Sociopath Community

Turncoat said: 

Yes, I'd say taking guns out of circulation would have a positive effect on violence in general.

Casualties, that's what would be lowered, and that's why any of this "disarming America" pipedream matters. If we had the same rate of violence from everyone swapping over to melee weapons, we'd still reflect a lower overall loss of life.

Not just casualties. I guess it depends on how you define violence but the way I think about it is that it's somewhat equivalent to damage. A gun can damage much more than a knife, hence its capacity for violence is greater.

It's a nice idea, but the weapons situation isn't something we can just make disappear. Unless we got rid of all firearms from... I dunno, djinni magic, we're stuck with solutions that have to work within the hard fact that guns are something we can't just get rid of.

Taking enough guns out of circulation so that it'd have an actual effect is probably practically unfeasible, yeah.

Changing an amendment is one of the most sacrilegious things in American superstition. Once we show that one can be changed, it'd snowball into trying to change more of it. 

As long as none are changed, people assume it's unbreakable, and that's surprisingly important for how this country functions.

Why is it okay to amend the original constitution but not an amendment? Seems strangely arbitrary. Especially considering it's been done before with the prohibition of alcohol.

Why is it the government against it's people? This should just be about the people and what they collectively want. The constitution is there to give the political system stability but the idea that anything could be changed in that document shouldn't be heresy.

Have you looked at "The People" lately? 

They are all busy fighting each other.

I have a feeling the people have always fought each other lol.

Some people handle guns better than others. I think it all comes down to how mature a society is. Are the Swiss mature enough to handle guns? Yes. Are the Americans mature enough of a society to handle guns? Less so. The realities are less than ideal though, guns aren't going away in the States no matter how many shootings happen. So their best bet is to invest in a more mature society. 

Kestrel said: 

Inquirer said: 

I'm not equalizing guns and nukes. It was just a way to highlight how I think focusing on the law-abiding gun owners is a bit of a fallacy.

The example you provided is so off it isn't congruent

How so? It clearly proves that solely focusing on the percentage of law-abiding owners is irrelevant. That should not be our first concern.

What exactly is "fixing less than 1% of a problem" here? Removing guns?

Putting regulations and restrictions on the purchase of weaponry will lower gun violence at the most by 1-2%. Placing regulations and restrictions require the criminals to actually obtain the weapons legally to be effective. This is not the case.

If we'd remove all guns then from where would criminals steal theirs?

It's probably true that restrictions, regulations, buybacks or bans won't actually decrease the number of guns out there enough to lead to a decrease in gun violence. The limitations are practical and not theoretical however, which is why I argued the latter in our last thread because it sounded like you didn't even want to entertain the link between number of guns and gun deaths. Somehow, despite getting rid of all guns, criminals would still find enough guns elsewhere.

If you are primarily focused on the practicalities of it then I agree removing guns isn't really a viable option. I still think certain restrictions would help though, such as forcing gun owners to get a license from a nearby gun range and more stringently forbidding various types of people from purchasing a gun.

Not only did I answer it in the past, I've already provided an explanation for it in my posts here. It isn't worth jeopardizing the integrity of the constitution to fix less than 1% of a problem. Put the effort into the bulk of the problem and not just the clickbait minority portion of it.

What is the click bait minority portion?

I also still don't understand how it'd jeopardize the constitution. Unless you just mean that any change to it would be bad because it'd make it different?

Isn't that phrasing just there to make the amendment itself very clear? It shouldn't affect the difficulty in changing or replacing it.

No. Those words were chosen intentionally, this isn't some dated language issue. It's very clear by its priority in amendments and its wording it isn't to be touched.

I'm not saying it's dated language. I'm saying the language in the constitution does not legally matter when amending it. The only reason you'd care about how they phrased it is if you see their authors, still, as an authority on how to design 21st century gun laws.

Why would it lead to a domino effect? Amendments have been passed before but only after A LOT of work. I don't see why changing the 2nd amendment would suddenly be any different.

