The 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century

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Kukulkan
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Re: The 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century

Post by Kukulkan »

honorentheos wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 6:48 pm
Another related trend line here is how gun sales and mass shooting deaths spiked in the spring of 2020 and have stayed high just as folks have been "picking up" on a negative vibe. It seems access to firearms is making it worse not better.
I would agree with you here. But if our goal is truly to do our best to eliminate gun deaths in the country, wouldn't an easier target be handguns, which kill the vast majority of people. I think there can be attempts to better control rifle ownership, but it seems that handguns are left in the wind and all of the focus is on "assault weapons."
honorentheos wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 6:48 pm
Also, mass shootings clearly dropped then spiked with the 1994-2004 assault weapons ban. It's not a mystery that limiting access to paramilitary weapons has an effect. The 1934 ban on automatic weapons had a dramatic effect as well.
I also would agree with you here. Data does show a clear drop in mass shootings. But data shows that overall gun deaths didn't really decline.

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I guess what I and others feel is that while adding better gun controls to weapons like AR-15's and AK-47's would certainly have an impact on mass shootings, it would have relatively little effect on over gun death. Mass shootings rarely breach 500 deaths a year whereas handgun deaths are in the thousands. As mentioned earlier, the fetishization of gun ownership is just as egregious as the fetishization of taking away "assault rifes." I am all in favor of making it harder and more inconvenient to buy and own any type of gun in this country. I just don't think either side really wants to solve the issue.
honorentheos wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 6:48 pm
While I believe the solution space for addressing shooting deaths in the US largely lies in asserting responsible ownership and use over unobstructed rights to access, it is not the case that access is a non-factor in our national problem. Fetishizing firearms is, in my opinion, the biggest hurdle and likely the cultural change that explains why the historic trends are as they are. People who view them as tools that involved passing on generational knowledge and safety culture aren't the majority of the problem here.
Yes, I do agree there is a huge cultural issue surrounding gun ownership. I think we can thank the NRA for that. I would be interested in what you think might be a solution for that. How do we "deprogram" people from their very emotionally charged views when it comes to guns.
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Moksha
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Re: The 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century

Post by Moksha »

Positive news for those who wish to commit mass murders. If you are worried about a means, what with talk of background checks on guns, consider mass poisonings like in this story from South Africa:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-new ... 2-27336527
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Dr. Shades
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Re: The 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century

Post by Dr. Shades »

Marcus wrote:"shoot at" in no way implies the enemy soldiers will be "deterred." You are equating owning a gun with the ability to accurately shoot and access to massive amounts of ammunition. you also seem to be forgetting that modern warfare has moved beyond the enemy arriving on a horse and showing themselves within walking distance.
Modern warfare has, but modern occupation has not. Did our own military have a cake walk after it occupied Iraq?
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 3:59 pm
-_-

:lol:

Good stuff, Shades.
So, if you own a firearm and ammunition, if an invading force occupies your hometown, you'll just sit back and accept the new normal without shooting?
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Manetho
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Re: The 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century

Post by Manetho »

Dr. Shades wrote:
Tue Jun 28, 2022 1:22 pm
So, if you own a firearm and ammunition, if an invading force occupies your hometown, you'll just sit back and accept the new normal without shooting?
Are you seriously under the delusion that it's militarily feasible to invade the United States?

1. No one who is sane attacks a nuclear-armed nation. That's why we haven't directly intervened against Russia over Ukraine.

2. Our only land neighbors are Canada and Mexico, both of which are far less populous than we are and don't have remotely comparable militaries.

3. A seaborne invasion of the United States would have to cross one of the world's largest oceans in the face of the world's most powerful navy. It's simply not happening.

4. Amphibious landings are notoriously difficult. The largest one ever carried out was the invasion of Normandy in World War II, crossing the English Channel and not a bloody ocean, and facing a German military that had already lost most of its strength after being fed into the meat grinder of the Eastern Front for three years.

5. If somebody, somehow, managed to get through all that, a campaign across the United States would face the same problems as invasions of Russia famously have: the land is simply too vast to effectively control. At this stage, and only at this stage, civilian gun ownership would become relevant, but even then, it's not the major factor. The Ukrainian military, not civilian guerillas, is doing most of the work in fighting the Russian invasion, and even though the Ukrainian military is far weaker than ours, Russia is stuck in a slogging war of attrition. It might seize some territory in the end, but full-scale conquest of Ukraine is already off the table. Note that the entirety of Ukraine is slightly smaller than Texas.
Last edited by Manetho on Fri Nov 25, 2022 6:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: The 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Dr. Shades wrote:
Tue Jun 28, 2022 1:22 pm
Marcus wrote:"shoot at" in no way implies the enemy soldiers will be "deterred." You are equating owning a gun with the ability to accurately shoot and access to massive amounts of ammunition. you also seem to be forgetting that modern warfare has moved beyond the enemy arriving on a horse and showing themselves within walking distance.
Modern warfare has, but modern occupation has not. Did our own military have a cake walk after it occupied Iraq?
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 3:59 pm
-_-

:lol:

Good stuff, Shades.
So, if you own a firearm and ammunition, if an invading force occupies your hometown, you'll just sit back and accept the new normal without shooting?
:roll:
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Re: The 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century

Post by Dr. Shades »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Tue Jun 28, 2022 2:39 pm
Dr. Shades wrote:
Tue Jun 28, 2022 1:22 pm
So, if you own a firearm and ammunition, if an invading force occupies your hometown, you'll just sit back and accept the new normal without shooting?
:roll:
Why not? Did your oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America become null and void when your term of enlistment expired?
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Re: The 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century

Post by Marcus »

Dr. Shades wrote:
Tue Jun 28, 2022 3:12 pm
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Tue Jun 28, 2022 2:39 pm
:roll:
Why not? Did your oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America become null and void when your term of enlistment expired?
:lol: did you think the oath meant everyone would magically acquire sniper skills in the event of an invasion?
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Re: The 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century

Post by Chap »

The fantasy that a miscellany of gun-fancying individual civilians is likely to present any serious obstacle to a military force which, by hypothesis, is powerful and ruthless enough to have already succeeded in invading part of the contiguous territory of the US is ... well, a fantasy.

What makes a military unit powerful is certainly, in part, its weaponry. But much of the rest of its effectiveness - perhaps most of it - comes from the highly trained coordination and mutual assistance of its members, and from their combined experience of fighting. Next to that, the effectiveness of individual civilians whose military experience is limited to range firing and walking around in body armour displaying their AR-15s in city centers to upset liberals is likely to prove negligible.
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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: The 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Dr. Shades wrote:
Tue Jun 28, 2022 3:12 pm
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Tue Jun 28, 2022 2:39 pm
:roll:
Why not? Did your oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America become null and void when your term of enlistment expired?
-_-
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
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Re: The 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century

Post by Schreech »

Dr. Shades wrote:
Tue Jun 28, 2022 1:22 pm
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Mon Jun 27, 2022 3:59 pm
-_-

:lol:

Good stuff, Shades.
So, if you own a firearm and ammunition, if an invading force occupies your hometown, you'll just sit back and accept the new normal without shooting?
Hell no! I’ve seen that movie too!!

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