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Texas Shootings

Ithikial said:
Doing the social media rounds (thanks @Rico ). Italian photographer went around a few years ago taking photos of different American families and their gun collection. This is just insane from where I sit here in "Hippy Australia". I mean honestly, replace every gun in the photo below with a bottle of alcohol everyone would be screaming "Get help for being an alcoholic" and there wouldn't be a debate. This photo (and others in the collection) show not evidence of an inalienable right, which most of the developed world disagrees with, but an addiction at the individual and a household level to things that go bang. Or some people don't realise you can actually reload a gun. :)

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The silly thing in all this is that I appreciate the hobbyists and the history buffs keeping history alive in a safe manner like in this old video below. There is nothing wrong with this* if there are heavy restrictions/regulations to ensure it's only the right people and the weaponry can't be used for illegal/harmful purposes. If that can't be enacted and enforced by the government and the community then there shouldn't by the capacity for those same weapons to be in people's homes.

* Okay the minigun, mortar and AT Guns maybe a touch too much but it does look impressive.
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This guy is Australian. He has a gun collection far larger than this for bolt action rifles. Should we go after him for his "insane" choices? Who gets to decide what is "insane?"

 
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Ithikial said:
Th There is nothing wrong with this* if there are heavy restrictions/regulations to ensure it's only the right people and the weaponry can't be used for illegal/harmful purposes. If that can't be enacted and enforced by the government and the community then there shouldn't by the capacity for those same weapons to be in people's homes.
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So how do you ensure that the guns won't be used for illegal/harmful purposes? I mean, how do you ensure a butcher knife or a meat cleaver or a garden hoe or an automobile aren't used for harmful/illegal purposes? Just ask all those people in Wisconsin that the fellow ran over and killed during a Christmas parade whether his vehicle was used for a harmful purpose.

What if instead of the gunman wrecking his truck he drove through the fence and ran down two teachers and 19 students on the playground and killed them? What would be the discussion? Would we be demanding that any motor vehicle capable of driving through a fence and running over people should be banned or heavily regulated? I didn't think so. But we are allowed to own guns and we are allowed to own as many as we are comfortable with. You non-USA folks can harp on it all you want and say it's "silly", "barbaric" or "whatever", but in this country gun ownership is a right, plain and simple. Bad people do bad things, whether it's with a gun, a sword, a car bomb or with the family minivan.
 
I heard somewhere recently (can’t recall where) that 50% of firearms in the US are owned by only 3% of the population.

I fully expect to be corrected on this by someone who knows. Unless of course it’s right.
 
HOA_KSOP said:
So how do you ensure that the guns won't be used for illegal/harmful purposes? I mean, how do you ensure a butcher knife or a meat cleaver or a garden hoe or an automobile aren't used for harmful/illegal purposes? Just ask all those people in Wisconsin that the fellow ran over and killed during a Christmas parade whether his vehicle was used for a harmful purpose.

What if instead of the gunman wrecking his truck he drove through the fence and ran down two teachers and 19 students on the playground and killed them? What would be the discussion? Would we be demanding that any motor vehicle capable of driving through a fence and running over people should be banned or heavily regulated? I didn't think so. But we are allowed to own guns and we are allowed to own as many as we are comfortable with. You non-USA folks can harp on it all you want and say it's "silly", "barbaric" or "whatever", but in this country gun ownership is a right, plain and simple. Bad people do bad things, whether it's with a gun, a sword, a car bomb or with the family minivan.
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@HOA_KSOP

Respectfully, but a butcher knife or a meat cleaver or a garden hoe are typically not found to be instrumental in the vast majority of mass killings. If they were, I’m reasonably certain most societies would look at some means to appropriately address the issue.

Insofar as a motor vehicle, perhaps it is in fact because they are recognized as capable of inflicting mass casualties that the State requires that they be licensed & regulated and that their operators be tested & licensed based on their demonstrated capacity to safely operate them.

And your right, people do bad things. However, because the vast majority of these bad things do involve guns and these increasingly frequent bad things are grossly disproportionate in the US as to what happens in the rest of the world, it is hardly surprising that us Non-USA folks tend to focus on that correlation.

May I ask you. Do you consider requiring a gun owner having to license any weapon they purchase an infringement on that right of ownership? Would a requirement that as a condition of obtaining that license the gun owner must demonstrate the capacity to safely use them, would that be an infringement?

Thanks.

Cheers!
 
An Argument Against Civilian Ownership of Assault and Similar Weapons in the Public Sphere

Outside of the Constitutional 2nd Amendment argument, another frequent reasoning given for allowing civilian gun ownership of assault style weapons is they are necessary to defend oneself and one’s family from some indeterminate specter of violence ever present and from which you are constantly at risk of being a victim of and / or as a necessary bulwark against Government oppression.

