this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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Yes a world where crackheads can legally carry guns will definitely not lead to violence.
It won't. Do you think crackheads won't sell their gun for crack?
Do you think they will not rob people for crack? They are addicts not stupid
If they are not stupid they won't.
Worst that can happen is that nobody walks alone.
Implying crackheads don't have agency
You think a crackhead gives one single fuck what they are legally allowed to do?
The crackhead is gonna have a gun whether it's legal or not (or maybe they'll sell it for more crack). The gangster that sells them the crack is DEFINITELY gonna have a gun. Laws have no effect on the lawless.
The question though is you. When you encounter the violent crackhead, do YOU want to have a gun?
Yes, they care when the gun they buy is either 50€$ or 50000€$ on the black market
A gun is not difficult or complicated to make. Any decent machine shop can make them, especially if you don't care too much about quality. And unlike a drug lab, the machine shop has a legitimate daytime use so you can set it up in plain sight.
You do realize these things are directionally oriented resettable explosives right?
Every time you fire a round is a fucking explosion going off very close to your hand.
Someone not caring about quality is gonna wish they had after losing their fingers to an overpacked round.
Perhaps, but it depends on the customer. A crackhead who wants a gat probably won't even know what ammo to load in it. (Apparently it's somewhat common for police to arrest street criminals with a gun loaded full of the wrong caliber ammunition). And unless you seriously overpack the round or make the barrel out of pot metal, more likely the quality problem that you will get is the gun failing to fire or failing to cycle. Remember though, you are talking about criminals, not people like you and me who care about safety ratings.
Therefore, we should give up and do nothing.
Therefore, we should acknowledge reality and form policy around that rather than pissing into the wind while pretending we're doing something useful.
For example- if you want to attack the lion's share of gun violence, address the causes of it, rather than the tools used in it. That means address drugs and drug gangs. Decriminalize or legalize drugs, put the gangs and cartels out of business. Treat addicts like patients who need help rather than criminals who need punishment, or at the very least stop locking up non-violent drug users with violent criminals (and thus turning them into violent drug users).
Let's also tackle poverty. Poverty is strongly correlated with drug use, so let's give people some hope and upward mobility so they don't feel desperate enough to use drugs. Doesn't work for everybody, but a good intervention that takes a young kid from the hood and gives him opportunity and resources so he has an obvious path to make something of his life will keep an awful lot of kids out of gangs and drugs.
Of course these solutions require more work and money than passing another law that criminals will ignore and getting your photo taken and saying I Did Something!.
Don't forget to also fight the culture around guns.
"Having a gun means you can defend yourself" is a dangerous thing to let live.
Being forced to defend yourself from a person with a gun is a thought no child should ever have. And yet here we are. not a week without a shooting happening.
I agree 100%. I think it's a failure of our society that ANY child has to think about defending themself from ANY sort of violence- be it a psycho with a gun, or crime on the street, or a bully who will beat them up. We should aim to do better as a society.
But the society I'd consider ideal is not the society we have. We have violent people in our society. A few go psycho and commit mass murder, most don't. And thus, we do our children a disservice by pretending otherwise.
We do a bigger disservice by doing little or nothing to identify violent people and help them become less violent.
Blaming the gun is a placebo pill we can take to make ourselves feel better about Doing Something. But it's like blaming the car for the actions of a drunk driver.
It may be dangerous, but it's also not wrong.
If 65yo grandma is approached by a 25yo male thug, she cannot defend herself whether thug is armed or not. The thug is bigger, stronger, and faster than she is.
If 65yo grandma is approached by a 25yo male thug, and she has a gun, she CAN defend herself. The worst case scenario for her is he also has a gun, in which case they are physically equal.
To be clear- I agree with you that we should not HAVE to defend ourselves. I'd love a society where nobody ever needs a gun. But pretending that society exists when it really doesn't does nobody any favors.
Excuse me what? The Grandma is shot dead before she could even pull the trigger.
And even if she defends herself then she will probably never live a happy life ever again because she just took a human life.
Why is it always Americans who do not understand that guns do kill people.
Yes, mental illness might also be an issue but you also dont do shit to solve that issue.
You dont even have healthcare. The one thing that could help is just banning guns but since every Jon Fuckwit sees himself as a one man militia we get columbine after columbine. But oh no you cannot take my guns its in my amendment that i am militia and i need my gun gun to defend myself from the bad guys. Two days later is the next shooting in a school, or a parking lot or a super market or on a highway.
