@enoch, you seem to be under the impression that you or I or anyone else has some kind of right to say whatever the fuck we feel like saying on the sift.

We don't. This isn't some public forum, it's a privately run website and @dag or @lucky760 have the right to decide if they don't want @gorillaman calling Obama a "nigger prince".

The sad thing is, I mostly agree with his post, but that one stupid epithet undermined his whole point and made him look like an ignorant fool.

And yeah, I'll fucking say it, calling Obama a "nigger" offends me, and not in some sensitive snowflake way. It should fucking offend you too, and frankly, I have no problem whatsoever with either dag (in his Siftler guise) or us as a community deciding that that's not cool and we don't want it here.

Free speech is not absolute, and anyone who thinks it is is deluding themselves. There are well-documented limits to free speech (yelling "fire" in a public theatre, joking about bombs at airports). Once you accept that something is not absolute, you then simply have to argue the degree to which limits apply (same as gun control, if you accept that civilians can't have nukes, then you're already in favour of gun control, you're just arguing over the extent).

Video omits something important :

NRA didn't need to be anti-gun-control prior to the 60's.

You used to be able to mail order machine guns shipped straight to your house... without any background anything.

It's the creation of affective (spelled with an 'a' on purpose) gun control laws at the federal level that gave the NRA a cause - hence they took up the cause.

The NRA is, essentially, a reactionary entity (in its current form).

-scheherazade

Very good points.

I agree that good firearm regulations should make it harder for suicidal people to get a weapon. Also, I agree that the unanticipated drop in firearm suicides is definite good outcome in Australia.

...But I'm still hesitant to use suicide rates as any sort of primary motivation for new gun control in the US. Statistically tracked, sure. But to me there is a very big difference between using a gun for violent crime against others, and a suicidal person using a gun to off themselves. A difference that needs to be clearly delineated in any statistics shown to promote (or disparage) any sort of gun control legislation.

One other thing, just so people don't think I am an NRA gun nut supporter, I personally wouldn't care if they made anyone who wanted to even own a gun go through the above steps to be allowed to do it. The Texas ones anyway, the may carry states allow the government or police to just say "screw you" and that isn't fair gun control.

Nonsense! If gun ownership is low, then obviously gun crime will be low too, right? Oh wait, D.C. has some of the lowest gun ownership rates in the country yet it somehow has the highest (by far) gun crime rates. Weird... it's almost as if criminals don't care about gun control and will obtain guns illegally!

@newtboy
@ChaosEngine

It's incredibly chilling to me that your comments got any upvotes at all. Yeah, I get it's a joke. But in the current political climate where people (i.e. Trump and his frighteningly large number of supporters) are actually talking about walling off an entire nation to keep out "undesirables" and killing the relatives of terrorists in some misguided attempt at revenge, it's a joke in poor taste.

Furthermore the anger behind the joke (and there is clearly anger since you guys are joking about sterilizing and killing people) is misguided as well--you put a camera in front of any political supporter and try to goad them into saying something that is clearly in direct opposition to what their party's line is and you're going to get a bullshit answer, regardless of whether you're interviewing a Democratic or Republican.

On that note, it would be interesting to see this same bit at the DNC with the reporter asking questions about gun control and the NRA--I'm sure you'd get some great clips of people being uninformed and stubbornly resistant to facts as well. And make no mistake-- what we're seeing here are the "best of" clips that some editor picked out to show Republicans in the worst possible light. I would really love to see the raw footage and see how the people they chose not to show on TV reacted during the interviews.

*promote Jim is a funny motherf#$ker

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Jim-Jefferies-on-gun-control

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Jim-Jeffries-on-God-Religion

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Thursday, July 7th, 2016 12:38pm PDT - promote requested by ChaosEngine.

Jim Jefferies on gun control has been added as a related post - related requested by ChaosEngine.

Jim Jeffries on God/Religion has been added as a related post - related requested by ChaosEngine.

Nothing is going to get done in Congress because the animosity between the two parties at this point in Congress is at Defcon 1. Bipartisanship is completely DOA. Both sides are just looking to criticize the other while crafting the narrative that their side is the one that knows what's best for the American people.

I think what you're going to see more of are things like what's happening in Hawaii. State representatives are going to realize the untapped voter potential that's out there by crafting gun laws before Congress does. In fact, probably the best solution to this problem right now is for States to work with each other and standardize all disparate gun laws across the U.S.

The real question here is how the Supreme Court is going to view these state laws when they (inevitably) get challenged on 2nd Amendment grounds. Scalia is gone now, so I honestly don't know how the Court will decide. But if you look at how gay marriage was essentially legalized in the U.S. state-by-state, I think you can see a road-map to how gun control laws could follow a similar path.

What's missing right now is an advocacy group that cares as much about this issue as the NRA does about "gun rights." It's easier to get people behind the legalization of gay marriage because it's a human rights issue and at the end of the day most people have a relative or friend (or several of each) who is affected. Sadly, it may take a day to come when everyone has a relative or friend who has suffered from gun violence to get the same kind of groundswell necessary to nudge things meaningfully forward.

That cheered me....with the whole gun control issue all over the sift. This was refreshing.

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Very nearly. There was a token cross-over vote here and there, but pretty much straight partisanship. Super.

It's been a while since I posted. I also rarely spew politics on the Internet anymore, but the arguments in the video are just weak.

Most gun control arguments amount to a bunch of cherry picked statistics, and then a complaint about other cherry picked statistics supporting the other argument. For example, you can't cherry pick the Chicago argument, that's just showing a lack of nuance, but let's go ahead and cherry pick the Australia and CDC arguments.

There was a ban on assault rifle sales in the US. Violent crime has dropped since it was repealed. How's that for a cherry picked argument?

Chaos's reasoning is aligned with my own. The issue is cultural, not legislative.

I'm also particularly peeved about the defense of a free state argument. I believe in the second amendment for this reason. You can't hold a block of houses with f16s. You do it with boots on the ground worn by soldiers bearing arms. To me, the second amendment is one of the last remaining checks on executive authority in this country. Tell the black panthers that bearing arms did nothing to protect them against abuses of state. Any policy maker considering a radical and unpopular extension of executive authority (ahem, Trump) needs to consider the logistical ramifications of an armed populace, wielding millions of firearms, the locations of which are unknown. That's a deterrent, plain and simple. Spend all you want on the military. The military is made up of people just as hesitant to wage war against their own countrymen as you or I. Especially so if there is a real possibility they are putting themselves at considerable risk in the process.

You can. That's actually the right way to do it. In the strictest sense, the only legal way to enact gun control.

(Although, IMO, a short sighted change... given millennia of repeating human history to show us what the future eventually holds.)

-scheherazade