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It's really not. Policy making with emotion instead of letting emotions settle makes for bad policy. You're actually conflating looking for and solving problems with responding emotionally immediately following a tragedy.
This isn't policy making based on emotion. We've seen this a hundred times already, both sides know exactly where they stand.
Part of the problem is that a lot of these liberal politicians literally want more kids to die so they can continue to pass guns laws. It's actually really sick.
The reason those of us on the left want gun laws is to prevent tragedies like this, so claiming we want the tragedies in order to pass the laws isn't just backwards, it's asinine.
And statistics do not prove your point, if they did we would not be having this conversation.
Honestly it's not effective at preventing mass casualty events. It may reduce mass casualty events by gun. There are still ways to commit mass casualty events and if people don't use a gun it can be even more effective.For example1. You could poison a bunch of food in places like 7-11s they put hotdogs on a roller easy to access, and...
Is this a joke?
No seriously, are you being serious?
Without a gun they would resort to the above.
And yet they don't do this anywhere in the world, ever. If you are being serious please drop this argument, it is the most cartoonishly stupid thing I have read on this site.
I get a feeling you already know this though and are a piece of shit who loves seeing kids die in mass shootings so you can push gun laws
Please stop projecting. There is no way any of this would make sense to you unless you are that callous and depraved in real life. Some of us actually believe the things we argue and actually care about other people.
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@Swagnarok
If it boiled down to it, you could kill a bunch of high schoolers piecemeal, one-on-one at night with a knife or something. Serial killer style. You could take out as many as most of these guys in America manage to do.
Then please enlighten us as to why every mass murderer uses a gun
Heck, we wouldn't even have to arm the teachers. Just make it legal for them to concealed-carry on school grounds. The likelihood of you knowing for sure that none of the personnel are armed is slim. If just one was, and if that one person intervened, that'd be it for you.
This completely ignores reality and common sense. Uvalde had armed guards on site who engaged with the shooter, that failed. Parkland had armed officers on duty, that failed as well. We have very few examples of mass shooters being stopped by the "good guy with a gun", and if the mass shooter is armed with an assault weapon they have a clear advantage.
It ignores common sense because the overwhelming majority of these shooters are suicidal, so to argue that the threat of being shot would deter them is absurd. This is not the solution you claim.
I'm not arguing it would not be better in that situation for a few teachers to be armed, I am saying it's a silly talking point to put forward as a solution for this because of the reasons I just mentioned and because it seeks to turn our schools into military bases instead of just looking at the situation and realizing that the guns are the problem.
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@dylancatlow
The argument would “prove too much”, and does imply an “infringement” under any reasonable interpretation of the English language
Does the government arresting someone for making a bomb threat constitute an infringement on ones right to free speech? YES or NO?
I agree that some of the republican talking points that come up after every mass shooting are bad, but they don’t even need them. They have enough as it is.
Can you provide just one? Cause I sure don't know of any...
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@coal
For you to act as if you have insight superior to mine into the meaning of the words I used to communicate is beneath idiocy.
I'm not telling you I understand your thoughts better than you do, I'm just showing you what your words amounted to. Perhaps you'd be better off explaining where I went wrong rather than just calling it idiocy. Like I said, coming off as an arrogant prick does nothing to further your argument.
Once you have learned what an argument from ignorance is, we may proceed. Perhaps.
I mixed up argument from ignorance with argument from incredulity. Wow bro, congratulations on the "gotcha".
Meanwhile, this was your example:
The gun control argument from ignorance is this: "If by implementing [policy (x)], we intend to achieve [result (a)], then [policy (x)] must necessarily achieve [result (a)]."
That's not even close. 'Intentions = Necessity' is no formal fallacy I have ever heard of, and it's certainly not "X is true because it has not been proven false". So perhaps you are the one who needs to read your own source.
Let me know if you have any intention in engaging in an actual, substantive dialog.
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@Greyparrot
This is NOT a nuanced statement that needs context.
It is if you care about reality, and basic English.
Again, your claim is that Biden was "Threatening to invade another major country over a small territory that has no Americans in it" [GP post 36]. This is not only what I've been responding to, it's what most of the political right has been portraying his comment to be. So let's look at how this actually works with a basic lesson in English.
Again, Biden answered in two parts; "yes", and "that's the commitment we made". So here we have part 1; the answer, and part 2; the explanation. Let's use an analogous example to see how this works.
Question: "hey Joe, game 7 is on tonight, are you still going to that Broadway play?"
