The Dark Knight Rises shooting and Gun Control

I generally respect what you have to say, and believe you to be a well-intentioned conservative, which is fine, but what you've just said here is one of the most misguided things I have ever heard. The solution to gun violence is not to have EVEN MORE GUNS on the street. The idea that the Founding Fathers sought to protect every citizen from obtaining as many guns as they wanted, and that there should be no restrictions whatsoever on the kind of guns people purchase for individual use, is ludicrous. The right to bear arms is guaranteed by the Constitution, but that doesn't mean that an individual has a right to buy a weapon that can shoot 60 bullets in one minute, as the Aurora Colorado shooter was able to do. It also doesn't mean that an individual should be able to purchase 6,000 ROUNDS of ammunition on the Internet, all without breaking any laws. The fact that this stuff is done, and that conservatives see no problem with it, is insane. There is no reason for any of this. An individual should not be able to purchase 6,000 rounds of ammunition entirely legally, and not have to report that purchase to the authorities, and there's no reason for an assault weapon, machine gun, or a bazooka to be legal either. The assault weapons ban needs to be renewed. No one needs a sub-machine gun to defend their two kids and a dog from a home invasion. It's flat-out ludicrous that most conservatives defend this. This is not sound policy.

As to the point I started discussing in this thread, I honestly must say that this statement is really ridiculous. Let's say someone did have a weapon. How is that person going to be able to shoot someone in a dark theater through tear gas when bullets are flying and chaos is happening all around him? It is far more likely that rather than kill this shooter, the well-intentioned person with a hero complex would kill several of his fellow movie-goers in his attempt to save the day. If someone had a weapon in the movie theater, the results would have been even more disastrous, not better. There would be even more dead people and wounded in that movie theater.

Gun ownership in this society needs to be heavily regulated. If I were President, this is what I'd do. Let me know what you think, Yoda. First, the ability to have a gun should require a license. In order to gain this license, you should have to undergo gun safety training and pass a written exam which tests your knowledge of when and how to use a gun safely and in what circumstances. Second, anything beyond a handgun or a simple shotgun should be illegal. There is no legitimate reason for an individual to possess weapons that were designed to kill large amounts of people. Those weapons should be reserved for law enforcement and the military. Third, everyone who attempts to purchase a gun should have to go through a thorough background check. This idea of people being able to buy a gun on the Internet or go to a gun show and have no background check whatsoever needs to be ended.. Fourth, anyone who has a diagnosed mental illness, and who is deemed a danger to themselves or others, should not be allowed to purchase a gun. This is a law that needs to be enforced. Fifth, if the assault weapons ban is not renewed, all sales of assault weapons and other accessories such as the purchase of 6,000 rounds of ammunition for a single individual, should be mandated to be reported to the federal government, so that if someone is seeking to amass a small arsenal of weapons, an investigation can be conducted to ensure that this person is not a mass murderer or terrorist. There's more that can and should be done, but that's a start.

There's a lot of space between repealing the Second Amendment and taking away everyone's constitutional right to own a gun, and allowing every citizen in the United States the ability to legally purchase weapons that are more appropriate for a mass slaughter than lawful protection. There's nothing wrong with ensuring that people who purchase a gun actually know how to use one, and have been trained for the purpose. There's nothing wrong with ensuring that people who are mentally ill should not be able to lawfully purchase the gun which will allow them to end their life. More people die from suicide by the usage of a gun than any other method. These are common sense ideas. There's absolutely nothing about any of them that is an unreasonable infringement of a citizens right to lawfully own a gun. I understand the desire to want to protect yourself and your home from harm, and to not want to have that ability taken away by the government, but I don't think any of these restrictions infringe upon that right. An appropriate balance needs to be struck between lawful and responsible gun ownership and incentivizing insanity. So, what say you, Yoda?

Originally Posted by DexterRiley
How about the 3rd guy who sees the 2nd guy shooting? How does he know in a split second whether the original nut is acting alone or not?

Yoda
"He doesn't. There's going to be a lot of chaos. That doesn't mean the alternative--a bunch of people being shot with no way of defending themselves--is better.

