[Oberon]

Originally Posted by August

We can't we be responsible gun owners without another useless law trying to mandate it? The overwhelming majority of firearms owners certainly are responsible and we're the only ones who would pay any heed to such a law. Not to beat the car analogy to beyond the grave but in my research on firearms fatality rates I saw a stat that says around half of the child deaths in vehicle accidents were related to them being improperly or completely unrestrained in spite of laws to the contrary. So if someone is so irresponsible as to allow a child to get their hands on a firearm what makes you think that they would care how the state says they should store them?

Agreed, but there are careless accidents and the like that a law might help stop. I mean it's the difference between advising that you wear a seatbelt and making it law to wear a seatbelt. If you are concerned that there might be a law based penalty to your actions then it makes you more focused to do them. Yeah, it's a bit stick rather than carrot, but like you already say, most of the people already do this, so it'll be second nature to them, and it will punish the idiots who don't, preferably before the child gets the gun and shoots someone.

That's a typical socialist answer. Pick one group of people to pay for the sins of another group. Why should I subsidize every jerk who acts irresponsibly? The NRA conducts far more gun safety classes than any other organization including the government yet that's not enough they must pay for it too? As I mentioned above what makes you think passing law 20,001 is going to make anyone act more responsibly and use those safes instead of pawning them for another crack rock?

Eh, I'm a socialist so I give a socialist answer. I must admit I've always struggled to understand the mindset of "I'm alright Jack, let the others hang" that seems to be prevalent in many American responses to situations. It's strange because Americans can be the most caring and giving people in one moment, and the most selfish in the next, I guess it runs with most countries but it seems to be more noticable in responses from Americans. At least it has been on here, perhaps a wider viewpoint is needed sometime, to see if it's just a GT thing.
But, again, it's surely in the best interest of the NRA to do everything and anything it can to avoid and stop mass-shootings? Therefore, if it is proven that such a scheme would work then it should be looked at by them, IMHO anyway.

What is causing these incidents is a flaw in our society, not the presence of an inanimate object that existed in peoples hands long before they started happening. What you interpret as a lack of caring about the incident is really the expression of frustration that once again any other possible cause is immediately ignored in the controllers zeal to once again move the bar a step closer to their goal of banning gun ownership.

I wouldn't go as far as to take the inanimate object out of the equation completely, because it's far far easier to kill a scattered group of people with a gun than it is to use any other weapon except perhaps high explosives. A knife requires you to get in close, likewise anything like a bat or sword, a bow and arrow requires arm strength and has a relatively low rate of fire except for in the hands of a specialist, and even then unless you hit specific areas, an arrow will do less damage to the human body than most bullets, a car requires a run up to the target and is only really good in wide open spaces, you can't really get a car down a school corridor...well, unless you use a Peel P50 but you'd probably just cause a few broken toes with that. With a gun though, especially with the more recent weapons which have reduced recoil as much as possible (I think of the AA12 assault shotgun, I mean that thing is a beast, good rate of fire, minimal recoil, and very reliable) it's a case of point towards the target and fire, it's so simple that a child can and will operate it in an effective manner with very little training.
In a way, the gun is the ultimate killing device, probably the one of the most lethal devices mankind has ever created, and one of the most simplest in basic function to operate. I mean I could shoot a gun, quite easily, but I doubt I would hit anything with it at range, but close range how could I miss? When you add automatic burst fire to that, with multiple bullets within a fraction of a second and anything in front of you is going to have a bad time of it.

Of course, I'm not going to say that it's completely down to the firearm, that would be nonsense. Until our attack drones gain sentience and turn the firearms on us, it's all just inanimate objects, and yes I agree absolutely that the fleshy bit holding the inanimate object is at least 70-80% of the problem, but it would be wrong to dismiss the firearms role in it completely.

That'd be real poplar with the Black Lives Matter folks but it's not just the Hood. There are plenty of others who wouldn't put up with it either.
I can't think of a better trigger for that civil war you mentioned

Eyeah...that's a fair point. Still, on the upside, at least the firearms will be safely stored during the civil war!

Tricky is an understatement when even biting a pop tart into the shape of a gun earns a kid a suspension. That's a sign of some serious paranoia over firearms that predates these incidents and I believe actually contributes to them.

I think both sides have gotten so entrenched and so paranoid about the possible actions of the other that anything is going to be viewed as a direct attack.
I guess that's another part of the frustration, like a lot of things in the US at the moment, there's absolute deadlock with no way forward, and people will suffer because of it.

I know that's certainly what gun owners want, we'd much rather go back to arguing among ourselves over the merits of 9mm vs .45acp in letters to the National Rifleman (the NRA monthly), but I'm starting to wonder about the other side, the purely political organizations like the Bloombergs and the Bradys. They need these incidents to keep their gun control cause alive because without them they get ignored. It's why their public support never lasts very long after these incidents. People realize how their solutions never actually target the problem itself (universal background checks are a prime example of this) and their momentum withers. They even pre-plan their responses to the next incident from what i've read, spending far more on lobbying and media efforts than the NRA could ever hope to match which is not nearly as rich as has been portrayed by the anti-gun media.

I dunno, I think they would probably say the same about your side. That whenever there's a shooting, the fear of a law being passed to ban or restrict firearms means that there's a mass purchasing of ammunition and firearms. I wouldn't be surprised if the pro-gun forums also pre-plan their responses to the next event because let's face it, we both know that there's going to be a next event, and in the age of 24 hour rolling news media, whoever gets their actions out there in the right window of time (not too soon to be seen as capitalising on the tragedy but not so late that the other guy gets their word in first) gets their fans approval. Because, at this late point in the day, the NRA aren't speaking to anti-gun people any clearer than anti-gun people are speaking to pro-gun people, they just speak to their own crowds and try to rope in whatever people in the middle ground that they can. I don't suppose though that there's many left in the middle ground which probably resembles Verdun by now.

Well just remember that things have already improved enormously in a comparatively short period of time for our species. While I agree we should always seek to improve more, not being able to achieve perfection does not mean that we haven't been really trying to get to (and keep) this point. It's not so far away from either of our countries that childrens lot in life is far far worse.

That's true, that's very true. I think that even if we cannot achieve perfection, we should always strive to get as close to it as we possibly can. In a way it's what humanity as a whole has been doing since we discovered fire, always trying to make life better, safer, and easier for ourselves. Of course, as a socialist, I think that we should focus on spreading that better life to as many people as we can, so that every child can enjoy a standard of life equal to our own, but as a realist I also realise that that is something that isn't going to happen tomorrow.

This has been a good talk, August, and I'm glad that you realise that despite my occasional acerbic language (for which I do apologise) that I'm not trying to attack the pro-gun position, nor am I a staunch believer of the anti-gun crowd. I can see the valid points raised by both sides and I think that to abolish the 2nd Amendment would be a massively foolhardy endeavour and cause a national divide not seen since 1861.
The American viewpoint is at times strange to me, as a Brit and a European, just as I suspect that the European viewpoint is confusing to an American at times. I'd like to think we agree on more things than we disagree, but of course in a place like this, a forum, most of the time we discuss things on which we disagree. Heaven knows, my viewpoint can be strange to some Europeans at times...one only has to look at the migrant thread to see that.
Still, guns or no guns, America is still an awesome place with awesome stuff, so keep being awesome America.