Answer: "yes, I promised my wife I would take her"
Translation: "while I would love to watch game 7, I value my commitment to my wife more so I'm taking her to the play not because that's where I would rather be, but because I am not backing down from my promise"
So why does this matter? Because the explanation shows what the person's value in the matter is, and by extension, if the goal was to get the person to change their mind, shows what would be necessary to accomplish this. In this example, to get Joe to watch game 7, he would only need to be convinced that his wife didn't care about the play.
So let's apply this simple English back to the example. What is Joe Biden saying when he said he would defend Taiwan? Was he"threatening" China? No, the explanation, being the thing that shows his values, tells us that he was declaring the US stands by it's commitments. These are two very different statements.
And because honoring US commitments is his concern, the only thing needed to get him to change his mind is to show him that the US did not actually commit to defending Taiwan militarily.
Now I assume this would be the very next argument; that the US never said they would militarily defend Taiwan. Well, this is a bit vague, Im not sure how else the US would defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion if not militarily, but even in this worst case scenario for Biden, the most you can say is that Biden doesn't understand US foreign policy.
I could barely imagine a more blatantly, cartoonishly hypocritical argument you could make coming from a guy who thinks Donald Trump would make a better president. I mean do you seriously think Trump has ever even heard of the six assurances? Only the most depraved partisan hack would attempt to argue that.
And not for nothing, but the hypocrisy of complaining about Biden being tough on China is also amazingly entertaining.
So now this is the part where you respond by telling me where I am wrong. Did you not say what I quoted from post 36? Is there no difference between declaring that the US will stand by it's commitments vs "threatening China"? In English, does the explanation following an answer not tell you what the answer means?
Somehow I suspect you either won't read a word of this or will ignore every point I made. Bandwidth overload.
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@dylancatlow
When democrats are accused of "politicizing" some mass shooting event, generally what is being claimed is that a disproportionate focus was understood to be useful for encouraging a gun control agenda they would like to see put into effect anyway.
The gun control agenda they wanted 'passed anyway' was literally meant to prevent the type of tragedy they are reacting to. It's just plain silly to claim they are using mass shootings to pass gun control when mass shootings are the reason they want gun control.
You may, if you wish, choose to believe that republicans are crazy for not wanting to violate the Constitution over...
It's not a violation of the constitution to put in place reasonable restrictions on owning firearms any more then it's a violation of free speech to arrest someone for making a bomb threat. The problem I have with republicans is the matter of what they choose to see and what they ignore that lead to this absurd interpretation of the constitution.
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@Incel-chud
I actually was a democrat while you have never been a republican. This is why I know you are being disingenuous here.
What a ridiculous thing to say. The fact that you changed your mind on something has nothing to do with how we tell whether someone else is being genuine. We tell by looking at the arguments they make and evaluating them for consistency as well as whether they would know better.
The 9/11 example shows how inconsistent republicans are being, and it's not the only example I could give. Reacting to a tragedy by talking about what we can do to prevent such instances in the future isn't just common sense, it's what politicians get paid to do. Thoughts and prayers don't cut it.
The fact that these shootings keep happening is the other part of this. This isn't a new problem, by now we all have our reactions down to a routine. Claiming that "now is not the time" might pass the first time, but hundreds of shootings later and they still haven't found the time tells us all we need to know. The only way they come to the table is when the democrats and the public drag them to the table kicking and screaming. They don't want to talk about this, so "now is not the time" is as clearly BS as it gets.
it's a bullshit argument like democrats knows gun grabbing is bullshit as a defense against another mass shooting.
Please explain your logic here. I would love to understand how passing laws that make guns harder to get is a bullshit defense against the phenomenon of deranged individuals getting their hands on guns.
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@coal
I assume I've already lost you by now. Like, if you're even following along at this point . . . I'd be shocked.
Being an arrogant prick does not help get your point across.
I have not argued that any policy that fails to "completely" solve a purported crisis must be rejected.
Yes, you actually did.
I quoted your argument, all you did was knock down each proposal on the basis that there was a hole in it, then moved on to the fix to point out there there was a hole in the fix. Then you cartoonishly leaped to the end where we just admit that we want to seize everyone's guns, which would never work.
In fairness you never did actually state a conclusion here, but there is only one rational way to interpret this; that these proposals should not be implemented because they could not ultimately solve the problem.
If that's not what you meant to argue that's fine, but read you're own words, that's the implicit take away.
the examples I laid out above stand for the proposition that it is unequivocally wrong to simply assume that anything you come up with will actually achieve anything at all in the way of bringing about intended results.
