Yet another needless mass shooting

[Condescension]

Alcohol kills people, and that's just for fun. Cars kill people, that's just for convenience. Fast food kills people, we're not banning that. Something killing people is not sufficient justification for getting rid of it.

I already said other solutions for dealing with mass murders.

[Condescension]

As fair as entertainment goes, guns are far less deadly than many alternatives.

[Randomizer]

Armed teacher fires weapon, but at least no one was injured:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/28/us/georg ... index.html

Let's hear it for Trump's plan in action. How much training is enough?

[Condescension]

Pretty hilarious story. I can't believe anyone actually believes in arming teachers. How dystopian is that?

[Jamiet99uk]

Donald Trump believes in it.
ND believes in it.

[flash2015]

Worcej wasn't saying that there should be no regulations on guns. He was saying that guns being fun is a good reason not to ban them. You are not responding in good faith to his point.

Just because it is "fun" doesn't justify the damage they causes. Fireworks are also a lot of fun (I had a lot of fun with them when I was a kid)...but they are banned at least where I live now because they cause too many injuries. The "fun" part was just not a good enough justification for the costs involved in easy availability.

Again it is stupid to compare guns to cars because cars are an essential part of US society. In many places in the US you could not properly function without owning a car. We have made the tradeoffs between utility and freedom. And with improvements in technology and further regulation in a couple of decades car related fatalities will likely be in the tens or hundreds instead of the tens of thousands. Where is that improvement going to come with guns?

As I mentioned above, we tried banning alcohol/drugs. It didn't work! That is why we aren't banning them. But we know from many other countries that restricting guns does reduce homicides...so it is reasonable and rational to have the same discussion here.

[Ogion]

flash, the number of countries that have severely limited access to guns is extremely long: pretty much every rich country but the US at this point.

So, yes, banning is entirely feasible. The alcohol anology just shows how little you understand about gun control policy. you're just exposing your ignorance, so I would advise you to drop that point.

[Jamiet99uk]

There's no need to be rude, Ogion. He's saying that banning different things requires different measures and may result in differing levels of compliance.

The real problem with a gun ban, which would need to be overcome, is how deeply rooted guns are in American culture. America needs to find a way to become a little more mature about this and realise it's no longer a land of cowboys and injuns.

A civilised society does not need, and indeed should not tolerate, the proliferation of deadly weaponry, designed to kill and maim, among the populace.

[CroakandDagger]

A docile population does not need deadly weaponry, and indeed possession of such should not be tolerated in any society that aspires to be authoritarian - for if the average citizen has access to proliferated tools of war designed to kill and maim then it would be easier for them to revolt when the government's ambitions of tyranny are finally realised.

[ishirkmywork]

suck
suck your teenage thumb
toilet trained and dumb
when the power runs out
we'll just hum

basically every pro-gun argument here pushes aside statistics and data in favor of feelings and anecdotes. a sad descriptions of our political times.

[ishirkmywork]

hey, that was my first new forum post! i must have too much free time again.

[Jamiet99uk]

A docile population does not need deadly weaponry, and indeed possession of such should not be tolerated in any society that aspires to be authoritarian - for if the average citizen has access to proliferated tools of war designed to kill and maim then it would be easier for them to revolt when the government's ambitions of tyranny are finally realised.

You oppose the concept of government, I assume? There should be no state?

[Octavious]

I think you're failing to recognize the assumptions of the pro-gun debate, Jamie. At its heart it's based in the philosophy of Plato, so about as fundamental as Western civilization gets. Plato discusses, in Republic, the transition of states from Aristocracy through Democracy and on to Tyranny as the natural order of things. Whereas you and I may see the natural flow being towards increasingly inclusive democracy, many of the pro-gun people believe that tyranny is inevitable unless actively resisted. If you start from such an assumption, the belief that the people must be given the tools to resist such a progression makes a lot more sense.

[Tugster]

I think we should make cars illegal, cars accidents kill thousands. And sugar too, sugar is very dangerous, way more dangerous than cars or guns, it kills tens of thousands to diabetes, heart disease. And don't forget bathrooms, lots of people fall and die in their own bathrooms, we should make bathrooms illegal too.

[MattyofG]

All our cars will become illegal. You think once the self-driving stuff gets good people are gonna let you take your old Chevy out on the road?

As soon as the AI-driving cars are better than people at driving, people aren't gonna be allowed to drive anymore.

[thamrick]

I'm so tired of the contrarian whataboutism arguments.

[Octavious]

When was it that the non-word of "whataboutism" was introduced to attack precedent and logical consistency? I don't recall hearing it before a year or two ago.

[flash2015]

flash, the number of countries that have severely limited access to guns is extremely long: pretty much every rich country but the US at this point.

So, yes, banning is entirely feasible. The alcohol anology just shows how little you understand about gun control policy. you're just exposing your ignorance, so I would advise you to drop that point.

I don't understand - can you expand on your alcohol argument and share with us your glorious wisdom? BTW, it isn't my alcohol analogy. Technically this isn't even an analogy - there is no comparison to something about alcohol to explain something about guns. I am just responding to an argument previously made (i.e. "look over there!" - ban alcohol/drugs before we can have a discussion about guns).

[thamrick]

When was it that the non-word of "whataboutism" was introduced to attack precedent and logical consistency? I don't recall hearing it before a year or two ago.

A quick google search shows it's origins to be in the 1990's. That was more just for my curiosity.

Do you really want to argue that the discussion to ban guns is analogous to discussions of banning cars/alcohol/drugs/sugar/bathrooms/whatever else has been said itt? The only one I'd entertain is the discussion of alcohol, and it's still not a good analogy, nor really even relevant.

Even if you did, which I'm sure is not the point of why these issues were brought up, it doesn't detract from the gun debate. It simply deflects.

[Condescension]

It's not really whataboutism since that's more about political behavior. It's an argument to absurdity. As Octavious said, it's about logical consistency. Logic is universal, and if we took the logic people used to discuss guns and applied it to other parts of life it clearly falls apart. The argument "it kills people therefore it should be banned" is incomplete and requires further argumentation and nuance, because the argument in that form can be applied to basically anything. What makes guns *distinct* from these examples?

There are absolutely good arguments in favor of banning guns. They do not exist in the popular discourse because the popular discourse just stops at "waaah guns kill people!"