More American children murdered by gun-toting lunatic

[worcej]

You love guns = you love gunshot deaths.

Get over it.

You’re not a US citizen.

Get over it.

[Jamiet99uk]

How do you do that you ask? Expand background checks to universal. Stop private gun sales without transfer of ownership paperwork, which requires background checks (the 'gun show' loophole). Confiscate firearms from criminals. Ramp up the ATF to target black market activities, including sales of guns. Provide severe punishments for ownership of any ghost guns. Improve the FBI's actions to stop a person of concern instead of just keeping them on a 'watch list'. Provide better mental counseling services to our youth who are demonstrating signs of depression.

Most if not all of these things would be a dramatic tightening of Texas's gun laws.

Yet you proudly stated you support Texas's gun laws.

Which is it?

I already addressed this the first time you tried to paint me as a hypocrite.

I am beginning to realize you don’t actually give a shit about the issue and just want to argue with someone.

No, I'm sorry, you didn't fully address this at all and you seem to keep changing your angle.

Can you clarify your position please?

Do you support Texas's gun laws, or not? If you do, how does that align with all your apparent reform proposals? I'm confused.

[Jamiet99uk]

You love guns = you love gunshot deaths.

Get over it.

You’re not a US citizen.

Get over it.

Thank fuck for that!

[worcej]

I have yet to see a practical solution come from you yet. You're just complaining and saying "America bad and uncivilized because guns."

Option 1: Amend your constitution to replace the Second Amendment with a modern, sensible, regulatory approach to firearms.

Option 2: Accept that the majority of Americans think gun ownership is more important than children's lives.

That's it.

It's a binary choice.

Your society is constantly opting for Option 2. Again and again.

What are you doing to change it?

Option 1 is not an easy thing to do - go look that process up.

Option 2 is your hyperbole opinion and not actual fact. It’s just your continued hatred at Americans.

[Jamiet99uk]

I have yet to see a practical solution come from you yet. You're just complaining and saying "America bad and uncivilized because guns."

Option 1: Amend your constitution to replace the Second Amendment with a modern, sensible, regulatory approach to firearms.

Option 2: Accept that the majority of Americans think gun ownership is more important than children's lives.

That's it.

It's a binary choice.

Your society is constantly opting for Option 2. Again and again.

What are you doing to change it?

Option 1 is not an easy thing to do - go look that process up.

Option 2 is your hyperbole opinion and not actual fact. It’s just your continued hatred at Americans.

Sometimes doing the right thing is not easy.

Why does your society lack the willpower to do the right thing?

[worcej]

Most if not all of these things would be a dramatic tightening of Texas's gun laws.

Yet you proudly stated you support Texas's gun laws.

Which is it?

I already addressed this the first time you tried to paint me as a hypocrite.

I am beginning to realize you don’t actually give a shit about the issue and just want to argue with someone.

No, I'm sorry, you didn't fully address this at all and you seem to keep changing your angle.

Can you clarify your position please?

Do you support Texas's gun laws, or not? If you do, how does that align with all your apparent reform proposals? I'm confused.

I support Texan’s laws on types of firearms available for purchase and open carry policy and at the same time believe there is opportunities to improve on laws that limit firearm access for felons, which is a part of the Texan laws already.

My proposed improvements entirely targeting the person and not types of firearms, which most Texans would probably agree to if they had to pick between my stance and your fantasy-world stance for the United States.

[worcej]

Option 1: Amend your constitution to replace the Second Amendment with a modern, sensible, regulatory approach to firearms.

Option 2: Accept that the majority of Americans think gun ownership is more important than children's lives.

That's it.

It's a binary choice.

Your society is constantly opting for Option 2. Again and again.

What are you doing to change it?

Option 1 is not an easy thing to do - go look that process up.

Option 2 is your hyperbole opinion and not actual fact. It’s just your continued hatred at Americans.

Sometimes doing the right thing is not easy.

Why does your society lack the willpower to do the right thing?

What makes you think your direction will accomplish anything?

You think saying guns are banned will just stop mass shootings?

There are more guns in this country than people dude. You cannot compare the US to Australia, New Zealand, or UK’s laws due to economy of scale and also cultural importance. It isn’t the same and trying to assume they are continues to highlight your lack of comprehension of the actual problem.

[worcej]

You love guns = you love gunshot deaths.

Get over it.

You’re not a US citizen.

Get over it.

Thank fuck for that!

Good - we don’t need you anyways.

[Jamiet99uk]

My society has eliminated personal gun ownership.

We don't have any school shootings. Ever. At all.

These have not been replaced by school stabbings or school baseball-bat murders or anything else. We just don't have regular incidents where some mad fucker goes into a school and starts killing children.

In your society this happens multiple times each year.

The common denominator here is guns.

We don't have guns, so we don't have shootings.

