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Palos heights

US Constitution says that a person has the right to bear arms. It doesn't say anything about ammunition though. Ban the ammo, problem solved. Nice decorative piece you have there, real shame if you cannot buy ammunition for it.

Caracasus, Frieden-und Freudenland, Jutsa, Ruinenlust, and 9 othersLord Dominator, Sapnu puas, Uan aa Boa, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Seagull, Tercania islands, New ladavia, and Rivienland

Caracasus

Sorry Candlewhisper Archive, while I agree with many points you raise, Aclion's point about racial bigotry and classism when it comes to gun control is spot on.

In the case of the US, this goes far beyond the sort of lazy racism and classism that as you rightly pointed out infects many aspects of society. It is instead the product of deliberate policies designed specifically to disenfranchise and subjugate black people who attempted to take seriously the 2nd amendment and absolutely requires criticism based upon those grounds.

While it is not an argument against gun control as a rule, it is certainly a reason to remain very hostile to the NRA, Republicans and Democrats who supported such policies. Even if the byproduct is a greater degree of peace and security that's no excuse.

Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Altmer dominion, and 2 othersTercania islands, and Rivienland

Gun control is just a part of many political agendas, but my view is that although gun control is usually pointless, as in the case of the good ol' Fascist US, most likely the case will be the laws will be loosened more and more for a better chance at getting re-elected, and in other places, it will stay a debate point. In Canada, I suppose the gun laws are a little too strict, but we are polite, so there are no gun disputes, really.

Caracasus, Jutsa, Lord Dominator, and Turbeaux

Chan island wrote:In random other topics, one of the best youtube channels about politics (in my opinion) just put out a neat video on conservatism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs

Huh, not a bad channel. I like to immerse myself in both sides of a political argument, so I'll definitely keep up with the channel. They seem like a counterpart to someone like Steven Crowder, where they have good, coherent, persuasive points, but run up against being dismissive and have an "us vs. them" mentality. I agree with what IS is saying, but the way it's presented is a bit divisive in my opinion.

Caracasus, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, and Tercania islands

Jutsa wrote:And then, of course, there's the fact that a lot of back-woodsy type folks actually use guns to hunt for food and merchandise.

"Hunting for merchandise" = Robbing a shopping mall at gunpoint? :P

Caracasus, Jutsa, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, and 3 othersTurbeaux, Canaltia, and Tercania islands

Mount Seymour wrote:"Hunting for merchandise" = Robbing a shopping mall at gunpoint? :P

I'm thinking more rugs, horns, etc.

But on this train of thought, could you say "Robbing a bank" is just "Hunting for personal profit"?

Caracasus, Jutsa, Mount Seymour, Ruinenlust, and 3 othersTurbeaux, Seagull, and Tercania islands

Verdant Haven wrote:To be fair, most of Earth's big time movers and shakers are plants or animals, so I'd say they have taken over. Homo sapien is an animal too! Humans are pretty annoying animals though, I must admit.

I can't disagree, in principle. I would suppose we all agree that the meaning of evolution would be pointless without a central nervous system : the very thing that separates animals from plants.
My point is...was it, has it been really worth it ?
The Grand Design opened an door of intelligence gathering and knowledge, and what are we doing ?
We're, in the end, biting the Hand that fed us with such planet transforming power.
I sincerely hope that Man will turn towards Oceans. More likely a future than litteral outlandish settlements on Mars.
Just watch how freak weather events rage. Terra is punishing us.

Cat-herders united

Re. guns protecting society from government tyranny, the problem is that the gun owners are usually the ones supporting the tyrannical measures. Even in the USA this argument fails because every time there was tyranny, from the federal government deporting native Americans and interning Japanese Americans during WWII to state governments enacting racist laws, gun owners were cheering them on and would have been far more likely to turn their weapons on those harmed by tyranny than against the government they had voted in power.

Even when those being harmed have guns, they are outgunned not only by the State but also by the gun owners of mainstream society.

The only real defense against tyranny is a strong commitment to rule of law and human rights. Without these, a heavily armed population just turns into warlordism and militia turf wars.