Nothing about you're argument suggested that he was "simply assuming" anything. If that we're the case you would have challenged premises, instead you accepted them in a reductio ad absurdum.
Second, if your argument is that nothing "at all" will be accomplished by these proposals then it logically fails at the most basic level. Your counter point to the idea of background checks was to talk about how it wouldn't have stopped *this one* shooter, yet that's not the idea behind them. For background check to accomplish "anything at all" it would only need to stop one would-be shooter. You didn't even attempt to argue it wouldn't.
You did the same thing with your leap at the end that we stop all future gun sales, pointing out that there are millions of guns in circulation. Ok, but to accomplish "anything at all" the proposal would only need to stop one would-be shooter. You made no attempt to argue that every single wanna be shooter knows somewhere where they would be able to get a gun, which is what would have been needed to make that case.
So no, this was not your argument.
The gun control argument from ignorance is this: "If by implementing [policy (x)], we intend to achieve [result (a)], then [policy (x)] must necessarily achieve [result (a)].". . . even though there is no evidence whatsoever that [result (a)] actually will result from [policy (x)].
That's not what an argument from ignorance is.
Argument from ignorance is "I don't understand X, therefore Y". What you're portraying is a conflation of intentions and necessary results, as if they are one in the same. That's an absurd characterization of gun control arguments.
Gun control arguments follow basic logic. Things like "less guns = less gun violence". Or "making guns harder to get = less wanna be shooters will be able to attain one". They could be ultimately wrong, which I would love for any 2A advocate to explain, but there's no fallacy there unless you are strawmanning it.
And as far as the no evidence claim, that's just bullshit. I could pull out a treasure trove of statistics showing how laxed gun laws results in increased crime and shootings. But this is such a complex and convoluted issue that you could do the same thing and we'd be here for months sorting through it with undoubtedly no progress at the end, because with so many statistics to choose from we're both just going to gravitate towards the ones that affirm or worldviews. This is why I prefer to address this issue logically. Things like; explain how more guns = less gun violence. Stuff like that.
but to assume that the purported crisis itself even can be solved at the national level, or by any level of government. That is all such incalculably myopic stupidity.
Do you believe in laws?
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This exchange is the perfect example of why the republican party wins elections, and why this country is so fucked.
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@Greyparrot
Thank you for proving my point.
I just quoted the question and Biden's full answer. I then showed you the full context of Biden's answer and explained how all of it added up to the opposite of what you are claiming. Your response was to ignore every single inconvenient fact I just brought to your attention and repeat your original claim as if I did not address every single word you said.
This is why a civil war is looming. On one side we have people who care about reality. On the other we have people who are too lazy to think, dont have the bandwidth to process any kind of nuance, and care only about upholding their own delusions. There is no common ground here.
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Jesus f****** Christ we have 20 abortion posts now we're going to have 20 gun posts.
If that's what it takes for the gun nuts to recognize the absurdity of what they're defending.
BTW, since you blocked me why are you replying on my thread?
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@Greyparrot
Gaslighters like you are the reason why Civil war is looming
The reasons civil war is looming is because ignoramuses like yourself continue to get your news from sources whose entire business model depends on you not caring enough about reality to learn how to use Google, and being more than willing to be spoonfed whatever reality is most convenient to support you're tribalism. Below is the actual exchange:
Reporter: "You didn’t want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons, are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?”
Biden: "Yes, that’s the commitment we made”
So what commitment was he talking about??? Enter Google:
The Republican Party Platform of the 2016 Republican National Convention mentions the Six Assurances, stating, "We salute the people of Taiwan, with whom we share the values of democracy, human rights, a free market economy, and the rule of law. Our relationswill continue to be based upon the provisions of the Taiwan Relations Act, and we affirm the Six Assurances given to Taiwan in 1982 by President Reagan. We oppose any unilateral steps by either side to alter the status quo in the Taiwan Straits on the principle that all issues regarding the island’s future must be resolved peacefully, through dialogue, and be agreeable to the people of Taiwan. If China were to violate those principles, the United States, in accord with the Taiwan Relations Act, will help Taiwan defend itself. We praise efforts by the new government in Taipei to continue constructive relations across the Taiwan Strait and call on China to reciprocate.
So when Biden said yes and then reiterated that his answer was based on the commitment the US made to Taiwan, he was in effect saying "the US will uphold US Policy". That was his answer, no matter how inconvenient it is to your psychological need to find something about Biden to whine about.