You are obsessed with guns, and you have shootings.

If you can't accept there is a specifically American problem that arises specifically from America's permissive gun culture, then you are blind. You are in denial.

Guns ARE the problem.

[Jamiet99uk]

You're saying I live in a fantasy world.

I'm actually describing the society in which I do live, for real, every day.

Why is your society so murderous, so violent? Why are you willing to accept that?

Wouldn't you prefer to live in a society with no gun violence? If not, why not?

[worcej]

My society has eliminated personal gun ownership.

We don't have any school shootings. Ever. At all.

These have not been replaced by school stabbings or school baseball-bat murders or anything else. We just don't have regular incidents where some mad fucker goes into a school and starts killing children.

In your society this happens multiple times each year.

The common denominator here is guns.

We don't have guns, so we don't have shootings.

You are obsessed with guns, and you have shootings.

If you can't accept there is a specifically American problem that arises specifically from America's permissive gun culture, then you are blind. You are in denial.

Guns ARE the problem.

You will never get rid of the guns now in the US. Pandora’s box is opened and it cannot close. Thinking it will just magically get better saying we should get rid of them is not practical.

Offer a practical solution Jamie. Amending the constitution isn’t practicl - It’s fantasy.

You're saying I live in a fantasy world.

I'm actually describing the society in which I do live, for real, every day.

Why is your society so murderous, so violent? Why are you willing to accept that?

Wouldn't you prefer to live in a society with no gun violence? If not, why not?

It’s fantasy because you’re just saying to ‘do it’ in the US. You’re also trying to compare two significantly different cultures and populations thinking it’s just easy to do and it’s the ‘right’ thing.

[Jamiet99uk]

Okay.

I'll engage with this, Worcej, if you'll come with me.

Can you accept, however hard it might seem, that eliminating personal gun ownership would be a good thing? (For all the reasons I have already mentioned).

[worcej]

You're saying I live in a fantasy world.

I'm actually describing the society in which I do live, for real, every day.

Why is your society so murderous, so violent? Why are you willing to accept that?

Wouldn't you prefer to live in a society with no gun violence? If not, why not?

Why are we so murderous and violent is a great question. I have a few opinions based in the erosion of family values, the rising rate of children growing up in single family homes, income inequality in major cities, and our media focus on sensationalism.

I highly doubt the UK has no gun violence even in the current state of gun laws. A quick google search confirms this, but it is much lower if that was your intended point.

[worcej]

Okay.

I'll engage with this, Worcej, if you'll come with me.

Can you accept, however hard it might seem, that eliminating personal gun ownership would be a good thing? (For all the reasons I have already mentioned).

Could it be a good thing is really dependent on what your objective is. If your goal is to just prevent death, then it’s obviously going to be good with little contest otherwise.

Personally I think it is not good to eliminate private gun ownership because it eliminates the potential for a militia in times of government oppression. An example of this type of concern is on display with Hong Kong’s absorption into China and lack of ability for protesters to prevent the government from imposing their will with violence and arrests without cause.

The presence of private gun ownership ensures the people are truly in power. A look at the history of authoritarian regimes such as Communist China and Nazi Germany highlights the fact that disarming the population was necessary step to their establishment of control.

To TL;DR it - I do not think it is worth disarming the population to prevent gun deaths because the consequences of an authoritarian regime possibly taking power, similar to what Chaqa reflected early in this thread.

[Jamiet99uk]

Personally I think it is not good to eliminate private gun ownership because it eliminates the potential for a militia in times of government oppression.

I'm sorry, but first of all, didn't you just, a page ago, argue that a "well regulated milita" was not the main purpose of your Second Amendment?

Secondly, you seem to be saying that your desire to be able to engage the US Army in a gunfight is more important than preventing the deaths of large numbers of innocent children? A well-regulated militia, forged in the blood of 100 children a year, will keep the federal government in check? Okay...... that's not weird at all.

In any case, surely the US Army could crush you if they wanted to? They have tanks and cruise missiles and you've got a few handguns or whatever. Now who is engaging in fantasy?

[worcej]

Personally I think it is not good to eliminate private gun ownership because it eliminates the potential for a militia in times of government oppression.

I'm sorry, but first of all, didn't you just, a page ago, argue that a "well regulated milita" was not the main purpose of your Second Amendment?

Secondly, you seem to be saying that your desire to be able to engage the US Army in a gunfight is more important than preventing the deaths of large numbers of innocent children? A well-regulated militia, forged in the blood of 100 children a year, will keep the federal government in check? Okay...... that's not weird at all.

In any case, surely the US Army could crush you if they wanted to? They have tanks and cruise missiles and you've got a few handguns or whatever. Now who is engaging in fantasy?

In regards to the first point, the current legal interpretation of the second amendment exists that the two (gun ownership and being a well regulated militia) are not tied together. That was my point to you being daft earlier.

