Quote :

"making them go around giving lectures on firearms safety and storage would be a good start"

How about starting with trial and conviction for negligent homicide? From the stories on this, the gun was "kept in a corner". Sorry, no guns (loaded or otherwise) should be left unattended in a corner while there are young children unable to understand the rules of gun safety in the house.

5/2/2013 1:34:56 PM

nobody puts baby in a corner.

5/3/2013 4:30:46 AM

So there have been 900,000+ gun deaths since 1980 and 3,400 deaths resulting from terrorism. The one everyone fears of course is terrorism, so much so many conservative commentators have essentially wanted to strip the bill of rights in response. When it comes to the 2nd amendment however that is the ultimate 3rd rail. I wonder why this is the case? Honestly I am not anti-gun or for stripping the Bill of Rights but this just seems like a logical fallacy.

5/4/2013 1:10:54 PM

Well, the conservative commentators do it because just like the rest of the media, the use of fear and panic drives their ratings. I seem to recall recently a story that the Toronto Star reported a murder every day for an entire year, and when people looked into it, they discovered that Toronto had something like 30 murders that year, the rest were outside Toronto, with something like 80% not even being in Canada. Fear sells.

As for the general populous, it's pretty much the same reason people fear plane crashes more than car crashes. In general, people are horrible at gauging risk from extremely rare events. Combine this with the fact that such events are almost always completely outside of our control and people are irrationally afraid of terrorist attacks.

5/4/2013 1:48:57 PM

It's the degree to which people believe either scenario could happen to them.

Terrorism is random. Gun violence tends to not be random, and tends to hit people who aren't voters or policy makers.

5/4/2013 3:14:56 PM

Welp, gun control is now officially pointless. Defense distributed has just made it pointless via an entirely printable handgun. Good.

http://reason.com/blog/2013/05/03/that-3d-printed-handgun-youve-been-waiti

5/4/2013 7:07:10 PM

makes a political statement, i guess, but without springs, it's just a single-shot with no real use.

5/4/2013 8:00:20 PM

Yeah, the political statement is the point, but you've got the potential for a fully printable weapon of any kind not that far down the line. If you've ever read The Diamond Age you're struck by the similarity of 3D printers and the internet to "The Seed" from the book.

5/4/2013 8:03:52 PM

"dum librals are such a short sited bunch"

5/4/2013 8:03:59 PM

define "fully printable"

you're not going to make barrels, springs, and firing pins out of ABS.

5/4/2013 8:39:41 PM

Quote :

"All sixteen pieces of the Liberator prototype were printed in ABS plastic with a Dimension SST printer from 3D printing company Stratasys, with the exception of a single nail that’s used as a firing pin. The gun is designed to fire standard handgun rounds, using interchangeable barrels for different calibers of ammunition."

Quote :

"Some critics of Defense Distributed's efforts have pointed to the limitations of the materials used by all but the highest-end 3D printers as imposing barriers to creating a full firearm, at least at the current state of technology. But CNet separately reports Wilson's claim that "he and others successfully fired 11 rounds through a 3D-printed gun barrel not long ago." The trick seems to be that Defense Distributed is creating an all-new design around the material (ABS plastic) rather than trying to print parts for an existing firearm design."

[Edited on May 4, 2013 at 8:43 PM. Reason : dffgddfg]

5/4/2013 8:42:04 PM

11 inaccurate rounds down the pipe before it melted

5/4/2013 8:46:43 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Line_of_Fire

Assassinations man !

5/4/2013 8:49:21 PM

It'll get there eventually. It's just a materials challenge now. It used to be a materials and production issue.

5/4/2013 8:49:27 PM

we'll see

5/4/2013 9:00:22 PM

Quote :

"There would still be dirty sluts and crooked bookies if those things were legal. It's interesting you have to cite that those things need "regulation" though..."

Of course there would be. After all, there are still people who engage in moon-shining. But surely you must agree that such numbers are drastically lower now than they were under Prohibition.
As for the "regulation" bit, why is that "interesting"? I'm not against any and all regulation. I'm against that which accomplishes very little and harms very much. Prostitution should be regulated if only for the reason that it presents a clear public health concern.

Quote :

"And there are safe ways to have prostitution, but there's not a safe way to have gun violence."

That is entirely absurd and disingenuous and you know it. Absolutely NO ONE here is saying we should have gun violence. If you have to argue using such nonsensical statements then you should probably just leave the discussion.

Quote :

"The problem is that the current regulatory environment has too many loopholes, to the point where a large portion of gun crimes are committed with illegally acquired guns."

