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I just want to say two important things..
First the recent school shooting is a tragedy and we should all be sad about the death of any children, especially as a victim of muder.
Second, we have to realize, for the sake ofperspective, how unfathomably rare it is for a child to die in a school shooting in america. It seems common because america is huge and the news makes this stuff public. But the numbers are more telling.
To put some numbers to it the chance of a child dyingin a school shooting in a public shool on any given day is 1 in 614 million. For comparison the chance of a person getting struck by lightening on any given day is **less** than 1 in 370 million.
In other words a child is more than **twice** as likely in the USA to get struck by lightening as they are to die in a school shooting.
Should we still mourne and be outraged by it... sure.. does that mean it is a problem that is common enough to be a huge concern... not really. We should probably put more effort into addressing the "lightening problem" than we should be about addressing school shootings.
I'm a little bit confused here.
Are you saying that school (or other mass) shootings are as "natural" as lightning?
@pj i am not. I am saying it is half as common as lightening to get killed in a school shooting.
@freemo
I do not agree with this statement:
“We should probably put more effort into addressing the “lightening problem” than we should be about addressing school shootings.”
The question is: “What can we do about it as a society?”
You can see the storm coming and you can choose not to go outside or you may try to find shelter and protect yourself in some other way, but a child who has to be in school supposedly safe under adult supervision doesn’t have such a privilege.
How can we consider ourselves a civilized society if we don’t have the means to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of individuals that should not have them?
You need a license to drive a car and you can’t buy cigarettes and alcohol under a certain age but you can carry a gun or even an army-style assault rifle no questions asked.
Sounds about right.
@freemo @pj Sources for my comment:
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002107670/historian-uncovers-the-racist-roots-of-the-2nd-amendment\
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opinion/second-amendment-slavery-james-madison.html
I take that view from the publications of these historians.
The often stated view of individuals being armed against the government seems to me to be a bit shakier in view of how the fledgling US government responded to things like the Whiskey rebellion. If they sincerely wanted individuals to be able to shoot federal agents, they would not have responded so strongly to those attacks.
@freemo @pj Slavery was definitely not the only factor in drafting the 2nd amendment.
Also, the colonies were more rural at that time than most of the USA is now and the country as a whole was in a more precarious state.
I feel that a lot of the division on gun rights in the USA is a rural/urban divide. Living at my uncle’s ranch in West Texas, you really need a gun for pest control, etc. In the college town where I live now, a gun really has zero utility. So residents of those two regions will have a legitimate difference of opinion.
Finding that guns provide a “sense of meaning to your life” as stated in the Scientific American article is not something I would be able to accept anyway. Neither do I get a sense of self from my car, house, etc.
Many, especially younger, people get a sense of self from things such as guns, cars, and boats, but that’s not the point.
A “well-regulated militia” doesn’t mean everyone can simply buy an assault rifle at the nearby grocery store. You can’t do this in Switzerland or Israel where I believe everyone that is supposed to, have a gun, but, afaik, there are no mass shootings like in the US.
Something is wrong with a society where you can’t drive a car without a permit or even a medical exam if you are of a certain age, but you can own a gun without any restrictions.
A well regulayed militia is not the sole protecyion of thr second ammendment. It is added as an exemplifying claise not a qualifying clause. This has been clearly established by the authors.
We have more than enough quotes from the authors to know they very clearly meant everyone had unrestricted access to weaponry (even heavy artillary)
Ive shared tons of quotes along those lines before. Id have to dig them up again.. i remember in one case one of the fiunding fathers talking about how the mikitia meant “all the people”, we have an example of the governement when it was new and the foubding fathers were still politicians explixitly approving private purchase of cannons, all sorts of thjngs, but id need to dig it all up again. I am on my phone so will have to do that from my computer
“A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined…”
- George Washington
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
- Thomas Jefferson
“The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
- Thomas Jefferson
“The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.”
- Thomas Jefferson
“I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.”
- George Mason
Yes. Let the bad drivers expunge themselves naturally, either by dying after hitting a tree or being killed when they hit someone having a gun.😀
If you take this stance then requiring proof of competence or professional credentials from let’s say, engineers, medical personnel, and similar jobs where one can do lots of harm if they don’t know what they are doing is also an attack on their freedom.
Everyone should be allowed to build and sell highrises and airplanes using whatever or no standards, as they like. That’s their freedom. If people die when one of those fails, who cares, they should have known better and protected themselves.
Alternatively, their families (with guns) can get such bad actors permanently out of business so only the “good ones” will remain.
Actually, this may work😀
What? This argument doesn’t hold.
There is a right to bear arms, there’s no right to drive. Furthermore, I admit even as a fan of the #2A, with both gun use and car driving, you’re not the only one who can be harmed in these scenarios, so to say that bad drivers will just die out in darwinian fashion and all the bad drivers will be gone with minimal consequences just isn’t true.
