News Gun Control - It Took An Aussie Comedian To Get It Right

[anthony]

 

[The Albatross]

Didn't this come up somewhere before? Is it a re-post or deja vu? Odd twist of irony or tongue and cheek to open up a "News, Politics & Debates" thread with an Oz comedian. But hey, to each their own I suppose.

 

[Truthful_Whispers]

With respect to everyone else's opinions. In the states, I personally support the right to bear arms. I believe that a person with a MI has as much right to protect themselves and their loved ones as someone who doesn't, as long as they haven't done anything harmful in the past. Gun violence is terrible, but truthfully, far more crimes of all natures are committed by "normal" people, versus people with a mental affliction. It is just that every time someone with a mental health issue commits a crime, politicians use it as a scapegoat in order to lobby for "gun control". Television rarely broadcasts news where someone is saved by having a firearm--which is far more common. Criminals will always have guns and other weapons, regardless, because they rarely buy or trade them legally. Guns in circulation are far easier to obtain than ones not in circulation, where people have to apply for and get registered. It is a very unpredictable and violent world that we live in, and the right to bear arms may mean the difference between whether someone chooses to climb through your window at 3 AM to try to harm you, or they choose not to.

 

[Ronin]

I had a funny discussion with a few folk in here recently, in which we about agreed one of the few options for a country small like this with so disconnect armed forces / paramilitary groups / civilians would be bearing arms, do what you need to & if cooperation's zilch, let's focus on small localized groups.

Personally I'd guess it's one of those super localized things. The world needs a redistribution of arms ime, some parts could do with waay too fewer of them (I'm not looking at you Africa, why would I).

 

[KwanYingirl]

Stellar performance. Should be required viewing in Congress.

 

[Deleted member 28740]

Walmart just stopped selling automatic rifles in the US. Shot guns still available. They said it had nothing to do with "gun politics."
"Forty one shots" by trained police officers on one unarmed man. And civilians not trained and going to the range weekly with automatic weapons is madness.

but truthfully, far more crimes of all natures are committed by "normal" people, versus people with a mental affliction.

Hard time getting my head around this one. "normal" yet morally deficient? "normal" but trigger impulse control issues? George Zimmerman comes to mind, and Ferguson, and….. are they 'normal'?

Guns are just the tip of the iceberg for violence. Rape, domestic abuse… and a woman in Florida that did use a gun to fire a warning shot to her abuse partner is in jail, for a long time. Clearly the shot was well above his head. Yet she is in jail, despite records of prior domestic abuse recoded and on file. So what is it that guns are allowed to protect in the home? She was not allowed to stand her ground, or bear arms. Totally messed up system.

 

[LuckyDuck]

Hello Australia! Canada laughs with you!

 

[WillyKat]

Part of me wants to scream and run away, far away from having a gun control discussion on the Internet. Another part of me has something to say and it looks as if that part is winning, cuz here I am, writing about gun control on the Internet.

So here goes: For the record, I own guns. They are all locked up and stored at some distance from the ammo. The keys to their locks are hidden. There are several reasons why I bought them, mostly having to do with being in a very bad state several years ago. Selling them is on my to-do list.

I sometimes wonder if there's a relationship between PTSD and the some members of the pro-gun lobby in the US. (I'm not talking about @Whispering_Truth here or anyone else capable of a healthy exchange of opinions.) There is certainly the hypervigilance; any mention of a new law, be it background check or otherwise, gets an over-the-top reaction from some. And if you stand back and look at it, it sure looks like a whole bunch of people just got triggered (no pun intended).

I had some contact with a prominent member of what I guess you might call the survivalist community. I'm all for being prepared for the next disaster, whatever it may be. I live in earthquake / fire country and after seeing what happened with Hurricane Katrina, I understand the need to stock up and be able to take care of oneself. On the other hand, there are some that have really gone off the deep end with it. You see them stocking up on weapons and ammunition, more and more, need the latest model, need better sights, bipod mount, better sling, night vision, more, higher capacity magazine, tactical vest, folding stock, body armor, gas mask.... You get the picture. More hypervigilance with a heaping spoonful of OCD.

More and more, and none of it addresses the fear. In other words, I look at some survivalists and some gun enthusiasts and see frightened boys (they are about 90% men) that, maybe, got hurt at a young age and never dealt with the fear, never dealt with the demon. They think that more weapons and more ammo will make them safe, and new laws will make them vulnerable, and 99.9% of it is about something else that guns and ammo can't deal with.

I recognize that, because I'm not so very different. Change a couple of variables about my life and I'd be right there, building a bunker in the woods, stocking up, waiting for the zombie apocalypse. But I also know that no matter how high my walls or how prepared I might be, it wouldn't solve that which hurt me.

So I get the arguments about being able to defend one's home. And I even see the original 2nd amendment argument about an armed populace being a counterbalance to government tyranny. Yet, there's something else going on here, something that guns can't solve.

 

[Anarchy]

Following the Appalachian Law School attack, there were 218 unique media articles published (and logged on nexis). If duplicates are counted there were 294.

There were three articles which mentioned defensive gun use.

Several students had retrieved their guns from their cars, confronted the attacker, and disarmed him without injury to either him or themselves.

Just one example of the appalling under reporting of defence of self and others.

A few weeks back I suggested that when the price was right, black marketeers would get into gun making,

I've since learned that the price must have been right for some years, " Forgotten Weapons " blog recently carried photographs and a discussion about professionally made 9mm machine pistols that have been getting found with drugs consignments entering the Netherlands since about 2012.

Suspicion was that these were coming out of a black market facility in Croatia, even if they were marked USA.

The well known Centres of artisanal gun making, with some very professional looking guns coming out, are the tribal areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the island of Luzon in the Philippines. The latter has some really crazy stuff as well as the usual machine pistols, they produce things like revolvers chambered for 5.56mm and 7.62mm NATO rifle rounds!

 

[WillyKat]

And now there are 3D printers that can produce guns. I'm not sure what the quality is like, but if your purpose is to kill one person, they only have to work once or twice.

 

[Anarchy]

@WillyKat , you may well have a point there. I see similar things with guys doing steroids and body building, also some of the dumber cops...

Robert h Churchill published a very good academic sociological study of various American insurrectionary groups through the history of the united state.

With the 1990s militia movement, he identified them as finding common cause with minority groups who had been on the receiving end of state privileged violence for many decades, and as seeing that violence beginning to extend into groups which had not previously been the subject of it.

John Ross' "unintended consequences" is one of a small genre of fiction that explores the question of insurrectionary violence, and goes back to well before the atrocious abuses against the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, or the seventh day adventist community at Waco.

Interestingly, the main character of the novel does get gang raped. I'm not sure whether that was a purely fictional device, or an event from the author's own life. Either way, would a link to PTSD invalidate the actions?

Or is it simply a wake-up call that others haven't had yet?

 

[Anarchy]

Cody Wilson, the guy who did the 3d plastic printed gun, had a later product, a small CNC machine to do the machining on AR15 lower receivers. (That's the part which the united state tries to attach controls to)

I don't know how many it will complete before it wears out, probably not many, but he did succeed in frightening a lot of people who have declared their desire to have violence used against non aggressive gun owners.

In Britain, there was a gentleman who was designing SMG s out of ordinary pipe fittings. He got five years in a Max security prison with hard bastards.

Later some asian guys were allegedly found with one of his books, and the British authorities used that as an excuse to disappear him for 3 months, in contravention of un human rights conventions that Britain is a signatory to.