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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh BYTE- "I hear ya, NIKI2" on the part about Frem and him calling everyone who disagrees with him a "liar". Staying out of whatever is between you and and NIKI2- haven't kept up with the back-and-forth on that.

That is all.

*backs out slowly*

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:

my being anti-traditional-gender-role is being treated as pro-gun bias.

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Just to clarify, though, damn, people's interest in actually reading other people's words and understanding them in this thread are verging on nil: I wasn't saying that laws are useless or meaningless, only that they're not where social change starts. Laws, to my mind are something like the marriage cerimony of social evolution and people act as if they're the engagement or even the first kiss. I was simply saying they are no place to start. No one wants to be proposed to on the first date.

Weirdest thread EVAR.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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TONY...

There are at least five pages in this discussion that I haven't read due to time constraints.

If you would be so kind, can you please enumerate for me the gun controls you would be OK with and the ones you wouldn't?

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I saw only one substantive suggestion on your part .... using 12-gauge guns as Taser dart-throwers.

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Hello,

The British model is good with two caveats.

1) I believe that even their limited use of lethal force could be further reduced. Knowledge of an armed assailant is not in itself enough of a reason to bring in the killers. A robust selection of nonlethal options may allow for effective nonlethal responses to lethal threats.

2) The citizenry have no practical tools of defense whatsoever.

So I am basically proposing the British model with an accommodation for second amendment rights.

The arms that the people keep and bear can be mostly a variety of effective less lethal weapons, rather than firearms.

Hunters could retain bolt-action/lever-action rifles suitable to their craft.

Sports shooters could possibly enjoy simple revolver style handguns or limited capacity target pistols and have marker ammunition available to them should they like to fire at some targets or tin cans.

Firearm equipped police, when RARELY required, could use the full gamut of nonlethal weapons in addition to hunting rifles/shotguns and revolvers. In most cases, I suspect tasers and stunning devices will subdue the lethally armed adversary without need for lethal response.

People fearful of tyrannical government will feel secure knowing that their constabulary is so limited.

People fearful of weapons of mass murder will feel secure knowing that nobody has such things. Not ordinary civilians. Not half-a-million police officers.

People fearful of robbers and rapists will be able to defend themselves against attack.

I think this solution would solve virtually everyone's problems.

--Anthony

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
I submit that if we as a nation trusted our government more we'd be able to pass anti-gun laws like we used to. (It's kind of a tautology, ain'it?) But who cares about that? The truth is, if our government were to start being trustworthy tomorrow, we'd cut down on the number of mass murders in the first place. 'Cause as long as our government's policies reflect a belief that social change issues from the barrel of a gun, that force of arms (i.e.: "or else" i.e.: laws) is what we need to make the world a better place, INDIVIDUALS WILL FOLLOW THAT EXAMPLE. If our government were to really stop the fucking torture, and cut military spending FOR REAL, and stop denying that we kill the weak and defenseless with every strike, then our citizens would follow suit and there would be a real reduction in gun violence in this country.

How is it that people don't make that connection? How is it that we think that if we just take guns away from "the right people," that this problem will go away? It's absurd and it's childish and it's never gonna work anyway.

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“As long as the child will be trained not by love, but by fear, so long will humanity live not by justice, but by force. As long as the child will be ruled by the educator’s threat and by the father’s rod, so long will mankind be dominated by the policeman’s club, by fear of jail, and by panic of invasion by armies and navies.”

Boris Sidis, from “A lecture on the abuse of the fear instinct in early education” in Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1919.

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And blah blah blah... Yanno, I researched to 2A too. That bit about well-regulated militias was not put in there for you, the Supreme Court, and all gun-nuts to ignore, and when the Supreme Court decided that the 2A protected individual right to own a gun, you all got handed a nice, juicy, totally unwarranted kiss on the ass. The right to own guns belongs with the STATES. Because it was the STATES RIGHTS the FF were protecting, not yours.

