The Gaming Den

I honestly cannot consider anyone who denies that alcohol makes people kill and maim and beat each other as anything but a big moron.

Arguing about firearms is the same as arguing about alcohol. You can't ever be sure that the guy who buys a bottle of JD is not going to empty it all in one go, and then beat his family. Or that the guy who bought it suddenly has a personal tragedy, drowns his sorrows in the bottle and then goes nuts. So, why let anyone buy a bottle of liquor?

Replace "bottle of JD" with "firearms" and you have the same argument you lot are making.

Medical uses for alcohol? Sure, sure. Same as a couple of people are saved by defending themselves with their gun each years.

The point is and remains: Alcohol causes deaths and violence and personal tragedies. Probably suicides too. And yet you all lie and deny how bad it is, just so you can drink in whatever peace of mind your pathetic denial provides for you. You bring forth cries about how it doesn't work - even though per capita consumption of alcohol has gone down a whole damn lot since the days of prohibition, even though guns are about as easy to remove from a country as alcohol is, given the current proliferation and lack of a central register in the US.

You go on about how you cannot remove alcohol-cuased violence completely, so prohibition is bad even though it would prevent at least some deaths, and yet refuse to apply the same logic to banning firearms.

Yes, you can drink in a repsonsible way - but what about your neighbour? Why should we let everyone drink if some cannot handle it? Why is the little girl beaten to death by her drunkard father worth less than the little girl killed in a drive by shooting? Why is the family destroyed by alchohol worth less than the family destroyed by a gun related killing?

You call me uncaring, and yet you ignore the countless tragedies related to alcohol each time you pop a beer.

That's pathetic.

Ah, I see. That's kind of weird then.

FrankTrollman wrote:

Fuchs wrote:Did you actually just try to make a case about the level of personal freedoms in Switzerland by dragging up some edge case without any detail, probably an urban legend or some distorted news bit?

No. I chose the laundry issue because while a friend of mine was staying in Switzerland for a bike race, the police literally came to his door and forced him to take down his drying laundry. The idea that you live in a high freedom country in Switzerland is god damn laughable.

If I was going to cite a news story, I would probably bring up the fact that your vaunted direct democracy is literally and specifically capable of having the the majority decide that you are not allowed to build the kinds of roofs you want to build. Not for safety reasons, just because you don't have the personal freedom to decide that you want a minaret on your building if the majority of the country thinks it's too Turkish looking. That's not what personal freedom looks like. Personal freedom is when the individual has the right to choose what kind of roof they want to put on the building they are having built, rather than the government. But you don't live in a country like that. You live in a country where the state explicitly has the right to decide when, where, and how you are allowed to express yourself for any reason or no reason at all.

-Username17

Again, pathetic much? Do I have to remind you about the homeowner's associations asnd their regulations in your land of the free? We'd laugh at people trying to tell us that our garden has to look just like the others on the street, and that we need to put up suitable holiday decorations.

Yeah, we regulate what kind of houses can be built - with quite a lot of leeway - and it results in natural disasters doing a lot less damage because the things are built sturdier and safer. Kind of like we force everyone to have health insurance.

And yeah, we don't let people deny the holocaust, or shout racist insults here. I'd prefer less restrictions of freedom of speech, but hey - my side didn't have enough votes and I can live with nazis not being allowed to spread their hatred. I also voted against restricting minarettes, but again, my side lost. But that's the thing with democracies - sometimes things don't go your way, and I value democracy too much to wish it away just because sometimes I don't like the result.

But you know, we don't have trouble with people not getting to vote because someone didn't like their race and scheduled voting times accordingly.

And, Frank - at least my country is able to vote on higher taxes. Takle a look at your own country next time, before trying to diss others.

Fuchs wrote:I honestly cannot consider anyone who denies that alcohol makes people kill and maim and beat each other as anything but a big moron.

Arguing about firearms is the same as arguing about alcohol. You can't ever be sure that the guy who buys a bottle of JD is not going to empty it all in one go, and then beat his family. Or that the guy who bought it suddenly has a personal tragedy, drowns his sorrows in the bottle and then goes nuts. So, why let anyone buy a bottle of liquor?