Caracasus, Jutsa, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, and 7 othersUan aa Boa, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Altmer dominion, Tercania islands, Larifien, and Novian Republics

Mount Seymour wrote:"Hunting for merchandise" = Robbing a shopping mall at gunpoint? :P

Especially in Forest.

Murmuria wrote:I would suppose we all agree that the meaning of evolution would be pointless without a central nervous system : the very thing that separates animals from plants.

True, but I mean, if a plant can somehow smell, hear, retain memory, and make decisions on how to distribute resources through fungi,
I'm not 100% sold a central nervous system is actually all that. *puts nervous system up for sale*

Caracasus, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, Canaltia, and 1 otherTercania islands

Mount Seymour wrote:"Hunting for merchandise" = Robbing a shopping mall at gunpoint? :P

Foraging I reckon. They get seriously pissed off if you try and forage in tesco's.

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:Sorry, Aclion, but here's where I switch to going against the pro-gun lobby. So, point by point:

- It is morally wrong to restrict the liberty of the innocent in retaliation for the evil acts of a few.

This statement is phrased in a way that is hard to disagree with, but could be phrased in different ways. For example:

- It may be morally acceptable to restrict the liberty of the broader population in order to reduce risk of harm.
- It may be acceptable for legislators to limit civil liberties if doing so makes the population safer.

The gun doesn't make me violent - the situation and many other factors do that. However, the gun escalates the stakes. So from a government point of view, there's the idea that to reduce risk for a population, the whole population needs to take a hit to their liberties.

I address that argument on the second point. Regardless, the catalyst for gun control efforts is not the suicide rate(which is rarely discussed except in the context of gun crime, suicide being a convenient way to double gun crime statistics), or the violent crime rate(which has been dropping steadily for year despite https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Right_to_Carry%2C_timeline.gif god). It is mass shootings that mobilise the gun control movement, which exploits a knee jerk reaction to a tragic event.

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:The statement you present is also somewhat reductionist, strongly implying that the few carried out these acts because they were "evil". I mean actually, that's hard to disagree with. Mass murder is evil. However, neurolinguistically, the phrasing you present represents a division between the "evil them" and the "decent us". Actually, more realistically, what we're looking at is a whole population that is morally grey, that sometimes does bad things and sometimes does good things. What legislation can do is modify how that morally grey population acts in a given circumstance.

I said evil acts for a reason.

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:Gun control does not make society safer

You can cherry-pick your stats on this. You've modestly gone for links that fail to show a correlation. Other more ballsy pro-gun folk have gone for the times that show that guns reduce crime. Of course, the anti-gun lobby will pick studies that support their point.
I'm not saying those are any better than your links. Rather, I'm saying that finding good science on this is near impossible, because almost everyone involved has a pro-gun or anti-gun agenda.

That's why I used metastudies in my links. It's possible to find studies that say there's a significant effect one way or another, but when you take all the evidence and compare it and the consensus is that the there's not strong evidence for a relationship. Then even if we're being generous we have to conclude that there isn't justification for taking away people's liberty.

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:I guess what that leaves us with is common sense. Do we believe that access to guns makes violence more dangerous?

To me, the answer is obviously, yes. If you have access to guns then the scale of violence worsens, and the opportunities for violence increase.

Sorry no. I want public policy to be based on the best evidence available, especially when we're talking about matters of personal liberty. I don't accept arguments based on intuition.

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:But actually, all in all, I distrust governments and people enough that I believe that tyranny is always nearby, and for me, we have to allow guns, and we have to stop the killing by addressing the OTHER causes to the killing.

Yep. Gun control distracts from real solutions to crime and mass murder. That's the other thing I wanted to address, but update happened so I had to cut and run.

Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, Canaltia, and Tercania islands

Murmuria wrote:I can't disagree, in principle. I would suppose we all agree that the meaning of evolution would be pointless without a central nervous system : the very thing that separates animals from plants.
My point is...was it, has it been really worth it ?

Evolution does not have a meaning. It is simply the relationship between natural selection and mutation. All of the non-complex-animal branches of the tree of life are doing fine without central nervous systems (broadly speaking and presently). That is why there are orders of magnitude more plants than humans!