In addressing the self-defense argument, we are being asked to accept that such are your personnel and family interests and that of ALL the many other assault gun owners subscribing to this argument, that you are ALL at such serious and imminent risk of such a violent action(s) against you, that you absolutely require the use of an assault gun to deal with those threats. Whereas as clearly a hand gun, or a hunting rifle, or shotgun would be of no value in protecting oneself?

To the argument that they may be required to one day fight back against State oppression. Can we be serious here for a second? Again, we are being asked to accept that a lone John Doe with his assault gun will by himself face down the State and tun back this oppression. To which one should ask, so his inevitable his state aided suicide accomplishes what exactly?

Well of course not goes the counter argument. John will be joined by Jane, by Mary, by Tom, by Dick and Harry and thousands of others fighting to lift the yoke of oppression. Again, here we are being asked to now accept that John and a disparate group of strangers all of varying competences & backgrounds will suddenly effectively coalesce and form such efficient fighting units that the State again re-thinks their oppression. Does Kent Sate ring a bell, … and they didn’t even have guns.

Yes, but there will also be militias and other groups as well that are organized, and together we will … May I suggest that were violence on that level ever to spontaneously erupt, the State would not be hesitant to unsheathe their own assault weapons and the inevitable State aided mass suicide that would follow such a conflict would again accomplish what exactly? Does the 86 dead at Waco sound familiar to anyone? How has that Azov Battalion in Ukraine fared of late?

So to conclude, my reasoning is simply this, if neither argument really stands the test of common sense then the only thing assault weapons have demonstrated in the public sphere is their unique ability to wreck havoc & death on thousands of innocent lives, children and adult without distinction, in a extremely short time frame. Nothing else. It is time they be prohibited from civilian ownership.

Addendum. To the State oppression argument and how my approach means not having the means to fight back. May I suggest one consider the impact of Gandhi’s 1913 Salt March, the 1913 Suffragette Parade, the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, or the 1988 Estonian Singing Revolution and many other such non-violent civil disobedience actions have had in changing their respective societies.

Cheers!
 
Nemesis said:
This guy is Australian. He has a gun collection far larger than this for bolt action rifles. Should we go after him for his "insane" choices? Who gets to decide what is "insane?"

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It's not illegal for Australians to own guns. It's difficult and there is licensing, background checks and strict storage laws etc. If I'm a member of a sport shooting club I'm probably not permitted to take my rifle home with me but have to keep it locked up at the club. I can safely go to any event, friend's house, public place and reasonably assume no one is carrying or has access to a firearm.

The difference in the video is he's not shooting semi-automatic or automatic weaponry or walking around a populated area with his weapon strapped to his person. Judging by the locale I'm guessing he's a country bloke/farmer which is a good reason to have a firearm in this country and many do. Good Australian Feral Fox and Cat shoots as an example. Introduced species are a pest and destroy local fauna and farm stock.

HOA_KSOP said:
What if instead of the gunman wrecking his truck he drove through the fence and ran down two teachers and 19 students on the playground and killed them? What would be the discussion? Would we be demanding that any motor vehicle capable of driving through a fence and running over people should be banned or heavily regulated? I didn't think so. But we are allowed to own guns and we are allowed to own as many as we are comfortable with. You non-USA folks can harp on it all you want and say it's "silly", "barbaric" or "whatever", but in this country gun ownership is a right, plain and simple. Bad people do bad things, whether it's with a gun, a sword, a car bomb or with the family minivan.
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@Bones26 beat me to it. We license people to drive a motor vehicle and don't let our under 10's behind the wheel... except for sitting on your Dad's lap to back the car out of the driveway. :p You have to get a license, past tests, you can lose that same license or "that right" if you show signs of not being safe in public. But apparently guns aren't worthy of the same respect as a motor vehicle? If your weapon goes off due to faulty maintenance why can't a USA citizen then lose their gun(s) and their license/right to own a gun?

All vehicles also have to go through various checks before they are sold to general public to make sure they are safe to drive and meet certain community standards. You can't buy a Formula 1 car and drive that down the freeway alongside the neighbours Toyota Prius. So why not limit guns in the same way and say only bolt action rifles? No semi-automatics of any kind can be owned. Maybe no gun that can hold more than one bullet at a time? Go nuts with musket ownership. Whatever rights you have in your constitution are kept, while there are sensible laws ensuring reduced risk of harm to the American community.

