Guns, Guns Guns

Pokermind, I am your enemy.

My dinner last weekend was tofu. My cereal cupboard includes several boxes of organic granola. (Not because I think organic actually means anything, but it was on sale.) I donate to the ACLU. I support Occupy Wall Street. I believe that President Obama is a Reagan Republican by his actions. Watching Elizabeth Warren win her election filled me with glee. I support a progressive tax scheme, and believe unions have their place. I'm a militant atheist- and by that, I don't mean I blow up abortion clinics, hijack planes or burn churches, but I do have a Flying Spaghetti Monster car decal and I'm a certified minister of Veganza.

I am everything you have been told is wrong with the United States today.

I don't care if you want to own a gun, as long as you're not a felon or mentally ill. I really don't care how your gun looks, as long as it's not functioning as an automatic weapon.

I don't care if you want to belong to some wingnut religion, whether it's fundamentalist Christianity or a bunch of nutjob comet hitchikers. As the saying goes, treat your god like your genitalia- don't wave it around in public or try to force it down my throat, and we'll both be happy.

I don't care where you make your money from, as long as you pay your taxes. Investment income or inheritances aren't special; you still should be paying your taxes just like everyone else.

I actually kinda like the idea of you owning a small business with a dozen employees, but I also know there's a huge difference between a small business making $500,000 a year and an individual making $500,000 a year. If you're the former and you haven't created an LLC or incorporated, it's because your taxes are better as an individual/sole proprietorship, or you're being foolish. You don't get special consideration for either of those.

I don't care if you have an abortion (or don't), if you live your life as your deity of choice demands (or fail regularly), if you want to get freaky with one or more consenting individuals or abstain, or say mean things about me (as long as you're not lying).

I do care a lot about that 'social contract' concept and evidence-based planning for the future, in fiscal, environmental or any other context. From those two ideas you get a whole lot of flavors of liberal. I think that's why the Democratic party sucks on party discipline- every single one of those Congressional reps has their own interpretation of those ideas, and they vote that way.

When you say 'those libruls', you're creating a category that doesn't exist. Liberals, as a rule, don't think, act or vote as a block. The only way to get all of them behind something is to make it something they all support. Between the Blue Dogs and Feinstein lookalikes, getting that sort of supoprt is dubious at best.

By video crazed do you mean plays video games? Are you among those who claim violent video games causes people to be violent?

The problem with many discussions of violent video games is that many people say "I play violent video games on occasion and it hasn't affected me, so how could they be part of the problem?" The problem with that line of thought is that most people aren't borderline psychopaths either. Combine the mental training in violence with an unstable personality and the results aren't good.

There's no good solution. Banning violent video games punished the vast majority of the users who aren't violent psychopaths. But not banning them, leaves them easily available to help trigger violent episodes in psychos. It's a similar problem to the gun control dilemma. Gun control punishes the innocent.

Really? I didn't know my upbringing so lacked values.

Wait a minute! If your premise is correct then crime rates in general and especially violent crime rates should be rocketing...and they're lower than ever. Maybe you need to reexamine how you're looking at things. Between 24-hour news channels and the internet we are more aware than we ever have before of what is going on in our country. Just because you're more aware of it does not mean something is more prevalent.

pokermind wrote:Basically I was discussing the fact that psychological disassociation occurs with all the violent media, games, films, even rap songs. Most adolescents have no personal experience with the actuality of gun fire and its effects on flesh. Add a marginal, low personal esteem, bullied, suicidal, and fame seeking personality to a gun with high capacity magazine and such things happen. Take away the gun, well I knew one professor bludgeoned to death with a claw-hammer by a wacked out grad student.

This problem has multiple causal factors, not to mention that our society does not tech the traditional values we once did, "Thou shall not murder sayeth the Lord" and "Treat others as you would have them treat you". What do kids have now, "Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful (im)famous corpse?"

Poker

Donnachaidh wrote:By video crazed do you mean plays video games? Are you among those who claim violent video games causes people to be violent?