I mean, obviously people just getting slaughtered results in much less confusion. It'd be even less confusing if they were lined up and executed one by one. But since when is preventing confusion the goal here? That's only important insofar as it prevents the loss of life."



So that's your solution. more guns and more killings, instead of passing laws that make obtaining that kind of weapon a lot harder to buy.

And maybe you also support more laws that makes killing someone unarmed legal because you don't like his looks

__________________
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You do this a lot: say you disagree with something, and then go on to explain why you disagree with something entirely different. I didn't say the solution to gun violence is more guns. I said one very simple thing: that it'd have been better if people in the theater were able to defend themselves. That's it.

No reasonable person denies that there are plenty of situations where guns allow people to defend themselves or fend off criminals. We have scads of examples of this. The arguments for gun control are that these incidents are not common enough to justify relaxed gun laws, and/or that other negative results follow. But that argument doesn't work when we're already talking about a specific situation. Once you posit the situation, yeah, of course it'd be better if the victims could defend themselves.

This is a straw man.

So you can buy bullets, but not in bulk?

Hypothetically, what would the authorities do with this information? Go to his house and interrogate him?

I don't think you have any idea if this is actually true. And it really galls me that people feel comfortable playing armchair general with statements like this, blithely acting as if they can game the situation out. Particularly with the phrasing: all I mention is the idea of someone having a gun, and suddenly you're constructing a psychological profile of some guy with a "hero complex." If we're allowed to just make up a person, how about a former Marine with excellent marksmanship? I mean, since we're apparently able to make arguments based on inventing convenient personalities and everything.

Maybe all he needs to do is brandish the weapon. Maybe he needs to fire one shot and the guy runs away. Nobody knows. And when someone pretends to, it makes me think they're not actually arguing in good faith.

You do realize that most of these restrictions wouldn't have restricted Holmes much, right? He had no history of mental illness, no record, and planned it for two months. The only difference is that he'd had to use a different gun.

I'm not the spokesman for gun owners. And I'm fine with some of this in theory, but skeptical as to how it would be applied in reality. More than that, I don't think the more reasonable restrictions will prevent mass shootings, and those are what usually spark these sorts of discussions in the first place. If people want to argue for them, they should probably do so in general, and not by suggesting that it can necessarily stop events like this.

Where did I say I was offering a solution to gun problems? And where did I even comment on making assault weapons harder to buy? Show me.

Here's what I actually said: that it'd be better if some people in the audience could defend themselves. If you have to mangle that statement in order to argue with it, then you don't have an argument.

This is some really ignorant bulls**t. I didn't say anything within ten miles of this.

I've come to expect that you'll make terrible arguments, but this is an ugly accusation that has no basis in anything I've ever said. Shame on you.

That was your response, more guns in that theater would have been a good thing, and nothing in your previous response suggested you were interested in restricting assault weapons and your comments certainly sounded like you were opposed to restricting them alongside your previous strict interpetation of the 2nd amendment.

Your comments about having more guns in that theater were extremely cavalier and didn't seem very concerned about the added carnage it would have created. And the Florida law, which is what I was referring to, encourages killing people whose only weapon is their fists. So have more laws like that, more people armed to the teeth walking down the street or in a movie house or in a bar, and you have the right wing's solution to gun violence, create a lot more opportunities for it.

I like how you say "more guns," as if I'm for air dropping them in randomly and hoping they end up in the right hands.

Let's try this again. Read carefully: it would have been better if the people in the theater had guns to defend themselves. That's the claim. Nothing about flooding the streets with guns, and nothing about gun control in general. And if you disagree with that statement, please, explain to me why it's way better for massacred people to be completely defenseless. But not until you've retracted your first claim and apologized for extrapolating wildly from what I said.

I'm sorry, did you just admit you assumed this because I didn't explicitly say otherwise? Are you serious?

Based on what? Is there some concerned font I forgot to use? There's nothing remotely cavalier about saying that it'd be better if those defenseless people could have defended themselves. The only cavalier statements are the "oh, it probably wouldn't have made any difference" ones.

I know exactly what you were referring to; the "Stand Your Ground" laws. And they had exactly zero to do with this topic, and haven't been raised once. So what the hell are you talking about, and where the hell do you get off accusing me of anything having to do with them?

This is a straw man.

It's not a straw man argument to say that the Founding Fathers didn't guarantee everyone the ability to purchase as many weapons as they want, or to limit the types that can be bought. This is exactly the position of the NRA. You may or may not support this philosophy, but the NRA does. They appear to believe that any restriction, no matter how slight, and no matter what the rationale, is an unreasonable infringement on the second Amendment.


So you can buy bullets, but not in bulk?
Hypothetically, what would the authorities do with this information? Go to his house and interrogate him?

They can keep an eye on him. They can interrogate him. They can do a lot more than what was done in this case, which was nothing. This guy bought bomb making equipment, 6,000 rounds of ammunition, 4 weapons, equipment that would be more appropriate for a SWAT officer than a civilian, and none of this behavior aroused suspicion or alerted authorities. All of it, with the exception of actually making the bombs, was legal. There's something wrong with that.


I don't think you have any idea if this is actually true. And it really galls me that people feel comfortable playing armchair general with statements like this, blithely acting as if they can game the situation out. Particularly with the phrasing: all I mention is the idea of someone having a gun, and suddenly you're constructing a psychological profile of some guy with a "hero complex." If we're allowed to just make up a person, how about a former Marine with excellent marksmanship? I mean, since we're apparently able to make arguments based on inventing convenient personalities and everything.

I think this is a fair point. I may have been too quick to generalize on this. At the same time, statistics show that a person is a lot more likely to kill their loved one coming home late from a party than they are an intruder. Accidental gun deaths happen all the time. And, given that gun ownership doesn't require any kind of gun safety training, or test to ensure that the person who has the gun knows how to operate one, it probably is a lot more likely that someone in this situation would be careless and lacking in ability to wield a firearm than it is that the individual would be a former Marine with excellent marksmanship.

Maybe all he needs to do is brandish the weapon. Maybe he needs to fire one shot and the guy runs away. Nobody knows. And when someone pretends to, it makes me think they're not actually arguing in good faith.

What evidence do we have that this is the case? Your scenario is at least as hypothetical as mine. People like this, who do these kinds of mass shootings are not rationale actors. It's very unlikely that they would be scared away by someone brandishing their weapon and would cower in fear at the sight of a gun. These are very determined individuals who are quite willing to risk their own safety to carry out these crimes.


You do realize that most of these restrictions wouldn't have restricted Holmes much, right? He had no history of mental illness, no record, and planned it for two months. The only difference is that he'd had to use a different gun.

The ability to not purchase a weapon lawfully that could fire 60 bullets in one minute may not have prevented Holmes from carrying out his plans, but it is very likely that it would dramatically have reduced the casualties he would have been able to inflict. That's a valuable thing to do. We may not be able to prevent these shootings, though if law enforcement were alerted as I have outlined to suspicious activity, we may be able to do a lot more than you realize, but we can certainly reduce the number of casualties that are inflicted. A handgun which can only shoot one bullet at a time is bound to kill a lot fewer people, and take much longer to do it than a quasi-machine gun.


I'm not the spokesman for gun owners. And I'm fine with some of this in theory, but skeptical as to how it would be applied in reality. More than that, I don't think the more reasonable restrictions will prevent mass shootings, and those are what usually spark these sorts of discussions in the first place. If people want to argue for them, they should probably do so in general, and not by suggesting that it can necessarily stop events like this.

How is it difficult to apply a licensing regime for the purchase of a gun? We do this for cars. The same principle can apply to gun ownership and should. Do you agree or disagree with this? It is also not difficult to ban assault weapons. This can also be done quite easily, or to ensure that there is sufficient coordination between agencies that someone with a diagnosed mental illness would show up on a background check. What do you disagree with that I've outlined, and what in your view makes it not possible to implement in practice?

Will, I think you should apologize to Yoda. Your comment that Yoda would support shooting someone because he didn't like the way that person looked was out of bounds. There's nothing in Yoda's post that suggested that he would favor this. We should be able to argue about these issues passionately, and disagree when appropriate, without engaging in shameless personal attacks which have no basis in fact or logic.

Well, it was in response, again, to the idea you were promoting more people with guns is a good thing, which is what we keep hearing from the right, who pass laws that makes it easier to legally kill.

You know, I wonder if you could start a new art form by shooting at someone ugly with a paintball gun with different shades of paint until you've transformed them into a beautiful work of art. A human painting. Could this be possible? Has this been done, yet? It sounds like something you'd see on America's Got Talent.

Didn't he say more shooters in that theater would have been a good thing?

Isn't that consistent with the right's notion more guns, not less, in the posession of supposed law abiding citixens ia the solution to gun violence? Isn't that how we wound up with a law in Florida that allows supposed law abiding citizens to shoot at the unarmed?

The idea of having potentially several shooters in a darkened theater with panicking people moving around discharging their guns is a good idea as absurd.

Holmes wasn't trained for that situation. He was in the same darkened theater. Are you just pretending to have some kind of battle expertise here, or what? You have no idea if any of this is true. You don't even have a way to calculate these probabilities. You're pulling this right out of your ass.

You don't even support people firing in self defense because he may not turn to kill them next? Is that a serious statement?

Um, yes, you absolutely did. I said it would have been better if people in the theater had guns to defend themselves. That in no way implies that I think everyone having more guns all the time would always be a good thing. Even if I think this, the idea isn't contained in the statement. That's called extrapolating.

Uh, no. The general idea--right or wrong--is not selling lots of guns and "hoping" responsible people end up with them. The idea is that they're out there, anyway, and criminals already have them, so ordinary people should be allowed to have them, too.

I am completely uninterested in your sloppy generalizations and I don't expect you to have any insight into this topic. I'm only interested in showing you how beyond the pale your initial comments were.

No, it isn't. I didn't say it, and don't think it. Don't make assumptions. And "you never said otherwise" is an absolutely terrible attempt at defending an accusation.

Or there could have been SAVED LIVES. CAPITAL LETTERS MAKE ARGUMENTS BETTER SOMEHOW.

By all accounts, Holmes wasn't an expert, either, so why do you require that a theater participant would have to be in order to have made a difference?

I never said that. I said it'd be better if the people who were massacred have some. What part of this is difficult to understand?

Also, how does "more people with guns" imply that I support Stand Your Ground laws at all? Even the Stand Your Ground law doesn't say you can't kill someone because you "don't like his looks." Explain that comment to me, please. Explain how it describes Stand Your Ground. Then show me where anyone in this thread said anything, positive or negative, about Stand Your Ground laws. Then, when you can't, you should apologize for making a sarcastic accusation with absolutely no basis in reality.

I'll respond to this later as I have to go, but you do realize he was wearing a bulletproof vest and wouldn't have been that easy to kill?

Oh, and the capitol letters were because I hit the cap lock button and didn't feel like retyping.

Wait, what? You can accuse me of wanting to shoot people because I don't like their looks because you think my position on gun control is "consistent" with "the right's notion," and that this notion helped lead to some law in Florida that doesn't allow you to kill people for the way they look, and which I've never said anything about? Do you have any appreciation for how ridiculous this defense is?

It's absurd if you just start with a theater and then add people firing guns to it. If you start with a theater with an insane person inside already shooting people, then it's not absurd at all. What's absurd is that it'd be better for them to just be lambs for the slaughter, with no way to defend themselves.

That's what I don't think you get. It isn't "hey, if someone had a gun they could have just shot him and it all would've stopped, nice and clean." Of course it would have been chaotic and dangerous as hell. But it was already chaotic and dangerous as hell. You don't compare the situation to some nice, pristine situation. You compare it to the hellish reality they were already in. And in that reality, a genuine chance to stop the guy and defend themselves is better than a defenseless slaughter.

I do realize that, and they don't have to kill them, they just have to stop him, slow him, disable him. And though I've never been shot while wearing a bulletproof vest, my understanding is that it both knocks you down and knocks the wind out of you. It could have helped immensely.

Yoda, have you ever been to a firing range? If so, you would realise the first time can be confronting for some people. What about a dark theatre and people getting shot around you?

It depends how close the impact is and the caliber of the bullet, and again if there was crossfire you can get behind a seat and do your shooting there. I think he was in the last row so he had a better vantage point. We don't know how experienced he was with firearms, if he had taken target practice, but you wouldn't need much to randomely shoot at people, to specifically target him and not hit innocent bystanders takes a lot more skill.

Mate!

I think this is overstating things; I believe the NRA crafted a compromise with Democrats in the 90s for a background check bill and I'm pretty sure they support a lot of what you and I would bother consider to be very basic, common sense regulations. Certainly not as many as you do, and probably not even as a many as I do, but not none.

But more importantly, it's a straw man because it has nothing to do with the thing you were replying to. If you want to reply to something I said, why would you start addressing the NRA mid-paragraph without even mentioning them? I wouldn't reply to someone saying something moderate about welfare and suddenly start arguing against communism.

Well sure, they can, but I'm asking what they should do under the hypothetical law changes you want to make. Should it be illegal to buy ammunition in bulk? Should everyone who buys more than X number of bullets be tracked and/or interrogated? And if the limit is, say, 1,000, what's to stop people from making multiple purchases of 999? And do you think it's feasible to track and interrogate anyone who does these things?

If someone were monitoring his entire life, then sure, it looks extremely wrong. But the individual elements, by themselves, don't amount to much. It looks awful when the guy's life is put under a microscope for all of society to see, but making these connections beforehand is nearly impossible without draconian levels of surveillance and restriction. The guy you buy a ski mask from is different from the guy you buy the bulletproof vest from, and both are different from the people who know you enough to suspect you may be unstable.

I've definitely heard the statistics about accidental gun deaths, and they're an important part of the debate. You didn't mention any specifically, which is fine, but it means I can only respond general. And generally, there are usually two fairly large problems with them. The first is that they usually count suicides. If someone wants to argue that we need gun control to stop people from killing themselves, they can, but that's a tougher argument to make, and I don't think we can call suicides "accidental" deaths for the purposes of this argument.

The second is that measuring accidental deaths versus intruder deaths misses things like injuries or merely scaring someone off, both of which are a big part of the benefit, whatever it might be.

Now, it may be that the numbers still make accidental deaths more common. But we need much better statistics to make these sorts of claims.

Yes, my example is definitely hypothetical. I'm not saying we should pretend it would have happened; we don't know. I'm only mentioning it to say that, if we're going to engage in hypotheticals, we can engage in positive ones as well as negative ones, with as much validity.

Exactly. Which is why I'm skeptical that gun control laws would do much to deter them.

That is entirely possible. If he's determined to do it, it might just force him to use pipe bombs instead. And then maybe in some alternative universe we're having a conversation about not selling fertilizer without a license. And maybe he just buys the gun illegally, instead. We can only speculate. But sure, it's entirely plausible that that sort of restriction could have slowed him down some.

I didn't say it was difficult. I said I was skeptical as to how it would be applied, which means I think it would be easy to abuse and make highly restrictive.

Lots of ideas are good in theory, but become less so in practice. The fear of many gun owners, I think, is not so much the idea of just banning assault weapons, but the idea of opening the door to a lot more.

Experience. Mexico has one legal gun shop in the entire country, and it is absolutely flooded with guns. Washington D.C. has a huge murder problem, and has an outright ban on guns, if I recall correctly.

There are, of course, all sorts of potential explanations, even a few that gun control advocates might reasonably claim. I can think of a few I would argue from the other side. But there's enough there to wonder how plausible outright bans really are.

I don't have any problem with banning gun ownership for people with mental illnesses. I'm a little wary of how easy it might be to get something defined as a "mental illness," however. But in theory I agree with it.

Re-reading it, you weren't being sarcastic at all, I read it wrong...so I apologise.