Terrorists strike yet again

This "muh rights" speech has to stop. Rights are given by people to people, and people can be wrong. Not that long ago, your rights included owning the life of another human being. Some of the people who gave you the right to bear arms enjoyed this privilege themselves. Then it was decided that it was a shitty right and was amended.
1) Nowhere in the Constitution is there a right to own a human being. You're confusing rights and laws. Our laws change daily, whereas our rights do not.

2) The difference between Europeans and Americans is that Europeans think that government grants rights, while Americans think that rights are natural and government's purpose is to protect them. In that light, most Europeans readily sacrifice their rights for some mythical greater good, while Americans fight tooth and nail to preserve their rights. In essence, get your commie hands off my guns.


Give me one example in modern world history where armed populace/gun owners stopped a tyrannical coup and I will see your point. Till then, it's pure rationalization.
Athens, as posted by Spectre upthread. Besides, many Americans would rather die trying to protect their liberty than live under tyranny.
 
1) The armament used by this shooter was already illegal/EXTREMELY hard to come by without 5-6 figure payments since at least 1985. Like it or not, there is something to the argument that more gun control (which may still have benefits) would do little to prevent this latest shooting.

Nope.jpg

400$ AR15 rifle with a 200$ scope, a 40$ bipod and a 200$ bump-fire stock. Less than 1000$ total. Totally legal, and not an NFA item, easy to buy in most states.
 
Nope.jpg

400$ AR15 rifle with a 200$ scope, a 40$ bipod and a 200$ bump-fire stock. Less than 1000$ total. Totally legal, and not an NFA item, easy to buy in most states.
Has this been confirmed?

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Give me one example in modern world history where armed populace/gun owners stopped a tyrannical coup and I will see your point. Till then, it's pure rationalization.
The Kurds are at least alive, aren't they?
 
Has this been confirmed?

Yes, some of the pictures clearly show the above setup. It was also mentioned in a police report earlier (legal gun, with legal modifications).
 
Yes, some of the pictures clearly show the above setup. It was also mentioned in a police report earlier (legal gun, with legal modifications).
I'll look for this later for verification myself, then. If so, I retract my previous statement about this particular shooting, but it doesn't invalidate my statement that a discussion needs to be had, which does mean hearing all sides.

As an addendum, from a personal standpoint, if this was a readily available/modifiable weapon, that's indeed chilling.
 
1) Nowhere in the Constitution is there a right to own a human being. You're confusing rights and laws. Our laws change daily, whereas our rights do not.

2) The difference between Europeans and Americans is that Europeans think that government grants rights, while Americans think that rights are natural and government's purpose is to protect them. In that light, most Europeans readily sacrifice their rights for some mythical greater good, while Americans fight tooth and nail to preserve their rights. In essence, get your commie hands off my guns.

There is a lot of irony in the logic that I have a natural right because the Constitution says so, and that's where your two main points clash.

Your second point is an adaptation of James Madison's 1792 "Charter of power Granted by Liberty," however he says nothing about Europeans sacrificing rights for a mythical greater good. It's also a 200-years-old comparison. His statement is a a protest against the English Bill of Rights of 1689, which established the British as the freest in the world. Madison favors the idea that a person's rights stem from liberty itself, and are not determined by a government.

So why are you looking at the Constitution as a source for evidence that slavery was not a right in your first point? In a Madisonian way, Southerns felt slavery was part of their natural right to property. They didn't need a government or a constitution to tell them what their perceived natural rights were.

It was government that established the second amendment as a right, while it should really be seen as a law. Outside of the Constitution, what evidence exists to support the argument that gun ownership is a natural right? The founders of the U.S. agreed to present it as a natural right - the document of the Constitution was a discursively established agreement among men about what are to be seen as natural rights. If we were to follow Madison's logic, we would not abide by a government's Constitution that seeks to determine natural rights.
 
A semi-auto rifle is "chilling"?
Any single weapon that can kill nearly 60 people, and injure 500, in such a short time frame, does indeed fit my definition of "chilling."

Did you see (more importantly, hear) the video clips of the firing? It sure as hell sounded fully automatic, even if that's not how it came from the factory.
 
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The Constitution doesn't grand me any rights... It's simply a document that restricts government because it recognizes my rights.

In the end it doesn't matter how much we argue about this because the 2A will not be repealed. Even if by some miracle it did, you'd have a civil war on your hands. We have the right to keep and bear arms, whether you like it or not.

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Any single weapon that can kill nearly 60 people, and injure 500, in such a short time frame, does indeed fit my definition of "chilling."

