The Liberal Gun Club Forum

The arguments in this thread are from people who are usually politically left of center and they clearly, for the most part, do not feel that gun ownership is a good thing or at the very least that our current gun regulations are a good thing. I post this for 2 reasons: its good to know what people who are our political allies but are basically anti-gun feel and why, and I am interested in your reaction to the many comments.

I can think of no reasonable gun restriction that could have stopped the latest shootings (but I also don't know all the details). I do think that some restriction on the availability of LCM would have reduced the number of dead in Aurora - whether or not such a restriction is reasonable, justified, doable or legal isn't the point really. So..... perhaps this should be another thread but what the hell..... what can we do to help prevent these sorts of things? Anything? Nothing?


http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... n-culture/

Feels like a link or something is missing.

In order, legalize tax and regulate ALL drugs, free access to higher education, government subsidies to new industry or outright expanding DARPA or a similar agency to civilian oriented application, Close the gun show loop hole for one, and realize that sometimes people snap and do bad things. It's cold, but that's the price of freedom. Yes you can crack down, and ban all guns, and you can stop most crime in the united states but at the cost of our liberty. I'm not just talking banning guns, that's insane with over 270 million guns out there, banning alone won't do the trick. If you really want to save lives, you'll have to actively police the entire nation 24/7 because the vast majority of gun deaths aren't aurora like shootings, they aren't done by insane individuals, they are done by criminals. Mass shootings are just visual we have the equivalent of 8 aurora shootings a day on a case by case basis across the nation and most of that is gang or rather drug related.

Fix your economy and don't criminalize that which does not harm anyone but the user.

lemur wrote:Feels like a link or something is missing.

Doh! Fixed.

gendoikari87 wrote:In order, legalize tax and regulate ALL drugs, free access to higher education, government subsidies to new industry or outright expanding DARPA or a similar agency to civilian oriented application, Close the gun show loop hole for one, and realize that sometimes people snap and do bad things. It's cold, but that's the price of freedom. Yes you can crack down, and ban all guns, and you can stop most crime in the united states but at the cost of our liberty. I'm not just talking banning guns, that's insane with over 270 million guns out there, banning alone won't do the trick. If you really want to save lives, you'll have to actively police the entire nation 24/7 because the vast majority of gun deaths aren't aurora like shootings, they aren't done by insane individuals, they are done by criminals. Mass shootings are just visual we have the equivalent of 8 aurora shootings a day on a case by case basis across the nation and most of that is gang or rather drug related.

Fix your economy and don't criminalize that which does not harm anyone but the user.

I get what you are saying, and I agree with most of it - creating a more equal society will reduce the violence associated with poverty which is where most gun death originate. And work toward that goal should be an ongoing goal because it will be a long hard slog to achieve.

Two questions:
1. How does DARPA's work help? http://www.darpa.mil/our_work/
2. Ever seen anyone strung out on meth? Ever seen a bright scientist living in a homeless shelter running from the law and eating out of a dumpster because he found crack? I have. I am all for legalizing pot. But many of the other drugs are orders of magnitude more dangerous. Of course, they are already dangerous and people die from them every day so the current laws aren't working but I don't think that making them available at your local pharmacy is going to make things any better. It might cut down on organized crime but I think that most of the crime associated with drug use is small time stuff like people robbing and stealing to get money to buy the drugs.

1. Government funding of technological advancement outside of military and space exploration applications. Things like advance cheap and smaller CNC mills, advanced 3d printers the horizon is literally endless. Technological innovation has always been a good thing, generally speaking, and some of it just simply isn't profitable in the short run in terms of monetary investment so it doesn't get taken up by industry. (examples: the internet, GPS, satellite communications, ect, ect, ect.)

2. Perhaps, but that's what programs like DARE are for. educated your people and show them what the drugs do. How effective have our anti-smoking campaigns been? Remove the criminal element and educate. worse case scenario drug addict numbers stay the same, organized crime becomes taxable organized business.

gendoikari87 wrote:1. Government funding of technological advancement outside of military and space exploration applications. Things like advance cheap and smaller CNC mills, advanced 3d printers the horizon is literally endless. Technological innovation has always been a good thing, generally speaking, and some of it just simply isn't profitable in the short run in terms of monetary investment so it doesn't get taken up by industry. (examples: the internet, GPS, satellite communications, ect, ect, ect.)

