News Us politics - read first post before comment

[Anarchy]

Not being facetious here, guns don't reproduce themselves. They require people to make them.

The pictures you'll see of guns being made will tend to be the very high end shotguns and rifles that involve a lot of incredibly skilled input, and they sell for the same amounts of money that would buy you a mid range super car or a house.

The main stay is commercial mass production. It's hard to match the price of guns made on big highly mechanised production lines, whether for civilian or state sector consumption. Iirc the metal innards that go into a Remington 66 nylon,'s plastic outer, cost about $8 to replace (it's a semi auto. 22 rim fire rifle. Imo it's a gun that's unsafe by design, but that's another story)

At the other end, the guns that you are unlikely to see pictures of being made are the guns made in places like the tribal lands of "Pakistan" (the line on the map that says pakistan goes around the area, but the central state has virtually no control) or (iirc) Luzon in the Philippines.

These are cottage industry knock offs of AKs MAC 10s etc. The philipinos also make revolvers chambered for rifle ammunition!

There was a fairly big craze for home building in the united state a few years back. I haven't heard much of it recently. It was a hobby,

Apart from just as a hobby, The home built stuff appears when the commercial stuff isn't available.

By far the easiest things to build, are submachineguns. They can be built using standard size piping and hand tools at home. No lathes or milling machines are needed.

They're also very effective.

In the early 1950s, American decisions to go for 7.62 ×51 as the standard Nato rifle round, meant dropping the idea of anumbers intermediate calibre (intermediate between full power effective to about 1000 yards rifle, and pistol calibres) selective fire rifle. Full auto fire with a rifle chambered for full a power round is totally uncontrollable.

Many nato armies continued using 9mm and .45 submachineguns for suppressive fire and in final stages of assaults, right into the middle of the 19 80s. Out to 200 yards, they're incredibly effective, arguably more effective than an intermediate calibre selective fire rifle. The problems are in logistics of two types of ammunition and when range exceeds 200 yards.

Out to 80 yards, a 12 guage shotgun loaded with buckshot is arguably even more effective as a fighting gun than either a selective fire intermediate calibre rifle or a submachinegun.

That's something that the Elmer Fudds of this world, who regurgitate the lines

"A hunt wabbitzez, but no one needs a...."

Really don't like to acknowledge

 

[Deleted member 541]

@Anarchy When There is a shooting in the US, like we just had, gun sales go UP!!!! People buy the to protect themselves.. no they don’t reproduce on their own.

Also, if and when you move to the US, then maybe you’d understand the issue we have with guns and mass shootings, until then, I don’t think you quite understand the issue they we have here, until then, you have NO CLUE!!!!!

The US is the ONLY country that has guns. The US is also the ONLY country that has MASS shootings. Doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out why!!!!!

 

[Anarchy]

until then, you have NO CLUE!!!!!

The US is the ONLY country that has guns. The US is also the ONLY country that has MASS shootings. Doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out why!!!!!

Actually, I've got a better grasp of the figures, the studies, the legislation, the emotional factors, the constitutional arguments and the historical perspective than most American gun nuts have. But I might not going to take offence or fall out with you over that .

I had a shotgun licence and shotgun when I was 15, and had licensed centrefire pistol and cf rifle when I was 17.

Several of the European countries have as high and even higher rates of guns ownership than the united state. Switzerland, parts of Italy and Finland spring to mind.

The small arms project (a research group based in Switzerland) has given estimates for the number of unlicensed guns in various European countries. These are just estimates, the actual figures will never be known. The estimates are that unlicensed guns outnumber licensed ones many times over.

Britain has had three mass public shootings, the first in 1988, all were with legallery held guns and by people who had been vetted by what is claimed to be some of the tightest controls in the world.
Those controls have been in place since 1921, almost 100 years.

Continued

But I might not going to take offence or fall out with you over that .

