USA in 2016 (FRIENDLY ZONE ONLY)

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Lotha
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Re: USA in 2016 (FRIENDLY ZONE ONLY)

Post by Lotha »

"We just heard a 'pop pop' sound. We thought it was fireworks at first."
How do people don't naturally jump to the conclusion that it's a gun, are fireworks really that common to hear?
If it's not New Year time I'd naturally assume it was a gun.

A lot of people here have illegal guns, left from their grandfathers or something, that they shoot to celebrate when someone in the family gets married or when Djokovic wins a Grand Slam. When I hear THAT sound, I know what it is.
And yeah, mass shootings happen. Wasn't common before people started cracking due to having to live the way we do. It's getting more common. And even though guns are illegal nobody gives a shit to uphold the law. And that's why I don't feel safe, not because I don't own a gun myself. It's because I know nothing can protect me from a psycho with a gun, should I run into one.

I can't imagine someone wanting MORE people to have guns.
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Re: USA in 2016 (FRIENDLY ZONE ONLY)

Post by anguyen92 »

Lotha wrote:How do people don't naturally jump to the conclusion that it's a gun, are fireworks really that common to hear?
If it's not New Year time I'd naturally assume it was a gun.
I hear fireworks sounds more often during the week of July 4th (even after July 4th). It scares the dog. If I am hearing popping sounds at my house (which, to me, seems to be in a nice safe suburban neighborhood) I would think it would be fireworks at first.

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Re: USA in 2016 (FRIENDLY ZONE ONLY)

Post by AB23 »

Lotha wrote:
"We just heard a 'pop pop' sound. We thought it was fireworks at first."
How do people don't naturally jump to the conclusion that it's a gun, are fireworks really that common to hear?
If it's not New Year time I'd naturally assume it was a gun.

A lot of people here have illegal guns, left from their grandfathers or something, that they shoot to celebrate when someone in the family gets married or when Djokovic wins a Grand Slam. When I hear THAT sound, I know what it is.
And yeah, mass shootings happen. Wasn't common before people started cracking due to having to live the way we do. It's getting more common. And even though guns are illegal nobody gives a shit to uphold the law. And that's why I don't feel safe, not because I don't own a gun myself. It's because I know nothing can protect me from a psycho with a gun, should I run into one.

I can't imagine someone wanting MORE people to have guns.
Fireworks are extremely common where I'm from. There are several stands near my condo, and I am invited to go set them off all the time. Whenever my friends and I don't feel like going out to bars, we go out to secluded areas a lot and set them off.

Its fairly common here. Perhaps not in your country. But that would be why people jump to those conclusions.

I guess it shows the difference in our cultures.. because the "shooting off guns in a celebratory manner" seems like something that happened in the 18th century to me, or in the wild wild west. I had no idea people still did this. That seems silly. Put the gun down.
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Re: USA in 2016 (FRIENDLY ZONE ONLY)

Post by Timotheus »

After the attack in Brussels there were some moments where idiots would use firecrackers in busy places to scare people. You could really feel the tension in those moments. I can't remember ever hearing a gun in person, so I'm not sure if I'd recognize it at first.
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Oh well. Deal with it.

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Post by AB23 »

The only difference in the sound is the rhythm and pattern of the "pops." (eventually the pops would be spaced so close together that you would know its not a gun). But at first, I don't blame people whatsoever for thinking that its fireworks.
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Re: USA in 2016 (FRIENDLY ZONE ONLY)

Post by Lotha »

AB23 wrote: I guess it shows the difference in our cultures.. because the "shooting off guns in a celebratory manner" seems like something that happened in the 18th century to me, or in the wild wild west. I had no idea people still did this. That seems silly. Put the gun down.
Oh you're right. It's not even culture, it's just something that remained from those times. Normal people don't do it. But it's still quite common 'cause there aren't that many normal people. :D
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Post by Fish Tacos »

