Mt. Tabor High Shooting

[BarcaDeac]

There are so many “responsible, law-abiding” gun owners until the second they aren’t. How often have we heard during mass shooting events that the firearms were obtained legally?

 

[deaconson]

How many neighbors/ friends/ families of gun violence perpetrators said they are shocked and never saw it coming?

 

[PhDeac]

How many neighbors/ friends/ families of gun violence perpetrators said they are shocked and never saw it coming?

And there are others where neighbors, family, etc threw up a ton of red flags, notified the authorities, etc and nobody did anything.

 

[Strickland33]

LOL. Na. Daydreaming that I'll get to blow away bad guys? Yup I daydream daily of someone coming through my front door and blowing them away. Would love for that to happen to myself and my family because you know I'm a gun owner and that's what we do right?

Not gonna respond to my post, eh?

 

[Rafi]

At the beginning of this thread I wrote that it is inevitable that more shootings will occur in the US because there are more guns than people. The response was:

Respectfully, your logic makes no sense, and I reject your premise.

Just over the past two days in the US, a paranoid man in FL shot a killed 4 people including an infant, an 8 year was shot and killed outside a football game, a couple was shot dead in California with no known suspects, etc etc.

Yes, my logic makes complete sense and more killings are absolutely inevitable.

 

[Strickland33]

What premise is 19deac92 rejecting exactly?

I think one of the most challenging things to overcome in this debate is how ideological gun ownership has become in this country.

Wakefan77, for example, believes in his heart of hearts that he's unsafe. My hunch is that no amount of logic or fact can challenge that perception.

In the aggregate, you get an utterly irrational position held by a group of people so "invested" in the inevitably of catastrophic violence that they can't really get to the bottom of what that means. It turns people into selfish ideologues who would rather create a conspiracy theory about Sandy Hook than deal with the reality that their vision, their ideology results in piles of bodies.

When politicians govern, they should make decisions to reflect the greatest amount of good in a society and yet the outcome is inaction because of how influential these selfish ideologues have become. I'm not sure how a vision that necessitates hundreds of dead children (not to mention millions of dead teenagers and adults), where your school, church, or workplace can be the sight of a mass casualty event, etc. is a desired one, but ymmv.

I'd respect it more if they'd own that piece instead of embracing the masculinist fantasy of being John Wick in a home invasion that statistically is far less likely than another mass casualty event in an elementary school. Life is scary, it's unpredictable, I get it. We're as safe now as a society as we've ever been. Just say you don't give a fuck about human life and get on with it.

 

[plama]

I don't have this particular fear and don't own a gun, but it's fairly easy to see how others might not be comfortable not having a gun and being helpless to those that do. Being helpless isn't a terribly good feeling.

 

[Strickland33]

I don't have this particular fear and don't own a gun, but it's fairly easy to see how others might not be comfortable not having a gun and being helpless to those that do. Being helpless isn't a terribly good feeling.

I mean, go to therapy and work that shit out.

Fear and helplessness are really dangerous emotions when it comes to ideology and policy.

 

[Strickland33]

It's fundamentally selfish when you think about it. Much like the collective response to COVID-19, a few people have decided that no number of bodies is too many to preserve their sacred right and they have paralyzed the collective's ability to act to create a less horrific world.

 

[birdman]

It wasn’t directly tied to Sandy Hook but it certainly played a role.

I won’t vote for any candidate that: i) opposes any form of gun control; ii) opposes gay marriage; or iii) supports the repeal of Roe v Wade.

Awesome.

 

[plama]

It's fundamentally selfish when you think about it. Much like the collective response to COVID-19, a few people have decided that no number of bodies is too many to preserve their sacred right and they have paralyzed the collective's ability to act to create a less horrific world.

One could say that the fear of the miniscule chance you or someone you know will die from a gun death is also something not to up and change our constitution over. I mean if you're going the public safety argument you're gonna have to ban booze too

 

[birdman]

What premise is 19deac92 rejecting exactly?

I think one of the most challenging things to overcome in this debate is how ideological gun ownership has become in this country.

Wakefan77, for example, believes in his heart of hearts that he's unsafe. My hunch is that no amount of logic or fact can challenge that perception.

In the aggregate, you get an utterly irrational position held by a group of people so "invested" in the inevitably of catastrophic violence that they can't really get to the bottom of what that means. It turns people into selfish ideologues who would rather create a conspiracy theory about Sandy Hook than deal with the reality that their vision, their ideology results in piles of bodies.

When politicians govern, they should make decisions to reflect the greatest amount of good in a society and yet the outcome is inaction because of how influential these selfish ideologues have become. I'm not sure how a vision that necessitates hundreds of dead children (not to mention millions of dead teenagers and adults), where your school, church, or workplace can be the sight of a mass casualty event, etc. is a desired one, but ymmv.