There's a certain paradigm a lot of Americans have that is unique to our country the more I speak to foreigners. It's that you aren't to trust your government and assume they are doing whatever they can to diminish your rights for their benefit. We worship revolution and it is the most American thing you can do in my opinion to hold a constant skepticism of your government at all times.

I very much believe it was envisioned for it to be ideal for the populace to hold the government at gunpoint when the amendment was made.

I get that you (and a lot of other Americans) feel like this. It doesn't make for a very good rational argument though. How would a realistic scenario look like where the US government chose to trample on the rights of its people so badly that it caused an armed uprising?

I still don't get the domino effect you and TC are talking about. There are dozens of amendments to the US constitution, why would another one suddenly make it easier for the government to ratify new ones faster?

 America is in a better place to hold their own against a tyrannical government than before. It'd be a miracle for the government to win an insurgency in the first place(it's never been done), let alone against histories most armed populace who just happen to be zealous on their rights not being infringed

I think you should be far more skeptical of your elites than the government. Seems like they pulled a really successful bait and switch.

Major Major said: 

Inquirer said: 

Isn't the justification obvious? That the freedom to not be a victim of gun violence should be prioritized over the freedom to own guns.

You need to also explain how taking them out of circulation will significantly reduce violence and how the tyrannical government argument is bogus. People aren't going to be happy with re-writing the foundational laws just because brainwashed leftists "feel" it might have a positive effect. They want something more concrete. Hence Kestrel's rant.

I think I did explain both of those (and we've had an entire thread dedicated to this in the past that I partly reference). Proving my claims is a bit harder though. While I can link to statistics that show a correlation between number of guns and deaths by guns it's much harder to prove that something that has never happened (the US government trying to subjugate its own people by force) is so unrealistic that it shouldn't be considered a serious argument.

There's also a difference between talking about realistic versus theoretical solutions. This is really a multivariate issue and should be tackled from a number of fronts simultaneously. If we only go by numbers the focus should be on ending the war on drugs (winning or forfeiting) because it ruins black families by taking away the father and by inviting gangs to take control of a very lucrative trade (both which lead young black men to become criminals), implementing a better form of gun licensing that both sets up a functional waiting period for purchases and actually limits 'bad' people from just going out to buy a gun and finally a much greater focus on firearm suicide prevention (possibly by encouraging people with depression to temporarily give up their guns).

Xadem said: 

Some people handle guns better than others. I think it all comes down to how mature a society is.

How "mature" is American society? 

While I would argue that we're ahead on some curves, such as racial prejudice, I wouldn't say that our sociological mental age is something worth bragging about. 

Are the Swiss mature enough to handle guns? Yes. Are the Americans mature enough of a society to handle guns? Less so.

I think a place that hasn't had to deal with gun issues in a post-exposure way can't be mature about something they've mostly avoided. 

Avoidance is effective, but it results in ignorance. You can't expect a place that hasn't been exposed to the problem to understand it as intimately. 

The realities are less than ideal though, guns aren't going away in the States no matter how many shootings happen. So their best bet is to invest in a more mature society. 

I disagree, because I don't see it happening. Our media campaigns push for "maturity" in a very reinforcing baseline way because they know their audience. 

We have the manage the tools themselves, as the people can't be beyond influencers fucking with them. 

Inquirer said: 

Turncoat said: 

Yes, I'd say taking guns out of circulation would have a positive effect on violence in general.

Casualties, that's what would be lowered, and that's why any of this "disarming America" pipedream matters. If we had the same rate of violence from everyone swapping over to melee weapons, we'd still reflect a lower overall loss of life.

Not just casualties. I guess it depends on how you define violence but the way I think about it is that it's somewhat equivalent to damage. A gun can damage much more than a knife, hence its capacity for violence is greater.

So we're on roughly the same page then? 

I guess I mean "Casualty Potential" more than something closer to "Reported Casualties", as otherwise I've contradicted myself when arguing against Billy about Car Bombs. 

It's a nice idea, but the weapons situation isn't something we can just make disappear. Unless we got rid of all firearms from... I dunno, djinni magic, we're stuck with solutions that have to work within the hard fact that guns are something we can't just get rid of.

