upvote for "nation of a short attention span".

Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I wish mental health care were as easy to get as, say, a gun.

The thing I heard was it took like 60 days for him to get tons of guns and 6,000 rounds of ammo. Look I'm not a big anti gun guy but it seems like if someone can do this, suddenly and call it a basic right there's something a bit wrong with that system. Looking at the system in a reasonable way when results like the ones even despite this one are occurring is a smart way to go about it.

Instead, I turn on any news channel and it's the most extreme people who want to ban all guns to the others who are now buying guns and ammo like crazy worried that they'll have to give them up. This is not a very intelligent way to have a conversation.

Speaking of this I'm going to see Batman tonight with a few of my friends, a couple of whom loves guns and has almost 25 of them. He's always been responsible and reasonable, I've barely even seen a gun of his when I go to his house to visit. I'll bring this up with him and I know he won't react like a nutcase waving the 2nd Amendment in my face. I cannot believe that we are the only two rational people on different sides of an issue.

*controversy

Adding video to channels (Controversy) - requested by MrFisk.

Just a no-brainer to anyone outside of the US.

7 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

If this guy was amassing weaponry for two months, then this wasn't a case of him just snapping and being able to kill people because he had point-and-click weapons close at hand. He was planning it. If guns were illegal, he still would have found a way to kill a bunch of people.

>> ^Trancecoach:

Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I wish mental health care were as easy to get as, say, a gun.


Mental health care is available to anyone with money.

Guns are available to anyone with money.

Wow, I have just lost respect for Bill Moyers. He has stooped to flat out lying and playing a fear mongering video that is full of BS. Right at 1 minute he says "one of the guns used was an AK-47 type assault weapon that was banned in 1994." This is a flat out lie. The so called "assault weapon ban" did not actually ban any weapons, it only banned cosmetic features on semi automatic replicas, or more accurately it limited a gun to having no more than two military style features found on the real assault weapon. His "AK-47 type assault weapon" would have still been legal, it just might have looked less scary.

The 1994 Assault Weapon Ban was political stunt that banned something that people feared, but didn't do squat to prevent crime. The DOJ conducted a study on the effect of the 1994 Assault Weapon ban and found that its effects on gun violence was "too small for reliable measurement, because assault weapons are rarely used in gun crimes." The Brady Center did a study of the ban and their findings were that "assault weapons" were only used in 1.6% of gun crimes.

I can't believe he played that clip of a scary muslim instructing on how easy it is to go to a gun show and walk out with a fully automatic weapon without a background check or showing any ID, without checking the facts claimed. That is total fear mongering BS. First of all you can't buy a gun at all, even at a gun show without a background check. Second, to legally own a fully automatic weapon requires a class 3 firearms license, which isn't easy to get or cheap, and you must register your weapons with the ATF. Way to go on fact checking that video Bill.

How come you never hear about the crimes that are prevented by people lawfully carrying a gun? A NIJ and another independent study from 1993 and 1994 found that 800,000 to 2.5 million crimes per year are prevented each year most of which the victim never had to fire a shot.

@jimnms - link for your last para?

Meanwhile, I think you're missing the point: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/america-is-a-violent-country/

Over to you and your next move: the 'data must be wrong' argument.

*law

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>> ^kymbos:

@jimnms - link for your last para?
Meanwhile, I think you're missing the point: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/america-is-a-violent-coun
try/
Over to you and your next move: the 'data must be wrong' argument.


Here's your source, and it didn't come out of my ass like Bill's shit.

What point I'm missing? Your linked article doesn't mention guns anywhere, it shows that America is more violent than other advanced countries, which is even more of reason to carry a gun for self defense. I think you're the one missing the point.

Ninety percent of violent crimes are committed by persons not carrying handguns. This is one reason why the mere brandishing of a gun by a potential victim of violence often is a sufficient response to a would-be attacker. In most cases where a gun is used in self-defense, it is not fired. Can the average citizen be trusted to judge accurately when he or she is in jeopardy?...