Also, I would like to announce that all previous cabinet members are free to hold their positions if I am elected as Forest Keeper. I know that Canaltia will be stepping down due to other obligations and other previous cabinet members are free to do the same for any reason. Otherwise, "if it ain't broke don't fix it." Additionally, if I win I would like to make the runner-up deputy Forest Keeper (If they are interested. However, I have a mental list of other options if they are not.).

Murmuria, Verdant Haven, Caracasus, Ruinenlust, and 5 othersLord Dominator, Uan aa Boa, Canaltia, Tercania islands, and Rivienland

Turbeaux wrote:Evolution does not have a meaning. It is simply the relationship between natural selection and mutation.

Bingo! Evolution is the natural consequence of not having a plan, driving intelligence, or set purpose. It has no intention, no desire, and no motivation. It is the most absolute expression of there being nothing in control that one could look for. Anything with genetic inheritance resembling that of earthly entities will experience evolution on the basis of whatever selection pressures they experience. It really is beautiful, and I think is probably about as close as biology comes to mathematics in simplicity and elegance.

Cameroi, Lord Dominator, Uan aa Boa, Turbeaux, and 2 othersCanaltia, and Tercania islands

Canaltia wrote:Huh, not a bad channel. I like to immerse myself in both sides of a political argument, so I'll definitely keep up with the channel. They seem like a counterpart to someone like Steven Crowder, where they have good, coherent, persuasive points, but run up against being dismissive and have an "us vs. them" mentality. I agree with what IS is saying, but the way it's presented is a bit divisive in my opinion.

That is true, and a regular sin. They write off a lot of people as a lost cause when that isn't entirely necessarily the case.

Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, Canaltia, and Tercania islands

Palos heights wrote:US Constitution says that a person has the right to bear arms. It doesn't say anything about ammunition though. Ban the ammo, problem solved. Nice decorative piece you have there, real shame if you cannot buy ammunition for it.

Are you Chris Rock?

https://youtu.be/VZrFVtmRXrw

Seriously though, I know a couple of people who put together ammunition together already because they think that it is too expensive now. It would have to either be banned for decades or taken away by the government in a manner that would violate the Fourth Amendment.

Canaltia, Tercania islands, Larifien, and Rivienland

RE Guns:

I think there are a couple of problems with arguments everyone makes which are really not coherent or are based upon something that doesn't happen.

1) Gun control advocates go after the wrong guns.

In America anyway, every time somebody advocates for gun control, when asked to elaborate they typically talk about semi-automatics and assault rifles. Maybe high capacity magazines, bump stocks and certain calibers of ammunition might be mentioned if they are somebody who's particularly committed.

Ignoring the terminology qualms that might arise, the simply truth is that semi-automatic rifles only account for a very small proportion of gun deaths (fun fact; that's true even in war zones, where most violent deaths actually come from the various forms of explosives). They get huge attention of course because they are a weapon of choice for mass shooters- like the New Zealand guy.

But in actuality, a majority of gun deaths (about half) are committed by hand guns. These would be your revolvers and pistols. But nobody cares about cute tiny hand guns 'cos they're cheap and can fit in your purse and under your pillow or something. They are also by far the most common weapon in suicides (something like 80% of some crazy high number) and gang related crimes, especially drive-bys (no matter how often Hollywood tries to convince us those are done with submachine guns or machine pistols).

They aren't even very useful in the whole tyranny argument. If a war death has happened with a handgun, chances are it was probably some form of execution. Fun fact; the tradition of equipping officers with them started so that they could easily execute deserters.

And yet it would be politically completely impossible to do it so meh.

2) Tyranny

Speaking of tyranny... this whole idea of loose gun laws making tyranny impossible is just fundamentally flawed.

Not because of the modern weapons by the way- tank crews have to leave their tanks at some point, and drone operators have to be somewhere- but because of how tyranny comes into place.

The romantic notion of some dictator appearing out of nowhere and declaring a new republic is... largely a fantasy. At least in the first world it is. Normally, dictators come into charge after gradual undermining of the democratic state, and normally the new autocrat is already the person in charge.

