corpsestomp Posted September 20, 2013 Report Share Posted September 20, 2013 Since the whole thread has turned into a gun control topic, I'm gonna throw another, different opinion in here. I think guns equalize people in a way that was never meant to be. If you cannot, or WILL not attack a person, or defend yourself from an attack with your own personal skill and body, you're a coward. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyzarius Posted September 20, 2013 Report Share Posted September 20, 2013 The problem with the defense with a weapon concept is that the initiative is in the hands of the assailant. I opt for the Australian approach. No massacres since 1996. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Imoutgoodbye Posted September 20, 2013 Report Share Posted September 20, 2013 The problem with the defense with a weapon concept is that the initiative is in the hands of the assailant. I opt for the Australian approach. No massacres since 1996. Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mali Posted September 21, 2013 Report Share Posted September 21, 2013 Points for being thorough, Pali. As it is now, the CDC has the go ahead to continue the research so we will see some real data before too long. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pali Posted September 21, 2013 Report Share Posted September 21, 2013 Here's hoping. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Croyvern Posted September 23, 2013 Report Share Posted September 23, 2013 Had to share this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Imoutgoodbye Posted September 23, 2013 Report Share Posted September 23, 2013 Share away. However, the actions of people and the capability of destructive weapons are two different things, even though I consider the way people worship their right to own guns about the same way religious people worship a piece of fiction, but I won't continue down that path of analogy. Rather, I'll point out that what a muslim fanatical terrorist (or I could also say christian fanatical KKK member to show that all christians are about as KKK as all muslims are terrorists) and a second amendment gun owning fanatic have in common is they are fanatics. Their actions allow them to take weapons, whose sole purpose is to kill, and, well, kill with them. The idea behind the right to bear arms was to protect yourself from those who would do harm to you and your loved ones. I love a good meme, but that one is confused in it simplicity and I would love to smack the person who made it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inscribed Posted September 23, 2013 Report Share Posted September 23, 2013 I don't think it's fair to call it worship when someone just wants to be left alone and not have the government interfere with what they are and aren't allowed to own, especially when it comes to matters of defense. Prohibition never, ever, works. It's pointless, self defeating, and generally just a waste of time, money and resources. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about alcohol, drugs, guns, or what ever else is supposedly the downfall of our civilization. It's best to focus your energies on productive things. I personally feel the militarization of our police forces and every single government agency to be of much greater threat to my daily life than the potential for some random shooting spree. I'd be interested to see a comparison between the number of annual fatalities due to mass shootings versus the annual number of fatalities due to the wrongful actions of cops/feds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pali Posted September 23, 2013 Report Share Posted September 23, 2013 Five minutes of Googling finds numbers of around 90-150 mass shooting deaths in the US in 2012 (variation due to multiple second/third-hand sources and differing definitions of what qualifies as a mass shooting), compared to Wikipedia listing 587 kills by cops during that year - HOWEVER, that list does not discriminate between justified and unjustified cop kills. Finding numbers for justified vs unjustified killings by cops seems like it'll take more time than I care to spend right now on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inscribed Posted September 23, 2013 Report Share Posted September 23, 2013 Yeah, I wasn't expecting anyone to provide actual numbers, mostly because I don't think actual numbers would be possible to source. My point was that shooting sprees are really not that big of a danger, and we really don't have any means of preventing them on a national level (on a personal level, be aware of your surroundings). Cop/fed killings, however, are a danger and are preventable. At least when a shooting spree occurs, the killer is always killed/caught. When a cop or fed shoots or brutalizes an innocent person, more often than not, they walk away with nothing more than a slap on the wrist and sent back to work to kill again. Also, I can legally defend myself against a shooter on a spree. Against a cop? Good luck invoking any self-defense laws, or even lasting long enough to make it to court to defend yourself with those laws. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pali Posted September 23, 2013 Report Share Posted September 23, 2013 My point was that shooting sprees are really not that big of a danger' date=' and we really don't have any means of preventing them on a national level (on a personal level, be aware of your surroundings).