No single other country that actually manages who can have a gun and who cannot has this problem.
While Germany, Canada and France together had 5 School shootings since 2009 the US had 360.
Even after Uvalde and 30 dead. Children! Dead children! You just said "oops the mental illness" and did NOTHING
And she could be stabbed from behind, or hit in the back of the head with a bat before she even saw her attacker. Yeah there's no guarantees in any sort of fight.
You are right on one thing- she'd probably never be quite as happy. I think you assume gun owners are spoiling for a fight, eagerly awaiting 'their moment to shine'. It's really not true though. Not for myself or anyone I know at least.
As a gun owner, I've spent a lot of time thinking about such things. Being shot isn't like in the movies where someone falls down and music plays and the hero rescues the girl, it's ugly and painful, it's like stabbing someone with a giant screwdriver by remote control. I hope I can live the rest of my life without ever shooting anybody or taking a life by any other means, because I'm pretty sure I'd never be quite whole ever again. I've always declined invitations to go hunting because I don't want to be the one to take the life of an animal, I don't even squish insects most of the time I capture and release them outside. So taking the life of another human is not something I ever want to do.
But what I want even less than that, is to do nothing while people I love are harmed. And so, if I have to trade my conscience and mental health for the physical wellbeing of my family or myself, then I will consider that a more than fair trade.
And I think the granny in our analogy would rather be alive and feeling guilty than dead. I know I would be.
This is one thing I HATE about my country- we have forgotten how important it is to take care of our own citizens. And I blame conservatives (the usually pro-gun ones) for this a lot more than liberals, but liberals deserve plenty of blame as well. Both parties find it effective and expedient to whip up voters with 'those other guys hate America!'.
It's not just mental health, it's everything. Look at student loans- kids take on crushing debt because they're told it's the only way to get a good job, only wages are stagnant and they can't make ends meet. Do we help them, the millions of our fellow countrymen who are in a really bad situation? Nah, fuck them, they did it to themselves.
And look at healthcare as a whole. People get cancer and go bankrupt with health insurance and it's just like oh well, like that's the way things are supposed to be.
Meanwhile the wealth of our nation is being extracted by a bunch of business interests that basically have the government in a state of regulatory capture (that video is from 2011 and it's even worse today) and the people of the nation are too busy blaming each other to work together and FIX some of our VERY REAL problems.
So yes, I support gun rights. But please don't lump me in with the loud and obnoxious lemming-conservatives who only use mental health as a way to defend against gun control then do nothing at all to actually improve mental health.
If it were up to me, we'd be spending BILLIONS on mental health, if not tens or hundreds of billions. If it were up to me, our defense budget would get a haircut (we really don't need to spend more on military than the next 10 nations, including all of our major enemies, combined) and that money would be re-invested in America's PEOPLE. Education, mental health, health care, etc. Schools should be palaces and teaching kids should be a well-paid, sought-after, competitive position that carries respect and prestige, not the current situation where teachers are basically underpaid babysitters that are expected to teach the test and then we act confused when entire generations of kids grow up with no critical thinking skills.
I believe the markets, and the corporations, and the government, do and should exist for the benefit of the populace overall, not the other way around. I think many in the US have forgotten that ideal.
Guns are cheaper in the black market though.
If 7-11 started selling dynamite, do you think bombings would stay exactly as common as they are now?
You see a lot of criminals walking around with dynamite? I don't.
Do you think that's because explosives are hard to make or buy? They're not. Starting with nothing but a bit of money, it's far easier to get something that will explode than a gun.
Blowing shit up isn't hard. It's also not useful, and a bomb won't usefully stop someone out to harm you. Thus criminals have little use for them.
Again:
If 7-11 started selling dynamite, do you think that would change?
Nevermind, I discount your opinion on literally everything.
Okay so full answer from a real keyboard. Please consider this one to supercede the last one which was written on my phone on my way to sleep.
First- addressing your argument:
I argue there ARE NOT would-be bombers out there saying 'I really wanna blow some people up but I can't get explosives, my reign of terror ended before it began :(, curse you explosives licensing schemes! Guess I have no choice but to get a job and therapy.'. Evil men will always find the tools they need to dispense their evil.
But there's a sliding scale. The more determined someone is, the more stringent restrictions it will take to stop them from getting whatever they want. There's a limit to what's practical, and a higher limit to what's possible. Look at prisons- the most secure, controlled, patrolled environment in the world, and yet prisoners still get drugs and weapons and cell phones. Evil men will always find the tools they need to dispense their evil, but assholes are more likely to settle for whatever's convenient.