I am not claiming there is a constitutional right. I am claiming that i consider it a right based on first principles.
As a side note there is the constitutional "right to travel" which garubtees a citizen the free movement between states. One could argue restricting ones access to conveyence is an infringement, albeit indirect, on ones constituional right to interstate travel
Rather interesting. I don’t know if that would effectively hold (for example, “assault weapons” are a type of gun, and have been banned, and similarly cars are merely one form of travel, so I’m guessing they could be banned also), but I didn’t even know this was a constitutional right.
It absolutely would not hold up in court. But just as i think any bans on assault weapons is unconstitutional i am free to feel the same about banning access to vehicals. My interpritation of the constitution doesnt have to match that of ghe supreme court of the day, just as todays supreme court interprits thr constitution radically different than earlier supreme courts.
Many states dont require boating licenses, works out just fine for the boaters. You also dont need a license to fly an ultralight plane, even with a passanger, works out well there too.
As for high rises, same thing, make sure someone is checking the highrise meets code in its planning and building phase, as long as it does its safe to build regardless of ghe credentials of the person who designed it.
We have countless examples of this sort of stuff being very workable and safe without needing licensing by having other mechanisms that ensure safety.
That’s all I’m asking: effective collective “mechanisms that ensure safety” enforced by the community, elected government, or whatever, that work for the vast majority of their constituents.
Giving everyone guns and saying that this is for their protection just doesn’t work for most people, despite what Jefferson was thinking when he said that having a gun will more likely prevent someone from attacking them.
What we know is that gubs arent the solution, but we know they arent the problem either. Banning them in a violent society makes things more violent. Im willing to suspect in a peaceful society banning them or not has no effect.
The solutions lie in changing our environments to be healthy, and improving access to mental health (which by the way is the exact opposite of what woukd haplen kf we toom away gun rights from people who seek therapy and get diagnosed)
No the right vs privilage argument is secondary for me... im a scientist i care about what works. What i know is the numbers show almost every time, you ban guns it either has no net benefit or, more kften, causes violent acts, especially rape, to sky rocket.
I support guns because banning them takes lives.
And the whole schizophrenic thing... doesnt matter if you thinknifs a privilage or a right. If you tell people they will no longer have access to guns and the ability tonuse it to protect themselves if thry go seek therapy and happen to get a mental health diagnosis, then leople will avoid therapy... you just made things way worse not better.
@freemo @rrb I don’t understand how's having a gun to protect oneself from a sick (or just evil) person is a better solution than making sure those people can't get a gun in the first place.
Using more guns to protect against bad people with guns is only good for gun manufacturers.
And nobody is asking the outright *banning* of guns, just to make sure peoplw that want them have the capacity to use them safely.
This is not in the Wild West anymore. I thought the government as an instrument of a civilized society was responsible for the protection of its citizens, especially the weak.
You say these people would be alive today if only they had guns. I believe some of them may have owned one, and one of the people killed, a police officer Const. Heidi Stevenson had used her and died anyway:
No its not the wild west, and in theory polkce shoukd orotect us... but in practice thst makes little sense. Police come when you call them and there is going to be a delay no matter how well funded. You cant even call police if your being jumped or raped most of the time.
In the end its great to talk about ideals and what shoukd be or shouldnt be. But we have to schknowledge reality, and the reality is that in most incidents the police will never be a reliable security.
For example only 46% of violent crimes in general are reported, i suspect much less for rape. Of those reported only 30% even result in an arrest. Its clear from these numbers very very few, if any, rape cases are acted on by police and prevented.
@pj @freemo You are not being fair to US history. In the "Wild West" they confiscated arms before you could enter the town. They were not stupid:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gun-control-old-west-180968013/
@freemo @pj
Eye tests? Epilepsy? Repeated DWI? Or just repeated accidents?
I just wonder about that.
Like the current case before the supreme court dealing with a man whose wife got a restraining order after he pointed a gun at her head and threatened to kill her, shot at witnesses, and threatened law enforcement officers with his gun. I think there are some people, for example schizophrenics, who should not have guns.
A person shoukd be expected to make sure they are fit to drive and are liable if thry dont. So yes a person woukd have to choose to take those tests to avoid negelgence and liability of course but that doesnt mean the government woukd administer or check the tests.
But more importantly talking about people with psychological disorders, thats a very dangerous restricgion. If you start taking away rights because someone sees a doctor and gets diagnosed the end result is people avoiding mental health for fear of loosing thier rights. Thats a horrible jdea.
@freemo
Interesting theory about why guns are so loved in the US:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-gun-became-integral-to-the-self-identity-of-millions-of-americans/