Somewhere and at some point there has to be a sense of community spirit to work together. There was in Australia and New Zealand that enacted sweeping gun reform. There was distinct events where the country's citizens said, "We don't what that to happen again. If I have to sacrifice something to help make that happen, I will." For us it was seeing a bunch of tourists being gunned down in Tasmania, in New Zealand it was a group of worshippers being gunned down a mosque while they prayed. In both cases the laws and action on the ground to enact change were within months. Sadly, seeing little kids gunned down in a school multiple times now doesn't appear to be that tipping point in parts of America. It's this perception that the American community won't come together and protect your own innocent children that those on the outside start calling this part of your society "barbaric". You value your weapons, your right to cause violence and harm, more than protecting the innocent and vulnerable... who don't forget are also American citizens themselves.

Someone wanting to cause harm will find a way to do it, no doubt. Even if the only items in existence were somehow fluffy pillows, there would be someone looking to beat down and smother someone else for some perceived grievance. The difference is the gun (especially the military grade hardware) is far to efficient at what it does and is too easy to access. Go nuts with a claymore in a public place. Fifty bucks says you don't kill or injure as many as holding an AR-15.
 
Americans gained and kept their freedom and their independence on the strength of the individuals who were armed and took it upon themselves along with their neighbors to stand against tyranny. Nothing has changed.This is not something we necessarily expect the rest of the world to understand or even accept. It is an American concept and won’t die an easy death.
 
sspoom said:
Americans gained and kept their freedom and their independence on the strength of the individuals who were armed and took it upon themselves along with their neighbors to stand against tyranny. Nothing has changed.This is not something we necessarily expect the rest of the world to understand or even accept. It is an American concept and won’t die an easy death.
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Not disputing this at all. It's part of your history and your story as a country. I think what the rest of us are saying looking in from the outside is "it isn't the 1770's anymore". Time has moved on, there isn't a tyrannical government to overthrow, the US now has a military large enough that can defend it's own borders unlike immediately after independence and the technology has advanced so far ahead of what any of the authors of the constitution and the early amendments could possibly understand at the time. Sometimes holding on to that history too tightly causes more harm than good. Losing tens of thousands of lives per year to gun violence, including little children, is also now going to be a part of that same American history. Or are the 1770's more important than 2022?

Just seeing the news there's been another mass shooting this time at a hospital. I'm sure guns had nothing to do with it. I doubt there was some great threat stemming from that place but don't worry we'll ensure that all the doors are locked so no one can get in and repeat this tragedy somewhere else. :rolleyes:
 
Pay attention to the latest shooting that you referred to and see how fast it drops from the narrative. The perpetrator doesn’t match the media narrative and will be immediately forgotten. The second amendment was specifically put in place to keep our own government from getting out of hand and it’s why nothing is off the table in trying to overturn it.
 
Guns aren’t going away anytime soon in America. Most any law going forward is targeting ONLY law abiding citizens and completely ignores the massively violent folks in this country who ignore ALL laws.
 
Bones26 said:
@HOA_KSOP

Respectfully, but a butcher knife or a meat cleaver or a garden hoe are typically not found to be instrumental in the vast majority of mass killings. If they were, I’m reasonably certain most societies would look at some means to appropriately address the issue.

Insofar as a motor vehicle, perhaps it is in fact because they are recognized as capable of inflicting mass casualties that the State requires that they be licensed & regulated and that their operators be tested & licensed based on their demonstrated capacity to safely operate them.

And your right, people do bad things. However, because the vast majority of these bad things do involve guns and these increasingly frequent bad things are grossly disproportionate in the US as to what happens in the rest of the world, it is hardly surprising that us Non-USA folks tend to focus on that correlation.

May I ask you. Do you consider requiring a gun owner having to license any weapon they purchase an infringement on that right of ownership? Would a requirement that as a condition of obtaining that license the gun owner must demonstrate the capacity to safely use them, would that be an infringement?

Thanks.

Cheers!
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We have gun safety classes and as soon as you buy a gun you are in a law enforcement database. Well, as soon as you buy a gun from a legitimate seller you are in a law enforcement database. But I am a little confused as to why you think licensure would solve a "bad people" problem? The person who ran over all the people in Milwaukee had a license, but that didn't him prevent from killing a lot of people with a motor vehicle.
 
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Ithikial said:
Not disputing this at all. It's part of your history and your story as a country. I think what the rest of us are saying looking in from the outside is "it isn't the 1770's anymore". Time has moved on, there isn't a tyrannical government to overthrow, the US now has a military large enough that can defend it's own borders unlike immediately after independence and the technology has advanced so far ahead of what any of the authors of the constitution and the early amendments could possibly understand at the time. Sometimes holding on to that history too tightly causes more harm than good. Losing tens of thousands of lives per year to gun violence, including little children, is also now going to be a part of that same American history. Or are the 1770's more important than 2022?
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We have guns to keep politicians "honest". They know that, that's why they want gun control. After seeing the way that the Australian and Canadian governments trampled your rights in the name of "keeping everyone safe" from COVID, you don't have much room to talk because it looks to me that you all will accept whatever BOHICA your governments send your way. Chastising us about guns and a Constitution crafted in the1770's is no different than us chastising you for having a monarch. Now that is an outdated idea.
 
