Gun control

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">8 YEAR-OLD who was at the Nats game: &quot;It was my 2nd shooting, so I was kind of prepared. I’m always expecting something to happen.&quot; <br><br>A gun-sick nation. <a href="https://t.co/EJOA9HUrq1">pic.twitter.com/EJOA9HUrq1</a></p>&mdash; The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) <a href="">July 19, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>


You screwed that up.
 
The fact that kids are now expecting these sort of things, and are being exposed to them multiple times is so messed up. Their population is so desensitised to the problem, that they just view it as business as usual.
 
I was reading a piece from Nature just now (link) that research on gun violence is on the rise again in the US, as funding has started to come available once more. Why wasn't it? Well:
Federal funds for firearms research have been heavily restricted ever since the 1996 Dickey Amendment, a clause added to that year’s annual spending bill that barred the CDC from funding any effort that advocates or promotes gun control.

Although the amendment did not explicitly ban research on firearms, the CDC saw its budget cut by $2.6 million in the year it passed — the same amount the agency was spending on the topic. CDC administrators saw the move as a message to steer clear, says Andrew Morral, a behavioural scientist at the Rand Corporation in Washington DC and director of the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research, a consortium of foundations that fund firearms research.

The amendment remained in subsequent spending bills, and researchers who continued to work on gun violence say that their work received more scrutiny. “Any research we would put forward would create just a waterfall of backlash,” says Charles Branas, an epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. The gun lobby would argue that the work was biased, Branas says. Lawmakers would start asking questions. “That’s not something a cancer researcher has to contend with,” he says. “I think it scared off a lot of potential young scientists.”

As a result, funding for research on guns lags far behind funding for other common causes of death (note the logarithmic scale!):
d41586-021-01966-0_19372088.png

So this is changing now - very very slowly, but any change is good.

This is the sort of approach by companies and governments that always does my head in though. Gun advocates and lobbyists and the entire gun sector obviously know that the liberal gun policies they promote and install are bad for public health, cause otherwise they wouldn't be making sure that people cannot research the public health consequences. Yet they still go ahead. It's like oil companies trying to undermine climate change work, or everything tobacco companies have been (and are still!) doing. There should really be a way to prosecute the high-ups that set company and government direction for manslaughter and similar offences.
 
If my kids had to endure practice sessions on how to react if there was an active shooter incident in their school I would be absolutely fecking devastated.

No child should ever, ever have to think their lives are in danger at school, let alone having to actually participate in safety drills.

It's beyond fecking wrong. It's disgraceful, abhorrent and completely sickening to think of those poor kids having to endure that.
 
So schools shouldn't do fire drills, either?

That's completely different mate. I get the need for the active shooter drills, it just makes me sick thinking about it.

I just think how I would feel if my kids had to have done them and how the poor kids must be feeling while doing them let alone how they feel during an actual event.
 
It’s a bit different unless the cause is billy bob flame throwing the athletics field

Well, to be fair, it could be. Fires happen for all sorts of reasons, arson included. And I wouldn't put it past someone like billy bob to do just what you've described. I know what these folks are like, heck I'm almost one of them.
 
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That's completely different mate. I get the need for the active shooter drills, it just makes me sick thinking about it.

I just think how I would feel if my kids had to have done them and how the poor kids must be feeling while doing them let alone how they feel during an actual event.

I'm just trying to wind you up mate. :lol:

Drills are drills, practicing a calm and smart reaction to the emergency is important but there are lots of other controls for fire detection and prevention systems in buildings like schools (pretty sure these are mandated by law, too). The fire drills are the icing on the cake because you're taking steps to prevent fires from happening and if they do, stop them from spreading. The drills are almost unnecessary.

Why not take similar preventive action against the gun violence?
 
I'm just trying to wind you up mate. :lol:

Drills are drills, practicing a calm and smart reaction to the emergency is important but there are lots of other controls for fire detection and prevention systems in buildings like schools (pretty sure these are mandated by law, too). The fire drills are the icing on the cake because you're taking steps to prevent fires from happening and if they do, stop them from spreading. The drills are almost unnecessary.

Why not take similar preventive action against the gun violence?