AB23 wrote: Addressing the first bolded misconception: This... right here... is the problem. People value their "rights to own a gun" (what? Just think about it. Right to speech, right to religion, right to vote, right to... own a gun?) over the lives of the innocent.
It's not a problem at all. It's an entitlement by the very definition of the word 'right'. It's given to you as a right in the Constitution for the express purpose of you NOT having to defend it. What makes right to religion any more worth protecting than the right to own a gun? Because it's not used to kill anyone? That's a claim I sure wouldn't want to defend.
AB23 wrote: How do people normally get in and out of a building? If you're holding a public event, lock your doors when it starts. If kids are going to school, lock the doors at 8 am (or whenever school starts). Church, movie theaters, everything. Lock the damn door when it starts. I didn't think I had to explain how that one works.
It was a rhetorical question to show the inadequacy of the thought process. Take the movie theater for instance: people get up a lot to pee and get snacks. It really bothers me because they're gonna miss stuff and I see it a lot. How are they going to get in and out of the room? You can't lock the main theater door because shows start at all different times. You can't lock the individual theater doors because people come and go a bunch. But ok, let's say for the sake of argument you did. Now you have to have someone whose sole job it is to stand at the door for as many overlapping shows as you have. You just added like 5-10 people to your staff that you now have to pay for. Now how is he going to know if he should let you in or not? He has no way of knowing if you have a concealed weapon or something he can't see trough his little view window. So now we start screening people at the main entrance with metal detectors and bag checks, hence my TSA comment. More money, more time, more effort. Can you do it? Sure, but like I said, it's not practical for widespread implementation. We do it at some sports events and some high schools (usually shitty ones) because the colosseums can afford it and because people in higher level police and city jobs get crapped on if something happens at a school, but that's about the extent of it.
AB23 wrote: If I have to live in a country where I have to fear for my child's safety when they go to school... a place where they are hurting no one and trying to get an education... because I know that the school is infested with guns, that's not a country I want to live in.
Fortunately you don't live in that country because as I showed you earlier, the mass shooting rates are infinitesimally low and the majority of homicides that aren't mass shootings that you posted are gang related.
AB23 wrote:Pretty convincing example that having a gun to defend yourself doesn't always solve the problem when the criminal will ALWAYS get the first drop.
It's not ALWAYS supposed to solve the problem. It's about giving you a fighting chance if you need it. There are plenty examples of officers who killed someone trying to harm them first or concealed carriers that helped others in trouble.
AB23 wrote:Someone explain to me how giving everyone guns would solve the problem? The criminal gets off... what, 10 bullets before people even realize what's going on? 15 before someone is able to aim at the criminal and fire? That could be 15 deaths.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... story.html

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/loc ... 76271.html

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/26/of ... rests.html

http://citizensvoice.com/news/police-pl ... -1.1370815

http://www.foxcarolina.com/story/172515 ... urg-church

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case ... 9072688443

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/three ... emucca-bar

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/us/12 ... print&_r=1

http://articles.philly.com/1998-04-26/n ... ce-teacher

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/a ... 36,00.html

There's 10 examples of people coming to the aid of others and preventing more deaths or preventing them entirely. None of them were shot in your "domino effect".
Jim wrote:You remove the gun and the threat of getting shot goes away. It really is VERY simple and works EVERYWHERE else in the world
It does? Maybe you're right and all these folks got stabbed. If you remove guns legally, you just make business better for the black markets who will happily supply them.

Ireland and Jamaica:
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Chicago
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DC
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The UK had a massive spike as well.

Granted this data is subject to the endogeniety problem, but then again so is the data for countries like Australia. I'm posting these specifically to challenge all of your mindsets so you aren't relying so heavily on confirmation bias.
Jim wrote:it doesn't happen in France
"France suffered more casualties murders and injuries from mass public shootings in 2015 than the US has suffered during Obama's entire presidency"

http://crimeresearch.org/2016/01/france ... -to-424-2/
Last edited by Fish Tacos on Tue Jul 12, 2016 6:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: USA in 2016 (FRIENDLY ZONE ONLY)

Post by AB23 »

I don't understand. Why can't you have a staff at the theatre stand at the entrance to an individual theater room and let people out, and subsequently let them in if they wish to return? How in the world would that inconvenience them at all? That's their job.

