26 replies to this topic

[TheAvengerLever]

http://firstread.nbc...in-schools?lite

Of course the National Rifle Association is blaming someone other than itself for the tragic shooting. I don't support gun control, but it's really really stupid to try to blame violent video games. You know, that thing that a bunch of people tried to do in the 90s until they realized that video games weren't actually the issue. Either way, it's neither the fault of gun groups or violent video games. It's the own kid's damn fault for choosing to do what he did.

[Sir Deimos]

I am too angry for words. I recently wrote an article about this bullshit for my website. Publishing pending.

[Fëanen]

These fools ignore the number of kind, gentle people who happen to enjoy violent video games, of course. It's all a distraction from the real elephant in the room - mental illness. What we really need to be asking is what factors of this young man's physiology and/or social environment led him to this, what warning signs there might have been, and what we should be doing - as a society and individuals - to deal with people who are so profoundly sick. Anything else (even the gun debate, though I personally find it baffling that civilians should need weapons of such a capacity) is secondary.

[Kisseena]

Yeah, people who blame violent video games are dumb.
I play violent video games and kill cops and pedestrians and hookers all day, and you don't see me doing it in real life.
Like Feanen said, it's mental illness. Not many people take care of it and if they do go see a doctor, the doctor just gives them pills to make them go away. It's just all messed up.

[Toan]

This press conference is the best case scenario for me, frankly - it was a fiasco. The story of the day won't be "listen to how correct the NRA is and we should listen to them", but instead it will be "my god look at how out of touch these bozos are with reality".

I think the era of blaming video games and being taken seriously is over, honestly.

[canas is back]

Not to my parents, or at least my mother. I think that there are many more severe problems with this than the whole gun thing (I am not for strict gun laws, but that is off topic). Mental health issues are the foremost of them, but there are other societal issues that I think are part of this.

[Egann]

Oh, Wayne LaPierre. You're usually such a sensible person...or at least not as insane as everyone else, anyway.

I get it; I really do. The shooting puts intense pressure on the NRA, and you desperately need a scape goat. But video games? And suggesting putting a policeman in every school. Oh, that's just brilliant; it's not like policemen aren't busy working on everyday crimes like homicides and robberies and restraining orders. And shootings always occur at schools between 8 AM and 3 PM like this one did, and upwards of 10% of children will be shot by random gun-wielding psychos before they graduate highschool.

Is there no end to the idiocy?

[Oberon Storm]

I think the era of blaming video games and being taken seriously is over, honestly.

Unfortunately there are a lot of pundits and politicians that are looking at Hollywood and video games as part of the problem. Even Jamie Foxx is pointing at violent movies.

I'm not a gun nut, but I also do not favor banning all guns. I do wonder how anyone can read the Second Amendment and take away from it that the people have a right to any and all forms of firearms. I don't know that banning assault weapons and high capacity clips would have really prevented this recent case. I believe he used primarily hand guns. But I have never been one to wait around for a high profile shooting spree before telling people that letting the assault weapons ban expire was stupid.

Movies and video games, I believe, are anothing thing entirely. Sure there ahve been plenty of studies showing an increased violent behavior associate with violence, but I don't think there realy lhas been one that wasn't just trying to prove an answer they thought they already had. I also doubt that any of those studies can even say that a violent movie or video game can make someone go out and kill. They also don't equip anyone with the ability to kill.

[JRPomazon]

This, I feel, gets the idea down pretty well.

[J-Roc]

Videogame violence let me outlet my rage about violence that was perpetrated against me as a child. I did get violent against others when I was younger (and if you want a bullshit counter argument as violent games got more realistic I got less violent), but now as an adult have only gotten in only a few fights and only when actually attacked and having to defend myself.

Counter-part, r-tards.

[arunma]

After the past year's worth of random shootings I'm starting to get on board with the idea that the second amendment is stupid and should be repealed outright. The Constitution also supports slavery, so at some level maybe we shouldn't care what the framers thought.

