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Forums - Politics Discussion - Shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas (19 Students, 2 Teachers Dead)

Chrkeller said:
sc94597 said:

Yeah, you obviously are white. Otherwise you would understand quite well that concern about the white-supremacist police forces and institutions in this country is not unjustified. Typical yt settler-colonizer mentality. 

non sequitur

At the very least we stop future sales of high powered, high capacity semi automated weapons of war.  Just start there. 

But you and others don't want any limitations, we would prefer dead children.  Which is your opinion, I just don't share it.  We could at least attempt to try.   

It isn't non-sequitur. When a white person tells a person of color that they are "paranoid" about the enforcement of gun laws disproportionately harming people of color (a proven fact with a plethora of data supporting it) their whiteness (and therefore limited perspective) is highly relevant to the discussion. I never said I don't support gun limitations by the way. I'd support any gun laws whose costs are felt proportionately by everyone, and therefore strongly considered. If white-supremacist Bob gets to keep his armory because of a grandfather clause and can use it to terrorize BIPOC people because he lives in a sanctuary county, while somebody who can't rely on police to protect them because of their race goes to prison because they carry a semi-automatic handgun for self-defense, I am going to oppose the law. But if the law equally applied to white-supremacist Bob in a sanctuary county, then it is far more palatable. 

But whiteness is often blindness on these topics.  



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Is it ironic that I'm legitimately color blind?

Either way, start simple. Stop future sales.



sc94597 said:
Chrkeller said:

I think common sense gun laws include allowing people to own hunting rifles and home defense (e.g. shotguns).  First step is to acknowledge high powered 45 rounds per minutes high capacity mags simply shouldn't be readily available for the average person to buy.  Does this fix everything?  No.  But at least start with weapon type.

Immediate questions: to continue the dialogue. Who are the new laws going to be enforced by? Specifically, how do you address rural and exurban sheriffs and police departments who practice "nullification" and states/counties that set up "second amendment sanctuaries"? Will there need to be funding allocated to the ATF to hire new, very large nation-wide police force that does raids in rural areas when state law-enforcement refuses to assist in enforcement? Are people who already own to-be-illegal guns allowed to be grandfathered in their ownership or will they have to forfeit them to comply with the law? If they are grandfathered in their ownership does that solve the problem given how many guns are already out there, often in white-supremacist hands? If they must forfeit them, how is this to be enforced? Will we expand prison populations to house those who disobey, despite having the largest prison population per capita in the world already? Or will fines and confiscations be the only enforcement mechanism and we hope that after decades of being fined the number of illegal firearms will naturally fall off at a rapid enough rate that they are hard to obtain within some of our lifetimes? If we just accept that this will be disproportionately enforced, how do we combat the inequalities in convictions, prison populations, economic well-being, etc among different ethnic groups due to the uneven enforcement of these laws? Will black, indigenous, and other people of color get reparations because the law only de-facto applies in our communities and not the second amendment sanctuaries where white people live? Will stop and frisk be explicitly outlawed so that those of us who don't own guns but look a certain way aren't racially profiled on the premise that we might have an illegal gun but really it is because of our race? Will regular police patrols be limited to shotguns or will they be exempted as they tend to be in current legislation? If they are exempted, why? 

What kind of dialogues are you used to having where you spew out 20 questions at once for the other person to respond to? This seems more like an attempt to shut down the dialogue by simply overwhelming the other party.



Chrkeller said:

Is it ironic that I'm legitimately color blind?

No it's not ironic at all. It is par for the course and entirely expected. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/color-blindness-is-counterproductive/405037/

"Instead, it encourages those who endorse this perspective to ignore the ongoing processes that maintain racial stratification in schools, neighborhoods, health care, and other social institutions. Can color consciousness draw attention to these issues? The research demonstrates that it can lead to more understanding of our racially stratified society and can give rise to a willingness to work for change. So from that perspective, it doesn’t seem worth abandoning just yet."