And yet so many of these so-called "solutions" to gun violence focus solely on people who legally purchase guns. In what way does that possibly make sense?

Quote :

"We aren't talking about the condition or quality of the industry, we're talking about reducing the size and visibility of it, and outlawing it did that."

I'd like to see your numbers regarding the "size" of the gambling and prostitution industries. Are you suggesting that Las Vegas doesn't exist? Are you suggesting that PowerBall doesn't exist? Are you also suggesting that those entities are not visible? What about prostitution? Damned near everyone knows precisely where to go in town to get a hooker. If it's not as visible, that's only because we've pushed it into the shadows, and at great cost to all involved! Simply making something "not visible" is easily the worst reason for legislation that I can think of. It's like putting brown paint over the leaks on a giant molasses tank in Boston so that people can't see the molasses trickling out.

Quote :

"Here pick a different one that you might like better, outlawing abortion certainly makes the quality of it worse and much more dangerous, but definitely reduces the amount of abortions."

A statement this foolish and short-sighted doesn't even dignify a response.

Quote :

"Really, though, this is another example of touting an outlier (mass shootings) as reason for new legislation. If you want to talk about the bulk of gun related crime, then we're looking at more frequent, smaller incidents that involve totally different motivations from mass shootings. Motivations that are a result of much deeper problems like poverty. In those cases its far more effective to talk about changing that motivation. Where you probably cant stop a guy from going nuts and shooting a bunch of dudes, you probably can stop a guy from robbing a store at gun point by giving him an education, job, and/or some form of support. When comparing gun crime rates in different big cities the largest differentiators are not their gun laws, but their demographics and economic prospects. Things like unemployment, education levels, and job quality are more important than anything else. Anyone trying to fix that kind of gun violence with gun laws is just looking for a scapegoat so they don't have to solve the real problems. Those problems are hard work and require resources and time, both of which don't get you reelected like a feel good gun law. theres also a bit of racism in there (the same with drug laws) where guns or drugs are an excuse to target minorities who wont be able to defend themselves in court. Rich white kid gets caught with some pot, "oh heh, boys will be boys! its part of growing up and its a victimless crime anyways. just toss him community service cause his dads a big political donor". black kid gets caught with drugs "hes ruining the neighborhood! thank jesus we have these laws to deal with his kind. lock 'im up!" tl;dr: the resources spent on gun control would be better spent on things that would do more good and actually help solve the problem of gun violence."

I cannot possibly agree with this more.

Quote :

"They did work. They worked as well as outlawing murder, it still happens, but it happens a lot less and people get punished for it. "

Again, such a statement is insane! Even after Shaggy eviscerated your claim that "laws against prostitution and gambling have worked", you still come back with another insane example, as the difference from transactions between two consenting adults is blatantly obvious! Do I need to go back and quote myself again for emphasis? I will: " It is undeniably apparent to all but the most ardent anti-gun mouth-breathers that simple gun ownership is in no way socially undesirable, much less is it in any way comparable to murder, theft, and assault."
Hell, for your rant against "the law won't work, so we should nothing," I'll AGAIN quote myself, where I previously demolished even THAT fallacious line of argument:

Quote :

"The argument isn't "we can't 100% prevent gun violence, so why try." The argument is that such laws severely infringe on people's Constitutionally protected rights and make law-abiding citizens jump through tons of legal hoops just to exercise those rights while having zero effect whatsoever on curbing gun violence, much less curbing the violence that provoked the creation of the laws in the first place. Laws don't mitigate illegal activity in any appreciable way; instead, they give us a way to deal with those who engage in activity that is socially undesirable. It is undeniably apparent to all but the most ardent anti-gun mouth-breathers that simple gun ownership is in no way socially undesirable, much less is it in any way comparable to murder, theft, and assault."

Quote :

"As for the "it has happened time and time again argument," slippery slope arguments are bullshit. "

Bullshit. It's NOT slippery slope to say that "X precedes Y" when you have historical examples of X always preceding Y. That's just quoting fucking history.

Quote :

"Presumably, you are saying (without saying it) that by eliminating guns in the hands of responsible citizens, they cannot protect themselves, and thus were victims of more crime in other countries...so what did I propose? Why, a solution to that issue - a solution that doesn't keep ANY GUNS out of the hands of law abiding citizens, but only makes it significantly more onerous for those who CLAIM to be responsible, but who actually aren't. Take a look at it above and tell me why it wouldn't work. "

It wouldn't work because, by and large, the people committing many of these crimes aren't buying the guns legally in the first place! Not only that, but you aren't addressing the actual reasons for the gun violence whatsoever.