Did you see (more importantly, hear) the video clips of the firing? It sure as hell sounded fully automatic, even if that's not how it came from the factory.
It wasn't a single weapon, as far as I can tell, and the shooting lasted 15min. Yes, I realize that he was shooting at near-full-auto speeds... out of a semi-auto.

Let me tell you where this conversation is going. You (or someone else) are about to tell me that even if it's truly semi-auto but it's modified to be shot fast, it should be illegal. I'll respond by asking who decides what shooting speed should be legal. You'll suggest something arbitrary like "one round a second". I'll post videos of people shooting pump and bolt gun faster than that. In the end it's all as nonsensical as banning "assault weapons" because just like you can't honestly defend bans on cosmetic features, you also can't honestly defend an arbitrary ban on shooting quickly.
 
Any single weapon that can kill nearly 60 people, and injure 500, in such a short time frame, does indeed fit my definition of "chilling."

Did you see (more importantly, hear) the video clips of the firing? It sure as hell sounded fully automatic, even if that's not how it came from the factory.

I'll post some YouTube reviews of bump-fire stocks and Echo trigger tonight after work. Or you can search yourself, I like the ones from "Demolition Ranch" (bfs) and "Military Arms Channel" (Echo trigger).

Edit: As promised...

Bump fire stock:


Fostech Echo trigger:

 
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Your suggestions "dealt" with mass shooters, they didn't prevent them.

Don't you see the hypocrisy of your own words? You are perfectly happy to ignore the lives of a few hundred people every year, simply because you don't care about their particular right to life, because it doesn't affect you personally.

And finally, I ask again - don't turn this on me! I said earlier, for the sake of argument, I will not propose gun control and I will listen to your suggestion on how to prevent future mass shootings. You suggested two, and I pointed deep flaws in both of them. You propose better mental health - but only to those who can afford it. Private charity would take care of it? What evidence do you have that such a thing exists? Get rid of gun free zones? You admit that bad guys will still have guns, claiming that it's guns don't kill people, people kill people, but you are not suggesting how we prevent these bad people from killing, you are only offering a response to them.

Maybe I am pursuing utopia, but at least it is a vision to move forward, and not a defeatist approach of there will always be shooters and all we can do is shoot back.

So what would you suggest? We can see mass murders happening in countries with very strong gun control, usually by using freely available common implements as weapons.
 
So what would you suggest? We can see mass murders happening in countries with very strong gun control, usually by using freely available common implements as weapons.

I'm sorry if you missed it, but I said several times - don't turn this around and ask me for suggestions (because I would suggest gun control), instead, I am willing to listen to you - what do you propose? You already answered that question though:

There is no way, you cannot stop crazy, you cannot stop evil, you cannot detect it before it shows itself, you can't do shit. You can only mourn when it happens.

Your proposal is to do nothing, and just wait until the next mass shooting happens. You and others keep saying that you can't stop evil, yet the U.S. is the only country that experiences mass shootings on a regular basis. They may happen occasionally around the world, but they happen disproportionately often here. Do we have more evil than other countries?
 
Let me tell you where this conversation is going. [...] arbitrary ban on shooting quickly.

I'm not saying I agree or disagree with the concept either way, but saying that picking a speed that is arbitrary doesn't any make sense because there are fringe out liers... isn't that how a lot of legal limits come about? Voting age? Age of consent differs by country and state. BAL?

Just a thought experiment: Speed limits.

There are two ways to go about limiting speed.

1: Speed limits: an arbitrary percentage of the speed people seem to want to drive. But no punishment unless you're caught.
2: Mechanical, electronic or software limits built into the car. Many cars are limited to 155, which basically stemmed from a sort of gentlemen's agreement between automakers. I have no idea what it's based on, but I have to assume there was some metric used to determine it...even it was an arbitrary metric. This speed limit could just as well be a legal one, limiting the use of higher speeds to sanctioned tracks and permitted situations.

But also note that those are two different types of limits.

One is managing day-to-day speed agreement between the driver, and the public. This could equate to things like waiting periods, background checks, etc. Sure there are ways around it, but there's punishments if caught.

Like posted speed limits, The length of waiting periods are pretty much arbitrary, as is deciding what is or isn't OK in a background check.

The other method for limited speed as described above is putting hard limits on the potential capabilities, like the speed limiter. This would be like limiting gun fire rates, round capacity, and perhaps caliber and types of bullets. There are already some of these regulations in place, even if it's state-by-state, so it shouldn't be a shock to anyone that there's many who feel these should be tightened, even if you disagree with it. And just like the 155MPH limit and posted speed limits, they are pretty much arbitrary...we'd just need to pick one. And of course, there's always going to be outliers and ways around it. Like...if you have a 155-limited car, I bet you could go faster if you hit that speed on the top of a hill, and then kept accelerating. But also, ways to use them in a specific locations, and possibly limited by permit.
 