JWeinCom said:
sc94597 said:

Immediate questions: to continue the dialogue. Who are the new laws going to be enforced by? Specifically, how do you address rural and exurban sheriffs and police departments who practice "nullification" and states/counties that set up "second amendment sanctuaries"? Will there need to be funding allocated to the ATF to hire new, very large nation-wide police force that does raids in rural areas when state law-enforcement refuses to assist in enforcement? Are people who already own to-be-illegal guns allowed to be grandfathered in their ownership or will they have to forfeit them to comply with the law? If they are grandfathered in their ownership does that solve the problem given how many guns are already out there, often in white-supremacist hands? If they must forfeit them, how is this to be enforced? Will we expand prison populations to house those who disobey, despite having the largest prison population per capita in the world already? Or will fines and confiscations be the only enforcement mechanism and we hope that after decades of being fined the number of illegal firearms will naturally fall off at a rapid enough rate that they are hard to obtain within some of our lifetimes? If we just accept that this will be disproportionately enforced, how do we combat the inequalities in convictions, prison populations, economic well-being, etc among different ethnic groups due to the uneven enforcement of these laws? Will black, indigenous, and other people of color get reparations because the law only de-facto applies in our communities and not the second amendment sanctuaries where white people live? Will stop and frisk be explicitly outlawed so that those of us who don't own guns but look a certain way aren't racially profiled on the premise that we might have an illegal gun but really it is because of our race? Will regular police patrols be limited to shotguns or will they be exempted as they tend to be in current legislation? If they are exempted, why? 

What kind of dialogues are you used to having where you spew out 20 questions at once for the other person to respond to? This seems more like an attempt to shut down the dialogue by simply overwhelming the other party.

Given that the other party started with one-sentence flippant responses that weren't relevant to the text quoted, who exactly is attempting "to shut down the dialogue?" Anyway, the questions aren't rhetorical. They are legitimate. Some of them are sub-questions meant to expand on a more general question. But ultimately the general question is, "how do we equitably enforce new gun laws in the United States, given that the institutions of law-enforcement are highly racially-biased and given that past and current gun laws are disproportionately harmful to BIPOC persons?" 



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sc94597 said:
SvennoJ said:


Why are automatic weapons not even banned in the US?

Automatic weapons were effectively banned in the U.S with the Firearm Owners Protection Act. In order to get one you need to go through a 6 month FBI background check and pay for a $200 tax stamp. All automatic weapons made after 1986 are illegal for civilian purchase, and everything else that had been grandfathered from before then is very expensive ($20,000 - $30,000.) Bump stocks, which convert semi-automatic weapons into fully-automatic weapons were banned via ATF regulation and the courts have held the ban so far. But the ban is hard to enforce because bump stocks can be made very easily and cheaply. 

The difficulty with banning semi-automatic weapons is that they are the most common weapon-category produced by manufacturers and the Supreme Court in D.C vs. Heller decided that any weapon in common-use is protected by the Second Amendment. Plus there are about 300 million semi-automatic guns in the U.S, and rounding them all up would cause considerable problems given the unconsented policing-landscape of the U.S and the strong ability for organized crime to develop around their restriction (like with drugs and alcohol prohibition.) If semi-automatic weapons were banned when there were few of them, like what was done with automatic weapons, it would be pretty easy to enforce, but since there are so many, the problems with enforcement arise. You might observe a situation where white people who live in rural areas where police don't want to enforce gun laws are affected very little, while BIPOC people who live in jurisdictions where police are more committed (mostly urban areas) in enforcing them feeling the brunt of these new laws. This of course leads to many other inequalities, and there is a widespread movement currently to move away from mass-incarceration, not create new crimes where there weren't formerly any that will almost certainly disproportionately harm non-white communities and persons. 

What are some ideas for enforcing bans of semi-automatic weapons that would get rid of about 300 million guns, in a way that doesn't disproportionately harm marginalized people, soon enough before the next political cycle leads to the repealing of such a law? 

You start by enforcing the laws at point of sale, manufacturing and imports.

Plus a voluntary surrender of weapons program, cash for weapons handed in.

A year later make it fully illegal to own semi automatic weapons without a special license. Hefty fines when found with an illegal weapon. If used in a crime, higher punishment.

Enforcing doesn't mean go house to house to search for weapons. But make it very clear through advertisements that you have x days left to surrender these weapons, after which hefty fines and higher sentencing come into effect when found with such a weapon.


Racist issues among the police are a different problem that needs to be addressed as well. You can't use one wrong as an excuse not to fix another wrong.



sc94597 said:
Chrkeller said:

Is it ironic that I'm legitimately color blind?

