Gun control in America

Originally posted by Q99
For the US, here's a chart made this October:

Mass shooting tracker

We all know there has not been 294 mass shootings in the US in less then a year.. So your source in accurate.

The source is accurate, it just uses a definition that we wouldn't use for mass shootings like those on campuses. i.e. that there were more than 4 victims including the shooter. That includes gang violence, family murder/suicide, etc, which we would generally exclude, it also includes wounded as victims, not just killed.

This is the source it was compiled from: http://shootingtracker.com/wiki/Mass_Shootings_in_2015

I bet most of that happened in Chicago involving drug and gang violence among blacks. 294 mass shootings is kinda being disingenuous.

Yep the gang violence is out of control, nobody seems to care that much.

Originally posted by Time-Immemorial
I bet most of that happened in Chicago involving drug and gang violence among blacks. 294 mass shootings is kinda being disingenuous.

You could just check the source. You would find that most did not happen in Chicago. Of the last 10 entries none happened in Chicago, they happened in: Memphis, TN; Savannah, GA; Dallas, TX; Roanoke, VA; Miami, FL; Chattanooga, TN; Boston, MA; San Francisco, CA; Moscow, ID; San Jose, CA.

Originally posted by Surtur
Yep the gang violence is out of control, nobody seems to care that much.

Of course people care, politicians have been fighting this for decades. If you have the genius idea that can solve it you should share it with them, because pretty much everyone agrees that we want less gang violence, but it's not a simple problem to solve.

Originally posted by Bardock42

Of course people care, politicians have been fighting this for decades. If you have the genius idea that can solve it you should share it with them, because pretty much everyone agrees that we want less gang violence, but it's not a simple problem to solve.

Thats simple, take away their guns.

Originally posted by Surtur
It's not the criminals that would worry me. I mean not that it wouldn't be a problem, but if they really banned guns then all these nutjobs would possibly come out of the woodwork. It'd be the final sign to them that the country has "gone to hell" and yep it is pretty much people in rural areas.

I'm not saying anything would be guaranteed to happen, just that the chances something would aren't so low that I'd rather not find out.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
The problem with that view and that comparison is that the effect of the war in drugs is pretty much the same all over western civilization. We can see that as inevitable.

When it comes to guns and gun violence, the US is the weird outlier in the west. No other western country has anything remotely like its issues. It is not normal, and it is not a state of affairs that is inevitable or simply needs to be put up with. It can, should and will be challenged.

namely the fact that the founding fathers of the united states created the bill of rights as an unalterable document. they did this because they knew they had to put into place some form of govt to rule the country but they were weary that this govt might eventually come to resemble the type of tyranny that they originally fought to escape

and it just so happens that gun ownership is one of the inalienable rights that they established.

now it might be that they were short sighted or counter productive in doing so... but nonetheless they did, and they did so based on what seemed at the time to be perfectly valid reasoning

so now we're stuck with the fact that guns must be legal to own in the united states. there is no getting away from this, unless you have a bloody revolution which throws away the existing constitution and starts over. and it just so happens that the gun culture in america makes this scenario virtually impossible... since the only time you see civilians overthrow the govt and set a law straight is when they have most of the public on their side.

so we're stuck with legal guns, short of a bloody revolution.

i think gun control should be focused on keeping those legal guns away from the black market. the vast majority of gun related homicides in this country happen with illegal guns... and said illegal guns are made easy to come by, by the fact that there are basic loopholes and oversight in our existing laws which make straw purchases easy (i.e. someone acting as a proxy by purchasing a gun and then transferring it into the possession of a criminal).

we should focus gun control on an effort to make it hard to make legal guns illegal. a properly moderated database which requires gun owners to periodically reaffirm their status as the gun owner would go a long way in combating this problem.

imagine if when you bought a gun, it was immediately signed into your name in the database, and every two years you were expected to show up to the govt office with the gun in hand to confirm that you still do have the gun which is verified via serial number.

if the gun is stolen or lost, just make it required that any gun owner who experiences this loss of possession of their gun has the legal duty to immediately report this to the authorities. failure to do so should be a crime.

that's basically my stance on the whole gun issue.

Originally posted by red g jacks

and it just so happens that gun ownership is one of the inalienable rights that they established.

I think this was discussed before. Why do you think that gun ownership (or specifically the 2nd Amendment) is an inalienable right?

if it's an inalienable right, why do we need it in the bill of rights?

I think most can see that the Constitution/Bill of Rights is not some divine document that can not be altered if something in it is outdated or no longer needed.

This includes guns ownership. It can be altered and changed same as anything.

Originally posted by Bardock42
I think this was discussed before. Why do you think that gun ownership (or specifically the 2nd Amendment) is an inalienable right?

once again, whether or not you agree that gun ownership should be inalienable is not the point. because the only way to truly undo a right that is established in the bill of rights is to either have a bloody revolution or a corrupt govt/supreme court that 'reinterprets' said rights to mean something other than what they were intended to mean

neither of which is a particularly attractive scenario to most americans

Originally posted by Bashar Teg
if it's an inalienable right, why do we need it in the bill of rights?

you might as well ask "if free speech is an inalienable right, why do we need the bill of rights"

Originally posted by Newjak
I think most can see that the Constitution/Bill of Rights is not some divine document that can not be altered if something in it is outdated or no longer needed.

This includes guns ownership. It can be altered and changed same as anything.

Originally posted by red g jacks
because it's in the bill of rights, which was specifically made unalterable because the founding fathers figured there were some rights that no matter what the context couldn't be violated

once again, whether or not you agree that gun ownership should be inalienable is not the point. because the only way to truly undo a right that is established in the bill of rights is to either have a bloody revolution or a corrupt govt/supreme court that 'reinterprets' said rights to mean something other than what they were intended to mean

neither of which is a particularly attractive scenario to most americans

Originally posted by Surtur
Yep the gang violence is out of control, nobody seems to care that much.

The liberal media does not really care about blacks killing blacks because there is no story. What sells ad time is Racial/Cop violence. No one in the media really cares that blacks are killing each other. They will blame the guns though.

Originally posted by red g jacks
you are quite simply wrong. the bill of rights literally cannot be altered based on the system that the constitution laid out, the only way to alter it is to have a revolution and nix the constitution in general.

Originally posted by Omega Vision
Those people are crazy anyway though. This is a dumb argument.

If they are crazy anyway why is it a dumb argument to suggest outlawing guns would possibly push them over the edge?

Originally posted by Bardock42
Of course people care, politicians have been fighting this for decades. If you have the genius idea that can solve it you should share it with them, because pretty much everyone agrees that we want less gang violence, but it's not a simple problem to solve.

But this is the same excuse people always say. Black lives matter only when taken by cops. Otherwise the excuse is that it is not an easy problem to solve. People do not get passionate about it to the extent of other things despite the fact it happens far more often and is a far larger issue and does more damage to the community then any cop.

So people do not really care as much. Chicago would be ground zero if they did.

If Obama could somehow get guns away from the people by going around congress and right over the constitution. This gun problem would be solved.

Originally posted by Surtur
If they are crazy anyway why is it a dumb argument to suggest outlawing guns would possibly push them over the edge?

Anyone who would actually engage in guerrilla warfare if the Second Amendment got repealed has bigger problems than their love of guns, and I really doubt there are that many of them anyway. For every hundred gunnuts who talk a big game about being a survivalist and prepping to fight the army, maybe one of them is serious, and that's because they're off their meds.

Again, dumb argument. If anything it's an argument for gun control, not against it.