And what's most remarkable is that the people who are now gaslighting you into thinking Biden is some war monger are the same people who were in full support of this to the point they put it in their party platform.
When are you going to realize that you are the sheep?
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Right. No one is loyal to types or models/ makes of cars.
Of course they are, that's the point.
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@Greyparrot
is Taiwan worth losing your Nation over? Because that's who you elected.
This is exactly why, despite being so absurd, the right wing is also effective. Facts and logic just don't matter.
Biden didn't wake up one day deciding he would threaten China. He was asked, unprovoked, 'would you uphold US policy?'. His answer was "yes". There's nothing controversial about that. There's nothing news worthy about that. And yet every right wing propaganda outlet had a field day with it for a week. It's like watching a bunch of monkeys laughing cause one of them smeared their shit over a windshield. So pathetic.
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@coal
Suppose we implement background checks across the board, in response to the demands of democrats to "close" the so called "gun show loophole" --- which is in fact no such thing. Then what? The most recent school shooting involved a passed background check, before the transaction in which the shooter purchased the gun was complete.Assuming I'm still playing in your ballpark, you next should argue that clearly the current background checks are inadequate because they allowed this person to purchase one. Ok, then what would adequate background checks look like? We could have that debate, but you'd get lost in the weeds because we both know you don't understand the technology involved.So maybe you drop the background checks issue, and you concede you really just want to make it harder to buy guns. Ok then, what about...
I'm very curious to know if there's a name for this fallacy.
It's a common tactic for 2A advocates to address each gun safety proposal one by one, and then because each individual proposal fails on it's own to completely solve the issue, argue no proposal is worth pursuing.
No one is claiming any individual fix will stop all mass shootings, we don't judge progress by perfection.
Outlawing guns or adding hoops to jump through makes them harder to get.
Making them harder to get decreases the odds that the next would-be crazed gunman gets his hands on them.
Decreased odds means there will be less crazed gunmen.
Less crazed gunmen means less mass shootings, and therefore less mass shooting victims.
We can argue all day about good guys with guns or whatever talking point is next, but this point is quite simple and not refutable.
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@Greyparrot
Reducing guns also means a possibility of Marxists taking over, which would cause far more deaths if they had control of all the guns.
Yes, I am well aware of the right wing paranoia that ensures every aspiring mass murderer is better equipped to accomplish the task than our soldiers in Vietnam.
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@Lemming
Any way someone can download the majority of it's content? Perhaps create a wayback machine type of site preserving it's debates? I figured there's got to be a few cyber gurus on here.
There was a lot of good stuff on there. Crazy that they would just delete it or store it away somewhere to never be seen again.
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@n8nrgim
is it possible for there to be a purpose for suffering? yes.
Wrong question. Whether it's possible is irrelevant.
Is suffering necessary for it's supposed good purpose to be fulfilled? Answer: Not if you're an all powerful god.
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@Lemming
So incredibly sad, but it's about time someone put it out of it's misery.
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@3RU7AL
The reasons for this I think are common sense. If we had the ability to single out the good guys and only give them guns, then of course this would be a good thing. But there's no way to know who is a good guy, so arming every good guy necessarily results in arming bad guys as well. Like I've said plenty of times already, nearly every mass shooter is a law abiding citizen until they fire the first bullet.
Moreover, the whole idea of needing a good guy with a gun presumes the bad guy are also going to get them. If there are less guns because guns are harder to get, then statistically, there will be less armed bad guys. That's common sense.
Another reason for this is also quite simple; if you know the other guy has a gun, you are more likely to reach for yours. The other guy being armed puts you're life in danger, making you defensive. Turns out fearing for one's own life is not a great de-escalator, just ask the police.
The last part of it is basic math. There's about 400 million guns in the US, so let's perform the following excercise; count from 400M down to zero. At each number list the number of Americans who will likely be killed by guns based on the total number of guns in the country. Take note at how the lower the number of guns gets, the lower the death toll gets until you get to zero guns, where, logically, you can only have zero gun deaths.
This is why I ask whether people believe more guns = less gun violence. I'd love to know how their math works.
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@ILikePie5
Mass shootings are not the only way people are killed by guns, they're just the event that capture everyone's attention.
The idea of arming everyone might work to prevent large body counts resulting from a crazed gunman opening fire on a crowd, but that also means everyone carries a firearm in every other instance where a firearm might do a lot more damage then good.