In fact, here's a little thought experiment: say you were living in Germany in the 1930s, and you want to stop tyranny with your gun. When would you start? When Hitler was elected? Well, now you're just going after a democratically elected chancellor. Maybe after the first anti-jewish laws? But they were very popular and most people would be opposing you. Maybe when the Reichstag burned down? What, when the country's security services were on high alert? Or are you going to wait until people are already being sent to death camps... by which time you will likely have already been identified and marked as a potential enemy of the state anyway so fat lot of luck to you.

I'm sure you see where this is going. The Weimar Republic was not killed in one fell swoop, but death by a thousand cuts, and each cut was cheered on by the population and each cut made the practicalities of resisting all the harder.

This point is made all the bitterer by the irony that the Americans who talk about overthrowing tyranny with their weapons are usually also the same people who cheer their government disenfranchising people from voting with the various ID laws, gerrymandering the districts and sticking by the electoral lunacy that is the electoral college. ... And cheer when their government demonises journalists, loosens the campaign finance laws, plays games with the legislative procedures, throws more money into defence and law enforcement, lets police officers who shoot innocents go free, incarcerates so many to the point where one quarter of the world's prisoners are in the US... engages in torture...blatantly lies to the people....operates one of the most comprehensive surveillance networks in human history... abandons its own people after natural disasters...

Alright, I'll stop. The point has come across. ;P

Verdant Haven, Caracasus, Jutsa, Mount Seymour, and 12 othersRuinenlust, Lord Dominator, Uan aa Boa, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Seagull, Altmer dominion, Tercania islands, Larifien, Rivienland, Cat-herders united, and Novian Republics

Re: Chan island: now that's an election manifesto. *claps*

This gun control thing, while never on my radar before in any serious way, has been bothering me lately, and also injected a bit of hope into an otherwise bleak topic, with Jacindamania or whatever they're calling it. Just enough strands came together to push it to the front of my mind. I am in the process of writing my thoughts, which I will probably just put in a dispatch, because I would like people to read it and try to pull it apart and play Devil's Advocate or show how to improve the argument. I've never really done a deeper think about gun control until the last couple days, so it's been interesting. It's not ready yet, though. lol

--

Re: Turbeaux: My invitation for new people considering Foreign Ministry notwithstanding, I would be happy to continue on if there is otherwise no interest, at which point I would only ask that you give the other person a decent, objective look before deciding. :-)

Caracasus, Mount Seymour, Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, and 4 othersCanaltia, Altmer dominion, Tercania islands, and Rivienland

Elundris wrote:Really? It protects the civil liberties from potential government tyranny? If you're in a developed country, your guns won't matter when a drone hits you from the sky with its driver hundreads or thousands of km away. If you're in a developing country... well, sure, the guns might help you combat tyranny... unless of course another more powerful country has an interest there or you want to combat the government tyranny with your tyranny. Syria is a great example.

I don't particularly want to wade into the wider gun control debate, but I do want to take issue with this point. The argument that guns are useless against tryany because of [whatever] more powerful weapon always seems dismissive to what those actions occurring would mean. To use the usual US example here, if drone bombing is a legitimate threat to the point that it's regular and possible expected, there is almost certainly a civil war of some type occurring already. Governments (even the most naturally tyrannical ones) don't just jump straight to the big guns when attacking their own population, and any competent politician (Trump is not either of those words, but I'm not trying to imply he would do this) isn't just going to start drone-bombing their own population or rolling tanks up the streets of random cities without a case-belli of epic proportions or an extensive build-up.

Edit: Or in other words, I think it's a bit dishonest to suggest there's no middle ground between no tyranny and a government bombing people, quite aside that bombing is historically either not great at complete accuracy or pretty expensive to target accurately (and still has collateral damage anyways).

Caracasus, Jutsa, Turbeaux, Canaltia, and 1 otherTercania islands

Lord Dominator wrote:I don't particularly want to wade into the wider gun control debate, but I do want to take issue with this point. The argument that guns are useless against tryany because of [whatever] more powerful weapon always seems dismissive to what those actions occurring would mean. To use the usual US example here, if drone bombing is a legitimate threat to the point that it's regular and possible expected, there is almost certainly a civil war of some type occurring already. Governments (even the most naturally tyrannical ones) don't just jump straight to the big guns when attacking their own population, and any competent politician (Trump is not either of those words, but I'm not trying to imply he would do this) isn't just going to start drone-bombing their own population or rolling tanks up the streets of random cities without a case-belli of epic proportions or an extensive build-up.

