The US War on Blacks!

[Berzerker]

it doesn't help Chicago much being a no gun zone when its surrounded by counties and/or states where guns are plentiful

[Ben Kenobi]

America as a nation-state is too recent to have developed the kinds of social conventions that allows Britain, for example, to go without a written constitution, trusting that everyone who counts believes the same as they do on what the unwritten constitution says.

Well, America is composed primarily of immigrants without a common experience - but even so, it's British system of governance, British legal systems, etc. Imagine what Britain would do if they had the same individual values as America? Also your violence is going up pretty substantially.

[Ben Kenobi]

No one cares if gangs are killing eachother.

So #blacklivesdontmatter ?

[Patroklos]

Yeah. I think that even if you tried to take them away, you couldn't do it. I'm sure you'd collect millions of guns but how on earth could you hope to collect them all, particularly from people who are ipso facto lawbreakers? You might reduce corner cases like this one where the kid gets a gun and goes crazy, but for street thugs blowing away street thugs? Forget it. It's not going to help.

The people you would have to rely on to do this confiscation, local law enforcement, are generally avid to rabid gun rights advocates and the owners of a good many of them. The chances of having this be enforced in any effective way are zero. You could call out the army, but then then you have the same problem x100.

[SlowwHand]

I guess Moby and Mr Fun are the most predictable posters.

[DaShi]

Considering how well they play you, I think you take that position.

[Hauldren Collider]

The people you would have to rely on to do this confiscation, local law enforcement, are generally avid to rabid gun rights advocates and the owners of a good many of them. The chances of having this be enforced in any effective way are zero. You could call out the army, but then then you have the same problem x100.

That's an excellent point. Didn't a bunch of sheriffs in colorado refuse to enforce the new gun laws there?

[Patroklos]

No idea, I am not familiar with that incident. It wouldn't surprise me.

[I AM MOBIUS]

http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-36131

Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

[kentonio]

That's an excellent point. Didn't a bunch of sheriffs in colorado refuse to enforce the new gun laws there?

It doesn't matter a damn what a bunch of sheriffs think if you're rolling out national policy. See Jim crow for more details.

[kentonio]

Maybe consider the fact that virtually all gun crime involves urban black and latino gangs, and find a way of eradicating those? Solving multigenerational urban poverty would alleviate an almost limitless host of social problems.

This is factually incorrect, AKA a lie perpetuated by the NRA.

So, do we have a gang problem or a gun problem? Data collected by the National Gang Center, the government agency responsible for cataloging gang violence, makes clear that it's the latter. There were 1,824 gang-related killings in 2011. This total includes deaths by means other than a gun. The Bureau of Justice Statistics finds this number to be even lower, identifying a little more than 1,000 gang-related homicides in 2008. In comparison, there were 11,101 homicides and 19,766 suicides committed with firearms in 2011.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-d...b_5071639.html

Makes you wonder how many of your other assumptions might turn out to be also untrue, doesn't it?

[C0ckney]

I think that the gun issue is just a manifestation of the real fear, which is fear of unbridled government. America as a nation-state is too recent to have developed the kinds of social conventions that allows Britain, for example, to go without a written constitution, trusting that everyone who counts believes the same as they do on what the unwritten constitution says. American society is constantly being re-invented (well, all societies are, but in the US that is more celebrated than feared), and individualistic, and government is widely seen as something to be tolerated at best. Some people fetishize this distaste for government into gun ownership and "my cold, dead hands."

Underneath it all, though, is the huge, gaping wound of racism and exclusivism, and to the huge and growing percentage of the population, government is feared less than their fellow-citizens are feared. Ironically, the biggest bigots are those lowest on the existing "white" social totem-pole, but the good news is that it is those people that can be changed with the right kind of education.

yes i think that this is true. people distrust government and think that guns protect their freedom from it. my point was about why people feel this way, when such a view is clearly absurd - people's guns have done nothing to protect them from mass surveillance or mass incarceration for example. i think it's because that guns are tied up with america's founding myths, so an attack on guns is seen as an attack on america and american identity. it seems that a shame that people are prepared to accept these very real costs for the sake of an idea that is, at bottom, completely illusory, but there it is.

one often hears that education is the solution to all kinds of problems, including here in brazil. politicians love it because everyone agrees with education, they can say "we need more/better education" and everyone nods their heads sagely. it's uncontroversial, unlike say ending the war on drugs or tackling inequality through redistribution and i think that this explains why it's always called for, rather than its efficacy or otherwise.

[kentonio]

We really need to get all these bad drivers off the roads!

..

“According to Bloomberg Business, gun deaths will exceed traffic fatalities in America this year. Can’t put a seatbelt on a semi-automatic.”

[The Mad Monk]

YES! A response!

[kentonio]

YES! A response!

You always get a response out of me eventually, you know that.