Just to clarify, I wasn't saying that means that a similar program wouldn't work/shouldn't be tried or discussed. I was saying that that program is extremely problematic, if not a complete failure. If you can read that and not think that it's a problem to have armed criminals and pedophiles being the "good guys with guns" that was part of the suggested plan to help protect children, then that's a different issue besides gun control/rights.
How do you report nonactions? This is the same problem with gathering information about direct crime reduction as a result of lessened gun restrictions, although statistical analyses of the population should help. Vermont, Alaska, and Wyoming all have switched to having no guns laws beyond the federal level. Does anyone know what their rates of violence look like since passing "Constitutional carry"? And Joe Arpaio is a shitbag who hasn't done anything about sexual assaults in his role as sheriff, either. I think this is a problem with Arpaio, not the concept of letting teachers carry weapons if they have a CCW license (which makes a hell of a lot more sense than having random strangers whose only purpose is to have a gun patrol the halls).
Living right next to Maricopa County, I'm amazed by his following. He seriously has an enormous amount of people who are convinced that he's the greatest thing since sliced bread and can do no wrong. I think it's that he takes a very militant, hardass stance that resonates with the fears of a lot of people. His entire platform is "I'm doing and saying the stuff that you think about but are too scared to actually say." He's extremely good at feeding off people's fears of criminals and illegal immigrants and is very good at appealing to conservative views on punishment, "traditional values," and the like. The fact that he and his cronies are corrupt assholes tends to get glossed over thanks to all the ideology. Think about it this way - when he's making Tent City and killing inmates by exposure, you think people are going to care about graft and lack of help for sexual assault victims?
Oh, understood, he's an all-around asshole, but I thought his inactivity on sexual assault cases was particularly relevant to the point Audreymonroe brought up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTyoppK_aDM&feature=youtu.be I don't generally watch CNN for my news but this is pretty damning. I know it came from Biden's mouth so everyone should form their own opinion as to what it really means.
I mistakenly scrolled down and started reading some of the comments under that video. I am now no longer able to form complex sentences and I have also forgotten how division and percentiles work. And these people get to vote. Man, screw democracy.
Can you summarize for us poor bastards who are stuck at work where Youtube is verboten by the anti-fun brigade?
The summary from youtube "Joe Biden was caught on camera in Washington saying that new gun control laws will notprevent another mass shooting or lower the number of gun deaths. Yet the President and Biden are telling us that we MUST pass gun control even if it saves just one life."
It's a clip from Erin Burnett's show covering some comments Joe Biden made regarding the prospects of eliminating mass shootings or dramatically decreasing murder rates. It appears that there were other media around him when he made these comments but it wasn't in a formal setting. He says explicitly that the new laws proposed will not prevent another mass shooting nor dramatically lower the murder rate in America. Erin points out the fact that Mr. Biden said a few weeks ago that we have "a moral obligation to do everything in our power" to make sure these things don't happen again. Which raises the question as to why we are pursuing further gun control when we know (as apparently do our politicians) that it won't fix this problem?
Directly quoting Biden from the video... So our elected officials are saying "Fuck it" now, just not to our faces. Guns are still scary and evil, duh...
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/america-doesnt-have-a-gun-problem-it-has-a-gang-problem/ This is an interesting article(EDIT: Relating to the data, not the content delivery) relating to gun violence in America. I'm unfamiliar with the site but just from a cursory review, I question whether or not the information(EDIT: Specifically the data) has been sensationalized slightly based on the author and some of the site advertising. Here's an excerpt:
Thanks. I'm not at all surprised, but at least now I pretty much have incontrovertible evidence that a new AWB would be nothing more than smoke and mirrors to appease the fearful at the expense of an unpopular subset of gun owners while politicians continue to avoid solving real problems like crumbling infrastructure, the creation of a permanent underclass via disenfranchisement and the War on Drugs, and huge numbers of people going bankrupt because they get sick.
If anyone else thought it was obvious that that was a fragment of what he was saying and that there was a "but" right after they cut it off, here's the rest of the quote: "“But there are things that we can do, demonstrably can do that have virtually zero impact on your Second Amendment right to own a weapon for both self defense and recreation that can save some lives.” and then I'm not sure if this was his next sentence, or said farther along: "This is not a difficult equation, if I can prove that there is no Constitutional impact on your right to bear arms and the action I’m suggesting can in fact demonstrably show some people could be saved then this seems to be a no-brainer to me." I don't really see what the big deal is. He's saying that no laws are going to eliminate the possibility of a mass shooting or get the number of gun deaths down to zero, which is the truth, and it's kind of nice to hear someone from the gun control side saying something other than "we need to stop gun deaths, period" as if that's at all possible. He's just saying his goals are to reduce the risk and reduce the number of deaths without impacting Second Amendment rights. It's really the most boring run-of-the-mill soundbite ever.
What he and the President have proposed will impact our 2nd Amendment rights. So in essence, the first statement of Biden's that I produced stated that it won't solve the problem. What you have added from that particular interview is his interpretation of truth (based on proposals put forth), to which I and most other gun owners would disagree with.
You're selectively quoting him and then willfully misinterpreting the intent/meaning of the statement in question. What Biden is saying is that he recognizes that no laws can eliminate the threat of mass killings because they are not fully eradicable. The possibility will always exist, but that he believes that there exist laws which will save a non-zero number of lives. But sure, it's much more fun to assume he's suggesting that he is legislating for funsies even though he knows that will have zero effect.
Let's forget about the second quote from that interview, where Biden says that he can demonstrate that what is being proposed will not affect our 2nd Amendment rights. Because it's entirely false and no rational person should believe that. You may or may not have seen this: http://youtu.be/noy5f-y0uhY Now back to the first section which I included in my post with the Erin Burnett video. Biden spoke the truth there: So based on that statement; why should anyone support further restrictions to include an AWB or restriction on mag capacity (I won't argue against background checks)? I would just as soon have them ban lighters to lower the risk of forest fires, self immolation and arson.
I don't get how this is not abundantly clear. I will translate for you: Based on the full context of his quotes, it is actually quite clear that Joe Biden does in fact believe that the gun control laws will lead to fewer mass shooting deaths. What you and Joe Biden disagree upon is the relative cost-benefit analysis thereof (and possibly the magnitude of the reduction, but that is unclear). Biden essentially says that it is morally imperative upon him to do everything in his power to save any number of lives. I think that's an unwise position for him to take, but one should at least debate him based on his actual argument. It is also probably likely that you and Joe Biden have different conceptions of what your 2nd Amendment rights actually are, so that is probably a moot point. It is probably unwise, however, to define rational as "he who shares my opinion on jurisprudence." Especially since the precedent is ambiguous on restrictions such as the AWB, including the majority opinion of Heller. I think the AWB is a very poorly conceived law, but I'm not sure it is unconstitutional.