Having said that, there's probably not enough support for that sort of thing, so let's be realistic. I will say that putting police in school (police, not rent-a-cops) in schools would probably stop most of these shootings from progressing very far. But where's the funding and resources for that? Police are needed all over the place. School shootings are rare enough that it's impractical to put several officers in every school in case the worst-case scenario plays out. Then you're just taking cops away from places where they're needed even more. Often times on Contro we're able to solve all the world's problems. But short of taking away the damn guns, I can't really think of any ways to prevent these shootings. Yeah, it's easy to think of preventative measures after the fact. But what if the next shooting is in an office building or an amusement park. Already in recent memory we've had shootings at a political rally, a movie theatre, a mall, and a school. What are you going to do? Put armed guards at all of these places? Sounds more like a police state to me.

[Doctor Pogo]

The NRA is deflecting blame onto anything else they can, when they really don't need to. They can just argue their own case and they'll come out fine.

The deflections are a specious waste of time. Mass shootings are random events, and they're not new, not some sign of the decline of civilization. Mass killings have been happening at about the same rate since our species invented the technology to make them possible. About 150 people a year die in mass murders in the US, give or take, and that rate has been pretty much constant since someone started measuring it. These events have been happening since long before video games, since before assault rifles, since before movies.

The presence or absence of armed guards is hardly a deterrent or encouragement, and their effectiveness is mostly a matter of chance, being in the right part of the building at the right time. There was an armed officer at Columbine. There was armed security at that mall in Oregon. Not in the right place at the right time.

Trying to find significance in random events will make you crazy, and it will make otherwise sane people say crazy things.

Making improvements to the systems that diagnose and treat mental illness may eventually prevent some of these events, lower the rate. But I doubt anything will ever eliminate randomness from the world.

[Wolf O'Donnell]

The problem, of course, is that even mental health systems are fallible. If you make guns harder to obtain, this decreases the chance of a nutjob getting their hands on such a deadly weapon.

Take, for example, the nutter that went rampaging through a school in Henan province. As he only had access to a knife, the chances of mortality dropped.

However, I came here to make another point. Why do you need a gun in the first place? You go hunting? Fine. Have a hunting rifle. You do skeet shooting? Fine, use whatever the hell firearm is used for that. You want to protect yourself? From what? Criminals. Well, you wouldn't have so many armed criminals in the first place if you had repealed the Second Amendment earlier. Sure, criminals are bound to get their hands on guns, but if they're not easy to get a hold of, that restricts the number of firearms that end up in the criminal underworld. Your mugger or thief isn't going to be armed. It's only really going to be the organised crime organisations that are armed and the chances of the average Joe going up against them are slim.

It's a Catch-22. You need the Second Amendment to protect your rights to a gun so you can protect yourself from criminals, because that exact same Amendment has made guns so prolific that it's very easy for a criminal to get a gun.

And either way you slice it, an assault rifle? Really?

[Sir Deimos]

I don't get how people assume guns are so easy to obtain. They're really not. I applied for a firearms license. I was denied. It ISN'T easy.

[Oberon Storm]

Repealing the Second Amendment isn't going to get rid of guns. There are too many guns already out there. Going around and collecting them all would be a logistical nightmare. You could do the whole money for your gun thing, but even that is only going to be so effective. It would leave enough guns on the street for your low level thief or mugger to get one.

[Egann]

As the discussion has broadened to gun control in general....

In my mind, a gun is no longer a weapon which makes sense for self defense. In most situations, pepper spray is a fair match against a handgun and will fair much better in court afterwards. In an age where nonlethal weapons are just as effective as lethal force, there's no "good" reason to carry a gun every day or to have one in your nightstand.

So the real question for the Connecticut shooting is not "why did the bad guy have a gun?" but "why didn't all the teachers have pepper spray?" if we can't trust the teachers with nonlethal force, what are we doing trusting them with our children? Heck, bullying is a common problem in schools. Why didn't the students have a weak one?