:lol:

You got me mate.. :wenger:
 

Win/win situation. If she survived that would be great, and if not it would have been a short trip.

at this point I feel so numb about these things that dark “humor” is all I got.No amount of protesting or campaigning for the “right” candidate has moved the needle even a millimeter. I am at a loss as to what more we can do.I mostly hate my country
 
Win/win situation. If she survived that would be great, and if not it would have been a short trip.

at this point I feel so numb about these things that dark “humor” is all I got.No amount of protesting or campaigning for the “right” candidate has moved the needle even a millimeter. I am at a loss as to what more we can do.I mostly hate my country

Just a bizarre mentality you guys have about pretty much everything. Can't get my head around it.
 
Just a bizarre mentality you guys have about pretty much everything. Can't get my head around it.

At this point my mentality is one of hopelessness. The wife and I have marched in protests, donated money to anti gun groups and campaigned for candidates with strong gun control platforms. I hate guns. Hate them. They exist for one purpose, to kill. People can talk all they want about target shooting and all that bullshit, but at the end of the day guns were created, and continuously improved, so as to be able to kill as many humans as fast as possible. Anyone who owns or uses a gun is contributing to the perpetuation of this and is part of the reason why tens of thousands of people die each year.I am not saying that they are doing the killing, only that it is through the business of the 90% of responsible gun owners that gun companies are able to exist and lobby against meaningful reform. Every dollar they spend on a new gun or ammo is a dollar that will be used to lobby against legislation that would have protected that little girl.
 
At this point my mentality is one of hopelessness. The wife and I have marched in protests, donated money to anti gun groups and campaigned for candidates with strong gun control platforms. I hate guns. Hate them. They exist for one purpose, to kill. People can talk all they want about target shooting and all that bullshit, but at the end of the day guns were created, and continuously improved, so as to be able to kill as many humans as fast as possible. Anyone who owns or uses a gun is contributing to the perpetuation of this and is part of the reason why tens of thousands of people die each year.I am not saying that they are doing the killing, only that it is through the business of the 90% of responsible gun owners that gun companies are able to exist and lobby against meaningful reform. Every dollar they spend on a new gun or ammo is a dollar that will be used to lobby against legislation that would have protected that little girl.

I really don't care about all the casualties who are gun owners themselves or the stories you hear about firearms being left unsecured in homes and kids getting their hands on them and accidentally shooting either themselves or family members etc. It's the innocent ones I feel sorry for. But as you're alluding to, exactly how many people are truly innocent? I would be interested to hear how many US households are actually completely gun-free.

I mean, whatever lame-ass argument is used in support of gun ownership, nobody has been able to give me a rational explanation for the need for your average American to own weapons like those below. And they usually own more than one.

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Somebody, help me understand.

PS. I hate that term 'RESPONSIBLE GUN OWNER'.
 
According to this poll 32% of adult Americans own guns and 44% live in a gun household. If true this means a majority of us do not have guns.
 
I really don't care about all the casualties who are gun owners themselves or the stories you hear about firearms being left unsecured in homes and kids getting their hands on them and accidentally shooting either themselves or family members etc. It's the innocent ones I feel sorry for. But as you're alluding to, exactly how many people are truly innocent? I would be interested to hear how many US households are actually completely gun-free.

I mean, whatever lame-ass argument is used in support of gun ownership, nobody has been able to give me a rational explanation for the need for your average American to own weapons like those below. And they usually own more than one.

4bq4T4b.jpg
95CObQC.jpg

gvAKz96.jpg
YXp7DXp.jpg


Somebody, help me understand.

PS. I hate that term 'RESPONSIBLE GUN OWNER'.


Have you not seen the size of the cockroaches over there?

Also, you have two very responsible gun owners on here. @Carolina Red and @Dwazza Gunnar Solskjær are both gun owners and both are intelligent and articulate lads who will happily debate with you and explain their love of guns. You might not agree with them but they will at least bother to help you try to understand their stance.
 
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According to this poll 32% of adult Americans own guns and 44% live in a gun household. If true this means a majority of us do not have guns.

Those figures seem kind of low, though that is reassuring to know. Although I don't understand how the minority would be permitted to influence the whole of society to such a large extent. How have the majority of the US population not been able to affect any change to ay meaningful degree? I read somewhere that there are more guns then people in the US, so all of those guns are condensed within a third of the whole population? That's mad.

Have you not seen the size of the cockroaches over there?

Also, you have two very responsible gun owners on here. @Carolina Red and @Dwazza Gunnar Solskjær are both gun owners and both are intelligent and articulate lads who will happily debate with you and explain their love of guns. You might not agree with them but they will at least bother to help you try to understand their stance.

