Except guns were always easy to obtain in America (and in fact much easier to obtain in previous decades) and mass shootings have only become a significant problem relatively recently. So what’s really happening?
The people who founded this country and wrote its constitution will always be relevant to the discussion of its future. And if you really can’t handle that, there are plenty of other people around the world who have shared their beliefs and ideas on this subject for the same reasons.
If the Founding Fathers really thought there idea of a society was so perfect and that it should never change, they wouldn’t have allowed for amendments to the original Declaration of Independence. So, yeah.
Love how gun owners love the infallibly of the your founding fathers, such benign men of righteous character whom wrought a law that served themselves and kept other men in chains. 
Point to Raz0r tbh.
People bring up the Founding Fathers as if they were the greatest thinkers to ever live. Even they themselves realized that times change and thus the Constitution should be able to change with the times. If not, we’d still have slaves and only white male property owners could vote.
Guns are one of those things that should’ve been dealt with already, but some people for whatever paranoid reason REALLY want to stick to them.
Nice general statement. Go ahead and list the half dozen factors, specifically. Since, statistically, the presence of gun control laws or absence thereof, has no causative link to gun crime, violence, and homicide. The statistics we do have indicate, as I showed in that graph, that it has an impact towards safety in a positive fashion if you have less gun control. However, when drilling down to the real nitty gritty of the statistics, you realize it barely has an impact at all.
In some counties in the United States, heavy gun control areas, gun crime is rampant. In others, with no gun control, gun crime is rampant. And vice versa, some areas with gun control are very safe, others without gun control are very safe, with virtually no gun crime. Both sides take those specific areas and lay them out as if it proves their side of the argument, when in actuality, taken as a whole, the laws or lack thereof are clearly not the real issue at hand.
You know, you’re doing the exact same thing you are trying to chastise me for. The absence of gun laws has absolutely zero causation linking them to gun crime, violence, and homicide.
As for factors, let’s take poverty, employment, habitability, and investment in education as a few factors.
Investment of education is a funny one, mainly because it’s known that money for schooling is heavily pushed towards richer, whiter areas. The less education one receives, as this study shows, the more likely they are to fall to crime including gun crimes. There’s been a link to this stuff for decades but people just want to stick their fingers in their ears and say, “nope! Can’t knock my pro-gun platform with facts! Sorry! I can’t link the two together I can only link my shit together when I remove all of your intellectual nonsense bye!” Which is what you’re doing with that shitty graph that proves only two things: the person who made it wanted to bullshit the people who saw it and that it’s a colossal waste of time.
And focus on lack of employment, because, again, for decades it’s been one of the leading causes of crime. And before you start going “omg just have them make their own businesses!” please keep in mind that anyone who wasn’t white had their wealth SEVERELY restricted if they could even get anything because of several public policies including red-lining which prevented minorities to move into white neighborhoods or get federal loans for property. What other roads do you have to live other than crime if you can’t get money and build wealth through any reasonable means?
This all leads to poverty, a catch-all but also its own factor because poverty specifically causes a lot of crime. Great minds as far back as Aristotle realized that poverty is going to create crime and the best way to lower crime is to make wealth available to everyone. But we don’t do that in the States. We’re not even close to it. And without going further into the racial issue, just focus that because of the poverty caused by the government, it can be said that those policies have caused higher gun crime rates and not gun restrictions.
Wee.
I’ve already addressed this in about three different threads, this one included: just because one county/state has strict gun laws doesn’t mean the one next door does. Just take a look at this interactive map and see for yourself.
I live in New York, pretty goddamn strict on gun laws, and it’s fine. Yet the difference between NY and Chicago is that Chicago makes sure to direct funds only to wealthy areas. For all his faults, at least Giuliani and Bloomberg put money in a lot of places that needed it and helped reduce crime.
So if you agree that the presence or lack of gun control laws is not a significant factor in creating gun crime, which will exist with or without gun control, and the real factors are economic and cultural, why would you favor pushing for gun control laws? Pushing for those laws won’t do anything to solve the real problems, and is a distraction from the actual issues causing crime.
The Constitution can be amended, sure. But it was deliberately designed so that the Government couldn’t just change it on a whim. Otherwise, you’re no better than Britain.
I’ve seen first hand the outrage caused by a Government who can make laws on their own.
It starts with guns, then it moves to speech, fair trials, warrantless searches, religion and thought in general. If you give the Government the power to change one Amendment without public consent (I.e. representation), you give them the power to change them all.
Ban alligators http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-child-dragged-alligator-disney-20160614-story.html
And I love how you guys apply a blanket statement as if there wasn’t disagreement on that issue. And of course people nowadays have no conception that states were much more than different parts of the country, men back then had more loyalty to their state than to the country, and so each one made its own decision. Several Founding Fathers and much of the country opposed slavery. But I suppose the entire country was the Confederacy and every one of the Founding Fathers was Jefferson.
If you are buying your shit family guns for christmas than you deserve to get decapitated by Isis.