That said, banning assault weapons makes no sense. I did a little research on the Conneticut shooting and--assuming he had the "assault weapon" super-large clips--he would have needed to be over 90% accurate to kill and injure as many people as he did. (50 possible rounds in the large clips for his handguns, 45 total injured/dead.) The obvious conclusion is that he reloaded, not that he had big clips. Imagine that all the "assault" weapons just disappeared from the Connecticut shooting. Congratulations; the (unused) .223 rifle in the guy's trunk disappeared. Wonderfully effective legislation, I see.

In my experience, most people who collect these guns do so for a hobby. They're sport shooters, people preparing for the apocalypse or for the Ruskies, or guys who just like to see how badly they can mangle a target with a 100 round clip. Why should we stop them? Because assault rifles are such ferocious weapons? They weren't even used!

Edited by Egann, 24 December 2012 - 11:41 PM.

[arunma]

As the discussion has broadened to gun control in general....

In my mind, a gun is no longer a weapon which makes sense for self defense. In most situations, pepper spray is a fair match against a handgun and will fair much better in court afterwards. In an age where nonlethal weapons are just as effective as lethal force, there's no "good" reason to carry a gun every day or to have one in your nightstand.

So the real question for the Connecticut shooting is not "why did the bad guy have a gun?" but "why didn't all the teachers have pepper spray?" if we can't trust the teachers with nonlethal force, what are we doing trusting them with our children? Heck, bullying is a common problem in schools. Why didn't the students have a weak one?

I have to say that's actually a fairly sensible solution. Giving teachers guns doesn't make sense, but I don't think too many people would object to pepper spray. Not sure it would help, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.

That said, banning assault weapons makes no sense. I did a little research on the Conneticut shooting and--assuming he had the "assault weapon" super-large clips--he would have needed to be over 90% accurate to kill and injure as many people as he did. (50 possible rounds in the large clips for his handguns, 45 total injured/dead.) The obvious conclusion is that he reloaded, not that he had big clips. Imagine that all the "assault" weapons just disappeared from the Connecticut shooting. Congratulations; the (unused) .223 rifle in the guy's trunk disappeared. Wonderfully effective legislation, I see.

In my experience, most people who collect these guns do so for a hobby. They're sport shooters, people preparing for the apocalypse or for the Ruskies, or guys who just like to see how badly they can mangle a target with a 100 round clip. Why should we stop them? Because assault rifles are such ferocious weapons? They weren't even used!

Yeah, the definition of "assault weapons" definitely needs some work. Right now it seems to be used to refer to any gun that looks scary.

[Egann]

Yeah, the definition of "assault weapons" definitely needs some work. Right now it seems to be used to refer to any gun that looks scary.

The problem is that the assault weapon definition is basically "any weapon with paramilitary connotations." Fully automatic weapons, large magazines, bayonets etc, and they ignore the fact that these are easy to fabricate independently and useless to most people. No, seriously. I have friends who full auto-converted airsoft guns BY ACCIDENT. Doing it with a real gun is not hard at all; it's just very illegal. There are lots of instances of criminals doing it.

The real thing the assault weapons bans of the past have ignored, though, is that in an actual gunfight I would prefer my opponent to be using a fully-automatic "assault" weapon over a bolt action deer rifle. Automatic weapons have successive recoil, which means that after one or two rounds the rest of the volley will almost certainly be aimed too high. If the bad guy has fired off enough practice rounds to compensate for that, he's a pretty accomplished marksman and could probably kill you just as dead with the varmint rifle I learned to shoot from when I was six.

[Sir Deimos]

Or he understands the concept of burst fire?

[Selena]

lol long post sorry


If no one minds, renamed the thread to reflect expansion to the broader topic.

Concerning the original topic, the NRA is obviously pressured. They didn't make an official announcement for several days, which was building media tension, and they obviously weren't going to say anything remotely negative about firearms or their owners because they're afraid of losing support. So, scapegoat.

As for guns in general...


