General / Off-Topic More than 50 killed in Las Vegas terror attack

[Bob Lighthouse]

Why the focus on homicides? Why not focus on actual gun deaths?

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4118836/gun ownership states.png

I have considered all of the variables in a completely factual, rational context.

Have you?
Do you understand how different things can be in the cities vs the country, law/crime wise?

[video=youtube;pELwCqz2JfE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pELwCqz2JfE[/video]

 

[Adept]

Ordnance /= arms.

You missed the point. The idea is that citizen militia is vital for (or up to the task of) defending the state. The militiaman of the era would have had all the kit required to fight an opposing army. I just attempted to work out the minimal equipment for trying to do that these days.

Even my suggested equipment wouldn't get very far. The actual opposing army would have AFVs, air power and artillery support. Without those things the best of me and my militia mates could manage would be guerilla style resistance in the mountains, à la Afghanistan.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

I'll admit I haven't been following the coverage, but has anyone actually seen numerous weapons in any of the original photos?
I saw 2.

I don't doubt he owned numerous, it just seems odd that they'd show the same two rifles over and over if there were so many at the scene.

You missed the point. The idea is that citizen militia is vital for (or up to the task of) defending the state. The militiaman of the era would have had all the kit required to fight an opposing army. I just attempted to work out the minimal equipment for trying to do that these days.

Even my suggested equipment wouldn't get very far. The actual opposing army would have AFVs, air power and artillery support. Without those things the best of me and my militia mates could manage would be guerilla style resistance in the mountains, à la Afghanistan.

Yes, in that context Zaphod Hawke is absolutely correct,.
Jefferson used "arms," in writing, to describe emplaced cannon for example.
That hasn't stopped some scholars and politicians from making the distinction I was referring to, thus "non ordnance bearable arms."

 

[Adept]

Technically, Adept has a point here. Arms as defined for the purpose of the second amendment are anything that can be picked up and used as a weapon. The fact he is (deliberately?) ignoring is that we can own any of these things he mentions. They just require additional vetting and approval. Although I've never heard of a civilian owning a Stinger missile system. As I understand it, they are quite expensive.

You can? As a private citizen you can get hand grenades and rocket launchers? I'm apparently not up to speed with US law then.

Wikipedia claims this

Legislation
In the United States grenades are classed as destructive devices, a form of Title II weapons under the National Firearms Act. They must consequently be registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, are taxed, and are illegal in states that ban Title II weapons. While in principle it is possible to legally obtain and possess hand grenades in some states, in practice they are not generally available.

As for the rest, somewhat to my surprise it looks like all sorts of weapons of war may indeed be legal to own in the US, if one just jumps through the required hoops and pays a registration fee for each individual item. In practise it doesn't seem to be done much though.

 

[Talarin]

And wouldn't the other way to ask that question be more helpful? If high gun availability does "protect" you from anything, why is the violent crime rate in the U.S. on "2nd world country" level?

Why? I'm not trying to make a case for or against gun ownership in the USA, so why would I be interested in that? You're pushing an agenda. You're trying to reach for arguments to make someone else justify their position. Stop!

And, which part of your point is the one you actually want to make? Either there are guns all over the place but that doesn't help reduce violent crime OR guns are mainly concentrated in 30% of households and violent crime is high by western standards - maybe the guns should be shared out? Ages ago I saw a study which suggested that gun ownership had stopped millions of crimes per annum in the US. I really have no way of gauging how true that is, but nor does anyone else so far as I can see.

As an aside - I'd probably go straight for the case that the different countries record violent crime differently - it's not easy to compare the two (e.g. UK vs. US). Have you got a source that has?

Speaking for myself: I don't get the discussion on gun ownership. I wouldn't choose it as something I'd want to be part of. But our American cousins, on the whole and over the course of centuries of political discourse and legal review, have. Respect that and don't take the opportunity of a national tragedy to advance your "this is why I'm right" discussion points unless you genuinely have something revolutionary to say.

 

[Don Alvarez]

And to drag the thread into something approaching the actual topic (the Las Vegas shootings), it seems that the NRA wants to restrict the sale of Bump-Stocks. Report from the Beeb plus What is a Bump-Stock for people like me who are clueless about such things.

Here's something I don't understand: how does a man get over 20 rifles and (I presume) thousands of rounds of ammunition, tripods and other accessories into his hotel room several days before committing this act and no one notice? Is this not something that would cause alarm?