A nationwide study by Don Kates, the constitutional lawyer and criminologist, found that only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The 'error rate' for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high." [source]

Of course, it is not surprising that where there are more guns, there tends to be more gun-related deaths, but northern Latin America (Brazil in particular) breaks from this trend in a major way. The area has a massive homicide by firearm rate, with some of the lowest rates of gun ownership in the world and the highest homicides by firearm count...

Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela and Ecuador combine for more homicides by firearm than Mexico, the United States, South Africa, the Philippines, Honduras, Guatemala, India, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Bangladesh, Argentina and Jamaica put together. That is every other country with over 1,000 homicides by firearm. You would imagine that gun control would be very lax in the area, but as the top chart here illustrates, that is not the case. Brazil, for example, has roughly 255 million fewer guns (and about 115 million fewer people) than the United States and a much more strict and effective set of firearm regulations. So, while it is true that where there are guns, there is gun violence, that is clearly not the only determining factor. [source]

I think when you're using the worst as a benchmark to say America is ok, you've given up.

But this is my favourite quote: "it shows that America is more violent than other advanced countries, which is even more of reason to carry a gun for self defense."

Causation, not correlation. But enjoy your guns.

>> ^direpickle:

>> ^Trancecoach:
Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I wish mental health care were as easy to get as, say, a gun.

Mental health care is available to anyone with money.
Guns are available to anyone with money.


I wanted to clarify this. Lack of proper mental health care is a big problem in this country, but it was not this guy's problem. He had the money for a small arsenal, then he had the money for therapy and drugs. It's impossible to find actual verified information on this, but the lawsuit from the one guy targets doctors. So at least someone believes that he was receiving care and had access to medicine.

It was a terrible thing to happen, but you have to realize that some people are just crazy. These things happen occasionally even in the most nonviolent cultures. The finger-pointing isn't helping.

@jimnms I think the right lesson to take from the example of Brazil is "gun control laws need to be properly enforced to reduce homicide", not "gun control laws never reduce gun crime."

Also, you're wrong about gun shows, there's a pretty big loophole. From wikipedia:

U.S. federal law requires persons engaged in interstate firearm commerce, or those who are "engaged in the business" of dealing firearms, to hold a Federal Firearms License and perform background checks through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System maintained by the FBI prior to transferring a firearm. Under the terms of the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, however, individuals "not engaged in the business" of dealing firearms, or who only make "occasional" sales within their state of residence, are under no requirement to conduct background checks on purchasers or maintain records of sale (although even private sellers are forbidden under federal law from selling firearms to persons they have reason to believe are felons or otherwise prohibited from purchasing firearms).

>> ^direpickle:

It was a terrible thing to happen, but you have to realize that some people are just crazy. These things happen occasionally even in the most nonviolent cultures. The finger-pointing isn't helping.


He wasn't pointing fingers, he's just saying it'd be nice if the tools of destruction this particular crazy person used had been harder to obtain.

Make it like health care is right now, where you can be denied for pre-existing conditions. Make it take a long time to set up, make it require boatloads of paperwork to get the bullets you need. Then, when it's all said and done, make it cost $5,000 for the cheapest possible gun, with bullets being hundreds of dollars each.

On the flipside, make it so anyone can walk into a hospital and get treatment. No background checks, no waiting periods, and if it costs anything at all, make it so cheap that a couple hundred bucks is enough to buy the lives of more than 10 people.