The whole thing needs to be examined and redrawn. Psychotic mass murderers aren't as common as media circus shows want people to think -- they just sell good news. Firearm related accidents are the more common threat, but you aren't going to hear about them in anything other than - maybe - your local paper. Or just your average, everyday murders. So, yes, our mental health system needs to be revamped. Our entire healthcare system does. But taking care of the nutjobs won't put much of a dent in the overarching problem.

Some might argue that guns aren't a problem because, compared with things like vehicle accidents, they account for only a slim percentage of fatalities and accidents. At the same time, however, over 10,000 gun-related deaths per year (discounting suicides) is dramatically higher than what you see in other countries. Even in countries that have similar gun laws.

Logically, this means that guns are not the problem. If guns were the solitary problem, then gun-related violence would be just as common in other countries. That is not the case.

What's really different about America? Lack of firearm education. A gun safety course is only optional. And even if you do attend a gun safety course, they teach just the basics about safe firearm operation -- maintenance, using the safety, how to properly shoot it. They do not teach you how to do a proper threat assessment. Which, if you own a gun for safety reasons, is actually more important than firing the thing in the first place. Compare this with Switzerland, where almost every household has a military-grade weapon, but the people actually know their shit due to all the mandatory militia training they go through.

Whereas America has a problem of "My grandpappy owned a gun and took care of it this way, so I'm gonna do it the same way and nobody can tell me different." Which is a really good way to pass on bad ownership happens. Leaves more room for tragic accidents. Despite what the NRA or good ol' country folk may say, we are not a nation of responsible gun owners. We are a nation "buy a rifle and go shoot propane tanks out in the woods because AHAHAHA FIRE." I say this with firsthand experience, because that's precisely the sort of thing that happened on every single camping trip I went on as a child. People don't go to ranges -- they go out to the rock quarry and fire at soda cans. And, of course, you can get a ricochet right to the face if you hit something that's pretty solid, just like this guy with his .50 cal rifle.


I don't believe that the average person defending the Second Amendment is doing so out of a love of our Constitution. Nobody defended the Sixth Amendment when it was effectively overturned by Congress when NDAA was voted into effect. Probably because the right to due process, although arguably more important, can't be used as a toy.

I don't believe that this is about "being able to defend yourself from a corrupt government." Because while that made sense in the 18th century, when everyone from farmer to soldier was using a simple musket, it is laughably illogical now. Modern combat is all about training, technology, and integrating both. Civilians aren't trained in modern combat - they just like to think they are - and their AR-15 is nowhere near capable of holding ground against an A-10 that shoots rounds of depleted uranium from a cannon as large as a Volkswagen. You're screwed. Always. George Washington himself though the militia was useless, and that was back when they weren't too far behind the regular forces.

This is about instant power highs and devices that instantly make testicles feel bigger than they actually are. The average gun is used for recreation. That's it. People may say they keep them around for safety, but, more often than not, those are fantasies about being some big action hero like in the movies. "Man, if someone comes in here to steal my shit, I'm gonna fire two shots right between the eyes, hell yeah!" As seen on every facebook status update about guns ever. Here's the sad truth about personal defense with a firearm:

1) If someone actually wants you dead, you usually won't be given time to defend yourself -- even if you have your gun on you.
2) Thieves are rarely willing to kill you, and most will run away if you interrupt a burglary (because they don't want to be identified).
3) Tasers, pepper spray, and other non-lethal devices are just as effective at stopping muggings and general altercations on the street.
4) They also won't kill bystanders if you miss, which you likely will.
5) Watching somebody die is traumatic, even if they were trying to hurt you moments before. You will carry that for the rest of your life. This is the one that most often gets ignored, because people never want to acknowledge this.

A murderer waits until you're unaware to strike - one good, unexpected punch to your face will stun you and hinder your ability to take out your gun before they start pummeling you to death. Or, if they have their own gun, the situation comes down to who has the first draw. Which the murderer almost always will. A thief just wants your stuff, not your life. A credit/debit card can be canceled before it can be used by a criminal. You can replace your license. You shouldn't be walking around with your SS card at all. If you push a thief into an altercation when they weren't originally looking for one, you've just made an easily fixed problem worse and put your own life at risk to defend a piece of plastic.