Quote :

"It should be very intuitive that IF we banned guns, it would definitely make us safer, no one with a brain could really dispute this."

Yeah, we'd really be a whole lot safer once all the criminals out there with guns realized that no one else had guns. No one with a brain could really miss that fact >.<

Quote :

"Actually, they did work. They significantly reduced gun death and gun violence."

Yes. And people went to other weapons. How at all is that "working"? People are still killing people, violence is still happening, but thank God they're not a gun! That makes it so much better! What kind of logic is that?

5/4/2013 9:42:53 PM

nope, that's all wrong

5/4/2013 10:08:35 PM

Gun control works, and its what the people want.

It's not what the NRA wants, and they got their way.

5/4/2013 11:16:19 PM

Segregation works, and it's what the people want.

not to mention the fact that there is little proof that gun control actually works. Not even the anti-gun talking point of Australia holds up to any actual scrutiny.

5/5/2013 12:24:25 AM

Quote :

"its what the people want"

I think it's ironic that the gun control crowd was pushing the "90% of the country agrees with us on this!", and when it failed, some folks began to question the validity of this phrase. The gun control folks intentionally tried to link the "90% of americans support background checks" to "90% of americans support exactly what's in this bill right now" and when it failed they seemed dumbfounded. Either they didn't know the details behind this stat / didn't bother to look into it / just assumed it was true OR they did know that those two statements weren't the same but decided to attempt to deceive citizens anyway I feel we owe it to ourselves not to let so much of these invented/warped stats dominate these discussions.

The failure of the T-M bill represents some of the inherent safeguards against the erosion of our liberties (republic vs. democracy). Limitations on the right to bear arms shouldn't come down to a simple majority vote riding on the tides of rapidly-changing emotions. What happened means the safeguard worked.

Hopefully there are lots of people at home asking themselves why it failed despite supposed amazing support and not simply blaming the NRA for its failure.

[Edited on May 5, 2013 at 12:30 AM. Reason : ]

5/5/2013 12:27:06 AM

naaaaah maaaaaaaan. The only possible reason is the evil Koch brothers. or ALEC. or the corporations, maaaaaaaaaan

5/5/2013 12:30:01 AM

^ those guys are the modern day definition of evil.

There was some major political blowback from this bill. The recent bumps will fade away soon, but thats not to say they wont try and bring back this bill right before the midterms to jog people's memory. I guarantee a repeat vote on this bill prior to an election would be a difficult choice for some of the weaker on the fence politicians out there after seeing the recent polls.

[Edited on May 5, 2013 at 1:01 AM. Reason : .]

5/5/2013 12:59:44 AM

Watch an Ad for “My First Rifle,” the Gun a 5-Year-Old Used to Shoot His 2-Year-Old Sister

http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/05/03/crickett_keystone_sporting_arms_watch_an_ad_for_my_first_rifle_the_gun_a.html

5/5/2013 8:01:38 AM

Oh for crying out loud. Look if the kid had pushed his sister into the new kiddie pool he had gotten for his birthday and she drowned, we wouldn't be digging up adds from the pool manufacturers web site saying "look at how they promote kids swimming in the pool". Their commercial shows adults supervising children in learning how to shoot a rifle. Oh the horrors.

5/5/2013 9:04:41 AM

Quote :

"Laws don't mitigate illegal activity in any appreciable way"

I disagree with this part of the statement. This is stupid. If laws had no effect, why would we even have them? Do you really think we'd have just as much stealing if we had no laws against it? Do you think people would go the same speed if we had no speed limits?

5/5/2013 11:46:34 AM

^^
Except guns are inherently dangerous. Kiddie pools are not.

They should not be thought of as the same class of toys. The fact that you would even think to make the comparison shows just how skewed the conversation has been made in favor of gun nuts, and how successful the gun nuts have been in permeating their message.

The fact of the matter is that the constitution and courts have allowed for regulations on arms for hundreds of years, and the current regulations are obviously inadequate.

When you have people making arguments like "laws don't actually do anything" (the same people who'd say we need the death penalty as a deterrent), you know there is something wrong with the conversation.

[Edited on May 5, 2013 at 12:14 PM. Reason : ]

5/5/2013 12:13:49 PM

drowning hazards are not inherently dangerous.

got it.