A better world is possible.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/weapons-sales-boom-following-dark-knight-shootings-20120725-22qse.html

>> ^NetRunner:

@jimnms I think the right lesson to take from the example of Brazil is "gun control laws need to be properly enforced to reduce homicide", not "gun control laws never reduce gun crime."
Also, you're wrong about gun shows, there's a pretty big loophole. From wikipedia:

U.S. federal law requires persons engaged in interstate firearm commerce, or those who are "engaged in the business" of dealing firearms, to hold a Federal Firearms License and perform background checks through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System maintained by the FBI prior to transferring a firearm. Under the terms of the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, however, individuals "not engaged in the business" of dealing firearms, or who only make "occasional" sales within their state of residence, are under no requirement to conduct background checks on purchasers or maintain records of sale (although even private sellers are forbidden under federal law from selling firearms to persons they have reason to believe are felons or otherwise prohibited from purchasing firearms).

>> ^kymbos:

I think when you're using the worst as a benchmark to say America is ok, you've given up.
But this is my favourite quote: "it shows that America is more violent than other advanced countries, which is even more of reason to carry a gun for self defense."
Causation, not correlation. But enjoy your guns.


Thanks for putting words in my mouth. I never said America is OK. Guns aren't making the U.S. more violent, so we need to be doing something to find out why Americans are more violent, not taking guns away from law abiding citizens which are used for self defense and crime prevention as I have already shown.

A long time ago I had the unfortunate experience where I had to use a gun to save my life. Luckily I lived in a place where you are allowed to carry a gun in your vehicle without requiring a permit, otherwise I wouldn't be here to have this lovely conversation. I now have a carry permit, and I do carry a gun. Perhaps if more people exercised their 2nd amendment rights in Colorado, the psycho could have been stopped before more people were hurt.

So what was the point of saying 'Brazil is worse'?

I would love to hear an honest argument from the pro-gun lobby. Something like this: "Ok, so we understand that guns kill people - that's what they're for. We understand that the more guns there are in a society, and the more high powered they are, the more people will get shot and killed. But we like guns, and we as a society are willing to accept the consequences of these preferences. Now fuck off and leave us to our guns."

At least it's honest. There's no bullshit, inverted logic, blind refusal to accept reality. It's a genuine acceptance of fact and consequence.

And if I'm not mistaken, support for gun use is growing all the time in America. So why not?

>> ^kymbos:

So what was the point of saying 'Brazil is worse'?
I would love to hear an honest argument from the pro-gun lobby. Something like this: "Ok, so we understand that guns kill people - that's what they're for. We understand that the more guns there are in a society, and the more high powered they are, the more people will get shot and killed. But we like guns, and we as a society are willing to accept the consequences of these preferences. Now fuck off and leave us to our guns."
At least it's honest. There's no bullshit, inverted logic, blind refusal to accept reality. It's a genuine acceptance of fact and consequence.
And if I'm not mistaken, support for gun use is growing all the time in America. So why not?


You obviously haven't read anything I have posted, so I'll sum it up and be done with you. Guns are more often used to prevent crime or save lives than they are used to murder or commit crimes (but you won't hear that from the mass media networks). Only 10% of violent crimes involve the use of a gun. Other countries that have made it illegal for private citizens to own guns, crime went up after the guns were confiscated, so your idea that less guns = less crime is flawed. Your own link said America is more violent than all other advanced countries, but if 90% of violent crimes don't involve guns, obviously guns aren't the problem and less guns won't stop the violence.

You seem to make a few confused points. You say that America is more violent than other countries, hence the need for more guns. You then go on to say that more guns mean less 'crime' and that lives are saved as a result. But seeing as America has more guns than other countries, shouldn't it have less crime, violence and homicide? America has a higher homicide rate than other developed countries: http://chartsbin.com/view/1454

In general, more guns does equal more homicide: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/index.html

This surprises no one, except perhaps you.

Firearm controls were introduced in Australia in 1996. Since then, the homicide rate has declined.

I'm not pretending that I'm convincing you of anything. Your mind is made up, and that's fine. Like I said, enjoy your guns. Just understand that pretty much every other country accepts the truth that more guns equals more death by guns.

The Australian experience, for anyone interested: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/brothers-in-arms-yes-but-the-us-needs-to-get-rid-of-its-guns-20120731-23ct7.html

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