Taboo Topics (Heavily moderated)

[Mr. Mander]

Guns laws also maintained quite a bit of cultural relevancy for a long while after the Revolutionary War, especially when it came to western expansion. Everyone who had a homestead out west felt they needed a gun due to potential attacks by Native American tribes and for hunting purposes, both of which were somewhat legitimate concerns. That period probably cemented the American attitude towards guns, even though our meat now comes from the supermarket and the only bands of roaming savages are door-to-door evangelists.

[corsica]

which is why i'm saying it needs to be revised because times have changed and things are different; that was my main point

[Reyo]

I wouldn't mind the government making it harder to get a hold of a gun. Anyone who really wants one would/should be able to get one no matter how hard it is. What I don't like is the idea of trying to make guns less effective in the populous, whether it's decreasing the magazine load you can have, or outright banning them. I wouldn't mind it because I want a gun to keep in the house "just in case", I'm actually not the type of person to run around with a bazooka on his hip.

The thing that gets me is what the amendment is supposed to stand for. It stands for the basic idea that the people should be able to defend themselves, personally, from any threat foreign or domestic. Not the military, not the government, but the civilian population. Whether we need it "in this day and age" or not is irrelevant because it stands for a self sufficient civilian population when it comes to protection. Besides, we don't "not need it in this day and age" anyway since we still have crime where people would need personal protection. That is a part of the amendment as well. It doesn't matter how "less" crime is compared to the wild west since, until the crime rate goes down to 0%, there's still a reason for concern for your own safety when it comes to muggings, home invasions, rape, murder, etc.

What I'd rather have happen is they make it where you have to prove that you know how to use it before they let you have it. Offer classes, take them down to the range, make them qualify, make them take the things apart. It'll serve two purposes, it'll decrease the amount of guns in the general populous just by the people being shooed away by the complicated process, and it'll make those who DO go through the process more proficient so you're confident that those who DO have guns won't fuck it up. The other thing it does is make it where if you don't have a gun, it's your own daisies fault for being too lazy to go through the process, and not the government.

[TheStranger]

What I want to know is why people would rather set themselves on fire than limit themselves to handguns or rifles. If its really for "protection" and not because you think Red Dawn is gonna happen next week, you dont need automatics of any kind.

[Reyo]

The AR 15, which is what everyone is freaking out about, isn't even an automatic weapon. The main issue is people don't know what they're talking about when it comes to firearms.

[Tales]

Like someone else said before, why can't they limit it to less powerful weaponry? As many have mentioned before, parts of the Constitution are outdated - at the time it was written many guns took a minute (if not more) to reload and were only really effective at short range. Nowadays guns are much more dangerous.

If you want to own a gun in the UK you need to fill out a lot of paperwork and prove to the police that you're medically sane and not a threat to society once armed with a weapon. It's a bit more relaxed with farmers though, as they say they need them to protect their livestock from foxes and so on. There have been very few school shootings but each one has resulted in harsher gun laws, the last one was in 1996 and now all handguns are banned.

[Operation Awesome]

Tales, those are all rational points that make a lot of sense.

Unfortunately, therein lies the problem in the American gun control debate.
The most powerful people in support of guns are crazy.

Just look at this shit.

[Kamak]

The thing that baffles me about the Texas reps is that recently many of them have been caught double dipping for salaries, which was illegal but gotten away with because they didn't need to disclose their salary gotten from the state even though it was a set amount. They did this even throughout the recession when we were closing down schools!

I think that might be more of an overstepping of boundaries than this shit.

Also Rush Libaugh needs to eat a massive amount of dicks.

[Dire]

American news is just painful.

Thing that concerns me is even though these are extremists who are actually willing to take up arms against their own country, and there hopefully aren't too many of them. I get the feeling there are people who are otherwise sane but gullible, who back these crazies up. People who really think that their government would do anything by force.

I keep seeing stuff where Obama is referred to as a dictator and shit. But from what I understand he's had a hell of a time getting anything done because he can never get enough support for what he wants to do.

[TheStranger]

The problem is that, from what Ive observed, the US has glamorized both military power, and an idealized past of independent spirit for so long that anyone trying to change what the crazies percieve as the "true" American spirit is met with enormous hostility. Remember the Occupy movement and how they immediatly got accused of being lazy freeloaders for DARING to challenge the almighty business overlords? The obsession with a rose tinted past that never existed does more harm than good.

[Galaxy Man]

That's actually mostly because we're significantly too capitalist. The media is basically owned by big businesses, and they do indeed go out of their way to slander and hurt anyone they think could even partially be a threat.

[Kamak]

The average American isn't really too stupid, but unfortunately the vast majority are conditioned to trust the news. After all, not too long ago, the majority of news reporting was largely reputable and the crazy stories were usually easy to see as false. However, with news groups being bought out by politically minded individuals and pundits and talk shows coming out in large numbers, it's easier to spin that trust into a frenzy. After all, that scary music and those words make an awful lot of sense. And Obama does seem a bit off in that picture where he's got an evil looking grin...

The biggest thing is that these groups feed on fear. The majority of what they say hits home for people, telling them things like that if they allow this to happen, Obama's going to take all of the guns away, and then criminals will be able to break into your house and kill your family, and all you may have to stop them is a baseball bat.

Obviously, if this is what's reported to people, the majority watching would oppose putting their family in danger. However, it's all unsubstantiated, one-sided, and prone to omission of facts and factors, and that's where the problem lies.

[Riku]

Remember the Occupy movement and how they immediatly got accused of being lazy freeloaders for DARING to challenge the almighty business overlords?

Actually, this was largely due to the fact that a large portion of them were bandwagoning without actually knowing what the hell they were talking about. I have a relatively neutral view of the Occupy movement, but the idiots that gave the movement its mass really hurt the cause's chance of appealing to anyone that isn't writing their novel in Starbucks.

[TheStranger]

Remember the Occupy movement and how they immediatly got accused of being lazy freeloaders for DARING to challenge the almighty business overlords?

Actually, this was largely due to the fact that a large portion of them were bandwagoning without actually knowing what the hell they were talking about. I have a relatively neutral view of the Occupy movement, but the idiots that gave the movement its mass really hurt the cause's chance of appealing to anyone that isn't writing their novel in Starbucks.

Sure, but atleast they tried. What has anyone else done, aside from making snide remarks on the Internet? Problem is that people refuse to grasp the fact that just because THEY succeeded in doing something doesnt mean that everyone else has the same chance, luck, starting point, or anything else. Remember those obnoxious online photos of people holding up signs of how they got through college with oddjobs and whatever? Just because ONE person does something ONE way doesnt mean that the other 300 million people in the country can do the same thing.

[Riku]

But if you're going to join a cause, then you had better know what the heck you're trying to help. Otherwise, you hinder it more than help. It wasn't that a lot of them were trying to make a visible statement that the corporations as an entity should not be given the same rights as an individual person, or that the well-being of the majority sometimes requires everyone to suck it up and chip in, whether they're directly benefited or not. They were joining because that was what all the cool, outspoken people were doing, and because not "joining" clearly meant that you were just one of the sheeple, man. I put the word "joining" in quotation marks because related to what Stranger said, a lot of it was just internet comments of "YEAH, FUCK THE MAN. 99% WHOOOOO"

Keep in mind, I am not saying that all of the people involved were doing this. But much of the huge amounts of people that made it so that the Occupy movement seemed like a big widespread thing were.