5/5/2013 12:16:31 PM

"Kiddie pools and guns are just as dangerous as each other"
-yowillyo

5/5/2013 12:20:21 PM

...and this is why the "gun nuts" are wiping the floor with you.

5/5/2013 12:21:34 PM

its a silly comparison, just like equating background checks to confiscation

5/5/2013 12:25:09 PM

^^
Because the gun nuts keep saying "they're going to take your guns!"

And people appear to believe this.

5/5/2013 1:01:34 PM

Its a comparison I didnt make.

5/5/2013 1:36:05 PM

You implied it.

5/5/2013 1:40:06 PM

I'm going to quote myself quoting aaronburro:

Quote :

"Laws don't mitigate illegal activity in any appreciable way; instead, they give us a way to deal with those who engage in activity that is socially undesirable."

To me this is hilarious to me.

5/5/2013 2:33:01 PM

Quote :

"Except guns are inherently dangerous. Kiddie pools are not. "

Wait, I can play this game too. Yes they are. But unlike your baseless assertion, mine has facts behind it.

http://www.childdeathreview.org/nationalchildmortalitydata.htm

2009, children 0-19 accidental deaths: 1056 drowned, 138 shot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_preventable_causes_of_death#Leading_causes_among_children_worldwide

World wide, firearms don't even make the top 5, drowning is #2

http://www.cdc.gov/safechild/NAP/background.html

US wide, in 2009, across all youth age categories, firearms don't even make the top 5 for accidental deaths, drowning never falls below 3rd. Firearms also fail to make the top 5 non fatal injuries list.

And just because I know you'll ask, the CDC estimates some 10.7 million swimming pools, public and private. Conservative estimates put private gun ownership over 200 million.

Quote :

"The fact of the matter is that the constitution and courts have allowed for regulations on arms for hundreds of years, and the current regulations are obviously inadequate."

How are they inadequate? Gun crime (and indeed all violent crime across the US) is down and has been on a downward trend for the last decade, even as the regulations have gotten looser.

5/5/2013 2:42:56 PM

Quote :

"mine has facts behind it"

Unfortunately not relevant ones. People drown other places besides kiddie pools.

This article says 9 kids die each day from gunshots:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_children_are_killed_each_year_by_gun_accidents

While this article says 5 kids die each week during the summer months from drowning in portable pools:
http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/metro/2011-06-21/kiddie-pools-pose-big-risk

[Edited on May 5, 2013 at 3:10 PM. Reason : ]

5/5/2013 3:05:19 PM

Per your first article, only 214 of those were accidental. You can't accuse me of being funny with my numbers by not restricting it to kiddie pools and then go an include intentional murder and suicide in yours. If you really want to do a 100% apples to apples comparison to your kiddie pools only, you'd have to restrict the number of accidental firearms deaths to just those caused by a child sized/marketed firearm.

5/5/2013 3:21:31 PM

getting stupid in this thread

5/5/2013 3:24:50 PM

not to mention, if we had been discussing an article about a small child drowning, you would all be complaining about responsibility of the parents and their failure to supervise the child. not that they shouldn't have owned the pool with a child in the house in the first place.

[Edited on May 5, 2013 at 3:30 PM. Reason : .]

5/5/2013 3:28:21 PM

Quote :

"Per your first article, only 214 of those were accidental. You can't accuse me of being funny with my numbers by not restricting it to kiddie pools and then go an include intentional murder and suicide in yours."

Who said anything about limiting them to accidental deaths? Both kill people. I'm not limiting the pool deaths to accidental ones either.

Quote :

"If you really want to do a 100% apples to apples comparison to your kiddie pools only, you'd have to restrict the number of accidental firearms deaths to just those caused by a child sized/marketed firearm."

No, you are removing the context. The statement was:
"guns are inherently dangerous. Kiddie pools are not."

Nothing about "kiddie guns" or accidents or anything like the goalposts you keep trying to move.

5/5/2013 3:38:05 PM

also, see what happens to your homeowners policy if you install a swimming pool and then juxtapose that with the ardent opposition to one of the proposals that would have required gun owners to carry additional liability insurance.

5/5/2013 4:10:15 PM

Quote :

"Who said anything about limiting them to accidental deaths?"

That would be the whole point of the discussion. You know, "inherent danger", as in "guns are inherently dangerous, pools are not". If you simply wanted to make a point that someone intending on killing another person will more likely choose a gun than a pool, then you'll get no argument from me. But in that case, it wouldn't matter whether the gun was marketed to children, marketed for children or if the gun was left alone with children since you would be talking about intentional harm, not the inherent danger in the inanimate object.

