Kindergarten Cops?

[High Fidelity]

no, not on the federal level now several states have the background checks (which sometimes includes mental health screening but that is on the state

That’s insane.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Given the American propensity to murder one another, it seems like these alone should be the very minimum before discussing further measures if those alone prove ineffective.

 

[dogs4thewin]

That’s insane.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Given the American propensity to murder one another, it seems like these alone should be the very minimum before discussing further measures if those alone prove ineffective.

Actually, as I stated above if we had a great propensity to murder each other there would be MANY more shootings. This is not saying that background checks are a bad idea, but whether saying that saying that we have a great propensity is clearly false as there are MILLIONS of guns and gun owners in this country and yet there are not 100000s of shootings a year. In fact, there were less than 50,000 gun deaths last year. We are talking total gun deaths this includes murders, suicides, murders in the commission of other crimes ( as opposed to a murder that is the lone act, accidental homicides with a firearm ( which by the way in most cases is punishable by law, and justified homicides that is to say that someone whether an officer or civilian killed someone in some type of self defense or defense of others

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Vermont is a very Democratic state. Democratic gun ownership is at 15%.
Maine maybe.
But unlike the South, gun owners in the east aren't saying they keep guns "in case the government oversteps its bounds." The 1/6 insurrectionists have many sympathizers who believe government overstepped its bounds when Biden won a fair election by 8 million votes. These gun owners are dangerous and unhinged and need to he told again and again that is not how democracy works.

Trying to compare different regions (and the various rules in them) to find a simplistic obvious pattern has become something of a fool's errand...Absent blatant cherry picking, it's very difficult to find a discernable pattern or correlative trend.

For instance, the "constitutional carry laws", while controversial due to the states that have enacted them, have been in places (considered to be relatively safe states like Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, and Idaho...) for quite some time...the other side of the coin, some states like Missouri, Tennessee, and Alabama have those laws, and they have much higher murder rates.

The same goes for gun ownership rates... states like Idaho (who also have permitless carry and a lower murder rate) have 60% gun ownership rate....New Hampshire has a 41% gun ownership rate.

Vermont, overall, has a 50% gun ownership rate...it's possible what you're saying is true and the lion's share of guns in Vermont are in republicans hands, but never the less, they're not causing problems up there from the looks of it being that Vermont has a pretty low murder rate compared to the rest of the country. Idaho has a murder rate of 2 per 100,000, which would put them right around here when compared to the world put them somewhere between Finland and Canada.

While there's a slightly stronger trend with regards to poverty...even that metric isn't a "slam dunk" and the trend is weak at best.

 

[dogs4thewin]

Also many of the murders were cases where the person wanted a particular person or persons dead ( not in the sense of a targeted attack based on race or religion but as in I am mad at x person or persons (particular) for x or y action so I murder them.

At the end of the day, we are left with very few true mass shootings that regulations would really stop all that many deaths. At least half of which by the way are by someone's own hand.

 

[Pommer]

Oh hyperbole. Always exposing the truth.

This is the million dollar question, isn't it? There is always a tradeoff between security and liberty. The real question is, how much of your liberty are you willing to surrender in the name of "security"?

As 9/11 and COVID showed us, many people are willing, nay, EAGER to surrender their liberties if it provides them with a greater feeling of security. But that "security" is mostly an illusion. Taking off your shoes in the security line at the airport doesn't make your flight any more secure. It's just theater that makes people feel better. And that's the problem with most gun regulation proposals. They would not actually do anything to improve the security of people. All it would do is give the government another stage in which to perform theater to infringe upon people's liberties to enable people to pretend that they're somehow "safer".

I've learned, particularly these last 3 years, that most people just want to DO SOMETHING!, and they aren't really all that interested in understanding if the something they're doing is actually beneficial. Just the act of "doing something" makes them "feel" better and that's what most people are looking for; a feeling of "security". But as Benjamin Franklin said in 1755 and repeated again in 1775;

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."​

Sadly, few people seem to understand the gravity of this statement. When you allow the government to step in to make you "safer" at the cost of your liberty, you deserve neither and you are effectively surrendering both. You can be sure that the government is nothing if not opportunistic, and they will happily take your request to infringe upon your liberty and run with it.

This is why I am leery of regulations in general. Almost all regulations sound good on the surface, but you can bet your bottom dollar that some corrupt, opportunistic politician is going to take advantage of your desire to feel "safer". They'll do things that create an illusion of safety. And people in their fears will breathe a sigh of relief, even though they're no safer than they were before the regulation and have lost just a bit more of their liberty in the process.

The way we went from “how do we keep kooks from shooting up the place” to “Tyranny!”
is impressive.

 

[Danthemailman]

Biden announces the creation of first White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention to be led by Harris.

Biden announces the creation of first White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention to be led by Harris

President Biden announced Friday the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which he said would the first in history. It will be led by Vice President Harris.

www.foxnews.com

 

[JustOneWay]

They will probably try to defund the police.

I know! Why do the republicans want to defund the police?

 

[Danthemailman]

They will probably try to defund the police

Would not surprise me. Just plain insanity.

 

[probinson]

The way we went from “how do we keep kooks from shooting up the place” to “Tyranny!”
is impressive.

The way you imagined the word "Tyranny" (and stuck it in quotes as if it were something I actually said) in a post that didn't contain the word is equally impressive. Incredibly dishonest, but impressive nonetheless!