There are so many people who fantasize about having a Firefly-esque "Big Damn Heroes" moment where they rush in and coolly blast away a criminal. People who dream that they were action heroes but didn't want to join the military, so they just buy copies of military-oriented gun magazines and dream about all the cool things they can do with all that professional gear. Sometimes that fantasy contributes to the problem, especially when coupled with lack of genuine training. It makes people trigger happy. Like that one man who shot a trespasser on his property, and it turned out to be his son coming home late.


I'd say that everyone should have to pass a mandatory certification class before getting a gun, which would include both how to operate the firearm and how to properly deal with hostile encounters (actually using the gun being a last resort).

As for assault rifles, they have no sensible function in the civilian world. They are purely for recreation and ego. They are terrible choices for home defense unless you're convinced the zombie apocalypse is coming or the Russians are about to invade. Assault rifles, no matter how big or small their magazines are, are suited for longer-range encounters where you expect to fire a significant number of rounds. Handguns are ideal for personal defense, especially indoors. Standard rifles and shotguns are principally designed for hunting. I would not be upset if assault rifles were restricted for purely military use.






tl;dr: Guns aren't a problem, because other countries aren't crazy, and firearm education in America is sorely lacking because YEEEEEEEEEEE-HAAAAAAAAW rednecks do what they want.

[SOAP]

Well I've been avoiding this thread for a while now since I caught some flak for my beliefs on facebook but essentially I agree with Selena on this. I do think guns are a problem though, or at least contribute to and aggravate an even bigger problem, which Selena really hit the nail on head in her post about lack of proper gun education. That's not to say I hate guns or that they can't be used for sport, but to say that they're anything other than a deadly weapon that needs to be handled with care and skill is just plain ignorant and downright dangerous. It pisses me off to no end when people say "Guns don't kill people, people do." Yes people kill people, but guns kill people too, even when the person handling it has no intention of killing anyone, like when Selena touched upon with accidental deaths caused by carelessness.

The reason I take this issue so personally is that I had a close encounter with gun violence myself when a friend of mine got his ass beat by his room mate during a party at their place. and goes into his bedroom to get his rifle. Somehow my drunk ass got the presence of mind to go after him and talk him into giving me his gun, which I promptly put back into his closet before he would had done something incredibly stupid. There were children there too, two of which were his two sons. While it was lucky I was able to stop a bad situation from getting worse, I shouldn't even have to be in that situation. This was a guy who had a documented case of PTS disorder after being discharged from army. Why on earth did no one see an issue with him owning an assault rifle? No one, not his room mates, not his wife, not even I ever saw a problem with it. He was some bad ass with a cool toy, and the whole PTS thing just made him seem like some tragically flawed hero. It's this kind of disconnect from rational thought that really bugs me about our country's attitude towards guns. The whole event was an eye opener for me and I feel strongly that I should have never been placed in that situation to begin with. In a perfect world, assault rifles would have no business being in the hands of civilians. And a soldier who was discharged and was found mentally unstable should not be able to own a gun at all. But such is the world we live in. It's a fucked up mess. All I ask is people use their heads a little more but even that's becoming too much to ask.

Edit: Going back to the original topic, I don't think the media to blame here either. Media is expression of society. It's like a mirror. If it glorifies violence, especially gun violence, it's because we as a society already glorify it. If you see how ugly you really look, blaming the mirror won't help.

Edited by SOAP, 31 December 2012 - 03:33 AM.

[Delphi]

I'm not for banning assault rifles but I do agree with Lena that it should be mandatory to take a gun safety class.

I'll admit that my family had guns growing up. I even knew where they were as a child. In locked cases under my parents bed until we could afford a gun safe and then they were stored there with the lock actually locked. On top of that, Washu and I knew and were taught to not even touch the gun cases as children as they're not toys. My dad wasn't keeping the guns so he could be a big shot hero. He collects them like some people collect art. He does put together his own custom AR-15s but they're not for home defense. It's putting together a work of art. The only time the guns came out were for target shooting where safety rules were observed period or you didn't go or for hunting with an actual hunting rifle. For hunting if you shoot it, you better be intending to eat it or use it in some manner because regardless of it being animal or human you have taken a life. You better have a good reason tor it.

