more than 500 people in a few minutes, they might get the idea that there is a limit to the firepower any one person should be allowed to wield. If you can confuse them about this, you might be able to forestall that conclusion.

there's also always initial reports and rumors of more than one shooter and its almost always not correct - except like the dc sniper and I think they took turns shooting and didn't work in tandem.

http://www.wnyc.org/story/breaking-news-consumers-handbook-pdf/

4. There's almost never a second shooter.
In the case of the DC Navy Yard shooting, the Sandy Hook shooting, and many others, initial reports included possible second and third shooters. “There’s pretty much never another one,” says Fisher. “So if you hear that, you can almost always discount."

Klebold and Harris set the template

San Bernardino was the only other one I can think of at this second.

XP, was curious whether my above suggestion of some sort of more objective measure (sustained aimed fire total muzzle energy) would distinguish hunting and self-defense firearms from assault weapons. As opposed to earlier assault weapons bans based on cosmetic features. After searching around for sustained/effective ROF, I think it would:

semi-auto 9mm/.45 pistol: 40 rds/min x 400 ft-lbs = 16000 ft-lbs/min
.357 Magnum revolver: 30 rds/min x 600 ft-lbs = 18000 ft-lbs/min
bolt-action .308 hunting rifle: 15 rds/min x 2800 ft-lbs = 42000 ft-lbs/min
12 ga 5 rd pump shotgun: 15 rds/min x 3000 ft-lbs = 45000 ft-lbs/min

semi-auto magazine-fed 5.56 rifle: 90 rds/min x 1300 ft-lbs = 117000 ft-lbs/min
automatic 7.62 rifle: 120 rds/min x 1500 ft-lbs = 180000 ft-lbs/min

There's a threshold issue with SMGs (automatic weapons firing pistol rounds), eg an Uzi would come in at 120x383 = 46000 ft-lbs/min, but strengthening current restrictions on automatic weapons would resolve this. How would one obtain sustained aimed rates of fire? Why not have a contest among ATF agents with the candidate weapon, with the winner or top 3 setting the value. Does a weapons modification (larger magazine, bump stock, crank) push values higher? Put it to the test.

“I don’t think we ought to punish 80, 90 million gun owners who have a right to own a weapon under the Constitution because of the act of one idiot,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “Just like I don’t think we ought to condemn all Muslims because of the act of one jihadist.”

why just condemn when you can ban them from the country outright

punish 80, 90 million gun owners

totally psyched to help these fine americans out w/ increased risk of meaningless death, glad i could contribute to the american idea somehow

http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/gun-violence

xxp -

The number of people on Earth who can reload and fire a .357 five times in one minute is probably in the dozens. Even with Moon Clips/reloaders and practice, that's an incredibly high threshold.

Three magazine changes for a 9mm semi-auto is pretty much anyone who spends a full day practicing.

What any 'objective measure' along the lines of what you're trying to do is going to end up with centerfire semi-autos being the weapons that need to be banned. Just start from that point and skip the million things that could be nitpicked (different ammo and barrel lengths drastically alter force, etc.).

I'd also say that what you're looking is a question relevant to spree shootings and ignores the way guns are used every single day in American violence. A low-powered .22lr or slow revolver is every bit as useful to/dangerous in the hands of gangs or a domestic abuser.

Which is to say that trying to make objective measurements that determine the potential lawfulness of a gun would be wasted energy, IMO. Making violence more abstract isn't convincing a soul.

The pretense that any gun is designed for anything besides killing other humans is a fucking joke anyway. Usefulness for hunting game remains a side benefit of the basic design

Force gun owners to trade their boomsticks in for bows and spears, imo. And then they have to teach themselves flint flaking if they actually want an edged weapon. Let's just return to the Paleolithic and see if we can get it right with a do-over, is what I'm saying here.

narrator: they didn't.

So my congressman Carlos Curbelo is writing a bill to ban bump stock.

milo z: That's the point. I took the most extreme rates possible rates of fire for typical hunting and self-defense weapons, and the total kinetic energy involved is still less than half of what can be achieved with assault rifles, whether semi-auto or fully auto.

What I'm looking for is a way to ban AK and M4/16 type weapons, that isn't mainly cosmetic (and hence comical/circumventable), that could could create fissures amongst gun owning voters. Personally, I'd like to see a day when only (some) law enforcement, and biologists/geologists in the wilderness, carry, but that would require a marked cultural shift, and every journey starts with a step.

tombot otm

The problem with that is that there are dozens of rifles just as 'capable' as the AK/AR platforms. The Ruger Mini-14 would just make a comeback - it was a favorite of the survivalist types back in the day because it had all the capabilities of an AR without the stigma (or legal restrictions). There is nothing special about AKs/ARs aside from current ubiquity - any magazine-fed centerfire semi-automatic is as capable or more capable. Differentiating beyond that is pointless.

Naming certain types of rifle is a fool's errand - anyone you can convince to get down with a 'ban' on ARs would be fine with banning semi-auto centerfires in general.

I'm not sure you're reading Sanpaku's post, there.