The latest school massacres

[Happy Monkey]

Bad example. Caitlyn still doesn't have one.

[DanaC]

Oh, and that quote about needing guns to disarm people - seriously? You can make a massive dent in the number of guns through the use of amnesties and buy-backs. The rest happens across time as new laws begin to bed down. There will always be people for whom illegality is enough of a barrier that simply making it illegal would reduce numbers.

It then becomes unsafe to use guns because - you shouldn't have it in the first place. It becomes a less comfortable thing to have. It becomes the thing you mitght get caught out on if the police pull you over for something unrelated, or have to turn up at your house because of a burglary. You won't get rid of all of the guns - as a nation I can't see you guys ever wanting that to happen. But you could make them less ubiquitous.

It doesn't happen over night. It happens in stages. It becomes a generational change.

And most of the stuff I've seen from the pro-control camp isn;t about ridding America of guns - ot's about setting some limits on the kinds of guns and ammo that can be bought and the level of availability.

You aren't allowed to just jump in a car and drive down the freeway without having learned how to drive and passed a test to prove it.

[Happy Monkey]

The "New Rule" conflicts with the last one. The government owns guns, and makes laws.

[DanaC]

I guess.

I think, where I am coming from is that I generally trust my country's soldiers and police with guns marginally more than I trust my next door neighbour or my cousin's crazy ass husband with guns.

As cynical as I am about state and the sinews of power - I don't think I have anywhere near as much distrust and fear of them as you guys seem to. I cannot imagine stockpiling weapons for the day when they send in the troops. There are odd times, during periods of great upheaval and social unrest (like during the Vietnam War in America, and the poll tax demonstrations in the UK) where battle lines seem tobe drawn - and that's when you get incidents like Berkeley campus, or the army on standby, with rubber bullets at Downing Street.

But, whilst there are governments who can rely on their armies to quell the population through brute force, fire into crowds of of their own civilians, and uphold the rule of a dictator there are many governments whose armies would balk and desert in great numbers at the idea of such an attack. I think the US is in the latter camp.

To stay fully armed against the highly unlikely and wholly hypothetical possibility of the government going to war against its own people seems kind of bizarre to me. The logic of owning a gun in case I am threatened with volence by a nutjob rapist makes way more sense. The constitutional arguments just don't work for me. You can all have guns and the army would still be better armed. Unless you're also planning on getting kitted out with full kevlar body suits and anti-tank weaponry. And even then they would still be better armed. You would still have to rely on the notion that they would be unwilling to launch an all-out fucking napalm attack - you'd still be reliant on them observing some kind of self-imposed limit to the level of violence they're willing to mete out.

There are many kinds of freedom. Freedom from an armed populace and for the most part an armed police force is something I value.


[eta] I suspect a lot of that is down to a different history. Not least the history of law enforcement. The reason we only have specialist units of police that are armed, with the majority of police unarmed is something that comes from the way in which law enforcement developed here during the early days of police forces. We have as much of a cultural inclination towards unarmed police as you have a cultural inclination to armed police. That's one of the civil freedoms that characterises british culture - for the same reason we have, for most of the early modern and modern periods, had relatively small standing armies except in times of war. Because standing armies swore their loyalty to the monarch, we have always tended to have quite a large 'militia' component to our land forces.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

The "New Rule" conflicts with the last one. The government owns guns, and makes laws.

Originally Posted by DanaC

I guess.

Just to be clear; I was responding to the meme post; I agree with you 100%.

[Griff]

The root cause of these events isn't guns. It is a lack of empathy. Empathy developed by having real connections with people. A friend was telling me today about something the teaching staff of the school she used to work at started doing after Columbine. Every Fall they would put every kid in the schools name on a 3x5 card on a wall. The teachers would put a check mark by every kids name that they felt they had a relationship with. They took away all the names of kids with a connection to staff and focused on the remaining kids the rest of the year slowly trying to build emotional connections with every one of them. This was a huge multi-year effort, but I think much more useful than pointing fingers left or right.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Griff

The root cause of these events isn't guns. It is a lack of empathy. Empathy developed by having real connections with people.

So suddenly we no longer have sufficient empathy? Nonsense. Empathy did not change. We now openly encourage everyone to use violent tools.

The study is indeed intriguing. But it does not address what has changed. We know throughout history, more guns means increases in violent deaths. We know people today suddenly 'need' to defend themselves where it was not so necessary BEFORE propaganda promoted that need and fear (ie 1950, 1960s).

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by DanaC

But having a gun and having a fucking vagina are not the same thing.

I agree, however to me they're equally as dangerous.

Originally Posted by DanaC

To stay fully armed against the highly unlikely and wholly hypothetical possibility of the government going to war against its own people seems kind of bizarre to me.

Yeah those are nut cases. They are small but vocal, I put them in the same drawer with second coming zealots.