Replace "bottle of JD" with "firearms" and you have the same argument you lot are making.

Medical uses for alcohol? Sure, sure. Same as a couple of people are saved by defending themselves with their gun each years.

The point is and remains: Alcohol causes deaths and violence and personal tragedies. Probably suicides too. And yet you all lie and deny how bad it is, just so you can drink in whatever peace of mind your pathetic denial provides for you. You bring forth cries about how it doesn't work - even though per capita consumption of alcohol has gone down a whole damn lot since the days of prohibition, even though guns are about as easy to remove from a country as alcohol is, given the current proliferation and lack of a central register in the US.

You go on about how you cannot remove alcohol-cuased violence completely, so prohibition is bad even though it would prevent at least some deaths, and yet refuse to apply the same logic to banning firearms.

Yes, you can drink in a repsonsible way - but what about your neighbour? Why should we let everyone drink if some cannot handle it? Why is the little girl beaten to death by her drunkard father worth less than the little girl killed in a drive by shooting? Why is the family destroyed by alchohol worth less than the family destroyed by a gun related killing?

You call me uncaring, and yet you ignore the countless tragedies related to alcohol each time you pop a beer.

That's pathetic.

Hey Fuchs. Maybe you should learn to read, like at all.

Ignoring for the moment that many of us have said absolutely nothing about how alcohol is a mandatory thing that we must allow, let us look at any fucking post about why you are full of shit:

Kaelik wrote:1) What are the negative consequences of banning all the Xs?
2) What are the positive consequences of banning?
3) How feasible is it?

So let us ask those questions about guns and the various things you whine about as being comparable to guns:

Guns:
1) Absolutely no loss of anything, because gun nuts are literally incapable of claiming that owning guns provides any benefit of any kind.
2) Drastically reduce murder rates. Also other violent crime. Also thefts.
3) Yes, totally feasible, because making guns requires skilled labor and fair amounts of capital, and those people would rather not be fucking arrested.

So we should in fact do it.

Cars:
1) We would lose out on lots of going places quickly.
2) Drastically reduce car accident fatalities and injuries.
3) Yes, totally feasible.

So we don't do it because we think getting places is worth people dying.

Alcohol:
1) Health benefits for moderate drinking, lots of people think it vastly improves the quality of their recreation, also, possibly result in a bunch of people who don't self medicate with alcohol and therefore beat people more than they did.
2) Slightly reduce the number of beatings that occur, or drunk driving fatalities.
3) Totally fucking impossible, since prisoners who are locked in jail cells and monitored daily while being provided with only limited access can make their own booze, I assume any human being who lives in a house and can buy their own groceries can probably manage a similar feat.

So we don't ban it only because it obviously doesn't fucking work to do it.


But yes Fuchs, you whining for an entire post about how mean we are to not care about drunks even though literally no one claims that alcohol doesn't result in at least some small amount of violence was totally exactly the issue, and not you deliberately avoiding the actual issue: That there are no benefits to guns and huge drawbacks, and that anything else you name is not going to fall into the same category.

Yes Fuchs, the argument about whether or not you should ban X can be made for anything, the difference is that sometimes, when you balance the benefits against the costs, it is in favor of banning, and sometimes it isn't.

I realize this is hard for you to understand, because you think it is immoral to punish you by imposing a speed limit on your driving because some other guy would get in an accident and you are a good driver, but for everyone who isn't an idiot, it is absurdly obvious that different questions sometimes have different answers depending on the facts of that specific case.

Alcohol and Cars have relevant factual differences that make banning them not worth doing. Guns lack any such reason.

It's a myth that alcohol causes violence.

Scientists have done some great studies where they tell people that they are drinking alcohol and give them non-alcoholic drinks instead, and people display aggression even though there is no alcohol in the drinks..