No it's not ironic at all. It is par for the course and entirely expected. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/color-blindness-is-counterproductive/405037/

"Instead, it encourages those who endorse this perspective to ignore the ongoing processes that maintain racial stratification in schools, neighborhoods, health care, and other social institutions. Can color consciousness draw attention to these issues? The research demonstrates that it can lead to more understanding of our racially stratified society and can give rise to a willingness to work for change. So from that perspective, it doesn’t seem worth abandoning just yet."

I meant color blind in the sex linked lack of cones.  Genetically passed on by my maternal grandfather.  As in I see all 4 colors of the rainbow.  I wasn't talking socially. 

But I get it.  I think we should do something to prevent kids from being killed, therefore I'm racist because reasons.  Or something.  Heck I don't know.    



sc94597 said:
JWeinCom said:

What kind of dialogues are you used to having where you spew out 20 questions at once for the other person to respond to? This seems more like an attempt to shut down the dialogue by simply overwhelming the other party.

Given that the other party started with one-sentence flippant responses that weren't relevant to the text quoted, who exactly is attempting "to shut down the dialogue?" Anyway, the questions aren't rhetorical. They are legitimate. Some of them are sub-questions meant to expand on a more general question. But ultimately the general question is, "how do we equitably enforce new gun laws in the United States, given that the institutions of law-enforcement are highly racially-biased and given that past and current gun laws are disproportionately harmful to BIPOC persons?" 

I did not say the questions were not legitimate, but there were about 20 of them fired off rapidly. I do not think you reasonably expected a thoughtful, measured, and researched response to all of them. Regardless of what anyone else was doing, this was clearly not an attempt at a dialogue. 

It's like going on a date and asking, "Hi how are you, how many brothers and sisters do you have, do you want to have kids someday, how many, if we had a boy would you want to circumcise, do you want to raise them in any particular religion, what if they didn't accept that religion, and what if they wanted to raise their children in a different one, would you intervene, and what if the children's gender identity is different from what is assigned at birth, and would you support a trans child, ..." Each question may be legitimate on its own, but if you spew them out like that, pretty sure that the other person would bail real quick.



SvennoJ said:

You start by enforcing the laws at point of sale, manufacturing and imports.

Plus a voluntary surrender of weapons program, cash for weapons handed in.

A year later make it fully illegal to own semi automatic weapons without a special license. Hefty fines when found with an illegal weapon. If used in a crime, higher punishment.

Enforcing doesn't mean go house to house to search for weapons. But make it very clear through advertisements that you have x days left to surrender these weapons, after which hefty fines and higher sentencing come into effect when found with such a weapon.


Racist issues among the police are a different problem that needs to be addressed as well. You can't use one wrong as an excuse not to fix another wrong.

Thank you for engaging with the questions I asked. 

While the bolded works to prevent the future sales of semi-automatic weapons from licensed dealers, how does one reduce weapons already owned from circulating? There are enough guns in the U.S for almost everyone to have two, and plenty of people who have hoarded them. 

You mention that there can be hefty fines when somebody is found with a weapon without a license. But many people with these particular weapons live in Second Amendment sanctuaries.The likelihood that they would even be reported and/or there is evidence that they own the weapon (since there are no registries) is slim if they live in these counties/states. Buy-back programs would have to be very generous, especially when the price of the weapon suddenly increases if there is no new production. New York for example had a buy-back program with very low compliance. 

The discussion surrounding race isn't to make an excuse, but to bring it to the forefront that enacting even more strong gun-law criminalization will lead to more inequalities between races. It is only a separate issue if the race issue is addressed before or concurrently to the enactment of the laws. Addressing the race issue addresses many of these mass-shootings at the source anyway. Advocates of gun control as the solution, should be even stronger advocates against white-supremacy because eliminating white-supremacy is the only mechanism in which gun laws can be equitably applied. 

Having said all of that, I do support a licensing system. The sort of licensing system that is found in the Czech Republic would probably be quite an easy sell. Alternatively, one of the best ideas for a licensing system I've heard is to have multiple different classes of fire-arms based on if they are rim-fire or center-fire, concealable vs. non-concealable, etc, and to couple the license with a nationwide carry permit to act as an incentive for gun owners to become licensed so that they can carry seamlessly across states. It isn't clear to me that this really solves the problem of there being hundreds of millions of guns already in circulation though, although it does solve other problems -- like educating gun owners on safe-storage, accident prevention, theft prevention, etc. 



sc94597 said:

I am a POC. My family are BIPOC. I still have concerns about gun laws because of how they are used to harm people who look like me and my family, even if we are non-gun owners, such as the examples I provided. I was genuinely asking about how enforcement of a ban would work without disproportionately harming people who look like me and my family, and you respond with a very yt perspective about hunting deer with no intentions of addressing these questions.