[eta] I suspect a lot of that is down to a different history. Not least the history of law enforcement. The reason we only have specialist units of police that are armed, with the majority of police unarmed is something that comes from the way in which law enforcement developed here during the early days of police forces.

Our history is much different, in that large swaths of the country had no police, or just a US Marshall who covered thousands of square miles, self defense was a necessity. We also have a history of hunting, first for subsistence, then mostly for sport but still tradition. (A friend in north Jersey sent me a picture of a Bobcat in her yard, today.)

...for the same reason we have, for most of the early modern and modern periods, had relatively small standing armies except in times of war. Because standing armies swore their loyalty to the monarch, we have always tended to have quite a large 'militia' component to our land forces.

I wonder about that since we've moved from citizen solders to professionals. Where is their allegiance?

Originally Posted by Griff

The root cause of these events isn't guns. It is a lack of empathy. Empathy developed by having real connections with people. A friend was telling me today about something the teaching staff of the school she used to work at started doing after Columbine. Every Fall they would put every kid in the schools name on a 3x5 card on a wall. The teachers would put a check mark by every kids name that they felt they had a relationship with. They took away all the names of kids with a connection to staff and focused on the remaining kids the rest of the year slowly trying to build emotional connections with every one of them. This was a huge multi-year effort, but I think much more useful than pointing fingers left or right.

I think that's big step to better results. Reminds me of this teacher.

[Pamela]

Originally Posted by Sundae

Hang on - you don't get a choice as to whether you were born with a vagina or not.
I'm not sure the same can be said for guns.

I beg your pardon? *I* get to choose to have a vajayjay. Didn't you get your choice form in the post?

[sexobon]

What caliber will it be?

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by Sundae

Hang on - you don't get a choice as to whether you were born with a vagina or not.

Originally Posted by Pamela

I beg your pardon? *I* get to choose to have a vajayjay.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Once again, their voices are missing from the debate.

Gun owners who favor restrictions on firearms say they are in the same position after the mass shooting in Oregon as they have been following other rampages — shut out of the argument.

The pattern, they say, is frustrating and familiar: The what-should-be-done discussion pits anti-gun groups against the National Rifle Association and its allies, who are adamantly opposed to any new restrictions on weapons.

Gun owners who occupy the middle ground complain that they are rarely sought out or heard, yet polls show the majority of gun owners support universal background checks and other controversial limits. President Obama is reportedly considering using his executive authority to impose new background check requirements on high-volume dealers in private sales — and many gun owners may support that.

“There’s this perception that people are neatly divided into folks who want an M1A1 Abrams battle tank to drive to work and those who want to melt every last gun and bullet into doorstops,” said Patrick Tomlinson, a science fiction writer and gun owner in Milwaukee who favors universal background checks and longer waiting periods for gun purchases. “There seems to be no middle there, but I know there is. I’m in it.”

WaPo

[Sundae]

Sorry, my amended post above looks a bit shouty.
I was simply emphasising for clarity, not shouting at the screen in rage.

[it]

You actually can use policy to impact culture.

Let's imagine a scenario where one of the states requires to pass some actual training before getting a gun license. Early on there would be a big hoopla about gun control and whether it's constitutional.

But if it stands, then over a few months you are going to have a new rising group of gun owners with an exclusive club mentality - they feel like they earned it, where gun owners in other states did not. This can be a potent viral strain to infect american gun culture with - remember how the american republicans defended the patriot act and phone tapping and so on? If you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to worry about. Much the same can happen here internally - within the NRA culture - if you don't want the tests it's because you don't think you can pass.

[it]

Originally Posted by DanaC

I'm sorry, but those two things do not equate. If you're not a driver, you shouldn't make laws about cars? Maybe, I could go with that. If you've never taught, you sholdn't make education law? Fine.

But having a gun and having a fucking vagina are not the same thing.

One gender making laws about what the other gender can do with their body is not the same as a set of people who don't own some things, making laws about whether someone else can own those things.

There are plenty of good arguments against gun control, and clearly there is some kind of identity level shit going on with gun control, but equating rights over vaginas and rights over guns is ridiculous and icky. Seriously, that shit makes my skin crawl.

But is the point really about choice, or about impact?

We all can get hit by cars or shot by lunatics, regardless of whether we own a car or a gun. likewise, whether it is forced fatherhood against someone's will (with possible jail time) or the other way around - killing someone who they believe in and view as their living breathing child - men are affected by them. Not to mention consent laws applying to both genitalia, and unfortunately censorship laws, because of.. reasons...

Note that I am pro-choice, but I disagree that they can't be equated - The point isn't a pro life one, but rather that anything which gives us the means to impact others becomes the business of others who don't want to be negatively impacted, regardless of the level of agency in the process of acquiring it, and regardless of whether we try to deal with it on a case by case basis through life or organize around it as a society.