Easier than you may think. He checked in Thursday, so between then and the shooting had almost 4 days to bring everything up. Stagger a bag or two a trip, spaced out over hours, different employees, different shifts, might have thought he was carrying one bag around, instead of ten different ones, in a hotel that accommodates thousands.... I imagine with some effort one could ferry up the parts to assemble a sherman tank in your room, and no one notice until you busted down the hallway with it. I'm exaggerating. Slightly.

Did housekeeping not attend his room?

It is not an uncommon request to make, especially in Vegas. To have housekeeping stay out, or just leave the towels at the door.

 

[FuzzySpider]

I have considered all of the variables in a completely factual, rational context.

Have you?
Do you understand how different things can be in the cities vs the country, law/crime wise?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pELwCqz2JfE

I went further. I actually looked at that channels collection of videos. It's propagandized far-right horse doey of the first order I'm afraid, full of racism, xenophobia, and some awful leaps of logic. As I said, if you want to defend your right to own guns that's fine. I'm not arguing against that. What I find objectionable is that you don't want to acknowledge the added risk this creates in your society. Linking that sort of crap in response to a mass-murder is straight from the Alex Jones book of, for want of a better word, "reason".

Whilst some are definitely talking about removing weapons from public ownership, why not try something else? Why not have better licensing laws so that people hoarding arsenals are investigated? Why not insist that people owning assault weapons get insurance on them? Why not have some sort of strict competency test for anyone who wishes to buy weapons? Of course, nothing will be done. But...

...the rest of the world is safer than the USA.

 

[Boomer Kay]

You're pushing an agenda. You're trying to reach for arguments to make someone else justify their position. Stop!

I have most of the participants in this thread on ignore.
Saying I don't care about their justifications would be the understatement of the year.

You either welcome data that the usual sources (the statistic you saw was from the NRA .. their methodology was .. well, they basically made it up) doesn't give, or you don't.
None of my business.

And another little trick the gun cult pulls is make the discussion about gun ownership when it actually is about crime prevention and gun safety.

Best "home invasion prevention": get some class 3 or higher Windows installed.
U.S. Windows are a joke. They don't resist 5 seconds of a total amateur with a screwdriver.

 

[Patrick_68000]

http://abcnews.go.com/images/International/homocides_g8_countries_640x360_wmain.jpg

...the rest of the world is safer than the USA.

Italy has lost much of its prestigious past

 

[Talarin]

I have most of the participants in this thread on ignore.
Saying I don't care about their justifications would be the understatement of the year.

You either welcome data that the usual sources (the statistic you saw was from the NRA .. their methodology was .. well, they basically made it up) doesn't give, or you don't.
None of my business.

I genuinely don't recall what the article was, I just remember being surprised by its conclusion. But my underlying point remains - even when you torture the data, the country with the highest per-capita rate of gun ownership in the world doesn't appear at the top of the charts. This isn't as simple as "guns bad" and there are lots of people flogging that horse, with little or no appreciation of the national context, on the back of a mass shooting - something I find incredibly distasteful.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

I went further. I actually looked at that channels collection of videos. It's propagandized far-right horse doey of the first order I'm afraid, full of racism, xenophobia, and some awful leaps of logic.

That has no bearing on the facts in that video.
Simple ad hominem.
Most of of the gun violence is in the liberal, gun controlled centers.

As I said, if you want to defend your right to own guns that's fine.

I have done nothing of the sort, I'm just clearing up your misconceptions.
You are just trying to pigeon hole me now.

What I find objectionable is that you don't want to acknowledge the added risk this creates in your society.

You have yet to link the two in a factual, rational manner.
ALL of the correlational evidence is suggesting just the opposite.
You refuse to acknowledge what is plain as day.

As gun ownership has increased, crime has fallen.
The places in the US with the tightest laws have the worst gun violence.
Furthermore, gun ownership support from the public is increasing over the same stretch:

Linking that sort of crap in response to a mass-murder is straight from the Alex Jones book of, for want of a better word, "reason".

Easy target, sure, but I submit you have yet to actually engage in it in a factual manner.
I chose it for exactly that purpose.
Well, the hyperbole is pretty funny, as this thread demonstrates.
He nailed you folks.

Whilst some are definitely talking about removing weapons from public ownership, why not try something else? Why not have better licensing laws so that people hoarding arsenals are investigated? Why not insist that people owning assault weapons get insurance on them? Why not have some sort of strict competency test for anyone who wishes to buy weapons? Of course, nothing will be done. But...

Burden of proof does not rest with the status quo.

http://abcnews.go.com/images/International/homocides_g8_countries_640x360_wmain.jpg

...the rest of the world is safer than the USA.