Academic view:
Article by Dr. Christopher J. Ferguson, Associate professor of Psychology and department charis of psychology and communication, Texas A&M Univserisy

Fairly blunt but to the point:
Ctrl+Alt+Del Comic from 10/12/2005, specifically the last panel (lower-right)

[quote="pokermind"...the young video crazed adolescents don't.

Poker

[/quote]

If you believe video games are part of the problem then you should also be blaming movies, TV, music, and books. And don't forget the Bible (or almost all of human history). All of those have violent images and themes to them.

The thing you're missing is that video games are no more the *murder simulators* Jack Thompson and other types like him have claimed than Dungeons & Dragons was Devil worship as was claimed in the '80s and '90s.

I am an avid target shooter and I've played all kinds of first person shooters, from Duke Nukem 3D to Call of Duty Black Ops 2 to Call of Duty Modern Warfare to Medal of Honor Allied Assault to Far Cry to all of the Halo games to Half-Life to Soldier of Fortune (likely the most graphical violent game I've ever played). There are only a few things that those games have in common with reality, how sights line up (which is fairly intuitive anyway), how to reload the weapon (also fairly intuitive), and what some specific guns are (depending on the game). That's it.

There are studies that have found there is an increase in prosocial behaviors (caring for others, being empathetic, etc...) after playing violent video games. There are studies that have shown the opposite. There are studies that are inconclusive. You can find a study (or ten) that will support your view if you want. But, several meta-studies have found that there is not a statistically strong link between video games and violent behavior.

There is no one thing to blame for massacres like happened at Sandy Hook Elementary or Virgina Tech or Columbine High School or Thurston High School or in Aurora, CO. The cause almost universally goes back to mental illness and the lack of treatment available. I'm just not talking about criminally insane where they are unable to comprehend right and wrong, I'm talking about not caring if it is right or wrong. I'm talking about people our society has failed. Our society failed Kip Kinkle, Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, James Eagan Holmes, Adam Lanza, and Seung-Hui Cho by not getting them the treatment they needed before they killed all of those people. I'm not excusing their actions, I'm saying that our society needs to do better, that they could have been helped and those massacres could have been avoided.

biochem wrote:

By video crazed do you mean plays video games? Are you among those who claim violent video games causes people to be violent?

The problem with many discussions of violent video games is that many people say "I play violent video games on occasion and it hasn't affected me, so how could they be part of the problem?" The problem with that line of thought is that most people aren't borderline psychopaths either. Combine the mental training in violence with an unstable personality and the results aren't good.

There's no good solution. Banning violent video games punished the vast majority of the users who aren't violent psychopaths. But not banning them, leaves them easily available to help trigger violent episodes in psychos. It's a similar problem to the gun control dilemma. Gun control punishes the innocent.

The problem with statistics is that while statistics are impartial, the context often isn't. taken out of context the numbers can be made to say anything.

IMO, the cause of high gun homicide rates in america is due to effectively every cause talked about in this thread, including both the seemingly higher rate of mental illness in america, the easy access to guns both legal and illegal, peoples attitudes towards others, societal conditions and more.

I dont believe gun control is the panacaea. I merely believe well thought out gun control, with the same rules everywhere to prevent loophole abuses, is merely one of several steps towards lowering americas homicide rate and the use of guns in crimes. I cant say it will be the biggest, but it probably wont be one of the smallest. Like walking on top of a skinny object, a balance between left and right is required, along with several steps, to get to the other side. both the republicans and the democrats have valid and invalid points about this.the problem is seperating the valid from the invalid, and getting them to accept that they are partially in the wrong over some views.

Spacekiwi wrote:The problem with statistics is that while statistics are impartial, the context often isn't. taken out of context the numbers can be made to say anything.

IMO, the cause of high gun homicide rates in america is due to effectively every cause talked about in this thread, including both the seemingly higher rate of mental illness in america, the easy access to guns both legal and illegal, peoples attitudes towards others, societal conditions and more.