Taking enough guns out of circulation so that it'd have an actual effect is probably practically unfeasible, yeah. 

Like, how do we even do it? 

This is why "Guns Are Bad" rhetoric gets nothing done, we need a way to fight the poison now that it's already this deeply in our system. 

Changing an amendment is one of the most sacrilegious things in American superstition. Once we show that one can be changed, it'd snowball into trying to change more of it. 

As long as none are changed, people assume it's unbreakable, and that's surprisingly important for how this country functions.

Why is it okay to amend the original constitution but not an amendment? Seems strangely arbitrary. Especially considering it's been done before with the prohibition of alcohol. 

It's about context, and Prohibition was doomed to fail. 

Again, The Constitution is an element of American Superstition. It only has to make as much sense as it's historical context and the room they have to use it in an argument. This society has the need to feel that the system running us is bigger than the government from having already been built on the back of Counter-Cultural Roots. 

Why is it the government against it's people? This should just be about the people and what they collectively want. The constitution is there to give the political system stability but the idea that anything could be changed in that document shouldn't be heresy.

Have you looked at "The People" lately? 

They are all busy fighting each other.

I have a feeling the people have always fought each other lol.

We're in an age of ideas and people are even more disconnected than ever. People being prone to infighting has been streamlined. 

Mexico gunbattle near Texas border between suspected cartel members, police leaves at least 21 dead

Four police officers were among nearly two dozen people killed after security forces engaged in an hour-long gunbattle with suspected cartel members Saturday in a Mexican town near the U.S. border, days after President Trump said he was moving to designate Mexican drug cartels as terror organizations.

The shootout happened around noon in the small town of Villa Union, a town in Coahuila state located about an hour’s drive southwest of Eagle Pass, Texas.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/mexico-cartel-member-gunbattle-police-texas-border

Kestrel said: 

Tryptamine said: 

Also the only reason we have these gun laws is because of our history of revolution, but the landscape is 300 years different now. They didn't have Apache helicopters and inter-continental ballistic missiles in 1776. It's a dated mode of thinking that we could revolt now.

 The vietnamese and the afghans didn't have helicopters or missiles. There'd never be a standing opposition, even in the revolutionary war guerilla warfare was prominent. Think of an American insurgency where pop shots and carbombs become the regular on authority. 

The military has around 1.3 million personnel, American citizens own more private guns than people that live in our country at around 360 million, and this is standing peace time before they're being produced to be distributed. It's not only possible to win a war of attrition with the military, it's in the publics favor(thanks to the founding fathers).

Also, do you really think the military would use missiles on civilians? America is very aware that they need to cater to the support of their people to declare any sort of war. Anything like that used in country, even if for the right reasons would end in a massive turnout of support for the revolting side. 

Like really, what insurgency actually hasn't had to fight against air support and missiles?

The mobile experience here is challenging, so I have to cover your points without formatting. North Vietnam had a home advantage, and they were also equipped and given strategic info by other communist nations. US showed up when all hell already broke loose. They not only had home advantage and time, they also weren't living in the Information Age.

I'm not sure what you're meaning about Afghanistan, as far as I know it was just too costly to be there, especially when the people who pay for the army don't even want us there. Very different situations in my eyes from something like a US martial law state.

The war of attrition against government argument might be a solid one. I hesitate to support that because I think if it happened right now, militias would be fucked. Anyone who expressed the important revolutionary sentiments online or on any phone would be drone bombed within the first 24 hours. The pure hell that would be reigned down would change the minds of 99.9% of people. Jane from JCPenny's would rather just live than fight.

In case you haven't noticed, we're not exactly breeding a warrior culture here with our rainbow flags, or modern shows like this:

So when it comes time to fight, is your neighbor who watches Glee going to help? Nah. It's already a lost fight, just look at the culture around you. Everything became this way, and people sat like frogs in water turning boiled. On the flip side, "progression" is at least good source material for comics.

Big Mouth reads to me like as if Steve from American Dad took a dark turn somewhere. 

It's fucking trash.