Damn that autoincorrect. It should say

I am not going to

 

[Deleted member 541]

http://timelines.latimes.com/deadliest-shooting-rampages/ This is just some of the mass shootings that we’ve had. These numbers do not include, domestic violence, gang shootings, suicides by guns or accidental deaths by guns.

Link Removed Here are more statistics.

These numbers make me sick...... Our president is blaming this on mental health. Well there are mentally ill people all over the world and yet we are the only country with this amount of people dying from guns. WHY is this??????

 

[Anarchy]

On the wider questions of why?

Mass public killings were so frequent in one place, that there was even a word in the language for it: "Amok"

It was usually a young man, who would select from among the tools available to him, the one that was likely to be the most effective, and would try to kill as many people as he could until he was stopped

Iirc, the perps often tried to suicide when they faced imminent capture.

All of the British mass shooters offed themselves. Non ever faced a challenge from anyone else with a gun. In the case of the first one, it was around 8 hours before armed police arrived in the town.

I spoke to a colleague of the guys who had licensed the second mass shooter, and a guy who grew up with the third. Both within days of those events.

There's a much needed project there of building a picture of these people. I've got my own ideas, but they're not yet at a point where I'm willing to debate them.

The place where the word "amok" came from: peninsula Malaya

 

[Justmehere]

This article helps explain why we won’t likely be seeing greater gun control measures in the near future in the US:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/politics/congress-gun-control-unlikely-to-pass/index.html

There are other solutions that Americans on both sides of the isle do favor:
62% favor armed guards at schools

Link Removed

And finally, we have to think about victims being able to defend themselves:

Citing four separate studies between 1988-2004, the assessment from the Dead Link Removed says crime victims who use guns in self-defense have consistently lower injury rates than victims who use other strategies to protect themselves (other strategies include stalling, calling the police or using weapons such as knives or baseball bats).Link Removed

@SheCat -
We already have “some kind” of gun control regulation.

Also, if and when you move to the US, then maybe you’d understand the issue we have with guns and mass shootings, until then, I don’t think you quite understand the issue they we have here, until then, you have NO CLUE!!!!!

I believe there are many people around the world do have a clue, and are capable of learning about and understanding life and problems in the US quite well. To me, your viewpoint borders on ethnocentrism to claim only Americans can understand the issue with guns and mass shootings in the US.

The US is the ONLY country that has guns. The US is also the ONLY country that has MASS shootings.

Are you being facetious? Of course the US is not the only country that has guns or mass shootings.

It’s this kind of extreme all or nothing (“ONLY country that has guns”) talk that shuts down the dialogue needed to find solutions. In my opinion, it’s pretty extreme to start claiming no other nation, not Canada, no Mexico, not Syria, not China, not Brazil, no other nation in the entire world has any guns. I can introduce to you more than a few refugees from Sudan who can validate guns do exist in other nations and are used in violent mass shootings in other nations. Survivors of the school shooting at the the Mamudo, Yobe State, Nigeria, where at least 42 people died can also validate guns and mass shootings exist outside the US.

It’s simply not factually true that no mass shootings occur anywhere else but the US. Even left-leaning Politifact has taken time to make it clear mass shootings do happen in their parts of the world, and has soundly disputed the numbers you posted from Bloomberg’s gun control advocacy group, “Everytown Research” —
Mostly False: 18 U.S. school shootings so far in 2018 and 18 in rest of the world over past 20 years.

 

[Anarchy]

You do know that everytown, like "mums" is one of Bloomberg's many AstroTurf groups?

 

[Anarchy]

I believe there are many people around the world do have a clue, and are capable of learning about and understanding life and problems in the US quite well.

Thanks JMH,

It is an area where cynical groups (no one here!) Do try to get people's emotions stoked up.

I've been debating the issue for the best part of 30 years now, so I've met most of the rhetorical techniques used to try to close down the debate

I'll just keep on Brit-splaining :O_o:

 

[Anarchy]

CULTURAL MARXISM, DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM, and some of what seems to be going on behind some of the news "issues"

Sorry that it looks a bit heavy and dry. It is.