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Frem, that really pisses me off. I mean seriously! That you lump me in with "y'all" makes smoke come out my ears. I have every fucking right in the WORLD to want to see some reasonable restrictions on guns without it meaning I want to ban them all. That is a stupid, idiotic stance to take, I expect better from you. I have NO desire to see all guns banned, whatsoever, can we get clear about that? And I'm certainly not "lying" about anything. I've been very clear, I believe, in what I'd like to see:

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Perhaps seeing the same people who decry the evil, untrustworthy government for stomping all over the Fourth and First Amendments, while simultaneously calling for the benevolent, reliable government to stomp on the Second has made me a little skeptical.

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Originally posted by Niki2:
We'll have to agree to disagree; it comes down to my view that the idea that the government could or would even TRY to confiscate people's guns is absurd and in my opinion an unjustified paranoia. We'll just have to agree to disagree whether it's an unjustified paranoia and let it go at that; all the aspects of our government trying to confiscate everyone's guns are so numerous and so absurd, to me, that it's not the basis for a rational argument.

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Anthony:

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In claiming to desire the outlaw of semiautomatic weapons, you are essentially calling for a return to the weapons technology of the late 19th century, post-civil war era.


That statement is so far outside reality that I shouldn't even respond. Obviously there are many, MANY changes that have been made to weapons technology since then, I don't know how you can say that. It's an absurd statement and again, over the top when it comes to discussing the issue at hand.

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Cav, I read your post and it came across AS IF social change resulted in laws, all the time, and never that laws resulted in social change. Your statements like

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I guess it's convenient. I guess it simplifies things so they don't have to focus on reality too hard.

"If only we had the right laws in place, America would be a paradise on Earth!"

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was something I found rather offensive; I've never thought that and I think we've all been trying to deal with reality, rather than avoiding it.

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Laws never bring about social change. No, they don't. Laws always come very late to that process. Laws are just what happens at the point in the process of social change when somnambulant, affluent citizens actually take notice.

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came across pretty strong, and seemed to be indicating that laws were irrelevant when it came to social change. I disagreed. I happen to think sometimes laws are passed which go AGAINST social change...especially some that Republicans have passed in the past few years. I agree that a lot of the time, laws follow social change, but not always, and you seemed to be putting the whole problem on the government not being trustworthy. I don't think that's the answer; if anything, I think it's the way our society has evolved which is causing people to "act out", not the actions of the government. That was my point.

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Hello everyone. I can't remember if tasers were mentioned in this thread as being non-lethal or not. They, I think usually are but they can also be lethal. Case in point a man arriving from Poland a couple of years ago into Canada was killed by being tasered. He didn't understand english and was getting frustrated with security. No translator was sent for or his mother who was waiting for him at the airport where he got off his plane. Security tasered him and he died. So not completely none lethal.

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
I believe the last thing anyone should have is faith in an institution. Institutions do not deserve our faith. They require our scepticism. Law is such an institution. Democracy is such an institution. Government itself is such an institution.

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Seriously, I don't understand why people persist in believing that there's a political solution to the problem of mass murder.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
OK apologies for dumping on you, Cav. I had little time to post, and was very rude in what I said.

I'll try to reply in a more respectful manner to the points I disagreed with.

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Seriously, I don't understand why people persist in believing that there's a political solution to the problem of mass murder.

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I don't see it as political, but legal. I don't see them as the same things. People who decry this becoming a 'political issue' just don't want to look at solutions they don't like, in my view.

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I guess it's convenient. I guess it simplifies things so they don't have to focus on reality too hard

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Or maybe others see solutions that you don't agree with. I don't think people who advocate changing gun laws have any less sense of reality than you, really?

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"If only we had the right laws in place, America would be a paradise on Earth!"

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No one sane believes this, and it just mocks people who support changes to gun laws.

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Laws never bring about social change. No, they don't. Laws always come very late to that process. Laws are just what happens at the point in the process of social change when somnambulant, affluent citizens actually take notice.

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Your idea that there is no law that can affect any situation in society ludicrously ignores the history of law making.