Do you realize how many individual homicides happen on a daily basis with a deadly weapon? Where is the "defense" that this immortal relic of a weapon provides then? How come armed cops can't prevent a mass shooting like what happened in Dallas, and have to resort to blowing the guy up because their guns are inadequate to assure safety?

Wanna know why the Dallas situation was so difficult? The Chief of Police said it himself. "We couldn't tell the good guys from the bad guys because of open-carry laws." How productive that legislation was, eh? It didn't stop the shooting. Those people with guns did NOTHING to prevent this from getting worse. The police men did NOTHING (besides get distracted from the true suspect).

If you take guns away from law-abiding citizens, you could stop suicide. You could stop crazy people from getting pissed off one day and killing someone. Please show me the statistic where the # of people saved by an innocent bystander using a gun to kill a mass shooter is higher than the suicide by gun/armed homicide rate?

I don't care too much about the black market. Other countries, several other countries for that matter, have done it successfully. I have little doubt that, while we may run into struggles, these shootings would significantly decrease.

Also, please tell me more about your constitutional rights. I study the constitution for a living. I've written on the subject and the controversy the 2nd Amendment causes on several occasions. The purpose of the 2nd Amendment wasn't for "self-defense." Not only does it not SAY that in the amendment... it doesn't even imply that. So that's an incorrect misconception.
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Post by Fish Tacos »

AB23 wrote:Do you realize how many individual homicides happen on a daily basis with a deadly weapon? Where is the "defense" that this immortal relic of a weapon provides then? How come armed cops can't prevent a mass shooting like what happened in Dallas, and have to resort to blowing the guy up because their guns are inadequate to assure safety?
I said it in my last post, it's to better your odds and there are tons of examples of cops that came out on top (probably what happens most of the time) and I already provided examples of CCW scenarios. There is an accepted level of inherent risk with a lot of things. Saying "where is this defense?" because a bunch of ambushed cops had guns and still died is like saying "those cops wore kevlar and it didn't save them, so why wear bulletproof vests". You're ignoring all the times something goes right in favor of when it goes wrong.
AB23 wrote:Wanna know why the Dallas situation was so difficult? The Chief of Police said it himself. "We couldn't tell the good guys from the bad guys because of open-carry laws." How productive that legislation was, eh? It didn't stop the shooting. Those people with guns did NOTHING to prevent this from getting worse. The police men did NOTHING (besides get distracted from the true suspect).
I agree, I don't support open carry.
AB23 wrote:If you take guns away from law-abiding citizens, you could stop suicide. You could stop crazy people from getting pissed off one day and killing someone.
Both possibly true. Both possibly false. Both drastically pale in comparisson to the number of law-abiding gun owners and I'd have a hard time supporting a lot of things in the name of a fraction of a percent.
AB23 wrote:Also, please tell me more about your constitutional rights. I study the constitution for a living. I've written on the subject and the controversy the 2nd Amendment causes on several occasions. The purpose of the 2nd Amendment wasn't for "self-defense." Not only does it not SAY that in the amendment... it doesn't even imply that. So that's an incorrect misconception.
It's debatable. Milita was comprised of many regular people that used their weapons for hunting, self defense, etc just like today. Just because the Army reserves exists now doesn't preclude that coverage. Regardless of where you personally land on it, it DOES fall under the most recent interpretation by the Supreme Court.

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Post by AB23 »

umm, DC v. Heller? No, that's not true. The Supreme Court's last interpretation of the 2nd Amendment had nothing to do with self-defense. It had to do with the constitutionality of a statute banning ASSAULT weapons.

When they interpreted the statute, they said that some guns were meant for the military, some guns are more accessible, etc. The only time they spoke about self-defense was the defense of property. But didn't talk about whether someone was entitled to that via the Constitution.