Here is a quote from the .gov site for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism:

Social and Cultural Expectancies. Alcohol consumption may promote aggression because people expect it to (5). For example, research using real and mock alcoholic beverages shows that people who believe they have consumed alcohol begin to act more aggressively, regardless of which beverage they actually consumed (10). Alcohol-related expectancies that promote male aggressiveness, combined with the widespread perception of intoxicated women as sexually receptive and less able to defend themselves, could account for the association between drinking and date rape (11).

In addition, a person who intends to engage in a violent act may drink to bolster his or her courage or in hopes of evading punishment or censure (12,13). The motive of drinking to avoid censure is encouraged by the popular view of intoxication as a "time-out," during which one is not subject to the same rules of conduct as when sober (14,15).

Their full report basically concludes that assholes who are violent drink alcohol, not that alcohol causes violent assholes.

Blaming alcohol is just a cop-out for cowards who don't want to take responsibility for their actions.

Fuchs wrote:I honestly cannot consider anyone who denies that alcohol makes people kill and maim and beat each other as anything but a big moron.

Or they don't believe wild conspiracy theories about fermented sugars engaging in evil mind control plots to kill all humans.

K does better by referencing the studies, but basically, alcohol doesn't make anyone do squat. People just like excuses for engaging in shitty behavior.

I'm just going to ignore the grand Den V Fuchs argument here and just go ahead and start my own question on this issue.

If a complete gun ban is improbable, how close are we to banning assault weapons and any other weapon that isn't normally used for hunting? While I don't see how concealed handguns are used for hunting, I'd also like to include it in the category of not-banned just so that we can at least move forward to getting more gun control.

Is it a logical step to ease into total or near-total gun ban or to just go ahead with a close to complete ban from the beginning?

alt text: The real cause of gun violence is gay drugs and demonic possession

I think that we are likely to see an assault rifle ban, and possibly a large magazine ban. People keep talking about how if the principal was a trained shooter, etc.. this would never have happened, and if guns were banned then the kid would have still gotten a hold of guns. Ignoring of course, the fact that the 3 weapons he used, he took from his mother, who bought them legally. If she had not been able to BUY them legally, then he would not have had access to them. It seems highly likely he was too mentally and emotionally disturbed to develop the contacts necessary to get an assault rifle on the black market.

Cynic wrote: If a complete gun ban is improbable, how close are we to banning assault weapons and any other weapon that isn't normally used for hunting? While I don't see how concealed handguns are used for hunting, I'd also like to include it in the category of not-banned just so that we can at least move forward to getting more gun control.

I've been hearing increased talk about:
1) Reinstating the assault weapons ban that ended in 2004,
2) Restricting large-capacity magazines, and
3) Closing loopholes that allow people to purchase guns at gun shows without background checks.

Now, it's mostly Democrats that are saying these things, but there is noticeable noise both among pro-gun Democrats and even some Republicans. Given that the above three things seem like a "reasonable compromise" and public support of stricter gun laws went up from 30-some-odd percent to a bit over 50 percent recently, we might likely see those three things in the near future.

sabs wrote:(...) It seems highly likely he was too mentally and emotionally disturbed to develop the contacts necessary to get an assault rifle on the black market.

Has there been any evidence that he was mentally and/or emotionally disturbed other than the fact that he shot people?

I am going to play a little Devil's Advocate here and bring up a point about why one should have a gun.

For personal protection against hostile animals: Now I only really seen this used in Alaska where bears are a problem and police/animal control would take hours to get to one's home if an attack occurred.

Like Clockwork . .
http://images.politico.com/global/2012/ ... draft.html

ishy wrote:

sabs wrote:(...) It seems highly likely he was too mentally and emotionally disturbed to develop the contacts necessary to get an assault rifle on the black market.

Has there been any evidence that he was mentally and/or emotionally disturbed other than the fact that he shot people?

More than one family acquaintance mentioned that he had a known psychological disorder of some kind, though it is not entirely clear what it was. Aspergers has been mentioned, as has Autism-Spectrum disorder, which of course are overlapping diagnoses so they could both be true.

