12 Dead, 50 Injured in Shooting at "Dark Knight Rises" Premire in Colorado

[Marelo]

Originally Posted by Gregness

Magus, you keep bringing up this access to guns nonsense, but that's exactly what it is. Guns are just a tool, and the fact that he has them didn't turn him into a sociopath.

How does a tool merely existing mean that everyone should have free or even slightly inconvenient access to it?

Like, I don't know about you but I'm pretty glad people can't buy landmines at Walmart.

Same argument, put another way: Tools are useful because they're designed to help people accomplish things. Shovels are designed to make digging easier. Guns are designed to make killing things easier. The idea that we shouldn't be suspicious or restrictive of people buying flak jackets and assault rifles because they're "just tools" is like assuming someone buying a shovel isn't planning on digging a hole in the ground with it.

[Magus]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

part of the issue is what I like to call "Telephone Game Syndrome"

Media: during an interview "is there any chance this was in response to the new batman movie"

Person A "I hear it might have been motivated by the batman movie"
Person B "It was motivated by the batman movie"

This is why I had "news" programs speculating. It leads to people thinking its true.

CNN has easily the dumbest story (LINK REMOVED BECAUSE IT WAS SERIOUSLY STUPID. Basically it's about that part in The Dark Knight Returns, the graphic novel from 1985, where a guy shoots some people in a theater, and then the second half points out that this is dumb to bring up, so why did they?) on their front page regarding this right now.

Hell Begins had the Waynes get shot outside a movie theater, why not go with that for your dumb article?

I like how the second half of the article basically goes, "This is actually baseless, but we already got your pageclick for our ratings, so joke's on you."

[Solid Snake]

The problem really is that the NRA has, in its mission to protect all guns from regulation, oversimplified the issue into a series of taglines about "Freedom" and "Liberty" and all those buzzwords you'll never be able to make sense of in America.

...And, really, I don't have a problem with certain KINDS of guns. That's the problem with the gun control discussion right now: The NRA has basically galvanized half the population by inappropriately, and inaccurately, demonizing gun control proponents as advocating a position that will restrict their access to their hunting rifles and destroy their "way of life."

I'm sure there are gun control proponents who'd seriously, if given the opportunity, outlaw guns entirely, but the general propositions I've heard from more serious political actors involves either banning the ridiculously violent varieties of guns, or merely including additional regulatory hurdles to the immediate acquisition of new guns.

Neither of those positions are unreasonable.

Neither of those options would, in any way, restrict what probably constitutes the majority of the NRA's membership from continuing to hunt. Shotguns and rifles that are designed to target game will continue to exist. Pistols that can only shoot a few rounds before requiring reloading? I'm all for continuing to sell them to purchasers in good standing -- though I'd like to see more regulatory impositions imposed on the sale of all firearms to ensure we're selling them to the right people. Many women, in particular, could well benefit from pistols that could be used to deter sexual assault.

As for the Second Amendment, even assuming the NRA is right in its assumptions as to its intended meaning and the literal nature of Constitutional interpretation, it's difficult to imagine what the "framer's intent" would truly be in the modern era. When Thomas Jefferson thought about guns, he was thinking about matchlock muskets. Those fuckers were notoriously inaccurate, painstaking to reload, and they sure as hell couldn't be used by mentally imbalanced citizens to has this kind of effect in these kinds of shootings.

[Gregness]

Originally Posted by Magus

Explain to me how an assault rifle is anything but a tool for killing people. If you need 30 shots for a deer you are a shit-tastic hunter. We always got along just fine with a 30.6. Heck, my father's first deer was bagged with a .22 with iron sights 50 years ago.

If it's just for fun I would argue the necessity of it in comparison to the danger. There's a reason people shouldn't be able to buy M80s (quarter stick of dynamite) either, even though presumably they just want to have fun with them.

It's not even arguable in my mind like a handgun where maybe you could argue its use in self-defense.

As for sociopaths, part of more stringent gun laws would be creating a database of people with a history of mental illness to go along with current criminal databases. Maybe that would be a start. I don't think even the NRA could oppose that, right? Except they probably do.

Originally Posted by Marelo

How does a tool merely existing mean that everyone should have free or even slightly inconvenient access to it?

Like, I don't know about you but I'm pretty glad people can't buy landmines at Walmart.

Same argument, put another way: Tools are useful because they're designed to help people accomplish things. Shovels are designed to make digging easier. Guns are designed to make killing things easier. The idea that we shouldn't be suspicious or restrictive of people buying flak jackets and assault rifles because they're "just tools" is like assuming someone buying a shovel isn't planning on digging a hole in the ground with it.

