gun control part 1: fuck yeah

Eventually.

Imagine you are captured, beaten, forced to labor, beaten if you don't, beaten if you complain, beaten if you attempt escape, beaten ... for the hell of it.

But, don't worry - EVENTUALLY society will evolve and you'll be free.

I don't think you are fully thinking your argument through. This is a fault of those libertarian arguments, they're only slightly better than far right propaganda and that's only be cause they're actually discussing real issues.

When it comes to human decency, "eventually" is bullshit.

 

yeah, like we're going to separate the mother from their child who came here to pick fruit in modern times.

 

I forgot, nothing has changed since the 19th century.

 

we're still bigoted cunts when left to our own devices.

 

I'm not sure we've seen slavery go away. We've seen it rebranded in various forms, some legal and others not but it still happens right under our noses in the so called developed world.

Whether it's outsourcing to nations with minimal labour laws, use of prisons as work pools, sex trafficking, indentured labour for criminal gangs to pay off debts, the concept of organisations bypassing mainstream employment practices to coerce or outright demand cheap/free labour from those who have no recourse remains a major part of our economies.

 

How was my use of "bigoted cunt"? Don't want to offend anyone.

 

In some regards we tend to overestimate our progress. The 19th century middle classes would have viewed their own era as enlightened and progressive much as we like to now, overlooking tiny details such as the brutality of workhouses and asylums much as we ignore the mentally ill, those incarcerated in a system which profits from taking their liberty, the homeless.

 

Poetic.

 

This. and this is the reason I will always lean on the side of the minority. Because it's usually the minority who's rights and freedoms are being trampled.

 

It wouldn't have in the Confederacy. It would have required amending their Constitution - you know, the one that said that no law could ever be passed to outlaw slavery, or to deny slave owners the rights to take their slaves to any state or territory held by the Confederacy.

 

I’ve acknowledged and addressed this in this thread. I reject the pessimistic view of humanity that’s being expressed in this thread.

 

And Lincoln could said bye Felicia to the CSA and let them go on their merry way. Maybe it would have lasted, maybe not.

 

Well, it was justly crushed under the boot of the Union Army, so that hypothetical is just hypothetical.

 

I reject the idea @The Ghost of Crazy Horse has ever been called a child on this board or that anyone has ever implied he is a child.

 

As opposed to the hypothetical that it was definitely going away? Yeah, it depended on how the Civil War went down. And even with that win we now have corporations paying pennies an hour for convict labor in the US, let alone conditions outside this nation.

And considering we have the largest convict populace of any nation in the world, both by absolute and percentage, and those are disproportionately minorities, there's definite slave labor in the US still.

But sure, it's 'hypothetical' that the CSA would have outlawed slavery.

Sorry, that's bullshit - we are still struggling with it today, it's just not out in the open anymore.

 

Any evolution towards the peaceful and equitable abolition of slavery in the South will forever remain a hypothetical, obviously. It's still a hard sell. I can't see any way the South gives up slavery except under military or economic coercion. I think the most likely outcome is the CSA eventually falls apart due to internal problems and is reabsorbed/reconquered by the US. Slavery still ends at the point of a bayonet.

 

What do you mean, "as opposed to"? What hypothetical did you think I was talking about?

 

If Georgia started getting heavy-handed on gun control they could never, ever, catch up to New Jersey in rag-dolling gun owners. I feel for you! I can't wrap my mind around NJ gun control - it's absolutely insane! So about the .50 cal limit - what about single shot muzzle loaders like .52 and .58 caliber? I can just about guarantee nobody ever committed armed robbery (in this century) or a mass shooting with a .58 cal muzzle loading buffalo rifle. And a slingshot? Great for killing chipmunks, squirrels and rabbits but that's about it.

 

getting shot "all the time?" You want to back that up with some facts/statistics to keep things in perspective, or just go on raw emotion and assumptions?

 

OF, there is no disputing the US leads all the developed countries in violent gun deaths.

 

I don't see it as pessimistic, merely honest in the painful way that so often is needed for progress to happen.

The ills of history aren't merely products of the times, IMHO, they are indicative of what we can be if we don't make efforts towards self reflection.

All the events being discussed have, in evolutionary terms, happened in the blink of an eye, the drawing of a breath. We, like every other animal out there, have survived by being and doing what was necessary to pass forward our genes. The difference is that we're really good at adapting those behaviours and cooperating to overcome obstacles too big for individuals.

We can cooperate to create, to innovate, to explore, but we can also cooperate to be ruthless, exploitative and violent on a scale no other species ever seen could match. That capacity hasn't gone, hasn't evolved out over a mere couple of centuries tagged onto the tens of millions of years that shaped us.

What we can do, however, is use that capacity to deliberately improve, to learn and cooperate towards making better use of our natures but we can't do that without acknowledging the need to do so.

 

How many times do you need to have this shown to you?

 

How many times do you need this to be shown to you?

 

Which is completely irrelevant in discussing gun violence in the US compared to other developed countries.

ETA: also, how do you reconcile "unintended consequences of biblical proportions" with banning guns within the context of your chart (above).?

 

I don't live in other developed countries. I live in America where I have a .6 percent chance of getting murdered. But considering my zip code and lifestyle, I'd ballpark my odds at about a .2 percent chance.
Of course I do have a 100 percent chance of dying over a long enough time span. Does this make sense to you? Maybe math isn't your strong point.

 

Because much like Prohibition back in the Roaring Twenties, banning guns would (1) immediately make criminals out of millions of average Americans, (2) create an enormous criminal class along the lines of the liquor mobsters from a hundred years ago as guns became the number one desired black market commodity, and (3) almost certainly spark a civil war. One does not remove a Constitutionally-enshrined basic right (to keep and bear arms) without people noticing.

 

Good summation of the situation. Yet of course some will drag out the "strict gun control works in Japan, England, China, etc. so it can work in America" idea totally ignoring/underplaying cultural and historical differences.

 

I'm not sure I'd use alcohol consumption as the basis for comparison with gun ownership, but ok.

Yeah, those bootleggers and rum runners. Where would they have been without an easy supply of booze from Canada and countries to the south? I wonder where the gun runners of armageddon will buy their arms without US retailers.

 

Huge stockpiles of existing arms. Overseas. "Law abiding" citizens looking to dump their now-illegal firearms. Lots of sources.

The commodity in question is irrelevant. You're talking about a thing, product, that was legal and highly prized and deeply enshrined in the culture for literally centuries suddenly being criminalized. Of course that's going to immediately create a criminal enterprise.