Further, his mother took him out of school because she "didn't agree with the district's plans for him". We don't know exactly what their "plans" were, but they don't normally have special plans for children that a parent would fight over unless the child in question has some sort of disability.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but the pictures that have been circulated of Adam himself not only have terrible hair cuts, they look like someone who possibly has developmental problems. That last one isn't super scientific, but children with developmental problems often look a bit "off". And he certainly does in the circulated pictures. Yeah, that could be a bad photo, and it could be cherry picked from available photos to make him look more alien and threatening or something. But it's certainly a photo which is very consistent with someone having neurological developmental problems.

-Username17

If Violent video games really were a problem, ll of us would be on murder sprees. I always found Violent video games made me less violent. I took my real desire to punch people in the face, and instead turned it towards shooting pixels in the head.

*nods*
yeah, same here . .
but of course that fact that all of these sprees were in schools can't have anything to do with the schools . .
or with the fucked up gun ownership and gun laws . .
no, it has to be metal/rock music and violent TV and video games!

Well this latest one has NOTHING to do with the School.
A) It's an elementary school.. Oldest kid there is like 11.
B) Adam Lanza never went to that school, even when he was in the right age bracket.
C) Adam Lanza was homeschooled by his mother.

So, blaming the school seems ludicrous on every level. There's just no way some 7 year old bullied a 20 year old.
Fucked up gun ownership certainly had a lot to do with it. If it had been illegal for his mom to own guns, he would not have had any guns to use. He would have had a knife.. at best, and been unable to shoot his way into the school like he did. So realy, he would have not killed a single child if his mother had not owned guns.

Fuchs wrote: And yeah, we don't let people deny the holocaust, or shout racist insults here. I'd prefer less restrictions of freedom of speech, but hey - my side didn't have enough votes and I can live with nazis not being allowed to spread their hatred. I also voted against restricting minarettes, but again, my side lost. But that's the thing with democracies - sometimes things don't go your way, and I value democracy too much to wish it away just because sometimes I don't like the result.

Real democracies have structures and rules that prevent minorities from being oppressed by the majority. The US is far from a perfect democracy, but Switzerland really is no better. Stop hailing your country as a haven of freedom and liberty. It is demonstrably not.

K wrote:It's a myth that alcohol causes violence.

Guns didn't "cause" those shootings, either. Why is a correlation okay with firearms, but not with alcohol?

If you think alcohol is unrelated to deaths, you might want to have words with the WHO, the US DOJ, and the CAMH in Toronto.

(this last is not about violence, but it is about the fact that alcohol kills people. But Fuchs was discussing what society considers "acceptable deaths", not just violence.)

Their full report basically concludes that assholes who are violent drink alcohol, not that alcohol causes violent assholes.

Blaming alcohol is just a cop-out for cowards who don't want to take responsibility for their actions.

The irony of this, coming from someone who wants to ban inanimate objects because they're too dangerous (even though millions of people--billions worldwide--own and use them safely), is staggering.

Eh, I guess there's some mudding of the waters here regarding what we should ban or not.

• Alcohol: main intended use: Recreation. Abuse or misuse leads to unintended consequences (alcoholism, death, etc)
• Cars: main intended use: Transportation. Abuse or misuse leads to unintended consequences (injuries, death, etc)
• Guns: main intended use: Shooting living beings. If used as intended, they lead to deaths. If you misuse or abuse them? More deaths.

Stop comparing guns to alcohol or cars. There's no "rational use" of guns that leads to people not dying. If the big idea is "I have guns so I don't have to use them", well, this is also stupid. You're just helping to fund industries that put guns in the hands of less responsible people than you, including the very bad guys that you fear.

Finally, even if nobody here actually believe that, the "we need guns so that the government fears us" idea has gone full adorable in this age of unmanned drones. That people who spout this idea aren't laughed out of the room seems to be some kind of bug in our current social systems.

sabs wrote:If Violent video games really were a problem, ll of us would be on murder sprees. I always found Violent video games made me less violent. I took my real desire to punch people in the face, and instead turned it towards shooting pixels in the head.