2. Perhaps, but that's what programs like DARE are for. educated your people and show them what the drugs do. How effective have our anti-smoking campaigns been? Remove the criminal element and educate. worse case scenario drug addict numbers stay the same, organized crime becomes taxable organized business.

All for #1, just don't see how it lowers gun crimes.

How effective have the anti-smoking campaigns been? Pretty effective for the wealthy, but not so much for the poor: http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/news/News/ ... king-rates
Number of smokers has remained the same, only now its largely poor folks.

Ironic, I was just there on Pharyngula before I decided to log-on to LGC before bed ;-)

Decided not to wade into that thread. I sometimes really hate the knee jerk "gun ban" response of so many of my fellow liberals, the demonization of gun owners, etc, the instant scoff that there could ever be effective defensive gun use when the Armed Citizen column of every issue of every NRA periodical has news story after news story showing it does happen. People sniff that this is "anecdotal evidence", but rigorous scientific evidence isn't as easy to come by in the social sciences, especially wrestling with such a complex social phenomenon, and then there's the unacknowledged confirmation bias (against guns, in favor of gun restrictions) on the part of many academic researchers. On the other hand, I'm not totally comfortable with John Lott's research funding sources and methods. I like Kleck, who is an independent researcher who was originally anti-gun but conducted his own research and was persuaded by the evidence that he was wrong.

Yes, it's true, sometimes people accidentally kill family members in tragic cases of mistaken identity, yes, sometimes people use guns to commit suicide; No, guns do not make you an invincible superhero and sometimes you can carry, have the training, and some thug still gets the drop on you and you lose/game over. Gun owners need to concede these points in these kinds of discussions and respond calmly and rationally "yes, but..."; Stress the virtues of *responsible* gun ownership. Concede there ought to be more done to improve health care and access to mental health services so we can do more to keep guns out of the hands of crazy/mentally unbalanced people (not a point many rightwing defenders of gun rights will be comfortable discussing or may outright dismiss as irrelevant...)

The Aurora shooter was under the care of a psychiatrist who specializes in Schizophrenia, which tells me he probably lied on his firearms purchase paperwork....oh good, we can prosecute him for THAT too, y'know, after all the multiple murder charges...that carry the death penalty in CO...

But I also hate the goddamn NRA and its ranks of Libertarian & Christian Yahoos that insist not only must we staunchly defend the 2nd Amendment but also we have to repeal Obamacare and elect Republican douchebags who are hell-bent on overturning Roe v. Wade and would repeal the 19th Amendment along the way if they could...why must I trash all the other rights and freedoms I hold so dear by paying my NRA dues so they can lobby for as many douche-bag Republicans as possible...?

Even if there had been CHLs present in Aurora, it would have been an awful scenario to try and defend against, and no way to know if the death toll would've been higher or lower or about the same.

As regards the Sikh Temple shooter, we know of churches that have been attacked by gunmen and stopped by armed parishioners--that DOES happen, the disbelief of our antigun liberal comrades notwithstanding.

The best thing an LGC'er could do is try to be the calm voice of reason on such a thread...be willing to concede to reasonable points made by the other side but still ultimately come down on the side of gun rights and the price of living in a free country without coming across like an insensitive, unfeeling asshole. Easier said than done.

I'm not renewing my NRA or TSRA memberships until well AFTER the election, if then.

mark wrote:

gendoikari87 wrote:1. Government funding of technological advancement outside of military and space exploration applications. Things like advance cheap and smaller CNC mills, advanced 3d printers the horizon is literally endless. Technological innovation has always been a good thing, generally speaking, and some of it just simply isn't profitable in the short run in terms of monetary investment so it doesn't get taken up by industry. (examples: the internet, GPS, satellite communications, ect, ect, ect.)

2. Perhaps, but that's what programs like DARE are for. educated your people and show them what the drugs do. How effective have our anti-smoking campaigns been? Remove the criminal element and educate. worse case scenario drug addict numbers stay the same, organized crime becomes taxable organized business.

All for #1, just don't see how it lowers gun crimes.

Innovation creates business opportunities, which decreases unemployment and poverty.

gendoikari87 wrote: Innovation creates business opportunities, which decreases unemployment and poverty.