In common sense thinking, if the public doesn't have the weapons, how can they be a militia?

As for the second - you're continuing to assume that my belief in private gun ownership means I condone mass shootings, which is an extreme exaggeration and constant misinterpretation of what I have been consistently saying in this thread. At no point am I okay with mass shootings - stop trying to say I am. In truth, the only real thing we differentiate on is in our opinions on how to prevent them from occurring.

Am I making myself clear here? I'm one more stupid quip away from just ceasing to engage with you because it demonstrates you're just here to troll and don't actually give a fuck about the kids who died, you're just using them as an opportunity to be anti-American as usual.

And for the third point, I remind you that there are more guns in this country than people. Then think about how do you expect it would go down that people would go door to door and try to confiscate guns. I feel safe in saying this based solely on our culture, but I'd wager 10+ million US citizens would never give their guns up and would die to defend the rights to protect themselves. There has, and never will be, a successful wholesale gun confiscation like what occurred in Australia and New Zealand because of the concern of actually removing the guns from the unwilling.

[worcej]

And before you ask - I would happily die to protect my country in the event that it was invaded, like what is happening in Ukraine, and I'd be unwilling to give my guns up if the government came to collect them at my doorstep just because 'guns are bad, some British guy says so'.

[Randomizer]

Mental illness wasn't medically proven prior and he's dead so no follow up exam. Mental illness is the latest Republican excuse for no need for more gun legislation since that is already barring gun ownership.

So do you think it isn't mental illness that lead an 18 year old to go shoot up an elementary school?

Sure, the shooter wasn't clinically diagnosed, but don't try to normalize this behavior because it isn't normal to want to kill children, regardless of gun legislation.

And it isn't an excuse to bring up mental illness - it's fucking fact that we focus too much on the tool and not the person behind the tool. The Buffalo shooting is a great example of how stupid it is to regulate 'assault weapons' and think that these events are going to stop.

There are news reports that he was bullied at school and told he was going to be a mass shooter. So maybe this was a "rational" response at least in his mind from the environment he was raised in.

As for the Buffalo shooter, he chatted on line for months leading up to the shooting with like minded individuals. One of them was a former federal agent, but no mention of the agency and job. So someone could have stopped him earlier by alerting authorities if they wanted to do so,

It has been pointed out that the percentages of mentally ill people world wide are roughly the same, but you don't have mass shootings in this great a number in other countries. So gun regulations do make a difference.

[worcej]

Mental illness wasn't medically proven prior and he's dead so no follow up exam. Mental illness is the latest Republican excuse for no need for more gun legislation since that is already barring gun ownership.

So do you think it isn't mental illness that lead an 18 year old to go shoot up an elementary school?

Sure, the shooter wasn't clinically diagnosed, but don't try to normalize this behavior because it isn't normal to want to kill children, regardless of gun legislation.

And it isn't an excuse to bring up mental illness - it's fucking fact that we focus too much on the tool and not the person behind the tool. The Buffalo shooting is a great example of how stupid it is to regulate 'assault weapons' and think that these events are going to stop.

There are news reports that he was bullied at school and told he was going to be a mass shooter. So maybe this was a "rational" response at least in his mind from the environment he was raised in.

As for the Buffalo shooter, he chatted on line for months leading up to the shooting with like minded individuals. One of them was a former federal agent, but no mention of the agency and job. So someone could have stopped him earlier by alerting authorities if they wanted to do so,

It has been pointed out that the percentages of mentally ill people world wide are roughly the same, but you don't have mass shootings in this great a number in other countries. So gun regulations do make a difference.

See, you highlight a couple problems I have with our current systems that are beyond guns:

1. Bullying is not handled appropriately in schools. We give children too many warnings when it comes to this type of behavior instead of nipping it in the ass like it should be.
2. We don't have effective counseling inside most schools to help kids get resources to improve their mental health.
3. In the Buffalo case - the fact he was on the FBI watch list already and we did absolutely nothing is pathetic and shows how our existing programs for preventing violence needs to be heavily ramped up.

And I'll continue to reinforce that the issue with the US is that there are far too many guns now to just say 'just do gun reforms'. I fucked up the quote from the video I posted, so I'll just get it right this time:

It would take over 600 years to get rid of all the guns in the country if you were able to remove 1 gun/minute every day, non-stop.

This is why I don't focus on 'guns are bad m'kay' - it's a non-starter because it's at a point of impracticality to ever be accomplished.

[worcej]

Interesting timing, but not surprised to see this video coming out based on current media hype: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwhlIQdzI9Y

Video is 18 minutes, watch it if you want. Interesting discussion on the definition of 'mass shooting' and how the data is framed to paint a narrative. And to be fair, statistics being manipulated to paint a desired image for an author isn't something new...