As I've said before there's no such thing as a responsible gun owner. When you look at the stats and the amount of mass shootings and killings that occur in the US and even compare to the rest of civilised society across the world, the 'responsible' thing to do would be to ban guns in the first place. So even owning a gun is just compounding and perpetuating the problem. I've tried engaging with gun owners on here but they just come out with the same lame-ass arguments. They're no different to those smokers or pitbull owners who try to defend the indefensible.
 
Have you not seen the size of the cockroaches over there?

Also, you have two very responsible gun owners on here. @Carolina Red and @Dwazza Gunnar Solskjær are both gun owners and both are intelligent and articulate lads who will happily debate with you and explain their love of guns. You might not agree with them but they will at least bother to help you try to understand their stance.

In a perfect world where there was proper gun restrictions or if Americans weren’t such bloodthirsty cnuts I would have zero issues with people owning guns. Shotguns and bolt action rifles for hunting? Hell, I’m sort of at peace with that now. Without hunting season the deer population of Wisconsin would explode (thanks to the loss of almost all natural predators, but that’s a different thread.) Handguns though? feck those. Those have one purpose, to kill fellow humans.

I have lived in 2 gun loving states and have had many friends who have owned guns. I would consider all of them responsible gun owners. Guns always in a locked safe and the ones with kids always stored ammunition in a separate locked box and never stored loaded weapons. Maybe surprising for you would be to know that not a small number of those friends are as pro gun laws as me. They marched with us in protests and campaigned with us for gun law candidates. That being said, I tell them what I said above; that their continued purchases provide the lobbying revenue for the industry. We disagree on that, but we do agree that laws need to be in place to protect society from itself.
 
These figures are not low, those figures are fecking madness. 1 in every 3rd adult you meet has a gun. That's fecking insane.
 
According to this poll 32% of adult Americans own guns and 44% live in a gun household. If true this means a majority of us do not have guns.
Im sure that poll was for legal owned guns, then we have people who inherited guns from parents, others who bought the gun from friends/black market and off course the ones who can’t legally own a gun and mostly do, is a lot of guns in this country.
 
The fact that nearly every second house you go to in America has a gun in it is crazy.

Madness. I shudder to imagine living 1000s of metres within a 'known' gun owner but in America you would never be more than a few feet. :wenger:
 
Weird conversation in the pub today. American friend of an acquaintance showing off his gun collection (it’s his hobby). Shows me a custom built sniper and claims that it can hit a plane from the ground … surely possessing something like that is not legal even in the US? Not sure whether to believe him or if he’s just full of hot air
 
The problem is that the assault weapons have become the boogeyman of the left, when the vast majority of gun violence is done by more "normal" weapons like hand guns. Even if we successfully got rid of those ridiculous military style guns, our gun violence rate would still be massive. If we really want to alleviate suffering at the hands of these weapons we need to somehow limit hand guns and ammunition but there is just no will for that here. It's so damned sad.
 
Weird conversation in the pub today. American friend of an acquaintance showing off his gun collection (it’s his hobby). Shows me a custom built sniper and claims that it can hit a plane from the ground … surely possessing something like that is not legal even in the US? Not sure whether to believe him or if he’s just full of hot air

Did it look anything like this?

Flak_88mm_anti_aircraft_guns.jpg
 
Weird conversation in the pub today. American friend of an acquaintance showing off his gun collection (it’s his hobby). Shows me a custom built sniper and claims that it can hit a plane from the ground … surely possessing something like that is not legal even in the US? Not sure whether to believe him or if he’s just full of hot air

:lol: probably bullshit. It's not likely that the bullet would reach beyond 15k feet. This is a nice table, though it doesn't have the mac-daddy sniper rounds of 50 cal and .338 lapua, the listed muzzle velocites for 7.62 NATO and 30-06 are in the right range.
 
:lol: probably bullshit. It's not likely that the bullet would reach beyond 15k feet. This is a nice table, though it doesn't have the mac-daddy sniper rounds of 50 cal and .338 lapua, the listed muzzle velocites for 7.62 NATO and 30-06 are in the right range.
Figured as much just the fact that the other guy at the table was hanging on every word like gospel made me almost fall for it
 
Anecdotal tale;

my niece has just gone to high school or whatever it’s called, in Atlanta

first day there is a fight over a friendly game of scrimmage on the playing fields. It spills over and 15 shots are fired at someone’s car. During lunch break apparently the shooter was going to make an entrance but instead had a load of cops and the kids trying to eat their lunch.

this is a few days into returning to school