The studies I've seen suggest a strong negative correlation between violent behavior and playing video games. Which isn't particularly surprising, since someone who is playing video games is doing that instead of being out and about getting into fights or whatever.

Okay, is anyone actually saying anything new on the alcohol issue, or is it the same fucking thing everyone has already shot the fuck down repeatedly? Do you have a point, or are you engaging in willful illiteracy so you can continue to shout ALCOHOL, ALCOHOL, ALCOHOL?

Alcohol is harder to ban than firearms. Alcohol is fucking easy to make. It requires almost no capital. A ban will reduce the demand for it, but not eliminate it, and it will put the production and sale of alcohol into criminal organizations who will get rich. Fuck, at this point, the U.S. has a moral obligation to start legalizing drugs; it will substantially reduce the power of criminal organizations in the U.S. and abroad, and the world will be a better place for it. Also; we have illegalized recreational drugs. Our prison system has no small number of people whose first offense was nonviolent usage thereof. And that is fucking expensive. Finally, alcohol also has the justification that it at least has a recreational usage.

Vehicles are easier to ban even than firearms. They are nigh impossible to make or hide once you have made and purchased them. A ban will even more thoroughly eliminate vehicles than it would firearms. A ban of vehicles would bring the U.S. to a screeching halt, because it turns out vehicles are how we go places in a span of time that is reasonable to include in our daily schedules. You could start a program of phasing out vehicles and phasing in lots and lots of public transport, and that'd be great. I am all for that. That is a wonderful idea. But a straight up ban of vehicles is a terrible idea, because it turns out they have utility upon which our modern society depends.

Firearms are pretty easy to ban. You can theoretically make them yourself, but those are shitty. They definitely kill lots of people. They have no justification for their existence whatsoever. Self defense? Sell the gun, the gun is more likely to hurt you than a criminal is. You are now better defended. Thank me later. VIVA LA REVOLUTION? Welcome to living in the modern first world. If the military doesn't support or ignore you, you'll die miserably. Also, hint: the people with guns are the ones that decide what happens after a revolution is successful. I'm pretty sure a successful revolution in the U.S. would make things so much worse. Recreation? I'm okay with targeting ranges receiving licenses to own, store, and permit the use of firearms on their premises, so you can just go there and shoot. But also, the vast majority of recreational shooting can be done with guns that are not actually fatal to people, and the part where people insist that the thing they shoot at targets with be able to kill people "because" is pretty terrible.

But mostly: public support for vehicles is high. Public support for alcohol is high. Public support for firearms is not as high. So it is actually politically feasible to look at this source of deaths and say "we can do something about that right now," which is not true for any of the bullshit anyone else is talking about. So even beyond the fact that banning vehicles is stupidly society-collapsing and banning alcohol is stupidly ineffective and crime-sponsoring and will flood our prisons with more nonviolent criminals and cause more net harm than net good by fucking lightyears, we can't even do those stupid, stupid things if we were stupid enough to want to because they are unassailably popular. Guns are not.

PoliteNewb wrote:The irony of this, coming from someone who wants to ban inanimate objects because they're too dangerous (even though millions of people--billions worldwide--own and use them safely), is staggering.

It makes perfect sense to me that getting assholes drunk makes their punches less dangerous, and giving them guns makes them more dangerous.

I'm not sure why you think inherent assholery is somehow inconsistent with the desire to not provide guns to people, while simultaneously providing drugs which do not cause people to be more assholy.

Stahlseele wrote: no, it has to be metal/rock music and violent TV and video games!

Personally, I don't think kids should listen to Jazz or Classical music, because they'll be exposed to too much sax and violins.

I overheard O'Reilly last night (my parents watch it), talking to someone advocating the idea that violent video games caused this shooting. Surprisingly, O'Reilly seemed to be on the side of "video games didn't cause this, bad parenting did." That or he was saying "we don't need to ban them, parents need to just not let their kids play them." Either way, I guess a broken clock is right once-ish a day...