As someone who works in one of those technical innovation fields, I'm not sure the way business is done in the modern world really results in many quality jobs for anybody but comparitively small numbers of the highly educated. Not saying that public investing in technology isn't a great Idea, but a lot of other stuff would have to shift for us to return to the kind of industrial job base that built the US middle class the first time.

JJR1971 wrote:Ironic, I was just there on Pharyngula before I decided to log-on to LGC before bed ;-)

Decided not to wade into that thread. I sometimes really hate the knee jerk "gun ban" response of so many of my fellow liberals, the demonization of gun owners, etc, the instant scoff that there could ever be effective defensive gun use when the Armed Citizen column of every issue of every NRA periodical has news story after news story showing it does happen. People sniff that this is "anecdotal evidence", but rigorous scientific evidence isn't as easy to come by in the social sciences, especially wrestling with such a complex social phenomenon, and then there's the unacknowledged confirmation bias (against guns, in favor of gun restrictions) on the part of many academic researchers. On the other hand, I'm not totally comfortable with John Lott's research funding sources and methods. I like Kleck, who is an independent researcher who was originally anti-gun but conducted his own research and was persuaded by the evidence that he was wrong.

Yes, it's true, sometimes people accidentally kill family members in tragic cases of mistaken identity, yes, sometimes people use guns to commit suicide; No, guns do not make you an invincible superhero and sometimes you can carry, have the training, and some thug still gets the drop on you and you lose/game over. Gun owners need to concede these points in these kinds of discussions and respond calmly and rationally "yes, but..."; Stress the virtues of *responsible* gun ownership. Concede there ought to be more done to improve health care and access to mental health services so we can do more to keep guns out of the hands of crazy/mentally unbalanced people (not a point many rightwing defenders of gun rights will be comfortable discussing or may outright dismiss as irrelevant...)

The Aurora shooter was under the care of a psychiatrist who specializes in Schizophrenia, which tells me he probably lied on his firearms purchase paperwork....oh good, we can prosecute him for THAT too, y'know, after all the multiple murder charges...that carry the death penalty in CO...

But I also hate the goddamn NRA and its ranks of Libertarian & Christian Yahoos that insist not only must we staunchly defend the 2nd Amendment but also we have to repeal Obamacare and elect Republican douchebags who are hell-bent on overturning Roe v. Wade and would repeal the 19th Amendment along the way if they could...why must I trash all the other rights and freedoms I hold so dear by paying my NRA dues so they can lobby for as many douche-bag Republicans as possible...?

Even if there had been CHLs present in Aurora, it would have been an awful scenario to try and defend against, and no way to know if the death toll would've been higher or lower or about the same.

As regards the Sikh Temple shooter, we know of churches that have been attacked by gunmen and stopped by armed parishioners--that DOES happen, the disbelief of our antigun liberal comrades notwithstanding.

The best thing an LGC'er could do is try to be the calm voice of reason on such a thread...be willing to concede to reasonable points made by the other side but still ultimately come down on the side of gun rights and the price of living in a free country without coming across like an insensitive, unfeeling asshole. Easier said than done.

I'm not renewing my NRA or TSRA memberships until well AFTER the election, if then.

I personally have had better discussions with Conservative gun owners as to why I am a Liberal than I have had with Liberals defending that I like to shoot guns.

I'll join the NRA when they back a honestly Liberal Democrat that is both a gun owner and a civil rights activist.

Fukshot wrote:

gendoikari87 wrote: Innovation creates business opportunities, which decreases unemployment and poverty.

As someone who works in one of those technical innovation fields, I'm not sure the way business is done in the modern world really results in many quality jobs for anybody but comparitively small numbers of the highly educated. Not saying that public investing in technology isn't a great Idea, but a lot of other stuff would have to shift for us to return to the kind of industrial job base that built the US middle class the first time.

a few more high tech engineering jobs are still better than nothing, especially if it advances human technology. I think we as a nation need to seriously look at the facts. Manufacturing jobs aren't going to be coming back in the number they were. And even if they did a lot of american's wouldn't want to do them. So we either forcibly bring them back (not sure how that'd work...) or we restructure as a nation more geared toward STEM. Basically move the jobs we had in the 60's in manufacturing to Labs and classrooms. that, however will require a huge investment in our educational system.

Well, it certainly is refreshing to see that more and more people are connecting the dots between these "random acts of violence," right-wing nut-jobs, and our shrinking economy.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/0 ... ist-Report