OK, cultural Marxism, what is it?
In orthodox marxist theory, the proletariat (working class) will lead the world into the inevitable (third age of) socialism, and, because history has always been class and lass conflict history, this will be the end of history.

Following the October 1917 revolution in St Petersburg, Lenin was faced with a problem, how to identify the proletarians who would support "progress" (progress towards the inevitable socialist future).

And separate them from the non proletarians who would be "reactionary" against that inevitable future?

Marx and Engels weren't exactly offering clear guidance on this practical problem. Especially as Russia had never developed the industrial capitalist economy that marx and engels were so critical of.

Lenin's solution was to take the idea of thought and ideology being controlled by social class. If people agreed with him, then they were in tune with the progressive evolution of the material productive forces, and were proletarian.

If people disagreed with him, they were not in tune, and we're not proletarian. As they weren't in tune with the inevitable future, well, there was absolutely no harm in killing them.
Peasants who disagreed were not proletarian they were "kulaks" - rich peasants. The irony of the contradiction in terms appears to have totally escaped Lenin.

OK, that's cultural Marxism. Disagree with a cultural marxist and you are branded "not a proper..." proletarian, black, gay, woman, american... whatever fills the space. Your view are not correct thinking, they're mere ideology and can be dismissed without consequence. (After the revolution, so can your life, but they're keeping that part quiet for now).

OK, the driving force behind Marx's inevitable socialism, was the evolution of the material productI've forces.
He never fully explains what these are, but from his use of the term, it appears to be technology ("the hand mill gives us primitive socialism, the watermill feudalism and the steam mill capitalism" etc)
Material technology was advancing itself and this was controlling the "social relations"
In old age, marx was very keen on new technologies, for example electric power, Hoping that each one would innevitably usher in the third age; socialism.

This "materialism" doesn't convince many, scientists, engineers or economists. Perhaps it doesn't convince many literature, gender studies, or journalism students either.

Unfortunately old ideas die hard, even when the surface form has disappeared. For example we no longer believe our rulers are gods, sons of God's, picked by God's, or hold warrants from gods - but the choi especially of majorities are assumed to be unquestionable, and the powers of governments, virtually unlimited. The idea of divine right is still lurking there in the background.

Materials determinism. It's still there aswell even if few marxists are willing to argue for dialectical materialism.

Look at the idea of a piece of metal (a gun) controlling a human's thoughts and actions.

 

[mamachick]

And of all these mass shootings in the US, 98% are done by males....why is this? Its not really a mental health issue, but it is an anger issue!
It is lax in gun laws, but it also must be about angry men that have easy access...I know I'm going to hell about this statement

 

[Justmehere]

I think it’s much more complex than that.

Studies have shown women actually tend to be angrier than men.

 

[Anarchy]

It is lax in gun laws,

That doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Prior to 1920, Britain had next to no gun controls, and a square mile of gun makers in Birmingham, along with makers in most towns and cities of any size.

Mass public shootings and the equivalents using blunt and edged weapons, and more recently the "truck of peace", didn't start to show up until the late 19 80s.

Even in the united state, the "I don't like Mondays" school shooting was very much a freak event, and incidentally the perp there was female.

For decades, teenagers had taken guns to school for target shooting, but these events were no occurring.

On the contra position. Relaxation of carry laws across the united state, was accompanied by a sharp decline in violent crime, homicide rates and property crime. Check out the now aging (2011) map of carry laws at gunmap.org for a summary.

I don't know if the Brady campaign still gives scores to states and cities for gun laws that the campaign approves of.
An interesting exercise is to plot a scatter chart of Brady campaign scores against homicide or armed robbery or whatever proxy for violence you choose for that year, and see what it looks like.

The Brady campaign's big bugaboo was always Vermont, with no state level gun controls (only f'eral), and usually the lowest homicide and armed crime rates.