Edit: Or in other words, I think it's a bit dishonest to suggest there's no middle ground between no tyranny and a government bombing people, quite aside that bombing is historically either not great at complete accuracy or pretty expensive to target accurately (and still has collateral damage anyways).

Additionally there's a huge political value in forcing a dictatorship to remove the velvet glove. It is a lot harder for other nations to justify supporting the government when they are killing citizens en mass to prevent free elections, as a US dictator would need to do to stay in power.

Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, Canaltia, and Tercania islands

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:A gun will help you if the authorities are gathering up the city's Jews, and putting them on the train to Auschwitz. A hundred guns in the hands of a hundred Jews, and you're looking at Nazis having to deploy tanks to get a bunch of civilians to the death camp. A gun helps you if you're up against someone with a gun.

Well, the Nazis did deploy the army to liquidate the ghettoes. But the point is, if Germans in general had been armed, by the time the camps were functioning Jews would have been deprived of that right. And even before then, everyone else would have been armed too. Now if Islamophobia and anti-immigration rhetoric in contemporary media and institutions drives hate crime, what would have happened to people in the atmosphere of 1930s Germany if everyone had been armed? The first time a Jew shot an Aryan in self defence, what would the reprisals have looked like? I simply don't believe that having a gun in every house would have improved that situation.

Chan island wrote:1) Gun control advocates go after the wrong guns.

In America anyway, every time somebody advocates for gun control, when asked to elaborate they typically talk about semi-automatics and assault rifles... Ignoring the terminology qualms that might arise, the simply truth is that semi-automatic rifles only account for a very small proportion of gun deaths... They get huge attention of course because they are a weapon of choice for mass shooters- like the New Zealand guy. But in actuality, a majority of gun deaths (about half) are committed by hand guns.

This is certainly true. Yet while taking assault rifles out of circulation wouldn't solve all gun related problems at a stroke, wouldn't any reduction in assault rifle massacres be a good thing?

Areulder

Uan aa Boa wrote:\
This is certainly true. Yet while taking assault rifles out of circulation wouldn't solve all gun related problems at a stroke, wouldn't any reduction in assault rifle massacres be a good thing?

The mass shooting epidemic actually started in a period when we had done that. Also nearly all firearms in use today are semi automatic and if the ban is not to be simply cosmetic you'd need to ban all of them. Whatever a AWB effect on gun violence we can say definitively that it did not prevent mass shootings.

Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, Canaltia, and Tercania islands

The earth scope

*peeks*

Lord Dominator, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Moorhen, and 1 otherTercania islands

Cameroi

its not that a gun doesn't help you if the government has fighter jets,
its that a gun doesn't help you if everyone else who has one, is on the side of tyranny.

this is where culture comes into it, much more powerfully and significantly then even if you had your own nuclear cruse missiles.

the thing to think about is what kind of a world do you want to live in, and what kind of social, moral and cultural values would make it that way.
its alright for role play if you want to live in a world where everyone goes around trying to kill or even just harass each other,
but for everyday life, i think anyway, that would be a pretty good description of hell.

Verdant Haven, Caracasus, Ruinenlust, Lord Dominator, and 6 othersEloren, Uan aa Boa, Turbeaux, Canaltia, Altmer dominion, and Tercania islands

Cameroi wrote:its not that a gun doesn't help you if the government has fighter jets,
its that a gun doesn't help you if everyone else who has one, is on the side of tyranny.

Naturally, guns are a force equalizer. But as we've seen civil rights movement even breaking the monopoly on force can be enough to safeguard your rights from tyrants. Remember that people violating the right to speak, the right to assemble and the right right to vote are doing so because they fear they will lose if people can speak, assemble or vote against them. If you're so out there that society is against you, even when you're getting murdered, then it doesn't matter what you say, how much you rally or how you vote; so there's no need for a tyrant to spend the moral legitimacy they'd lose stopping you from doing so.

The black horns

Gun rights in our country (United States) should not be altered, period. I feel sad for the politicians and people calling for change on this, particularly those who are left of center (usually far left) of the spectrum.

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