Why 155mph? Because 250km/h is a nice, round number high enough to not cause an armed uprising over here when German automakers came to that agreement.
 
So a completely arbitrary number based on "not upsetting feelings"? :lol: Not, like, "250km/h is shown to be the peak of the bell curve when it comes to (blank) and (blank)"?
 
I'll look for this later for verification myself, then. If so, I retract my previous statement about this particular shooting, but it doesn't invalidate my statement that a discussion needs to be had, which does mean hearing all sides.

I retract mine too; "Gun criminal" or just "murderer" would be more accurate than "illegal gun owner." And before anyone says, "We don't know which owners are criminals in advance," well we don't have to, because he was making that (Trump supporter) statement about the shooter (after the shooting).


Gun politics thread is that way guys

Also, I've seen zero info about motive anywhere (nor did anyone who knew him suspect mental problems). Does that mean we still default to calling it terrorism?
 
Your proposal is to do nothing, and just wait until the next mass shooting happens. You and others keep saying that you can't stop evil, yet the U.S. is the only country that experiences mass shootings on a regular basis. They may happen occasionally around the world, but they happen disproportionately often here. Do we have more evil than other countries?
You keep concentrating on one type of mass murder, would you feel differently if we had mass arsons? Mass vehicular homicides? Mass chainsawings? Things like this do happen in other countries, they use different implements. Would you feel better if this was done via arson? Or a car bomb? Or a an IED? Humans are extremely inventive animals, when they want to do something they figure out how to do it, want more proof? Google for the kinds of weapons people fashion in prison and these are not exactly mechanical engineers there.

Mass murders of any type are horrific and it hurts to read about them, but to quote Ben Shapiro's quoting of someone else "Compassion is a terrible tool when it comes to policy"

And you propose gun control? OK, so what do you actually propose? How would you implement it? How would you take care of the guns in circulation (around 300mil or so)? How would you ensure that all purchases are done legally? How do you weed out crazy people before they have been judged to be mentally incompetent? How do you ensure that legal guns are not illegally modified? How do you make sure that guns are not illegally smuggled in? How do you stop people from straight up building guns in their garages? How do you make sure that people don't use other means like explosives, cars, flamethrowers, homemade drones?

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I'm not saying I agree or disagree with the concept either way, but saying that picking a speed that is arbitrary doesn't any make sense because there are fringe out liers... isn't that how a lot of legal limits come about? Voting age? Age of consent differs by country and state. BAL?

Just a thought experiment: Speed limits.

There are two ways to go about limiting speed.

1: Speed limits: an arbitrary percentage of the speed people seem to want to drive. But no punishment unless you're caught.
2: Mechanical, electronic or software limits built into the car. Many cars are limited to 155, which basically stemmed from a sort of gentlemen's agreement between automakers. I have no idea what it's based on, but I have to assume there was some metric used to determine it...even it was an arbitrary metric. This speed limit could just as well be a legal one, limiting the use of higher speeds to sanctioned tracks and permitted situations.

But also note that those are two different types of limits.

One is managing day-to-day speed agreement between the driver, and the public. This could equate to things like waiting periods, background checks, etc. Sure there are ways around it, but there's punishments if caught.

Like posted speed limits, The length of waiting periods are pretty much arbitrary, as is deciding what is or isn't OK in a background check.

The other method for limited speed as described above is putting hard limits on the potential capabilities, like the speed limiter. This would be like limiting gun fire rates, round capacity, and perhaps caliber and types of bullets. There are already some of these regulations in place, even if it's state-by-state, so it shouldn't be a shock to anyone that there's many who feel these should be tightened, even if you disagree with it. And just like the 155MPH limit and posted speed limits, they are pretty much arbitrary...we'd just need to pick one. And of course, there's always going to be outliers and ways around it. Like...if you have a 155-limited car, I bet you could go faster if you hit that speed on the top of a hill, and then kept accelerating. But also, ways to use them in a specific locations, and possibly limited by permit.

You picked a bad example because speed limits, outside of the USA, are actually based on certain logic. They take into account road surface, visibility, how straight or curvy the road is, intersections if any, possibility of pedestrians and wildlife. In the US they are based on how fast people typically drive on a given road and made low enough to make some decent money off of em. Nothing arbitrary at all.

Speed governors aren't necessarily arbitrary, they might be due to protecting the car from damage, you don't want the car to be pegged at redline for an hour (say you are in Germany). My A4 had a 130mph limiter (as did all US ones) because the US version was offered with H rated tires as standard and that speed is significantly above any legal limit in the US anyway.
 