#notallgunowners
#onein80million
You live next to an outdoor gun range
Obvious bias is obvious
rise of corporations, economies of scale, the internets, technology improving marketing and logistics and manufacturing, billions of dollars of advertising, etc etc. Gun industry has blossomed a lot in the past few decades. there are way more people with guns now, so if the NRA argument that good guys with a gun would stop bad guys, we wouldn’t see so many successful slaughters. maybe we shouldn’t let terrorists have guns, or people who have domestically abused their partners, or other sketch people…
founding fathers liked slavery
"My opinion against it [slavery] has always been known… Never in my life did I own a slave.” -John Adams
"Domestic slavery is repugnant to the principles of Christianity… It is rebellion against the authority of a common Father. It is a practical denial of the extent and efficacy of the death of a common Savior. It is an usurpation of the prerogative of the great Sovereign of the universe who has solemnly claimed an exclusive property in the souls of men.” -Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration Of Independence
“Slavery, or an absolute and unlimited power in the master over life and fortune of the slave, is unauthorized by the common law… The reasons which we sometimes see assigned for the origin and the continuance of slavery appear, when examined to the bottom, to be built upon a false foundation. In the enjoyment of their persons and of their property, the common law protects all.” -James Wilson, Signer Of The Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
I could go on but you get the picture. Benjamin Franklin co founded the first antislavery organization in the United States with Benjamin Rush in 1774. George Washington signed into law a bill prohibiting slavery through federal legislation, and said in a letter "I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it [slavery].” Washington himself owned slaves, but they were slaves that were part of his wifes estate (Washington married into wealth) and in his will he freed all of those slaves.
How about you read some actual history before spouting off bullshit? Fucking ignorant people who have never read a history book in their lives talking like they know shit because it fits their political narrative. Slavery was always a divisive issue in this country and it was so divisive that it eventually led to the bloodiest war in our history.
And maybe you’d have a point on your statement about guns if any of these mass shootings occurred somewhere where other people had guns. Instead, it’s colleges, clubs, and elementary schools, where the shooters get to unload on dozens of completely unarmed people who don’t have single handgun between them.
The country was founded on a particular philosophy of private ownership, self reliance, and self determination. Voting, free speech, self defense, and right to ownership are the building blocks of such a society.
anything that infringes on that should be viewed with suspension and pushed back. We cannot as a society claim that we value democratic ideals of indivudiality and then and go and bar individual choices. Barring anybody who isn’t part of the state’s monopoly on violence from access to weapons is a slap to the face and a decleration that people cna’t be trusted. Part of being in a democratic society is that we put faith in that people can come together and vote to uphold particular values at an individual level, that they would vote with a moderate balance between their wants and the welfare of society. We have faith that the individual will fullfil his civic duty and follow the social contract, and in return he can continue being. If we can’t trust people to own the tools to defend themselves something that impacts for the most part only themsleves, why should we trust people with tools that impact the whole of society? Tools that are far more powerful and dangerous
Letting people own guns fall under this category of faith. We as a society put faith that people wouldn’t go and do dumb shit en mass, and that is true. Its only a real small minority that goes and do stupid shit with guns. For the most part guns aren’t used for dumb shit, the same can’t be said about voting or free speech. Most people squander or abuse those things to hurt others.
If the argument against guns was to be applied to voting, then living in a society where people could vote should be a concern for everybody anti gun. Under the current system, people can cast a vote to push and allow for very stupid laws. Voting has killed, marginalized, and essentially ruined entire communities home and abroad thourgh the legislation of laws that made it ok to do that kind of shit. Why should we trust society to self rule, when they have for the better part of 240 years have done harm with their vote. Why should people be allowed to vote again? I don’t see why anybody needs to vote when for the most part, people have squandered the vote and allowed institutions to kill people with no consequence, rob them of money that should be for the general welfare, allow blatant corruption, etc. Look at this election cycle, why do we even allow people to vote?
The constitution was made to be amended, it was made so on purpose, especially when you look at the slavery issue and the provision within the constitution that need to be meet for an amendment. But using those powers to erode the principles of private owenrship, self relieance and determination is fucking absurd.
So not only has he been a regular at this club (eliminating the idea of him casing it out entirely) for yrs, but he also asked a fellow classmate out well before that. Dude was definitely gay. It’s practically confirmed now.
We’re getting all this information from third and fourth-party sources now. Why did the FBI want his ex-wife to be quiet about their abuse? A mere indictment on DV charges would be enough to make him fail NICS.
People keep asking for the Government to do keep guns away from psychos, when they’re already provided with the means to take action themselves. This should instead be a wake-up call for people to exploit NICS and make psychos aware to the Government - that’s what it’s there for.
It originated from the Palm Beach Post, so it isn’t a Gawker issue. Most people thought the idea of him being gay was wrong, but it actually made sense from the jump. The former co-worker admitted that he should’ve fought harder in exposing him, but he was at a point where he just wanted to get away from dude. That’s something most people generally do. Hindsight is a bitch. The FBI knew it wouldn’t be a good look and were trying to avoid more bad press.
Another article talked about him casing out Disney World days before the attack: