Thousand Oaks shooting

[a completely inoffensive name]

I know that bar and I have walked that street many times...

I thought I would feel angrier, but I don't.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I know that bar and I have walked that street many times...

I thought I would feel angrier, but I don't.

We are, collectively, becoming numb to such news reports. Obviously, those personally involved or directly affected thereby do not react the same.

[Husar]

"Americans", they're Trump voters, they're bible belters, they're hillbilly militiamen, they're war-hungry nationalists, they're mass shooters, and some of them, I assume, are good people.

Don't blame me, they said on FoxNews the other day that everything good in "America" is under siege.*

Seems pointless to say anything serious because it's wasted effort at this point. Here are some recent feel-good stories about guns instead:
https://twitter.com/nra

@NRA
Nov 8
An armed #Missouri man heard "blood-curdling screams" and sprung into action. Benjamin Seadorf approached a vehicle where a man was strangling a woman in front of their children. He drew his gun and held the attacker at gunpoint until police arrived.
[...]
@NRA
9 hours ago
ARMED CITIZEN: A #Tennessee woman may have averted tragedy recently when she awoke to find a naked man in her bedroom, got her firearm, and held the man at gunpoint until police arrived.

Stick your head in the sand and pray to your golden gun.
Or maybe smile because you're not Brazil...I don't know anymore...



*I don't watch FoxNews but it seems hard to guess wrong here

[Seamus Fermanagh]

This would be the statistics considered important by the gun lobby source. I admit to wondering how, in a country where 90k rapes are reported in a year, 200k other abuse attempts are warded off by guns/threat thereof.


I have always viewed the 2nd as the final guarantor of freedom in that, facing government tyranny, citizens could band together and use firearms to defend themselves from that tyrannical government. Firearms are also good tools for home defense, defense of one's person, and for hunting. In NONE of these scenarios is a handgun the best choice of firearm. Especially given the general level of firearm training and accuracy under high-stress situations, most persons defending themselves or their homes are better off with a shotgun. Hunting more or less mandates rifles or shotguns. Going up against the government might require automatic rates of fire, but would NOT be best served using a handgun.


More than half (production figures suggest 55%) of privately owned firearms in the United States are handguns(pistols and revolvers), not long-arms (shotguns, rifles, assault-style rifles). Though no more than half of the firearms present in society, handguns, not long-arms, represent roughly 90% of the deaths (suicides, accidents, and homicides) attributed to a specific type of firearm.

I am wondering if we could solve much of the problem by prohibiting weapons with a barrel length of less than 35cm, maybe by issuing shotguns or rifles to those forced to turn-in or decommission their handguns.

Just a thought.

[rory_20_uk]

First off, the romantic notion of the populace having the ability compete with a proper army probably last saw use in the Franco-Prussian war... and then they still loss with hideous casualties.

Requiring a licence to drive and not one to have a gun is nonsensical. That coupled with people having the wrong type of guns (probably in large part due to ignorance) compounds the problem.

Where hunting is a thing, having the guns held at a gun club would also help ensure they're used appropriately.

But Jim Jeffries said it best "many Americans value the sanctity of life - unless it is standing on their lawn".

[Montmorency]

This would be the statistics considered important by the gun lobby source. I admit to wondering how, in a country where 90k rapes are reported in a year, 200k other abuse attempts are warded off by guns/threat thereof.


I have always viewed the 2nd as the final guarantor of freedom in that, facing government tyranny, citizens could band together and use firearms to defend themselves from that tyrannical government. Firearms are also good tools for home defense, defense of one's person, and for hunting. In NONE of these scenarios is a handgun the best choice of firearm. Especially given the general level of firearm training and accuracy under high-stress situations, most persons defending themselves or their homes are better off with a shotgun. Hunting more or less mandates rifles or shotguns. Going up against the government might require automatic rates of fire, but would NOT be best served using a handgun.


More than half (production figures suggest 55%) of privately owned firearms in the United States are handguns(pistols and revolvers), not long-arms (shotguns, rifles, assault-style rifles). Though no more than half of the firearms present in society, handguns, not long-arms, represent roughly 90% of the deaths (suicides, accidents, and homicides) attributed to a specific type of firearm.

I am wondering if we could solve much of the problem by prohibiting weapons with a barrel length of less than 35cm, maybe by issuing shotguns or rifles to those forced to turn-in or decommission their handguns.

Just a thought.

What is the cost-benefit ratio? How many defusals vs. escalations? That's always the question both sides should be trying to answer statistically.

The "2nd Amendment" demographic are far likelier to be guarantors of tyranny than otherwise.

Resistance to a "tyrannical" government always occurs with collective and communal action, not with individuals grabbing for their guns. I still maintain the Founders understood this.

The history of guerrilla movements and partisan warfare proves just this. WW2 partisans in the east were almost entirely supplied, led, and organized by the Red Army and NKVD (when they weren't pure bandits). Look at the Taliban, it's not a few goatherders with AKs, it's a well-organized national movement and international crime syndicate with command and supply centralized to the level of regional warlords. (The Pakistani government helps too.)

I have no problem with banning handguns, but to ease people into regulation I would take the deprecation of the personal defense aspect slowly, since it's more resilient than the hobbyist motivation and more widespread than the violent-reactionary motivation. But it's tricky, like weaning an addict off the drug that keeps them in pain when they're administering ever-increasing quantities in order to escape that pain...

As always, keep in mind that the gun "problem" is not one of "getting them out of the wrong hands", it's a supply-side and ideological problem. Gun ideology is almost entirely wrapped in the greater far-right ecosystem, which needs to be defeated anyway, and the absolute number of serviceable firearms in existence on a global scale is what needs to be reduced to reduce violence everywhere.

[Husar]

This would be the statistics considered important by the gun lobby source. I admit to wondering how, in a country where 90k rapes are reported in a year, 200k other abuse attempts are warded off by guns/threat thereof.

Well, it kinda goes hand in hand. The same state of mind that leads to the refusal to restrict guns could just be responsible for the high amount of crimes that need to be warded off with guns. In other words, the guns are necessary for protection because of the mindset that says violence is the problem solver.

The comparison with Honduras, El Salvador, Jamaica and the Ivory Coast is funny because three of those countries probably only have so much violence because of the US. Every drug war in South America is mostly financed from the US and probably provided with all the weapons that just disappear in the US due to the lack of proper oversight. Surely illegal weapons also exist elsewhere, but the amount of weapons "trickling down" from the US is probably magnitudes larger:
https://www.rand.org/news/press/2017/07/19.html
https://www.insightcrime.org/news/br...brazil-report/

So basically that link compares developing nations to a (supposedly) developed one and elegantly ignores that the developed nation is the root cause of many of the issues plaguing these developing nations, which are obviously less well equipped to deal with the issues due to their development status (and potentially their large dependence on and influence from said developed nation that sees them as quasi-colonies in many ways).

And as for comparisons to Britain, would it be a good idea then to give all these knife attackers guns instead?
They also note the second criticism themselves: "** Comparing violent crime between two countries can sometimes be difficult as each nation defines it differently"

But they had to put it in there for all the people who don't bother to read the fine print I guess.

As for the gun ownership rate and gun ownership preventing crimes, they should show some statistics about how many crimes are stopped by armed citizens in Germany and Switzerland. Being proud of how armed citizens kill more criminals than the police is also absurd. Germany has a lower crime rate than the US and FAR fewer criminals are killed by police (I'm guessing close to none by armed citizens). So that site is just making stuff up IMO.

[Montmorency]

Well, it kinda goes hand in hand. The same state of mind that leads to the refusal to restrict guns could just be responsible for the high amount of crimes that need to be warded off with guns. In other words, the guns are necessary for protection because of the mindset that says violence is the problem solver.

The comparison with Honduras, El Salvador, Jamaica and the Ivory Coast is funny because three of those countries probably only have so much violence because of the US. Every drug war in South America is mostly financed from the US and probably provided with all the weapons that just disappear in the US due to the lack of proper oversight. Surely illegal weapons also exist elsewhere, but the amount of weapons "trickling down" from the US is probably magnitudes larger:
https://www.rand.org/news/press/2017/07/19.html
https://www.insightcrime.org/news/br...brazil-report/

So basically that link compares developing nations to a (supposedly) developed one and elegantly ignores that the developed nation is the root cause of many of the issues plaguing these developing nations, which are obviously less well equipped to deal with the issues due to their development status (and potentially their large dependence on and influence from said developed nation that sees them as quasi-colonies in many ways).

And as for comparisons to Britain, would it be a good idea then to give all these knife attackers guns instead?
They also note the second criticism themselves: "** Comparing violent crime between two countries can sometimes be difficult as each nation defines it differently"

But they had to put it in there for all the people who don't bother to read the fine print I guess.

As for the gun ownership rate and gun ownership preventing crimes, they should show some statistics about how many crimes are stopped by armed citizens in Germany and Switzerland. Being proud of how armed citizens kill more criminals than the police is also absurd. Germany has a lower crime rate than the US and FAR fewer criminals are killed by police (I'm guessing close to none by armed citizens). So that site is just making stuff up IMO.

It's especially great when the US makes military arms sales to countries in Latin America, and then cartels and gangs either loot the arsenals for military-grade equipment, or buy it off corrupt officials.

I like how people dying to guns is described as "criminals killed". That's what it's all about, eh, the Dirty Harry fantasy of being a "big man"?

T egregious bit of propaganda about the town in Georgia requiring all households keep a gun, therefore causing burglary rates to drop. Yeah, turns out to be BS. The law was a purely symbolic measure in reaction to gun control trends, there is no data presented on the gun ownership rate in Kennesaw, Georgia over time, and the "drop in burglaries" is an example of lying with statistics because 10 to 50 burglaries per year is a very small sample size, and crime dropped all over Georgia throughout that period and for years afterward.

There isn't even a pretense of rigor here, it's Prager University-tier.

There's a more troubling assumption here however: the rights (they believe) are afforded by the 2nd Amendment are so important, that it would be valid for the government, under force of law, to demand that private citizens keep them. Every law, as you know, being ultimately backed by the threat of state violence. IOW, 'keep guns or we'll gun you down' is legitimate and appropriate. Holy fuck, what happened to government overreach? Just the fact that gun advocates would believe such a law to be good in theory is lunacy.


EDIT: Hi Seamus, I hope you haven't found my posts this week standoffish (or more than usual, at least). I'm always interested in hearing your responses.

There is an example of an ostensibly correct application of "2nd Amendment solutions" in American history, in the extremely American Battle of Athens in 1946. Facing a level of corruption and authoritarianism from their local government that would incite riots in most of contemporary Russia if replicated there, local WW2 veterans determined that they would vote the offenders out and met guns with guns when the local machine grandees tried to stop them by fraud and threats. They stopped the fraud, pulled off the electoral landslide, and overthrew the machine. Somehow, no one was killed despite many injuries, thus preserving family-friendliness for any prospective PG film adaptation.

Ralph Duggan, who had served in the Pacific in the Navy and became a leading lawyer in the postwar period, "thought a lot more about McMinn County than he did about the Japs. If democracy was good enough to put on the Germans and the Japs, it was good enough for McMinn County, too!"

Unfortunately the progress proved ephemeral, but, well, that's America for you.

The new GI government of Athens quickly encountered challenges including the re-emergence of old party loyalties.[35] On January 4, 1947, four of the five leaders of the GI Non-Partisan League declared in an open letter: "We abolished one machine only to replace it with another and more powerful one in the making."[36] The GI government of Athens, Tennessee collapsed. Tennessee's GI political movement quickly faded and politics in the state returned to normal.[15][37] The Non-Partisan GI Political League had replied to inquires by veterans elsewhere in the United States with the advice that shooting it out was not the most desirable solution to political problems.

[Crandar]

Obligatory reading.

I understand that the correct solution is more nuanced than simply ban guns and let the Obama Red Guards overthrow democracy, but the obsession of American culture with guns is not an innocent coincidence. It's not surprising that Finland has quite a bad record with massacres in public places and also encourages gun ownership, ever since the sensitive age of 16.

[Gilrandir]

WW2 partisans in the east were almost entirely supplied, led, and organized by the Red Army and NKVD (when they weren't pure bandits).

Wrong, see Armia Krajowa, UPA and Forest Brothers.

[Montmorency]

Obligatory reading.

I understand that the correct solution is more nuanced than simply ban guns and let the Obama Red Guards overthrow democracy, but the obsession of American culture with guns is not an innocent coincidence. It's not surprising that Finland has quite a bad record with massacres in public places and also encourages gun ownership, ever since the sensitive age of 16.

What do you think of contextualizing American gun control as an international arms control problem?

Wrong, see Armia Krajowa

The Polish resistance was a military organization (basically an extension of the Polish military-in-exile) and organized as such.

During the formative period of the military wing of the Polish underground
state between September 1939 and spring 1943, a conception
of armed resistance to the occupation emerged that made preparations
for a national insurrection in the closing stages of the war the focus of
ZWZ-AK efforts. It was a strategy that accepted that the war was likely
to be of long duration and that the ZWZ-AK could not confront the
occupation with armed action in a way that unleashed the military
power of German occupation forces with devastating consequences on
the civilian population. The focus on the long-term strategy of preparation
for a national uprising had important consequences in terms of
shaping the ZWZ-AK’s approach to partisan warfare. First, it meant that
partisan warfare would be under strong central command and control
so as to not invite reprisals through armed actions yielding little gain
and provoking bloody reprisals. Second, the creation of a network of
small units in support of a future national uprising created a necessary
infrastructure for partisan warfare that the ZWZ-AK could employ in aid
of the wider war effort until German weakness would trigger a national
uprising.

Their equipment and non-food supply I imagine came from a variety of sources like pre-war caches, captured German equipment, and British airdrops.

I recall NKVD offering assistance towards the Warsaw uprising, even if Polish-Soviet relations were never quite friendly. I think you're right in that the Soviets were not able to support Polish resistance for at least half the war even had they wanted to. (And by mid-1944, they were basically already in Poland and fighting the Polish resistance as much as the Nazis)

UPA and Forest Brothers.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It is necessary to evaluate WW2 guerrilla movements by placing them within the state context.

[Gilrandir]

The Polish resistance was a military organization (basically an extension of the Polish military-in-exile) and organized as such.



Their equipment and non-food supply I imagine came from a variety of sources like pre-war caches, captured German equipment, and British airdrops.

I recall NKVD offering assistance towards the Warsaw uprising, even if Polish-Soviet relations were never quite friendly. I think you're right in that the Soviets were not able to support Polish resistance for at least half the war even had they wanted to. (And by mid-1944, they were basically already in Poland and fighting the Polish resistance as much as the Nazis)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It is necessary to evaluate WW2 guerrilla movements by placing them within the state context.

You just corroborated my claim that not all guerilla movements in the eastern front of WWII were supported by the USSR (contrary to what you had said).

[Montmorency]

You just corroborated my claim that not all guerilla movements in the eastern front of WWII were supported by the USSR (contrary to what Seamus said).

OK. I concede to your pedantry. I should have been specific enough to exclude groups that were explicitly anti-Soviet, and limited my statement to the territory of the Soviet Union.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I am enjoying this convo, but unfortunately my hills are on fire now and my internet/phone comms are down. Will be back to respond whenever these fires die down.

[Shaka_Khan]

Stay safe.




I used to live in California several years ago. I never saw a fire in this scale before.

[Strike For The South]

Another disaster. Passing laws is only part of it. We barely enforce the laws we have now.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I'm back, not dead yet. only the third time in my life SoCal fires have encircled me.

Another disaster. Passing laws is only part of it. We barely enforce the laws we have now.

There was a ban on large capacity magazines voted on by the public. I believe NRA or someother 2nd amendment group had filed a lawsuit and asked for a stay on the ban which is why the shooter was able to purchase one.

[Montmorency]

I'm back, not dead yet. only the third time in my life SoCal fires have encircled me.



There was a ban on large capacity magazines voted on by the public. I believe NRA or someother 2nd amendment group had filed a lawsuit and asked for a stay on the ban which is why the shooter was able to purchase one.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46198498