You picked a bad example because speed limits, outside of the USA, are actually based on certain logic. They take into account road surface, visibility, how straight or curvy the road is, intersections if any, possibility of pedestrians and wildlife. In the US they are based on how fast people typically drive on a given road and made low enough to make some decent money off of em. Nothing arbitrary at all.

Speed governors aren't necessarily arbitrary, they might be due to protecting the car from damage, you don't want the car to be pegged at redline for an hour (say you are in Germany). My A4 had a 130mph limiter (as did all US ones) because the US version was offered with H rated tires as standard and that speed is significantly above any legal limit in the US anyway.

Fair enough. I'm sure there's also some sort of metric used to determine a posted speed limit in the US on brand-new roads. They can't post a speed limit if there hasn't been any traffic on it.

OK, so that's kinda beside the point.

But I'm going to continue to use the car analogy, because I think there are a lot of parallels. Something most of us hold dear and as a part of our national culture, we don't want them taken away, many use them for survival, and at the same time have enormous potential to cause incredible carnage if in the wrong hands, which has been exploited many times before.

The point I was arguing against is that it's silly to limit a firing rate on a gun because there are ways around it, and who gets to pick the speed? Well...people have figured out out to disable mechanical and electrical governors for decades, and i'm sure software is also being defeated soon, if it hasn't been already. As for how the speed is chosen, there's lots of ways to pick the speed, and even it it weren't perfect and was at least partially arbitrary, it wouldn't be unique compared to other regulations. One I mentioned was age of consent. Are there some countries and states that maybe base theirs on some specific metric? Possibly...but it still ranges from 14-18 across Europe, and I'm sure some were just picked out of thin air, and carried on just "because".


And your car has a speed limiter that was put above any speed limit in the country, anyway. Limiting rate-of-fire on a gun seems like a seemingly-similar thing. Is driving fast absolutely fatal to everyone all the time? No. Should people be allowed to drive that fast? I would say yes, in certain scenarios like closed courses and tracks, or with permits. The public in general has an understanding that there are good reasons to have min and max speeds...and at the same time, the speed limiter is there to protect both the driver and the public from someone using the vehicle beyond it's intended purpose, limiting both it's performance and it's potential harm.
 
You keep concentrating on one type of mass murder, would you feel differently if we had mass arsons? Mass vehicular homicides? Mass chainsawings? Things like this do happen in other countries, they use different implements. Would you feel better if this was done via arson? Or a car bomb? Or a an IED? Humans are extremely inventive animals, when they want to do something they figure out how to do it, want more proof? Google for the kinds of weapons people fashion in prison and these are not exactly mechanical engineers there.

Mass murders of any type are horrific and it hurts to read about them, but to quote Ben Shapiro's quoting of someone else "Compassion is a terrible tool when it comes to policy"

And you propose gun control? OK, so what do you actually propose? How would you implement it? How would you take care of the guns in circulation (around 300mil or so)? How would you ensure that all purchases are done legally? How do you weed out crazy people before they have been judged to be mentally incompetent? How do you ensure that legal guns are not illegally modified? How do you make sure that guns are not illegally smuggled in? How do you stop people from straight up building guns in their garages? How do you make sure that people don't use other means like explosives, cars, flamethrowers, homemade drones?

Let's get one thing clear. Mass shootings are currently happening in the U.S. Mass chainsaw massacres are not. Therefore, they don't require our immediate attention. Enough "what if's" focus on the real - mass shootings on a regular basis.

And I will not let you bait me in proposing gun control just so you can attack it with 2nd amendment/NRA logics. I said, multiple times, I'm willing to hear your alternative solutions. So far they have amounted to just "Shit happens, evil guys be evil, only thing we can do is shoot back." Do you admit that your position is that prevention is impossible and efforts to try are futile?
 
There are more than 10,000 huge CONEXs sitting on the docks of at San Juan full of aid that aren't being distributed because for whatever reason, PR truck drivers are not showing up like they were supposed to. This, per the regulations, is the responsibility of the state and local governments to do unless they formally tell the Feds they can't. PR hasn't told the Feds to bring in truck drivers and insists they can do it themselves - but the truck drivers are not appearing.

FYI, one reason the truck drivers aren't showing up? The local Teamsters Union representing truck drivers has called a strike and has decided their strike is more important than people getting, you know, food or medical aid.

No argument there, but the fact remains that the local PR branch of the Teamsters is on strike and refusing to go to work; they prefer that their fellow citizens starve and die rather than help them. See for yourself at the links above.

Just popping by quickly before bed, as I just saw that this is fake news. There is no Teamsters strike, and the conservative blog that started it was being selective in their editing.
 
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