So I ask, do you believe more guns = less gun violence? It's a simple question no matter how complicated you try and make it. You can deflect by pointing to defensive gun usages but the only reason the vast majority of people need a gun to defend themselves is because the aggressor has a gun, so this argument is pretty much worthless.
I'm not advocating for taking away everyone's guns as the political right loves to cartoonishly portray, there's a balance to everything. But imagine for one second a society with no guns at all except in the hands of law enforcement. Do you seriously believe that this society would be less safe then what you are proposing?
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@TheMorningsStar
Anyone that wants a gun will soon be able to just print one, and no laws (unless you create massive privacy violations) will be able to stop this.
The Patriot Act created massive privacy violations, yet pretty much all of the same people railing about 'big government having no right to take our guns' had no problem with it. Privacy and safety will always be a tug of war, it's just a question of what the issue is at hand than determines what side of it you land on. So in this case, because you value guns, you oppose any legislation that could severely hamper one's ability to make them at home, and because of your position along with everyone else who shares your basic value here, no meaningful legislation is plausible.
It's not an argument to claim gun printing cannot be stopped (because you won't let it be stopped). That's just a statement of perceived power.
I could go on and on, but it is pretty much pointless. I put in the effort to make this comment and guess what, no one that is an advocate for gun control/bans here will really give a shit anyways. Sure, some people that are on my side might give me that 'thumbs up' or even expand on the point, but the effort here is wasted...
If your metric for whether your time on this site is wasted is whether other people change their mind, then you are the very problem you take issue with. Openmindedness is about the will to look deeply at your own position and question whether it is valid, yet your expectation is that everyone else change their minds to agree with you and if they don't then that is proof in and of itself that they are dishonest or willingly ignorant. That's not openmindedness, that's arrogance.
I have no expectation that anyone else here will change their mind after reading my arguments, yet I engage anyway. That's because I'm not here for anyone else, I'm here for me. If you are any different from those you take issue with you'd be able to say the same.
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@ILikePie5
Honestly, MAD would prevent mass shootings. If everyone had a gun, even the lunatics will realize that by the time they pull out their gun, 10 other people will have theirs ready to go as well. Waste of time really at that point. Just a thought
So your position is; 'more guns = less gun violence'. Is that correct?
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@Greyparrot
I'm just surprised doubleR accepts the premise that the NRA can't be wrong about universal concealed carry.
What a stupid comment. You know damn well that I never said nor implied anything like this. As usual, you are not here for serious conversation but rather to play games and troll.
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@Dr.Franklin
As for Lefraud James, I personally think he can recover from this. A superteam on paper that can't even reach the playoffs? Yeah, he is finished. The guy can't win a ring without the bubble or Ray Allen. Total fraud in my book
He lead 3 different teams to NBA championships. When he was in Cleveland the Cavs had the best record in the NBA. When he left they had the worst record in the NBA. Then he returned and they won a title.
He's not Jordan, but to call him a fraud is crazy.
As for this "super team", we've seen this before. The rockets had Olajuwan, Pippen, and Barkly. The Lakers had Shaq, Malone, Payton, and Kobe. No titles for either of them. The problem is that they're superteams on paper only, and almost always made up of players well past the peak of their careers. This isn't really anything new.
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Never ceases to amaze me how right wingers think teachers cannot be trusted to teach, but should be trusted to arm themselves and stop mass shooters.
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@Greyparrot
Disarm the armed security details on politicians, reduce their personal gun usage and then we can go from there.Rules for thee and not for me shouldn't be the bread and butter of the leftists.
Do you support legislation that grants citizens the right to handcuff and arrest police officers on the spot, along with charges filed against any officer who resists?
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@Greyparrot
Outlawing guns while having no controls in place to stop guns from coming in is worthless.How do you know this? We have never tried universally permitted conceal carry laws in the country yet. Maybe the NRA is wrong about universal concealed carry?Can you accept the fact that the NRA could be wrong?
How do I know this? What?
It's basic common sense, but doesn't even look like you were responding to what you quoted. In fact none of you're post addresses anything I said, which I guess is not surprising.
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@Outplayz
Like ban AR's is like saying ban Honda's bc most accidents involve a Honda.
This is a self defeating argument. If all guns were the same them there is no reason gun advocates would be so passionate about buying particular ones. An assault weapons ban would therefore not impact them at all.
But of course we know that's false. A product designed to me more powerful and more efficient will be better at achieving the goal. And since the entire point of a gun, the thing it is literally designed to do, is kill people... Forcing mass shooters to settle for something less effective will certainly save lives.