While they held that you can use a gun for self-defense, they refused to go in depth, and even clarified the opinion by saying you have the right to defend property.

Which, to me, still doesn't answer the question... why do we need Semi-Automatic weapons? Why is a handgun not sufficient to protect your house?
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Post by AB23 »

FWIW, I guarantee you that, if a gun issue came up again, gun control will be pushed since Scalia is dead and Hillz is gonna be POTUS.

and I further guarantee that Ruth Bader Ginsburg writes the opinion:

"The Second Amendment has a preamble about the need for a militia ... Historically, the new government had no money to pay for an army, so they relied on the state militias," she said. "The states required men to have certain weapons and they specified in the law what weapons these people had to keep in their home so that when they were called to do service as militiamen, they would have them. That was the entire purpose of the Second Amendment."

Ginsburg said the disappearance of that purpose eliminates the function of the Second Amednment.

"It's function is to enable the young nation to have people who will fight for it to have weapons that those soldiers will own," she said. "I view the Second Amendment as rooted in the time totally allied to the need to support a militia. So ... the Second Amendment is outdated in the sense that its function has become obsolete."

As for the Heller case, decided by the court in 2008, Ginsburg says the court erred in its decision.

"If the court had properly interpreted the Second Amendment, the Court would have said that amendment was very important when the nation was new," she said. "It gave a qualified right to keep and bear arms, but it was for one purpose only — and that was the purpose of having militiamen who were able to fight to preserve the nation."
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Post by cheesedip1 »

People in the States are so used to guns having a certain sound in v games and movies that they dont recognize a real gunshot when it goes off. The two sound totally different.

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Post by vChris »

Fish Tacos wrote: "France suffered more casualties murders and injuries from mass public shootings in 2015 than the US has suffered during Obama's entire presidency"

http://crimeresearch.org/2016/01/france ... -to-424-2/
....Obviously. The US didn't have a terror attack at the scale of Paris during that time frame. According to the data on that page, it is 396 casualties in the US compared to 540 casualties in Paris. 525 casualties were because of the Charlie Hebdo/Bataclan/Saint-Denis attacks.

I admit I haven't looked up all the US dates and the background. But no, an terrorist attack with 498 casulaties (only counting Bataclan/Saint Denis/Stade de France) is not a regular thing over here.

To me, the frequency in the US is the shocking part. 25 incidents in 6 years. You can count on something to happen every year. Granted, the US is much bigger. But still.
Only counting the incidents, you have 5 in France in the same time, happening only in 2012 and 2015 (the Charlie Hebdo terrorists are counted twice btw, because they had mass shootings three days apart)

Honestly, that page was created to prove Obama's quotes at the beginning wrong. Which is why they put those quotes there in the first place, followed up by 'France has more casualties, despite what Obama says about the US'.
I have trouble believing the statistics written down by someone who wants it to serve a purpose so badly, no matter if it is pro or con.

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Post by axlar »

Lotha wrote:
"We just heard a 'pop pop' sound. We thought it was fireworks at first."
How do people don't naturally jump to the conclusion that it's a gun, are fireworks really that common to hear?
If it's not New Year time I'd naturally assume it was a gun.
over here we have not had war for ages, so we associate the sound with something we are familiar of hearing.. i.e. fireworks.. as i (thankfully) have never heard gun shots in public..
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Post by Fish Tacos »