I'd respect it more if they'd own that piece instead of embracing the masculinist fantasy of being John Wick in a home invasion that statistically is far less likely than another mass casualty event in an elementary school. Life is scary, it's unpredictable, I get it. We're as safe now as a society as we've ever been. Just say you don't give a fuck about human life and get on with it.

Perceived risk is really wacky. People have a really hard time estimating risk of low probability events especially when the consequences of the event are really severe. Adding emotion to the equation makes people's ability to assess risks and estimate probabilities even worse. On the one hand we have 77 worried about some one breaking into their house with a gun and on the other we have Brasky freaking out about his 1 year old son getting gunned down at school. How likely is either to occur? Which is more likely to occur? The Likelihood of either happening is really low but emotions surrounding both are really high, so our perceived probability distributions get really wacky.

 

[Rafi]

Perceived risk is really wacky. People have a really hard time estimating risk of low probability events especially when the consequences of the event are really severe. Adding emotion to the equation makes people's ability to assess risks and estimate probabilities even worse. On the one hand we have 77 worried about some one breaking into their house with a gun and on the other we have Brasky freaking out about his 1 year old son getting gunned down at school. How likely is either to occur? Which is more likely to occur? The Likelihood of either happening is really low but emotions surrounding both are really high, so our perceived probability distributions get really wacky.

This is true, but if gun laws are tightened, both are even less likely to happen. Other developed countries don’t have to worry about either.

 

[Rafi]

One could say that the fear of the miniscule chance you or someone you know will die from a gun death is also something not to up and change our constitution over. I mean if you're going the public safety argument you're gonna have to ban booze too

We don’t have to change the second amendment. We should implement laws that have widespread support, though.

 

[Tobacco Road]

This is the argument the NRA uses, but it is incorrect. How would universal background checks, banning ghost guns, magazine limits, or red flag laws hurt lawful gun owners?

It’s a slippery slope. If we start passing “common sense” gun laws then obvs repealing the 2nd amendment comes next.

 

[wakephan09]

The same Democrats who push anti-gun laws and are "anti gun" are protected by security/police with......GUNS.

This is the dumbest "gotcha" ever.

 

[Rafi]

It’s a slippery slope. If we start passing “common sense” gun laws then obvs repealing the 2nd amendment comes next.

Sorry, can’t tell if this is sarcasm…

 

[ConnorEl]

It’s a slippery slope. If we start passing “common sense” gun laws then obvs repealing the 2nd amendment comes next.

Yep.

Then they comin’ fer mah guns ‘n next are bibles.

Then t’ force me t’ git a “vaxination”.

Over mah dead body!

 

[PhDeac]

Perceived risk is really wacky. People have a really hard time estimating risk of low probability events especially when the consequences of the event are really severe. Adding emotion to the equation makes people's ability to assess risks and estimate probabilities even worse. On the one hand we have 77 worried about some one breaking into their house with a gun and on the other we have Brasky freaking out about his 1 year old son getting gunned down at school. How likely is either to occur? Which is more likely to occur? The Likelihood of either happening is really low but emotions surrounding both are really high, so our perceived probability distributions get really wacky.

Here's one way to think about that issue. Both are low probability personal events. Both are high probability society level events. Both events happen regularly. So if we care about our society beyond just ourselves, we should figure out how to address the issues of armed break-ins and mass shootings.

I'll get back to that after I address the next part.

We don’t have to change the second amendment. We should implement laws that have widespread support, though.

We have changed the second amendment. For a long time, the Second Amendment wasn't considered to be a universal right for every single person to have any gun they want. Heller (2008) and state laws changed that.

So let's get back to the first point.

Let's say we want to stop armed break-ins. Have armed break-ins decreased since gun rights have expanded? I don't have that data. Answering that question would help us understand if more guns prevents armed break-ins at a societal level.

Let's say we want to stop school shootings. Have school shootings decreased since gun rights have expanded? Yes. Most of us are in our late 30s and older. We were in K-12 before and shortly after Columbine. Columbine was a singular event, a touchstone moment that stayed in the news and in our public discourse. Now school shootings are common place. Can anybody argue that expanded gun rights have helped society lower school shootings and other mass shooting?

 

[plama]

What's a high society event? Looks like 14k gun homicides a year, around 40% of which the people are drunk. More than half the people (60%) aren't white. So there are a couple thousand sober white dudes who love their guns causing death a year. Compared to the 100k annual alcohol related deaths and the 600k covid related deaths some of us shrugging off these days...... seems just another case of social media and the news making things out to be a larger problem than it is. It seems like it's literally an issue equal to the amount of people who died from COVID today.

I'd imagine if you're a white dude and not in a trailer park or fucking your neighbor's wife.... you're probably not gonna die from a white redneck weilding a gun.