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Laws exist--governments exist--to maintain the status quo. That's what an "ordered society" is: a society that stays the same. How pathetic is that? An institution whose sole purpose is to make people think that without it they wouldn't be doing what they think they oughta do anyway. Nobody ever needed a government to enforce majority rule.

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I can't see any evidence to back this statement. Is our society the same as 100 years ago? Government and laws must be doing a lousy job, because change is rampant.

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But what all of us here want is social change. Social evolution. You want it, I want it, and Frem and Anthony both want it. And how do we get it? Not through government and not through laws.

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What social changes do you want that will impact on someone who wishes to murder a lot of people? Do you propose such changes to society that no one will wish to murder others? To inflict suffering on others?

Kindly explain what momentus changes would need to happen to permanently remove people with potential for mass murder from our society?

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Just look at gay marriage for a minute.
*snip*

So then what happened? Well, support for gay marriage got to be so strong in poll after poll after poll that Obama & Co. realized that if they didn't fall in line with public opinion they were liable to start losing elections.

(THAT's what get's laws passed, btw.)

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This is the hopeless part of your post.

I see that sometimes laws have been passed because people have lobbied and fought for them to be law, that they (sometimes they are even politicans) have put themselves in the firing line because they believe that something is right. I have seen that sometimes great segments of society will resist the laws ie civil rights, votes for women, end to child labour but there has been *enough* support for a law to be passed. And then change does happen.

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The stupidest thing you could do is outlaw them now. Outlawing a thing that the people actually want always brings nothing but misery. And in the long run, after bazillions of dollars have been wasted in the effort, it never works anyway. What we need is for Americans to stop wanting (loving/desiring/fetishizing) guns so damn badly.

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Again the hopeless part. Nothing we can do. It won't work. Woe.

here is a thought. Try it. See if it does reduce the violence. If you are right, the stats will prove it.

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How is it that people don't make that connection? How is it that we think that if we just take guns away from "the right people," that this problem will go away? It's absurd and it's childish and it's never gonna work anyway.

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yeah I remember these kind of frustrating conversations with Americans about how something can *never* work ie public health, when it works okay elsewhere.

How is it that you can make this so difficult and convuluted.

It's like a fat man stuffing his face on sugar and complaining that his weight is the result of sugar being introduced to the west in the middle ages. Maybe he is on a fundamental level correct, but the easiest solution is for him to stop eating sugar.

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So weird. I thought I clarified this in my previous post. I never said "there is no law that can affect any situation." This is very troubling and kinda instantly exhausting 'cause it suggests that you think I'm a lunatic on this subject. I said, and you quoted: "Laws never BRING ABOUT social change...Laws always come VERY LATE TO THAT PROCESS."

Laws don't come first. They don't begin the process of social change. What I see with the gun craziness in this country is that we need social change. Laws are not the best way to begin. Because they are too sweeping and general and if we enact them before we understand the problem, may have no positive affect on the problem they were intended to address.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
MAGONS, HKCAV- I think the most significant example of laws being well in advance of society are our civil rights laws. A lot of people weren't ready for the emancipation, when it happened. They weren't ready for civil rights, and non-discrimination either, when THEY happened.... heck, Federal soldiers were needed so that black kids could go to a "white" school.

They STILL aren't ready... it's not like discrimination is a thing of the past. But we no longer have slavery, and a lot of progress has been made. The next generation is far less prejudiced than I.

When you institute laws, it may takes five generations to follow, but as long as the rewards and punishments remain consistent, follow they will.

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YES! EXACTLY! Governments always are doing a lousy job. That's why my position is not one of hopelessness. Change happens all the time and is happening at ever accelerating rates throughout the world despite entrenched power ALWAYS opposing it. And, over all, though it is not perfectly linear and progressive in every given place and time, the shift from more authoritarian power to more individual power is what we see unfolding historically. We, as a species, are growing up and I'm not seeing laws as the engine of that change. People have to want change, they have to be making change, before they're gonna make laws that reflect the changes they want in a meaningful way.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
1. Some restrictions of gun ownership
2. Better provisions for treating people with mental health problems
3. Widespread societal changes that involve increasing empathy in the population

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