So by 'if 7-11 started selling dynamite', that means drop the difficulty of acquisition to zero. And in that sense, of course there'd be more bombings- both because 'Dynamite sale! 12 sticks for $12' posters in the window would bring bombs closer to peoples consciousness, and because you now cover the entire scale of determination.
Second, my argument:
Bombs are a bad analogue because you can't use a bomb defensively. If someone threatens to bomb my car, having my own bomb won't help me much. And a bomb isn't directed, it's broad destruction that harms everything in its vicinity (buildings, people, vehicles, etc). So I can't use a bomb to defend my home from an intruder as I'll just blow up my own house & family; I can't use a bomb to defend against street crime because I'd blow myself up too.
A gun however CAN be used defensively. It doesn't harm everything in the vicinity, just whatever you shoot at. The gun doesn't also harm the shooter, doesn't also harm everybody nearby. I can shoot the intruder or street criminal without also harming myself or my family.
So consider Night City, or any similar society where you can assume everyone you meet is armed. In that society, much like in ours, you have two classes of people. There's the criminal class- which includes the main character V. They go about their illegal actions, using violence against anyone who stands in their way. And there's the average people. In a game like CP2077 or GTA, the average people are the NPCs that populate the city but with whom you have little or no interaction other than stealing their cars or wishing they'd get out of your way.
Obviously we'd like to disarm the criminals. But as people who don't follow the law, that's easier said than done.
When in the beginning of the game you hear the news report that there were 87 murders last week, notice that it's talking about gangs and cartels, not innocent bystanders? Art imitates life.
But now consider the NPCs. Imagine if every time you had to steal a car, the owner would try and shoot you, and if you shoot back then random bystanders would shoot you. Would that impact your willingness to steal cars? I think it would, you'd go looking for parked cars to avoid firefights.
And that's why I say having a mostly armed society is not an awful thing.
After you wrote it, did you read it?
First part: 'Laws never work because crime is magic. Okay, practical obstacles work. Actually I agree completely and making a bad thing easier makes it way more common.'
I hadn't even brought up how capitalism can make problems worse on purpose. You went out of your way to make that a gimme. And thanks a bunch for bringing up prison, which is the best possible example of everyone wanting something (escape) and approximately zero people achieving it.
Stopping crime is not pass/fail. The existence of a crime doesn't negate how much good was done, by forcing every asshole who wants to do a terrorism to gamble their fingers on redneck engineering contraptions intended to explode in someone's face.
Second part: 'Nobody gets hurt in a mass shootout over a carjacking.' You can't even imagine assuming everyone you meet is unarmed. Like most places.
I think you're filling in the blanks a bit and putting words in my mouth.
I say practical obstacles work to screen out the 'low hanging fruit'. It's like metal detectors at the airport- screens out the random idiots, but not the dedicated terrorists. Trying to screen out the terrorists just gives you the TSA which costs billions and offers little of value above the standard metal detectors and xray machines of 1990.
There's two things that would stop another 9/11-- locked cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know to rush a hijacker rather than cooperating. Security is a distributed decentralized problem, and centralized solutions rarely work for that.
As for prison- my analogy was pointing out the futility of trying to stop people from getting items they want. It doesn't work for drugs, it doesn't work for guns. You'll disarm the good people and the bad guys will stay strapped. And smuggling drugs into prison is a LOT easier than smuggling people out.
I'm all for reducing the number of guns criminals have. I just think it's a bad idea to reduce the number of guns good people have even more. And since a law only affects the law-abiding...
If you read this comment of mine there's minimum of 55k defensive gun uses in the US, probably more like 300-350k. The law will directly affect those. Not every one would become a murder, but that's a lot more victims of various types of crimes. And of the 10-12k firearm homicides per year, how many are committed by people who aren't legal to own a gun in the first place? An awful lot.
I CAN imagine a place where everyone I meet is unarmed- I live more or less in such a place. Connecticut, USA- I only know a few people who own guns but almost none of them ever carry, and I almost never carry myself.
I was making a specific point that you've sidestepped- that if a criminal had significant fear that their victim would be armed, there'd be less crime. That if in GTA random NPCs shot you for stealing cars, you'd probably steal fewer cars. Do you disagree with that?
Locked cockpit doors are also practical obstacles, numbnuts.