Quite literally having everyone armed is probably the one solution that would put the biggest dent into this problem. I mean, we've never done it so i'm not sure how it will play out... will bar fight deaths outweigh any other positive?
Arming every single individual in the country is not something we just try to see what happens. That's insane.
You're literally arguing that the solution to a country plagued with gun violence is to add more guns. This is hardly any different than arguing that the solution to the opiod crisis is to increase the flow of opioids.
The idea that a good guy with guns is the answer to mass shootings is just wrong. Common sense alone refutes this. It doesn't take much of an imagination to recognize the chaos that would ensue if a mass shooter went on a rampage in a room full of guns - everyone would pull out their guns and no one would know who the shooter is. And this isn't just speculative, there have been a number of examples of this. In Tuscon for example when Gabby Giffords was shot there was a good guy with a gun on the scene and he almost shot one of the individuals who wrestled the shooter down and took his gun.
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@Greyparrot
So why create these dangerous gun free zones in a city?Don't you think removing these dangerous gun-free zones would be a good idea until you can come up with a plan to ban all guns on the planet?
For the same reason the NRA bans guns from it's own convention; removing guns removes the possibility of someone shooting the place up. This is basic common sense.
Outlawing guns while having no controls in place to stop guns from coming in is worthless, especially the the neighboring county is swimming in them. Cities cannot stop guns from crossing it's borders, only countries can do that.
Do you understand this point? Yes or No?
Still, I support at least some measures because it's about more then just stopping mass shootings. If you have to risk jail time to carry a gun you are going to be less likely to carry a gun, making it less likely that you would end up using it. This idea that criminals don't follow our laws is an absurd argument, the world is not so cartoonishly simple. Everything is about risk vs reward.
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@thett3
But there are all kinds of tragedies that happen just because someone uses something they don't "need"...nobody "needs" a swimming pool, a motorcycle, a classic car with no seatbelts or airbags, sugary foods, cigarettes etc...
If guns only killed the person pulling the trigger then this would be a valid comparison, but it's the opposite. None of these can be used as a weapon of mass murder, except the classic car I guess but that's true of every car.
obviously it is a problem when clear headcases who everyone knows are the type to do a mass shooting can just buy a high powered rifle and does exactly that, but you also have to admit that millions of people responsibly enjoy owning and using these guns.
Of course, but that's not relavant. Banning anything means that those who were able to handle themselves responsibly also have to pay the price, but we don't let that stop us when there is a greater good to come out of it. This is exactly the problem with guns, we treat them differently than we treat anything else.
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@Outplayz
I'm not a republican and i'm more so progressive.. i don't think this is absurd. Actually, if you think about it, there is one thing in the gun debate we haven't tried, the "good guy with a gun" hypothesis.
I’m not arguing that it wouldn’t be better in a mass shooting situation for the teachers to be armed, I’m arguing that to put this forward as the solution is absurd. This idea, along with the many other proposals that tend to be paired with it (armed police in every corner, one door entry/exit, etc) is essentially to turn our schools into military bases.
I call this absurd because it's kind of like seeing a wave of car accident deaths all involving speeding vehicles, and then putting forward as the solution; tire reform. I mean sure, better tires might make things a little better but clearly the problem is people speeding.
I talk about the way every other nation see's us because it really is amazing to take a step back and look at where we are when this is where our gravitate towards as the solution.
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@ILikePie5
You’re arguing for something that isn’t feasible
Which is what exactly?
nor is it in spirit of the Constitution
Please explain what “well regulated” means.
Your solution takes guns away from lawful citizens.
And our solution to drugs takes crack away from responsible crack doers. That’s how banning anything works.
Nearly every mass shooter was a law abiding citizen till they fired the first bullet. That is in fact the case with most gun homicides. This is a terrible reason to support the proliferation of a product literally designed to kill people.
And again, how are you going to regulate private sales of guns. We already saw what happened during Prohibition.
See post 39
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@Greyparrot
Laws banning guns in one city does not work in a country where guns are readily available.So why create these dangerous gun free zones?
Do you understand the difference between a city and a country?
Do you think you can purchase a truckload of guns in Mexico and drive it into the US without issue?Of course, especially under the current President of law enforcement.
Ah ok, so you’re just being stupid, presumably because you have no valid response. Got it.
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@Greyparrot
So why create these dangerous gun-free zones?
Let’s try this again.
