Prayers For Las Vegas Nevada

Trump didn’t win the popular vote & the Republican Party has been cheating the system with all the gerrymandering that has been going on in the past few years, which is the process of setting electoral districts. Gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party by manipulating district boundaries.

Oh yeah, let’s not forget all the Russian hackers & interference that was going on as well.

Trump stole this election and his corrupt political party helped make that happen.

 

So your training covered nothing about the further complication and risk your “good guy” weapon is in an emergency situation? You can say I’m wrong all you like, but your absolutism and refusal to acknowledge both the complexity of the issue and of an emergency situation IS part of the problem.

 

I don't think America will ever, ever wake up. It's sad it's happened. I think some Americans are doing great things in the world but I don't this will ever change. I not surprised by this one bit.

 

Okay, Hillary. You realize that after months of investigating, there's been literally zero evidence of Russian hacking. In fact, major news outlets have now had to retract not one but two major stories about it.

Doesn't matter. The President isn't elected by popular vote.

Of course it covered the complications--don't be ridiculous. At no point have I refused to acknowledge the complexity of emergency situations where adrenaline is running high and decisions are made in fractions of a second.

You accuse me of absolutism while insisting that all gun holders are automatically adding risk to the people around them. How is that not absolutism?

Who's at greater risk: an unarmed family in the midst of a home invasion, or an armed one? Who's at greater risk: the patron of a grocery store where there's an active shooter with the police minutes away, or the patron of a grocery story with an active shooter and three customers who are legally carrying and have had the requisite training to do so? To suggest that legal carrying immediately increases the risk to innocent people is laughable on its face. Good people with guns are a force multiplier, not a force divider. I'm stunned that a former cop is disagreeing with me on this.

I'm going to ask you the same question that I've asked @Nebulous. and anyone else who I engage on this topic--what law would have prevented the Las Vegas tragedy? You can chime in on this too, @Surfing Poet.

All the gun control folks go radio silent whenever I ask that question.

 

@SuperFan LOL, I see how you got to 1182 posts.

 

I'm a sucker for a debate, what can I say.

 

Food for thought:

Marvin Wolfgang is perhaps the most celebrated criminologist of the 20th century. His contributions to the world of criminology are hard to overstate. He was very liberal in his politics, and notoriously anti-gun.

In 1995, Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz released a study about defensive gun use (DGU). They found that the defensive uses of guns far outnumbered the lives lost by gun homicides.

Marvin Wolfgang responded:

"I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country. If I were Mustapha Mond of "Brave New World," I would eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police. I hate guns--ugly, nasty instruments designed to kill people."​

and then he goes on ...

"What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator ... I have to admit my admiration for the care and caution expressed in this article and its research. Can it be true that about two million instances occur each year in which a gun was used as a defensive measure against a crime? It is hard to believe. Yet, it is hard to challenge the data collected. I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology. They have tried earnestly to meet all objections in advance and have done exceedingly well."​

Boom.

If you'd like to read it for yourself, here's a link to his piece, "A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed"
http://www.hoplofobia.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/A-Tribute-to-a-View-I-Have-Opposed.pdf

 

It is not absolutism, to speak about a present and real threat. If that gun is not present, the risk IT PARTICULARLY presents, disappears. Discounting that threat, as you are, shows that you cannot engage on the finer points and wish to broadly sweep across the issue, in order to be right.

 

And as to which law would have prevented the massacre, being unfamiliar with US statutes, I cannot say. That does not appear to be the issue under discussion, though. This discussion appears to be about the need for such weapons as perpetrated the offense. You are derailing that conversation with your prejudice.

 

And yes, I admit to my prejudice too. I do not see the need for good people to carry guns, except in the course of their employment. But maybe I am so far removed from your culture that I have no possible appreciation of why a person might think they need to.

 

I love how you can clearly see the risk that appears when there's a gun present with a licensed operator ... but you fail to see the risk that appears when there isn't a gun present with a licensed operator.

 

Out of curiosity, where do you live?

 

Oh no, I appreciate that risk entirely. But as you say, criminals will still get guns, so that’s nothing that legislation can likely affect. Do you honestly feel fearful without a gun? Have you ever had to draw yours?
I live in Australia.

 

They should be, otherwise one party can cheat their way to a win. See my post above about gerrymandering.

 

Spoken like someone who clearly doesn't understand the purpose of federalism.