When I was older, like 20 not 10, my dad taught my sister and I gun safety. It's been drilled into my head to the point that even if it's.a prop gun for a costume I have trouble not following safety rules. You keep the safety on. Even if you're just absolutely sure the safety is on, you treat it like it's not. Treat the gun as loaded even if you "know" it's not. Point it up or down or don't point it at all unless you want the thing in front of you to die. When the safety is off and you're aiming, you don't put your finger on the trigger until you are going to take the shot right then and there. If you're stupid enough to actually shoot someone, your life has now changed and will never be the same. You better call a lawyer before the police and get to know him really well throughout the years because you will be stuck in court the rest of your life.

I mean for crying out loud, gun safety isn't rocket science. You respect the weapon and what it can do. You keep it locked up. You realize that if you're the putz that thinks he's an action hero, you're the guy that likely can't hit jack and will probably hurt anyone other than your intended target. Hell even with violent criminals you're more likely to survive a shootout with one by running away and zig zagging as most of these guys can't track a moving target. If you try to have a gun fight, you or someone not involved is going to get hurt.

Long rant short, our culture doesn't have respect for guns. Most people if given a rifle would wave it around no big deal (something that personally scares the crap out of me and tends to instantly end potential friendships) thinking because it's not loaded or the safety is on means it's safe. If guns are to he what the media makes out to be a ubiquitous part of American life, then it's more than past the time to start educating the populace to respect the things. Hell I'd even be okay with a police officer coming to schools to not sugar coat the fact that guns aren't toys. The earlier we can instill that guns should be respected, the sooner we can start seeing results.

Edited by Delphi, 31 December 2012 - 03:46 PM.

[Egann]

Or he understands the concept of burst fire?

You try doing that in a gunfight. Knowing a technique in an academic sense and being able to use it when you're high on adrenaline are two very different things. Because I spent all of my high school researching and learning about this stuff, I'm roughly on par with a Navy SEAL in terms of raw, academic knowledge. That does not mean I am anywhere close to on equal-footing against one, though.

. Civilians aren't trained in modern combat - they just like to think they are - and their AR-15 is nowhere near capable of holding ground against an A-10 that shoots rounds of depleted uranium from a cannon as large as a Volkswagen. You're screwed. Always. George Washington himself though the militia was useless, and that was back when they weren't too far behind the regular forces.

For as much as I agree with what you said...on this matter you're flat out wrong. On an EVEN battlefield where everyone is playing the same game of World War 2.5...yeah, the U.S. Military will kick ass. Wars since World War II, though, suggest otherwise. Vietnam, and now Iraq and Afghanistan all feature a "militia" or an equivalent achieving Pyrrhic victories against the U.S. Military, if not outright holding their own, and in the last two that was without any major foreign aid. It's called asymmetrical warfare, and Washington would have called it dishonorable.

So no. Resistance is always possible, no matter what materials or training is available. Would guns really help? I don't know. I will point out, however, that the French Resistance did, indeed, use guns, albeit more to support sabotage than to kill enemies.

The real question is the reverse; do politicians want to remove guns from the population to make them unable to mount uprisings and resist political change? Let me translate this into political-speak; "Do we want panicked or desperate citizens to be able to riot with guns?" Completely different connotations, but probably the same meaning to the politician, so yes, I can easily see a politician thinking that for a secondary reason for legislation. I just don't think most pro-gun control politicians think that way.


If I had my druthers, I'd make self defense a required class for high schools. War and violence have been so foundational to who we are as human beings that not knowing at least the basics of war? It's like saying you don't know how to read or add. I'm not saying you need to know a thousand disarms like SWAT does, but you should know a thing or two about military history, know how to safely handle or render a gun inert (even if you don't know how to shoot it) and feel comfortable handling a nonlethal weapon. You can teach all that with rubber toys.