Laws banning guns in one city does not work in a country where guns are readily available.
Is that clearer? Do you think you can purchase a truckload of guns in Mexico and drive it into the US without issue?
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@ILikePie5
There’s a lot of bias. You hear of all the instances where guns committed mass shootings, but you never hear of those that stopped mass shootings. That’s the problem — the media.
Agreed, the media is the problem. Once upon a time, like back in the Walter Cronkite days, all reporters were held to basic journalistic standards. Then one day Rupert Murdoch funded a news network who’s explicitly stated mission was to “put the GOP on television”, a network who to this day rails against every other news network as fake, and propaganda while their own prime time hosts text strategy with the White House, appear on stage with their party’s president, and where their senate candidates stand on stage thanking them for the help they gave them in their primaries.
It is in this media environment where, suddenly, guns have become fetishized while the most basic of common sense arguments are ignored in favor of ridiculous talking points uttered by this very network and the countless copy cat networks it inspired.
You’re certainly right. Take a step back and look at the GOP’s position on this issue;
‘The answer to less gun violence is more guns’. Only bias could explain that.
‘Laws don’t work to stop criminals’. Only bias could explain that.
‘The problem with school shootings are the doors’. Only bias could explain that.
Once again, only in America is this a problem. Meanwhile every developed nation on earth shares every factor we do except one; we’re flooded with guns. This isn’t complicated, unless you want it to be.
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@Greyparrot
We already know how banning guns has turned out for the past 50 years in major cities. Gun-free zones invite more crime and murderers.
Last time I checked, there was nothing to stop anyone from driving over to the county next door where guns are worshipped, purchasing a gun and driving it right into any major city in the US.
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@thett3
The massive population size of the US obscures things somewhat.
The last statistic I saw on that was that the US accounts for 31% of the world’s mass shootings, despite accounting for 5% of the world’s population. I’d Google it but am not interested in a Google battle since there are countless sources with “studies” to affirm either position. What is definitive here is that this is not a problem anywhere else in the eyes of their own citizens. The rest of the world looks at us like we’re crazy, so that right there says it all. Or at least it should.
But in the rest of my post I did agree that there are some minor roadblocks we could put in that I think would deter a surprising number of these events, I just don’t support banning so called “assault rifles.”
We’re not that far apart, but it’s a debate site so how boring would it be to focus on our agreements?
I never understood the opposition to an assault weapons. Of course we can cherry pick little things wrong with the bill, that’s a reason to amend it, not get rid of it.
If guns are about self defense, no one needs an AR15. If guns are about sport, then I would love to see someone explain to the parents of the Uvalde victims that our love of sport is more important than their child’s life.
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@TheMorningsStar
You are a genius! Let's make it so that the law abiding citizens don't have guns!
Nearly every mass shooter was a law abiding citizen before they fired the first bullet.
Wait... if a criminal already doesn't give a damn about the law and will go around shooting people... Gasp! Maybe they won't actually care about the laws around how to acquire guns either! Impossible!
Ah yes, the tired “criminals don’t follow our laws” argument.
No one is proposing we pass laws telling criminals they are not allowed to be criminals. Gun safety law proposals target those who distribute guns, which last I checked qualify under your framing here as “law abiding citizens”.
Locked doors get picked all the time, and alarms get bypassed. Yet somehow I doubt you would make the same argument; that the possibility of a safety measure not working means we abandon any attempt to improve safety. Somehow I suspect you will still lock your doors when you go to sleep.
And besides, the majority of these are deranged individuals who don’t have any meaningful relationships in their lives. Laws making guns harder to get especially targets these types of individuals because acquiring guns illegally means you have to know people, and those people need to know you’re legit. That wouldn’t happen with most of them if we had actual laws designed to stop them.
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@thett3
Well it is about mental health because mentally healthy people don’t do this.
Is the US the only nation on earth with mentally unwell citizens? If not, then please explain, since this is the problem, why these shootings only happen here.
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Watching republicans scramble to try and make sense of their positions on gun laws over the past few days has been both head sctratching and infuriating. I just wanted to list some of the played out classics along with a response, can we all agree that these need to be retired ASAP?
Democrats are trying to politicize this tragedy
The entire point of government is to be the means by which society solves its problems. Mass shootings in America is a problem. Democrats are not politicizing this, this is a political issue.
Now is not the time to talk about gun laws
Easily the most disingenuous of them all. If not in the aftermath of a mass shooting, the very thing gun control laws are mostly aimed at deterring, then when the hell is the right time to talk about this? When have republicans ever came out and said “ok, let’s talk about this issue now”. Never happened.
