And as I have to point out almost every time this thread is bumped, mass shootings (indeed all homicides) have been trending down, not up, and gun control doesn't work. We have a media who leads what bleeds, and has an axe to grind.
Tell that to Milwaukee, who just reached 300 shootings, a record high so far.
I'm sure Chicago is right there to console Milwaukee.
I'm not sure how you can say gun control doesn't work when the US is basically the most gun-liberal nation in the world, and the one that suffers mass shootings this often. Meanwhile us crazy gun controllers in Canada and the rest of the developed world don't see a proportional level of gun violence, let alone mass shootings.
Well, we're less gun-liberal than, say, Somalia...
And Syria, too, I'm sure
Because the guns won't go away because of laws. Of genies going back in bottles and whatnot. So, until there's a magic wand for getting rid of all the guns, all gun control in the US will accomplish is disarming the law abiding, which increases gun crime, a la Chicago, DC, etc where the gun control laws are strongest.
And here I thought I wasn't going to get to use any of these.
Mysterious drifter brings to mind they kind of guy who'd shank you with a spoon around here.
I'll take gun control arguments more seriously when they aren't blatantly illogical appeals to emotion.
Appeals to emotion aren't necessarily illogical. Thinking that a shooting that leads to a bunch of dead children is maybe a good time to re-assess your gun laws doesn't strike me as illogical, even if it is emotional. When on earth is the right time to take gun control laws seriously? Maybe one day there will be a shooting where people no one likes or dislikes get killed, and then we can unemotionally discuss gun control. Of course it's emotional: people are dying. It's not illogical to want to discuss ways to minimize that.
But emotion.
Appeals to emotion are ALWAYS illogical. You're asking someone to give into a base emotion, not the facts, and are doing so purely to undermine the other position's logical, legal stand point. Why should ANYONE debate anything like that?
That's different than saying "well I guess you decided the second amendment is more importand than dead children." THAT is fallacious. It's oversimplified emotional blackmail.
I disagree. Unless you're a Vulcan.
Well, okay, yes. Totally fair. I was being snarky.
I don't know how relevant that is. I mean, does Chicago have borders?
It doesn't work when you can drive half an hour and get a gun easily. But it goes beyond just gun control. The entire gun culture of the US is more to blame than the availability of guns.
yup. it's much more about gun culture and the general acceptance in many regions that walking around with a gun is a-okay and perfectly normal and your damn right than the actual availability of guns. Seeing a person carrying a gun who isn't clearly a hunter or law enforcement or something like that should be cause for concern and an immediate red flag - "hey, why's that guy walking around with a frikkin' gun?!". If I saw a man walking around with a gun in a shopping mall around here, I'd call 911 (ok, 112) right away - not because it technically can't be legal, but because it's a huge "whoa, what's happening?". As long as people feel guns are a normal accessory to carry around, don't expect gun laws to change anything or gun crime to go down.
We're a great big country with wide open borders. Nationwide gun prohibition would just turn us into Chicago writ large, Even if there weren't already a huge glut of firearms in the country that would still be in the hands of criminals while the law abiding citizens dutifully turned theirs in. So, short of a magic wand or a hundred years or more of bloody police-state authoritarianism, the guns are here to stay and strengthening gun control laws only makes more victims.
You do realize you're falsely equating the consequences of outright prohibition with those of stricter control, don't you?
Arbitrary half measures (such as the "assault weapons ban") have already been shown, multiple times, to have no real beneficial effect. Besides, everybody says we need to be like Europe, so large scale bans are what we're talking about, right?
Appealing to emotion is what gets you legislation as strong as the Patriot Act, and Federal agencies like the TSA.
Not necessarily. Obvious first steps are all weapons being registered to someone's name, requiring a weapons license or mandatory course, putting some other arbitrary limit than 'assault weapons' like # of weapons per person depending on your license. I understand that the last 2 come into conflict with the 2nd amendment, especially with the 'weapons to fight an oppressive government' interpretation. But they are just examples of regulations that are not outright bans or half measures.
Why limit the number of weapons per a person? Yes, it fights straw purchasing but it also interferes with businesses that rent guns (like ranges and hunting lodges), legitimate collectors, and families with more than one shooter. Children can't own their own firearms but many families hunt together or go to the range together.