The vote for President isn't a national popularity contest. The vote is actually 51 separate state votes. It was designed that way so that a few particularly populous states couldn't run roughshod over the rest of the nation. It's also why each state has an equal number of seats in the Senate--the Senate is there largely to serve as a check against 'the tyranny of the majority.'

Now, I know you're all about mob rule, which is one of the things that makes you a liberal. And if that's your philosophy, then fine--but don't go pretending you give a rip about the Constitution.

By the way--most state legislatures have the right to draw their congressional districts as they see fit. Again, that's one of those rights that states have ... and those decisions are made by officials who are elected by the residents of those districts. Liberals have been complaining about gerrymandering for decades, and yet they seem incapable of paying attention to any elections that don't involve a President, which is why they seem to get their asses kicked in every midterm election. Hell, I bet $10 you can't name your own US Representative or a single person in your state's legislature without running to Google.

 

Exactly and that is precisely the problem, they surgically draw their congressional districts in such a way that they either maintain themselves as a red state, or they flip from a blue state to a red state. The system is broken and needs to be fixed.

 

The article by Marvin Wolfgang is a fascinating little read, and I think it supports really well the notion that civilians should in fact be allowed to carry guns of some kind or another. When I have more time, I'd love to take a look at the 1995 Kleck and Gertz study Wolfgang refers to. I'd also be curious to find out whether anyone has in fact come up with a refutation of Kleck and Gertz's methodology, as Wolfgang suggested. I did just enough research to find out that Wolfgang died in 1998, so chances are that if such a refutation exists it was written by somebody else. Meanwhile, @Hazel Simone, I'd be curious to know your thoughts about the Wolfgang article if you have time to take a look at it.

@SuperFan, she does have a point here, you know. I'm not too familiar with the specifics of how the Las Vegas shooter obtained his weapons and don't have time to do much research right now, but my understanding was that at least some of his weapons were semi-automatic guns that he probably obtained legally. If that's the case, a general ban on buying and owning semiautomatic weapons might have prevented the incident, or at least might have reduced the death toll. I'd be curious to see how you respond to the idea that automatic and semi-automatic weapons should not be available to civilians whereas certain pistols, rifles, and shotguns (for example) should remain legally available to those with permits.

Having read your earlier comments about AR-15's and similar weapons being a defense against tyranny, I get what you're saying and agree with the sentiment. However, I also think that if we're faced with real tyranny in this day and age, we're pretty much screwed. Tanks, bombs, and drones trump AR-15's.

Of course, in the U.S., there's also the question of whether any given piece of firearm legislation is constitutional. The most advanced gun in the late 1700s was of course a lot less lethal even than a typical modern rifle--it was much less accurate and took much more time to load. Unfortunately, when the framers wrote the second amendment, they couldn't envision the invention of our modern, sophisticated weapons, and that leads to some interpretive difficulties (and disagreements) today. Clearly, a total ban of firearms would require a repeal of the second amendment, but when it comes to issues like semi-automatic weapons I think the constitutional-or-not issue is less clear-cut.

 

So if you're conceding that legislation won't have much affect, what's your point in this debate? Are you just hoping that good people all around the US will give up their guns? I'm really confused as to what you're arguing.

Not particularly fearful, no, but I feel safer when I do have one. At least I know I have options if I encounter an active shooter.

By God's grace, no I haven't. Hopefully, I'll never have to. Should there come a day when I need to, it's pretty reassuring to know that I'll have the option.

Would it surprise you to know that, per capita, there are more rapes, more assaults, and more burglaries in Australia than in the United States? The same is true of the UK, which also has much more restrictive gun laws.

When you restrict guns, the only people you're restricting them from are good people, who then become sitting ducks for those who would intend to do them harm.

Out of all the mass shootings that have happened in the last 10 years in the United States, an enormously high number of them have occurred in "gun free zones" where guns were explicitly forbidden. How many lives might have been saved in those situations, had only a single good person been armed? We'll never know.

Are there tradeoffs? Absolutely. But largely, Americans have decided that the freedom to defend themselves with firearms is worth the cost of possibly suffering at the hands of that exact same freedom.

 

Per capita means we have a way higher raw number of those types of things going on over here.

 

Or maybe liberal voters could actually run decent campaigns in district elections. Nah, much easier to complain that everything is rigged. Districts are rigged. Elections are rigged. Of course, they're never rigged when the liberals manage to squeeze out a win.