[/quote'] The main reason they are the issue they are currently is, in my opinion, because of the media's bias towards sensationalism - coverage of shootings gets good ratings, even though the amount of coverage shootings get is in many ways disproportionate to their impact. They are certainly an important subject that deserves a certain level of discussion (not necessarily the level they get), but I'd bet jilted lovers probably kill more people each year than mass shooters do too (a bet made with no research done to support it, to be clear, but with some degree of confidence based on prior knowledge). According to the numbers I found, about 20% of cop kills would need to be unjustified to equal mass shootings - a high proportion, to be sure, but not outside the bounds of possibility. My bet would be that it's a bit lower, but that still leaves us with fairly comparable numbers... in a country of 300 million, with several hundred thousand violent crimes per year, 50 dead vs 100 dead is not much of a percentage change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Imoutgoodbye Posted September 23, 2013 Report Share Posted September 23, 2013 I doubt we'll see any hard data on relationships between specificity of crime and context of gun ownership for at least another 10 years or so. In the mean time, from what I've looked at, there's too much flawed data on both sides of the argument floating around. Example: Pro-Gun often relate owning a gun to owning a vehicle. The argument is "So what if owning a gun makes it more likely you'll die by a gun related incident than non-gun owner? Owning a vehicle makes it more likely you'll die in a vehicle related accident". Example: Anti-Gun (Con-Gun? I don't know how to label myself here) often put out statistics that are misleading. I found multiple articles that put suicide use into the killed statistics and that's a completely different issue. What I did find was this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/12/16/searching-for-hard-data-on-guns-and-violence/ Plus the fact that, again, at the bottom of that article, Australia's gun reform laws, which began back in 1996, have made a difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mali Posted September 23, 2013 Report Share Posted September 23, 2013 This isn't Australia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Imoutgoodbye Posted September 24, 2013 Report Share Posted September 24, 2013 This isn't Australia. THIS...IS...SPARTA!!!! Sorry, that's what popped into my head. The 'this' made me ask myself, "Well, what is it?". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mali Posted September 25, 2013 Report Share Posted September 25, 2013 Welcome to Pangaea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inscribed Posted September 26, 2013 Report Share Posted September 26, 2013 http://reason.com/blog/2013/09/26/3d-printing-now-brings-you-semiautomatic New plans for a 3d printable 22lr semiautomatic pistol, available for free download over at defcad.com. The price on 3d printers is also set to drop drastically next year as copyrights on certain laser parts is set to expire. Go ahead and regulate that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pali Posted September 27, 2013 Report Share Posted September 27, 2013 I expect it will be a very, VERY long time until the black market for 3D-printed guns comes anywhere close to the black market for guns made in other ways - there are simply so damned many of the latter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Imoutgoodbye Posted September 27, 2013 Report Share Posted September 27, 2013 I expect it will be a very' date=' VERY long time until the black market for 3D-printed guns comes anywhere close to the black market for guns made in other ways - there are simply so damned many of the latter. [/quote'] You know, if you want, I have a nice big crawl space (read almost basement you could stand up in), well wrapped...you could always store some of thos 50+ guns you own over here, Pali. There's room right next to all my half-built drones and the replica Terminator I've almost built...just need to finish modulating her flux capacitor and a tweak on alternative life style romance personality processor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pali Posted September 27, 2013 Report Share Posted September 27, 2013 I own swords, not guns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inscribed Posted September 28, 2013 Report Share Posted September 28, 2013 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crackwilly21 Posted September 28, 2013 Report Share Posted September 28, 2013 I like you, Inscribed... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pali Posted September 28, 2013 Report Share Posted September 28, 2013 Your overconfidence is your weakness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atticus Posted September 29, 2013 Report Share Posted September 29, 2013 Wow, hell of a post. Considering the hardest part of building up a firearm is the housing assembly, and bam now you can print them out. No serials on it. Damn, obtaining the firing pin ect is of relative ease. The possibilities..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crackwilly21 Posted September 29, 2013 Report Share Posted September 29, 2013 Private citizens are allowed to manufacture up to 6(?) or their own firearms a year as it is. This has been the case for a LONG time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atticus Posted September 29, 2013 Report Share Posted September 29, 2013 Very true, but it was never as simple is printing a housing assembly out. Hell I could make dozens of these things in a matter of hours with my training lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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