"Futility" is pass/fail thinking. We absofuckinglutely keep most prisoners from getting most things they want. If your standard is literally nobody and never ever ever, yeah no shit that won't work. But I feel no need to defend the assertion that most people in prison are left wanting.
Don't talk to me about systems if you think 99% success equals failure.
You want magic.
The only reason it's sooo easy for "criminals" to pull guns from behind their ears is the comical abundance of firearms. Where the fuck do you think the black market comes from? There's no secret factory churning out bad-guy-specific firearms. Burglars find guns lying around, muggers take guns from victims, straw buyers look like "good people" - and there's more guns than humans in America. There's a gun and a half per person. How the everloving fuck are you "for reducing the number of guns criminals have," if not by reducing the number of guns available?
I didn't address 'what if carjackers thought randos were armed' because what happens is, they shoot you first.
Most illegal guns today are stolen or straw purchased, because that's the easiest and cheapest way of getting them and it requires very little transport.
Let's assume you made civilian gun ownership totally illegal. The math changes- they get a bit more expensive, they get shipped in from overseas along with the drugs. Or they get made locally- a gun isn't that hard to make in any decent machine shop. Certainly easier than making drugs. And unlike the drug lab, the machine shop has a legitimate 'day shift' use so it doesn't have to hide in a basement.
But you yourself said there's 1.5 guns for every person. That doesn't go away overnight you know. Even if you could get support for broad spectrum civilian disarmament, the criminals won't give up their guns and they'll just start importing or making more.
If you want to stop crime, of any kind, you have to stop the root causes. Stopping drunk driving by banning alcohol didn't work in the 1920s. Stopping gun violence by banning guns won't work today. You need to go deeper- look at where most gun violence comes from (gangs and drugs), and address that. It means education, jobs, a war on poverty, and it costs a hell of a lot more than just signing a law. But it would actually improve our society.
Or effectively prevent them, or reliably prosecute them, or-- what, suddenly you understand game theory? When it's convenient?
This is stupid. We can make things harder, and they happen less. Some obstacles work better, some goals are worth more effort, whatever. You don't get to pull this motte-and-bailey horseshit. You went from declaring all self-proclaimed criminals will always always always get all the guns they want, to acknowledging that cost / complexity / time / consequences prevents a ton of access that would happen if there were no obstacles, to sort of mumbling and hand-waving that changes won't change anything because imports and stockpiles and Jesus Christ have you ever seen a foreign country?
Even the solution you treat as a worst-case extreme is wrong. Almost nobody wants to ban all guns. That is a right-wing ghost story. But buyback programs, registration, and serial-number tracking can reduce guns available to the black market, and chase down the pathways guns take to get there, without stopping any particular ammosexual from collecting greasy toys.
Perhaps nobody overtly wants to ban all guns in the sense of making all guns illegal. There's always a 'reasonable' proposal. But it overall feels like a roll back strategy, like the US tried to roll back communism in the cold war- pick at the edges until there's none left.
A buyback program IS a ban by the way- it's just confiscation with compensation. 'You can't own XYZ anymore so we will confiscate it from you, but we'll give you some money.
The real issue though is that guns aren't hard to make and therefore the black market effect will be minimal. Look at illicit marijuana (pre-legalization) as an example. Lots of it was grown in Mexico then smuggled in. Then hydroponic/airponic tech got better and cheaper and instead it was grown in attics and basements closer to where it would be sold. So now the drugs smuggled in are drugs that require lab processing like cocaine or heroin. But if (hypothetically saying there was no legalization) you made home-grow setups illegal, that wouldn't stop anyone from doing it anyway.
Same is true with guns. For under $500 you can buy a device that turns a half-machined block of metal into the main part of an AR15 rifle. For $5k-$10k you can buy a CNC machine that will turn a solid billet of metal into most parts of a gun. And unlike a drug lab, unlike even a basement marijuana grow op, all these devices can be presented as 'legitimate use' with very little prep- just clear the gun CNC file out of the machine and that's it. Way easier than marijuana (which takes weeks to mature and then must be harvested and packaged). So you could do this in a legitimate front business with a 'night shift' crew.
So I argue even if you greatly restrict civilian firearm ownership, the real criminals who commit the majority of gun homicides and gun crimes will have unimpeded access to guns. The same gangs that right now trade in stolen or straw purchased guns, will instead trade in imported or home-machined guns.
Damn it's crazy that you say that despite there being dozens of countries where crackheads just don't have guns.