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HOA_KSOP said:
We have guns to keep politicians "honest". They know that, that's why they want gun control. After seeing the way that the Australian and Canadian governments trampled your rights in the name of "keeping everyone safe" from COVID, you don't have much room to talk because it looks to me that you all will accept whatever BOHICA your governments send your way. Chastising us about guns and a Constitution crafted in the 1770's is no different than us chastising you for having a monarch. Now that is an outdated idea.
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To quote an Aussie comedian living in America: "You realise the Government has drones right? You're bringing a gun to a drone fight!" :D Governments that get toppled by violent domestic uprisings generally get toppled themselves like seen in revolutionary France and Russia to name a few. USA faced an external threat in the UK.

The Australian and New Zealand response to COVID did not trample anyone's rights and New Zealand actually had very free gun laws (including the right to own an assault rifle) at the start of COVID and there wasn't any fear to enact 'restrictive' laws there either. Protests sure, but no plans to storm the Kiwi parliament. Our nations Governments and communities got to work to keep ourselves safe. It goes back to my earlier comment about there being a sense of community among the population of each country to get things done for the common good. And that doesn't make me or anyone who believes that a nasty communist. All of these restrictive COVID measures have been wound back now and we are effectively back to normal given the danger has passed. I went about my day pretty much normally, no threat of losing my job, bought a new PC, fell in love and even went on a romantic holiday all while being 'oppressed' by my Government. When our police used some of the new COVID powers for other purposes the laws were changed to prevent them from doing that again as it wasn't the intent. Our politicians reacted and fixed the laws. Some people actually wanted the restrictive systems to remain a bit longer being fearful of omicron. In Australia, our total deaths since the start of the pandemic have 8,601 from a total population of just under 26m people.

As for the monarchy, yeah I'm a republican and would love to see that disappear and there is talk here of another attempt to do so. But I can promise we won't be going to war with the UK to do so. Actually there maybe a good fight with the Brits on the cricket pitch. :p It will via a referendum, probably with a sausage sizzle. There's no rush to do this however as the real power is held in the parliament and our elected officials with the monarch being effectively a figure head via their designated representative the Governor General. Which himself is an Australian chosen by our elected officials and is a rubber stamp for new laws.
 
@Nort,

If you wouldn't mind enlightening me on a question I have regarding the U.S. constitution.

Does the constitution specifically define who is an adult citizen in the U.S. and at what age one is considered an adult?

As I understand now, individual states can implement their own particular conditions / restrictions on gun ownership, but the reason I ask about the constitutional question is, I was wondering if the Federal government would be able to impose a nation wide age limit on a citizens ability to purchase a gun, or would that be a constitutional infringement?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers !
 
Ithikial said:
Our nations Governments and communities got to work to keep ourselves safe.
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Ours does not. Our government is using the excuse of the war on terror to become, well, more authoritarian. The current Administration is actively going after its political enemies, like parents who speak up at school board meetings, people who disagree with CRT or BLM or the Democratic party or mask mandates or vaccine mandates, or who are Pro-life people or religious conservatives. So when the government looks at its citizens as terrorists, check that, when the government sees people who do not agree with the party in power's policies, mandates, or did not vote for Biden as terrorists, it behooves those people to stay well-armed. You don't have that luxury, we do.
 
Bones26 said:
@Nort,

If you wouldn't mind enlightening me on a question I have regarding the U.S. constitution.

Does the constitution specifically define who is an adult citizen in the U.S. and at what age one is considered an adult?

As I understand now, individual states can implement their own particular conditions / restrictions on gun ownership, but the reason I ask about the constitutional question is, I was wondering if the Federal government would be able to impose a nation wide age limit on a citizens ability to purchase a gun, or would that be a constitutional infringement?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers !
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I am not aware of the Constitution addressing the age of majority. Generally, nationwide, if you are younger than 18 years old, you are a minor. Once you turn 18 years old, you are an adult. As far as I know, whether the Feds can place an age limit on gun ownership would be a question of first impression (i.e., never considered before). If the Feds tried to enact such a law, the amount of litigation would be considerable. My guess … and this is just a guess … is … if history is any indication … the eventual result would be that the Feds limiting gun ownership would be deemed an unconstitutional infringement, and it would be left to the States to work through that issue.
 
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