My point is more that tools are neutral and that condemning a tool for what a person does with it is counterproductive. For the digging example, shovels are designed to make digging easier, but if some nutcase digs up a sewer pipe in my front lawn and breaks it open, it doesn't really matter whether he used a shovel, a backhoe or his goddamn bare hands, the damage is done. The issue is the guy being a nutcase/asshole/whatever, not that tools he used exist.

Careful and thoughtful application of dynamite helped carve Mount Rushmore, and that same dynamite could just as easily blast Washington's nose off.

Anyway, if you all want to have a further discussion of this, I'm more than game to engage you, but we should take it to PM's or another thread or something so we're not derailing this one.

[rpgdemon]

Originally Posted by Magus

I like how the second half of the article basically goes, "This is actually baseless, but we already got your pageclick for our ratings, so joke's on you."

Then don't link it for fucks sake. You are feeding into it.

[rpgdemon]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

though I'd like to see more regulatory impositions imposed on the sale of all firearms to ensure we're selling them to the right people.

Such as?

One of the biggest things people do wrong in debating the issue of gun rights is just say, "We need more regulations." It's like, sure, that makes sense inherently, but there already are a boatload of regulations. Like, list a regulation, and it'll probably already be, legally, in place.

It's not an issue of needing additional regulations on the sale of firearms, it's the fact that no one needs a pistol that can shoot 100 rounds without reloading. Who does that benefit? The person at a gun range who doesn't feel like reloading? And then you have the people going, "NO IT'S SUPER FUN TO SHOOT." Then you say, "Yeah, okay, your fun is totally worth the lives lost to these weapons in incidents like this.", and win the argument.

[Magus]

Originally Posted by rpgdemon

Then don't link it for fucks sake. You are feeding into it.

It's like a Rush Limbaugh article or something, a car wreck. We can't look away. Hell you can't even watch CNN without seeing the dumb way the media coverage of this is going. That said, I will take the link out since you are right.

Originally Posted by Gregness

My point is more that tools are neutral and that condemning a tool for what a person does with it is counterproductive. For the digging example, shovels are designed to make digging easier, but if some nutcase digs up a sewer pipe in my front lawn and breaks it open, it doesn't really matter whether he used a shovel, a backhoe or his goddamn bare hands, the damage is done. The issue is the guy being a nutcase/asshole/whatever, not that tools he used exist.

Careful and thoughtful application of dynamite helped carve Mount Rushmore, and that same dynamite could just as easily blast Washington's nose off.

Anyway, if you all want to have a further discussion of this, I'm more than game to engage you, but we should take it to PM's or another thread or something so we're not derailing this one.

Yeah but take your example of dynamite. Should anyone be able to access dynamite when they have no legitimate purpose or need for it? No. Like if you want to buy an assault rifle you should have to have a legitimate purpose for it, not just the second amendment. You can't go buy uranium or whatever. That's a hyperbolic comparison of course but at some point there should be a line between what is okay for civilians and what should only be given to police/military. And the line seems self-evident to me. I don't think civilians should be able to buy grenade launchers or explosives or assault rifles. They just can't be argued to be for self-defense.

I don't really see this as derailing the topic, I don't think we've had a spree killing topic ever where we didn't talk about gun control in some shape or form.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by rpgdemon

Such as?

Background checks (including a prospective buyer's mental health history), lengthy waiting periods before acquisition, limits on the amount you can purchase at once, a centralized government computer database that records the amount (and type) of firearms you've purchased and own under your name, regulations inhibiting transfer (ie, inability to inherit), regulations relating to bullets (guns can't fire X bullets before a mandated manual reload)...

...ideally in the more distant future, also some way that certain more powerful weapons (the shotguns, not the self-defense pistols) would require personalized activation via fingerprint or voice.

[Magus]

A pistol is far more dangerous as a whole than a shotgun, though.

[Aerozord]

Just tossing this out there. Guy made homemade explosives and was able to use them for strategic advantage and the greatest difficulty in taking down suspects like this is the full body armor (ie the defensive aspect that no one seems to argue to regulate).

Sure it might have lessened number of dead but it wouldn't stop things like this. Could have easily have used other weapons

Japan has crazy strict weapon regulations. So some nut just drove a car into a crowd then started slashing people with kitchen knives. We are humans. The entire reason we are at the top of the food chain is our ability to make weapons