5/5/2013 4:48:23 PM

Quote :

"That would be the whole point of the discussion."

No, things that are dangerous are dangerous for both the accidental and the intentional ways they can cause injury. To put it simply, things that are likely to cause injury are dangerous. That puts a slippery sidewalk in the same category as sarin gas.

I showed you some references that indicate that guns are more dangerous than kiddie pools, which I think should have gone without saying, but whatever.

5/5/2013 4:55:51 PM

the fact that firearms are so good at killing is what makes them so great

5/5/2013 6:55:47 PM

[Edited on May 5, 2013 at 7:29 PM. Reason : Never mind. Not getting into semantics argument with kris of all people.]

5/5/2013 7:26:50 PM

Quote :

"drowning hazards are not inherently dangerous. got it."

This is literally all I said, obviously sarcasm, and the opposite is absolutely true.

Anything like a pool, large or small, and specifically targeted towards children represents a drowning hazard.

Now Im sorry the subject matter ITT has your panties in a wad moron, but I in no way implied guns in what I said. You would have to be fairly stupid to not see the danger represented by a kiddie pool. Honestly people like you not taking them seriously is probably the #1 reason they actually kill children.

As far as the level of danger compared to a gun, that is obviously debatable and should be hashed out, but dont pretend any form of pool is harmless. If you want to then I simply pray you dont have any children, nieces, or nephews.

A good comparison to a kiddie pool might be a 22lr. Mishandling of that caliber leads to a large number of deaths each year. The reason is the guns are so small, or the cartridge is so weak, or blah blah blah, that people dont take them seriously. Nobody ever accidentally kills themselves with a safari cartridge because they are so large that people handle them like a live grenade.

The moral of the story moron is maybe people like you shouldnt pick and choose what is dangerous and what is not based upon your political beliefs. The reason this thread has descended into stupid is because people like you make idiotic statements that cannot be taken seriously, and then you depend on your douchebag cohorts like dtownral to bail you out. You assume because TSB swings left that you can say whatever you want and it will be magically covered up.

Fact of the matter is given the subject material here you are way out of your league, and its quite amusing to see the liberal self-destruction when they find out they arent very smart. Its even funnier when the legislation they are jerking off over gets nerfed by their own party. Maybe you should have voted for Dr Jill Stein since shes the one that actually represents your views?

Also I would advise you to quit trying to put words into my mouth. In case you havent noticed I usually pop into these threads after they descend into the retarded and say something off-topic or inarguable. In this case, yes, kiddie pools are dangerous and that isnt a fact you can dispute. Thats the only thing I said and since you latched onto it you now look like an idiot. Call it a troll if you want, but it obviously worked. Im sure someone has made this joke before, but youre a bit of a moron.

[Edited on May 5, 2013 at 7:46 PM. Reason : -]

5/5/2013 7:45:47 PM

^ lol

Iow:

"Kiddie pools and guns are just as dangerous as each other"
-yowillyo

5/5/2013 10:22:06 PM

Quote :

"I disagree with this part of the statement. This is stupid. If laws had no effect, why would we even have them?"

While I never stated that laws have "no effect", I've already stated why we have laws, even if their effect is minimal: to give us a legal punishment to give to people who do things that we, as a society, deem unacceptable. Just stop and think: what about a law prevents any person from doing something? Absolutely nothing.

Quote :

"The fact of the matter is that the constitution and courts have allowed for regulations on arms for hundreds of years, and the current regulations are obviously inadequate."

Why are they "obviously inadequate"? Methinks you have an expectation of what a law can do that doesn't jive with reality. It also seems that you expect to handle complex issues regarding violence with simple solutions that don't even being to scratch the surface of the real problems.

Quote :

"not to mention, if we had been discussing an article about a small child drowning, you would all be complaining about responsibility of the parents and their failure to supervise the child. not that they shouldn't have owned the pool with a child in the house in the first place."

Nail. Head.

^ way to continue putting words in his mouth

5/5/2013 11:21:31 PM

Quote :

"what about a law prevents any person from doing something? Absolutely nothing."

How is that relevant if it has the real effect of stopping them from doing that thing?

5/6/2013 12:04:06 AM

Quote :

""not to mention, if we had been discussing an article about a small child drowning, you would all be complaining about responsibility of the parents and their failure to supervise the child. not that they shouldn't have owned the pool with a child in the house in the first place.""

not me, i made a statement about liability insurance

5/6/2013 8:05:12 AM