Second, I do not recall anyone on September 12th 2001 saying not was not the time to talk about a response to the terrorist attacks. They know this is ridiculous.
Third, every single republicans making this argument has no problem talking about illegal immigration every time an illegal immigrant kills someone. Imagine if this shooter was illegal how the political right would be losing their mind talking about the border and how democrats are responsible for this.
The problem is mental health
Setting aside the notion that there is only one problem here to address as if we could not try multiple solutions at once, the US does not have a mental health issue significantly worse than any other developed nation. We do have more guns however. Way more.
Also, has any republican ever put forward a mental health bill aimed at addressing gun violence? I haven’t seen it.
But it’s even worse then that, because every time democrats propose making healthcare of any kind more accessible republicans are against it, so this might actually be the most disingenuous.
We should be arming teachers
While nothing technically wrong with this, it’s clearly the most absurd. We have already seen countless examples where security and police officers fail to properly engage mass shooters, but we expect teachers are going to get the job done?
This is the talking point which shows just how insane the Republican Party is. Rather than to address the fact that any would-be mass shooter can easily get their hands on military grade weaponry, they would rather turn our schools into military bases. This is where the GOP’s priorities are right now. It’s absolutely sick.
Retire these talking points.
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@Polytheist-Witch
BTW, if you’re going to respond to me what’s the point of blocking me?
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Then you should certainly pursue that.
The correct answer was; “it’s wrong to lump all theists together as if they all support raping little boys”.
But I get it, cognitive dissonance is a pain in the neck.
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I don’t think any theists should be allowed on this site because they’re all morons and they all support pastors rapping little boys. Some might pretend they’re not ok with this, but really it’s all of them.
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@Tradesecret
True not all atheists think that way.
Then you’re not talking about atheism.
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@Greyparrot
We can only pray Xi Xin Ping is laughing off the threat to launch American nukes over Taiwan.
Let me guess… suddenly, you have a problem with a president threatening nuclear war?
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@Greyparrot
Trump was literally laughed at on the world stage, and was the subject of late night satire globally his entire presidency, but sure, Biden is the one they are laughing at.
The ability to make up a preferable reality is quite impressive.
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@Deb-8-a-bull
God either.( A ) EXISTS.OR( B ) DOES NOT EXIST.Thats A or BOne of them HAS TO BE CORRECT.Thats .BOr AA . RealOrB. Not real.OneOrrrrrrTwoWhat did ya pick?You prob went with ( C ) hey?
If the defendant is either guilty of committing the crime or innocent of having committed the crime, why is there a “not guilty” verdict?
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@Tradesecret
I find it frustrating that atheists - choose not to give a reason
If an atheist makes a claim then that atheist has a burden to prove their claim. But since atheism isn’t a claim, there is no reason atheists would carry such a burden to give a reason for anything other than why your claim do not have any merit, which they do, all the time.
I also suspect that it's really a copout. Most secular atheists I know - hold almost identical worldviews. Yes, there are differences. But so what? That is the case with every religion and worldview.
The commonality amongst all theists is that they believe in a god. Anything beyond that might fit into theism, but is not itself theism. So it would be just as egregious for atheists to attack theism for things that not all theists accept as it is the other way around.
The differences matter, because group labels are defined by their commonality. It would be silly for me to attack the pro life position because of their opposition to contraception, while disregarding the fact that opposing contraception has nothing to do with the pro life position and many pro lifers are even ok with it.
This is what you are doing with regards to atheism. If you have a problem with the worldview most atheists seem to hold then why not start a thread on addressing your disagreements there? Why not ask atheists to tell you what they believe and why do you can just knock down their claims?
I don't agree we can compare it to what woman want. That's a false dichotomy.
The point is that there is nothing all women want because the only thing that makes one a woman is however you are defining a woman (vagina, chromosomes, whatever). So to attack women for wanting thing X is wrong because you are attacking those women who do not want X as well. That is perfectly analogous to atheism because there is nothing all atheists believe. There is one thing all theists believe though, because that is how the word is defined.
Atheism is apparently some kind of response to theism, yet all theists see their religion as a worldview.
That’s part of the problem. Theism isn’t a worldview, your religion is. So an atheist would be just as wrong to conclude that they defeated theism by defeating the claims of your religion as any theist is attacking atheism because of some perceived defeat of an atheist’s worldview.
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