Originally Posted by George
Hmm. Where have we seen this before?
upvoted for Apes-based content
Hmm. Where have we seen this before?
-Formerly Stabulator
Wasn't the main problem with the the ability for it to cause so much damage in a short amount of time, thus making it the weapon of choice for mass murderers?
Another way to look at it is that shooting victims have a fighting chance of surviving if their wounds don't involve spreading large parts of their internal organs throughout the room, and banning AR-15s would help survivability in a mass shooting scenario.
Let's face it, if you guys stopped the mass killings you could relax and just sweep the rest of the gun issues under the rug
Yep, this is really astute. No one in this country seems to care about the vast majority of shootings that involve handguns. That's probably because they mostly fall into two categories - gang violence (in other words, black or brown people killing black or brown people - fair or unfair, the media doesn't give a shit), and suicides (still a taboo subject, and again, the media doesn't give a shit).
That's why I'm fine with them buying back my AR-15s. I literally bought them because my mother, who has a lot of physical issues with her back and legs, wanted to learn to shoot. Handguns and higher-powered rifles and shotguns would be challenging for her, but she insisted she wanted something "useful," AKA not a .22. Her (and my) real use for them would be in the case of massive unrest following a really large earthquake or other disaster, which is certainly possible given our geology here in the LA basin. Super unlikely in the short run, but actually very likely in the 50 or so years I expect to remain on this planet.
I'd happily sacrifice the AR-15s for the opportunity to liberalize concealed carry laws in California (getting a CC license in the urban parts of this state is like going to a combination of the DMV and the dentist), but as G'day suggests, I'll even give them up just to stop hearing about them in the news. Without my mother's limitations, I'd have been perfectly satisfied with a few handguns and shotguns - semiautomatic in both cases.
All that said, I still am a firm believer in science and statistics, which point to AR-15s (and long guns in general - rifles and shotguns) - being a very small percentage of the gun violence problem in this country. Unfortunately, they've become a very VISIBLE part of the problem, because they're being used by white people to kill white people, especially children.
If you really want to affect change on gun violence in this country, you'd work to overturn the Heller case, and ban handguns. Of course, you'd have to round them all up. Good luck with that. Even normally law-abiding, reasonable folks that I know, when pressed on that issue, talk about how they'd just hide them in their attic/basement/safe.
Last edited by KillerB; March 2nd, 2018 at 06:54 AM.
Here are statistics, right from the state that is most in opposition to semiautomatic rifles: California.
https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/a...-report-16.pdf
Right from page 6 - "California assault weapon use has remained at a relatively low proportion of total firearm use since this annual report commenced in 1998."
IMO, discussion about their effectiveness or lack thereof is irrelevant in the face of statistics that state that only 9% of all gun crimes involve the use of rifles OF ANY KIND, while 86.5% involve the use of handguns. Anyone who is being intellectually honest, and reacting as if gun deaths that involve black or brown people are as great a tragedy as gun deaths that involve white people, should be working furiously to overturn the Heller decision, and to ban and buy back handguns, not semiautomatic rifles.
I'm not entirely sure that handgun violence's being swept under the rug due to racial reasons alone. Even if all hand gun deaths were all white folks, the psychological impact is just not as severe as mass shootings.
Just as when a jumbo jet crashes, it's a huge deal psychologically. Statistically, commercial aviation crash deaths is just super low compared to auto crash deaths. Yet we tend to have more folks afraid to fly rather than afraid to ride. Human brains cannot really fully appreciate statistics sometimes... When more folks die in a single event, it is more traumatic to our brains...
Compare to the opioid epidemic sweeping rural white America. It's got all kinds of attention, IMO, solely because the people are white, working and middle class folks. Drug addiction was an issue in black and brown communities for years (remember the crack epidemic), and we fought it with mandatory jail time. This time around, it's all about gentler, treatment based solutions.
It's totally about race.
^QFT.
Clearly racism still exists..., statistically white lives matter more..., not trying to pretend that's not one of the reasons. But I think we can obviously overcome racial problems at times... (see Obama). However, not sure if we can overcome our gun problems...
Psychologically or in terms of newsworthiness, you'd get more attention when commercial airplane crashes vs a car crash. Wanting MORE regulations to ensure safer commercial airliners is not a bad thing especially if we see multi crashes within since beginning of the year! Similarly asking for more stringent requirements for buying those rifles also shouldn't be a bad thing.
Statistically we have less of these bigger fishes than small fishes, but we might as well fry the bigger fishes first!
I just think involving 'race' in this issue is not necessary. Just like the drug problems you mentioned. Eventually... we'll deal with the problem one way or another by focusing on solving problems rather than focusing on our racial problems. We need to eventually solve our racial problems too of course... but even in that drug problem example, root cause of drug problem isn't really about race, right?
I can agree that mass shooting of a black church/school probably for sure will cause even less reaction in congress, but it'll probably still be more newsworthy than some white dude being gunned down? That's my point. # of victims/incident makes more of a difference than race... eventhough total # of gun deaths greatly exceeds automatic rifle deaths.
Last edited by Crazed_Insanity; March 2nd, 2018 at 10:00 AM.
Isn't it obvious that from the beginning the drug thing was a race thing.
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