Well that's just ridiculous, no it is not and again, it's those darn liberal cities to blame for our inflated stats.
That's like the people who think China is culturally homogeneous.
I suggest such reasoning is simply veiled bigotry.

 

[Minonian]

I have most of the participants in this thread on ignore.
Saying I don't care about their justifications would be the understatement of the year.

And you are right.

 

[Boomer Kay]

I genuinely don't recall what the article was, I just remember being surprised by its conclusion. But my underlying point remains - even when you torture the data, the country with the highest per-capita rate of gun ownership in the world doesn't appear at the top of the charts. This isn't as simple as "guns bad" and there are lots of people flogging that horse, with little or no appreciation of the national context, on the back of a mass shooting - something I find incredibly distasteful.

The national context is that you have a gun lobby that successfully defunded research into gun related issues.

 

[Talarin]

Easier than you may think. He checked in Thursday, so between then and the shooting had almost 4 days to bring everything up. Stagger a bag or two a trip, spaced out over hours, different employees, different shifts, might have thought he was carrying one bag around, instead of ten different ones, in a hotel that accommodates thousands.... I imagine with some effort one could ferry up the parts to assemble a sherman tank in your room, and no one notice until you busted down the hallway with it. I'm exaggerating. Slightly.

It is not an uncommon request to make, especially in Vegas. To have housekeeping stay out, or just leave the towels at the door.

Fair points. Thank you muchly.

 

[Talarin]

The national context is that you have a gun lobby that successfully defunded research into gun related issues.

What research is it that you think is missing? Which part of this discussion isn't well understood? There are plenty of organisations that collect data which we put to use. I'm struggling to think what additional research would be useful.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

For those saying things from abroad or here in the US with no context, the NRA was from its inception, and until very recently, PRO gun control.

The NRA and the Republicans were both against public gun ownership within my lifetime.
The turn came in response to the civil rights movement, and that aspect was a big part of the Black Panther platform.

The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership—and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers—the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement. In the battle over gun rights in America, both sides have distorted history and the law, and there’s no resolution in sight.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/

 

[Boomer Kay]

What research is it that you think is missing? Which part of this discussion isn't well understood? There are plenty of organisations that collect data which we put to use. I'm struggling to think what additional research would be useful.

We don't even have the actual number of guns per household.
Big retailers have information about the number of toilet paper sheets you use, but guns? Or ammo?

The estimates (!) of legal guns range between 250 and 350 million total. More granular? Nope.
More precise? Nope.
Maybe those estimates are completely exaggerated and there's significantly less and that puts the U.S. in the same "violent crime" bracket as Afghanistan. We don't know with any certainty, but we know the average for cars per driver's license holder: 1.1
Who's driving that .1 car?

 

[Adept]

That has no bearing on the facts in that video.
Simple ad hominem.
Most of of the gun violence is in the liberal, gun controlled centers.




I have done nothing of the sort, I'm just clearing up your misconceptions.
You are just trying to pigeon hole me now.




You have yet to link the two in a factual, rational manner.
ALL of the correlational evidence is suggesting just the opposite.
You refuse to acknowledge what is plain as day.

As gun ownership has increased, crime has fallen.
The places in the US with the tightest laws have the worst gun violence.
Furthermore, gun ownership support from the public is increasing over the same stretch:

http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2015/08/8-12-2015-3-57-45-PM.png










Easy target, sure, but I submit you have yet to actually engage in it in a factual manner.
I chose it for exactly that purpose.
Well, the hyperbole is pretty funny, as this thread demonstrates.
He nailed you folks.





Burden of proof does not rest with the status quo.




Well that's just ridiculous, no it is not and again, it's those darn liberal cities to blame for our inflated stats.
That's like the people who think China is culturally homogeneous.
I suggest such reasoning is simply veiled bigotry.

I promise to be astonished if you can show evidence that gun massacres and murders are carried out by liberals in the majority.

I suspect you'll find that they tend to be the victims, not the perps.

 

[lysan]

I promise to be astonished if you can show evidence that gun massacres and murders are carried out by liberals in the majority.

I suspect you'll find that they tend to be the victims, not the perps.

I don't think liberals are more or less murderous than conservatives but there is a lot of crime going on in gun controlled cities, just look at Chicago.

 

[Adept]

To be fair, I was being a little disingenuous concerning the stinger...

When I was in the service anything containing missile or rocket guidance data tended to be classified at least secret.

While I don't know, I would imagine the current generation of guidance systems contain classified information not available to the public.

I suspect the government has some way to prevent the sale of guided missiles to private citizens or organisations. Occasionally they end up on the international black market, and AFAIK insurgents and terrorists are very keen to buy some.