That's the issue. There is this "Binary" line in the sand.

The gun control legislation itself shouldn't discriminate, here people of different ethnic/cultural backgrounds don't really suffer any more or less with or without guns... But one thing is for sure. They are certainly less likely to be shot dead.

One of my roles as a first responder is extrication's where we assist the ambulance service... And after all these years I can count how many "incidents" involved guns. - None.

Growing up as a kid in the 80's, guns were everywhere, even my own father had a double barrel shotgun in his garage that I often played with. (No ammo of course.)
Fast forward to the late 90's... And every child after that is highly unlikely to ever see a gun in real life... And it doesn't matter what cultural/ethnic/minority you are, it's just safer for everyone.

cyberninja45 said:

The country its your right to bear arms. So a license to a right would never fly nationally. 

So having armed personel in schools is the next best thing to me. To me gunfree zones in a country like this makes no sense. May as well call them sitting duck zones.

You don't loose the right. It's just made more difficult.

Having armed personnel just means the higher chance of a cross-shootout with casualties caught in the middle... And no child should grow up fearing if they are going to be murdered in what should be a safe, constructive, learning environment.

kirby007 said:

This wouldnt have happend if those kids would have been allowed to carry their gun with them to school.

I feel for these kids/families

Your sarcasm is next level.

You can't even trust kids to keep their hands out of a cookie jar.

cyberninja45 said:

Why arms guards in schools a bad thing?

It's a school, not a prison?

sc94597 said:

There is estimated to be about 400-600 million guns in the U.S. The majority of them are probably semi-automatic weapons at this point. That is a gun to person ratio of between 1.2 and 1.8. 

Controlling the supply of guns is just not logistically possible at this point. 

It would be easier to: 

  1. Work on reducing wealth-inequality and eliminate homelessness and poverty. 
  2. Pay to have a school psychiatrist evaluate every student and have free-at-the-point of use mental healthcare for everyone in primary and secondary school (at least, ideally for everyone.) 
  3. Reconstruct social clubs that allow people to form physical connections beyond their family and in which a person is more likely to be de-radicalized or re-adjusted to society. Historically local churches did this, but the U.S population is secularizing. Right now the problem is that young people in the U.S experience what Durkheim called Anomie. This is either because rules are too rigid and alienate them or because there is no normative structure at all. 
  4. Reconstruct the education systems so that students don't feel alienated. See: Ferrer movement and Francisco Ferrer as an ideal model. 
  5. Decriminalize all drugs and other non-violent "crimes." 
  6. Aggressively dox and put maximal social pressure on fascists and other hyper-nationalists. 
  7. #6 but for Incels and other radical misogynists. 

Introducing every point on this list would be easier (and likely have a greater effect on shootings) than reducing the supply of guns in the U.S. Solving these problems would also solve many other social problems in the U.S as well. 

Start with Gun Control first and then work your way back. It's the source of the issue, you attack issues from the source.

Cobretti2 said:

The sad thing is when you say this to some American's  how it has worked in Australia they  spit out the old knifes kill people, cars run over people, things you see in Aus every now and then, or they see the farmer story that lost everything shoot his family for example.

What they don't get is that certain guns make it easier to kill someone and at a faster rate. Most people that do these massacres need the gun as a knife they be to gutless to do it, and if they did well you can get a group of people jump that person and disarm them and far less people would die.

In reality if they looked at Aus, since Port Arthur, we haven't had a massacre of that nature (i.e. a stranger shooting strangers). The worst we gotten is some guy with a hand gun from memory in probably 2008 now who shot like 3-4 people?

Correct. We did actually have a "stabbing" issue, so we actually introduced restrictions of buying knives, so if you are under 18, you cannot walk into a shop and purchase a knife and then stab someone.
We also introduced a weapon-concealment ban, so you couldn't carry pocket knifes unless it was for a professional reason.

And that had an effect on knife related incidents.

Cars are a high-risk activity and of course "Car Control" is a thing, you need to be trained, you need to be insured, do the wrong thing and you get punished and more... Which is what it should be for guns too.


You introduce tools to reduce them. And if it saves a life, then it was worth it.



--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--