I dont believe gun control is the panacaea. I merely believe well thought out gun control, with the same rules everywhere to prevent loophole abuses, is merely one of several steps towards lowering americas homicide rate and the use of guns in crimes. I cant say it will be the biggest, but it probably wont be one of the smallest. Like walking on top of a skinny object, a balance between left and right is required, along with several steps, to get to the other side. both the republicans and the democrats have valid and invalid points about this.the problem is seperating the valid from the invalid, and getting them to accept that they are partially in the wrong over some views.

Yep, there's lying and lying with statistics. Pollsters know how to phrase questions to get the answer they want too.

Most criminals in prison and on Death Row are poor, they there because they could not afford a competent defense, I remember some famous murder cases where rich defendants skated: OJ Simpson, the Kennedy cousin Smith come to mind.

RandomGraysuit wrote:Pokermind, I am your enemy.

[SNIP]

Gee Enemies over political differences, and you showed me how to use emoticons. Do you like this one from Dr. Strange love I guess video games are the third rail of politics here



Ah well Y'all got enough hair to make it worth this Mountainy Man's effort in scalping ye? That's what my Shoshoni friends suggest doing to enemies

Poker

pokermind wrote:

Spacekiwi wrote:The problem with statistics is that while statistics are impartial, the context often isn't. taken out of context the numbers can be made to say anything.

IMO, the cause of high gun homicide rates in america is due to effectively every cause talked about in this thread, including both the seemingly higher rate of mental illness in america, the easy access to guns both legal and illegal, peoples attitudes towards others, societal conditions and more.

I dont believe gun control is the panacaea. I merely believe well thought out gun control, with the same rules everywhere to prevent loophole abuses, is merely one of several steps towards lowering americas homicide rate and the use of guns in crimes. I cant say it will be the biggest, but it probably wont be one of the smallest. Like walking on top of a skinny object, a balance between left and right is required, along with several steps, to get to the other side. both the republicans and the democrats have valid and invalid points about this.the problem is seperating the valid from the invalid, and getting them to accept that they are partially in the wrong over some views.

Yep, there's lying and lying with statistics. Pollsters know how to phrase questions to get the answer they want too.

Most criminals in prison and on Death Row are poor, they there because they could not afford a competent defense, I remember some famous murder cases where rich defendants skated: OJ Simpson, the Kennedy cousin Smith come to mind.

RandomGraysuit wrote:Pokermind, I am your enemy.

[SNIP]

Gee Enemies over political differences, and you showed me how to use emoticons. Do you like this one from Dr. Strange love I guess video games are the third rail of politics here



Ah well Y'all got enough hair to make it worth this Mountainy Man's effort in scalping ye? That's what my Shoshoni friends suggest doing to enemies

Poker

On the lighter side, no sorry. nowhere near enough hair. =D

Just had a quick look at President Obama's proposals. They look like good ideas to mke and don't seem to over-reach in the way that some feared. Any thoughts?

At a quick glance, the only thing I would disagree with in the President's proposals is the ban on assault weapons. I disagree not because it is a bad idea, but because, as this forum has demonstrated time and again, the imprecision of the currently accepted definition that they are using to classify such weapons. Clarify that one point and even I would accept his proposal as a good idea.

One additional point that was not addressed was a method for private gun sale to be checked. If they are going to require a background check for such sales, they need a mechanism in place to do so. Perhaps allowing one or two pawn shops or shooting ranges to do the background checks for a small fee would be a good idea, because a place that can verify the validity of identification is needed.

KNick wrote:At a quick glance, the only thing I would disagree with in the President's proposals is the ban on assault weapons. I disagree not because it is a bad idea, but because, as this forum has demonstrated time and again, the imprecision of the currently accepted definition that they are using to classify such weapons. Clarify that one point and even I would accept his proposal as a good idea.

One additional point that was not addressed was a method for private gun sale to be checked. If they are going to require a background check for such sales, they need a mechanism in place to do so. Perhaps allowing one or two pawn shops or shooting ranges to do the background checks for a small fee would be a good idea, because a place that can verify the validity of identification is needed.

The problem with that sort of plan would be that there would be ways for disreputable people to easily (but illegally) run a background check on someone without their knowledge or consent if they pretended they needed it so they could sell that person a weapon.