[Selena]

For as much as I agree with what you said...on this matter you're flat out wrong. On an EVEN battlefield where everyone is playing the same game of World War 2.5...yeah, the U.S. Military will kick ass. Wars since World War II, though, suggest otherwise. Vietnam, and now Iraq and Afghanistan all feature a "militia" or an equivalent achieving Pyrrhic victories against the U.S. Military, if not outright holding their own, and in the last two that was without any major foreign aid. It's called asymmetrical warfare, and Washington would have called it dishonorable.

This is true, but there are some key differences in play.

The age of invasion is over. If the US military had been allowed to properly unleash its full might and outright invade Iraq and Afghanistan, taking the countries over completely, those wars would have been over in months. The current war campaigns are tied down in a ton of red tape for fear of upsetting the global community. We influence puppet leaders, some of whom aren't exactly useful or cooperative, and we don't have direct authority over their otherwise inept security forces. Our goal in these countries is to peacefully withdraw and leave behind stable governments that we have no direct control over. The US is amazing in a real war campaign, but when it comes to these sort of issues the US is a lot like Tim Allen trying to fix things on Home Improvement. We don't get to invade and take over. We invade and dick around for a while without being able to seize direct control of the place. Of course we get shot up. And after so many years of lingering in a country without being able to actually take it over, we eventually get fed up and go home without accomplishing much. Like 'Nam.


Civil Wars are different. Nobody's likely to properly intervene, and nobody's likely to care much one way or the other if we blow up half of our country during an internal conflict. We wouldn't be restricted like we would in a foreign crisis. The only restrictions placed on soldiers would be dictated by the personal morals of the leaders in charge. It's true that the victor of a civil war will have to rule over the remnants of the losing side, thus promoting the notion that you've got to be especially fair, but then two little words come to mind:

General Sherman.

The only first hand experience we have of civil war indicates that the US federal government has no qualms about burning your house, your land, your food sources, and everything you love to the ground. Without a whole lot of remorse. And the 1860s were admittedly a different age with different views on combat, but it was an age where militias had lapsed behind the regular army just enough to where it proved that minor armed resistance really did nothing after proper forces were eliminated. And they will eventually give up.

Though not surrender those Confederate flags put on the back of trucks. And Scarlett O'Hara did get to shoot that one Northern guy.

[arunma]

Couldn't have put it better myself Lena. I find the idea that we need guns to overthrow the government somewhat ridiculous. Let's say, though, that such a feat was possible for a bunch of idiot rural folk with their shotguns. This, I think, is all the more reason to simply ban all civilian ownership of firearms. Contrary to popular belief the US Constitution does not have any provisions for its own overthrow. Some cite the Declaration of Independence as proof that the founders believed it's always OK to overthrow a government if you don't like it. If so, I'd like to know why many those same founders, namely the Federalists, went and passed the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts just a quarter century later.

A plain reading of the Second Amendment shows that there is no mention of armed rebellion, and I'm curious if anyone can produce court opinions that say otherwise.

[Sir Deimos]

Or he understands the concept of burst fire?

You try doing that in a gunfight. Knowing a technique in an academic sense and being able to use it when you're high on adrenaline are two very different things. Because I spent all of my high school researching and learning about this stuff, I'm roughly on par with a Navy SEAL in terms of raw, academic knowledge. That does not mean I am anywhere close to on equal-footing against one, though.

... what? I've fired automatics. Burst fire really isn't overly difficult. Some techniques, yes, require training and much practice, but to say that burst fire is impossible to apply in one of these scenarios is ludicrous. Some automatics even have the option to be set between single shot, burst, and automatic. Which takes any small amount of guess work out of the equation.

[Nameless_Joe]

Just finished reading this article :

http://www.polygon.c...y-violent-video

Thought it might be relevant to the violent video game aspect of this thread. Another example of how mass mentality hasn't changed.

Edited by Nameless_Joe, 02 January 2013 - 08:56 PM.