AB23 wrote:umm, DC v. Heller? No, that's not true. The Supreme Court's last interpretation of the 2nd Amendment had nothing to do with self-defense. It had to do with the constitutionality of a statute banning ASSAULT weapons.
[...]
The only time they spoke about self-defense was the defense of property. But didn't talk about whether someone was entitled to that via the Constitution.
Taken from the syllabus from the section of key points that were held in the first few pages: http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/up ... 07-290.pdf
1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
[...]
3. The handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement (as applied to self-defense) violate the Second Amendment . The District’s total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of “arms” that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense. Under any of the standards of scrutiny the Court has applied to enumerated constitutional rights, this prohibition—in the place where the importance of the lawful defense of self, family, and property is most acute—would fail constitutional muster. Similarly, the requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional. Because Heller conceded at oral argument that the D. C. licensing law is permissible if it is not enforced arbitrarily and capriciously, the Court assumes that a license will satisfy his prayer for relief and does not address the licensing requirement. Assuming he is not disqualified from exercising Second Amendment rights, the District must permit Heller to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home. Pp. 56–64.
I understand the definitions get a little fuzzy as a bottom loaded semi-automatic pistol was originally placed in the same family by the District as a machine gun / assault weapon which got the ball rolling to begin with, but how do those red portions not directly contradict what you're saying? I see it not only addressing handguns but also the right to defense of self, family, AND property within the home. Not just property. It also seems to explicitly say that the Constitution protects that right.

@vChris, that's fair, my point was to address Jim's comment about France, but now that I look at it a second time I see he used the word frequency and wasn't talking about mass shootings necessarily so that's my bad. It's true, France does have lower rates of gun related homicides, suicides and injuries. I can't find data on France's rates before and after gun control though (at least not with a cursory search). They may have been enjoying a low stats in this area to begin with. That's the endogeneity problem I mentioned earlier which is a fancy way of saying you're looking at a cross section of data plotted against what is actually a multi-dimensional plot of data across other variables. (As I type this next bit out that could possibly show the opposite of what I showed before, I hope people remember when I said this in my other post I applied it to the posts that showed upward trends as well and said I only posted them to challenge preestablished mindsets)

For instance, if we look at the firearm homicide rate in England and Wales

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People do are against gun control would claim "look at that massive spike!" and those for it would say "look! eventually it went down!" In actuality, there are more variables in other dimensions of the plot and we're just looking at a slice of it. When we see a spike in hiring law enforcement that is maintained, it sheds new light on the problem

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So now our gut reaction is to inversely correlate law enforcement to crime, which is probably a solid assumption, BUT now the problem is more complicated. Does this mean the same thing would have happened independent of the ban? Does this mean it's a combination of the two? What other variables are having an effect we don't see and how strong is their impact. It's not so simple, and that's really the only point I'm trying to drive home. I may sound like a staunch gun supporter but it's only the conclusion I'm currently at after consolidating all of this. With the right data, I could be swayed again.

I just want people to understand that when they reference situations like Australia that may (or may not) have already been enjoying a downward trend in crime. The right answer isn't to look at the below and say "it works" it's to ask if we have all that we need to make an informed decision.

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Post by AB23 »

Because the rationale behind that opinion was based on assault weapons. Their rationale is that assault weapons are military-inspired, not domestically-inspired. That's what the statute in Heller is 100% about. Not handguns.

Therefore, the rest of Scalia's opinion on handguns is what is referred to as dicta, which is when a justice goes off on kind of a lecture, but it does not become law. Its outside of the actual ruling itself. Its just something that justices can refer to in the future if they need help with a particular case. The dicta that Justice Scalia, the most conservative justice in the history of SCOTUS, wrote in Heller is not law. It is merely dicta.

The only takeaway from that case was the constitutionality of the Maryland ban on assault weapons, and the line between what is an assault weapon and a semi-automatic weapon.

So you're takeaway from that case on what is law is incorrect. The law from that case has nothing to do with handguns. The only thing that refers to handguns is referred to as dicta.
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Post by Fish Tacos »

Oh gotcha, I see what I was doing wrong now, thanks for explaining it.

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Post by Jim »

AB23 you're completely speaking my language, it's so refreshing to see an American with a sane outlook on GUN ownership
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Post by Andy92 »

I know this isn't a USA issue, but it's a world issue that affects all of us. So disheartened to see the events going on in France tonight. This stuff is happening way too frequently with way too many numbers.
anguyen92 wrote:Oh well. Deal with it.

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.. Whilst we're adding charts.
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