Gun Control Frenzy

[jamil]

It is OK. It should be linked to the voting age. along with the draft age.

If the Democrats want to lower the voting age to 16 then the draft age and the age of majority to buy, own and carry a handgun go right along with it

If you’re old enough to be conscripted, you’re old enough to vote, drink, smoke, own firearms, and drive a rental car. Okay. Maybe not the rental car. That’s probably going too far.

 

[Phase2]

If you’re old enough to be conscripted, you’re old enough to get an ID and vote, drink, smoke, own firearms, and drive a rental car. Okay. Maybe not the rental car. That’s probably going too far.

FTFY

 

[jamil]

FTFY

Well, thanks, but no, you didn't fix it. I said it the way I meant it. My statement wasn't about voter ID. It was about being consistent with a legal acknowledgement of the age of maturity, and thus the intersection of the age at which rights become legally protected with the age at which one becomes eligible to take responsibility for defending his country. If you're mature enough to protect your countrymen's rights against foreign enemies, you're mature enough to have your country protect the same rights domestically. That discussion stands apart from the discussion of rules for voting.

But if you want to talk about that topic...

 

[Phase2]

Well, thanks, but no, you didn't fix it. I said it the way I meant it. My statement wasn't about voter ID. It was about being consistent with a legal acknowledgement of the age of maturity, and thus the intersection of the age at which rights become legally protected with the age at which one becomes eligible to take responsibility for defending his country. If you're mature enough to protect your countrymen's rights against foreign enemies, you're mature enough to have your country protect the same rights domestically. That discussion stands apart from the discussion of rules for voting.

But if you want to talk about that topic...

You read it wrong. Having an ID is required for most all of the acts you listed. Voting is an exception that shouldn't exist.

 

[jamil]

Yeah...if only we could get folks to see analogies and be consistent in their beliefs, like he tries to do here:

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6136225112001#sp=show-clips

Consistency works both ways. If voter ID suppresses minorities right to vote, an ID required to do anything suppresses whatever the thing is that it's required to do. If you need an ID to vote, and that requirement suppresses your right to vote, and you need an ID to ****, then logically it would suppress the right to ****.

But then expand that to firearms. Obviously if it suppresses one thing, it either suppresses the other thing as well, or neither. So then, if you're going to argue in favor of voter ID, and that it doesn't suppress the right to vote, then it makes it hard to argue that requiring an ID to do other things suppresses that thing. Like ****ing. Or the right to own and carry firearms.

You can't argue that requiring ID does not suppress the right to do one while arguing that it does suppress the right to do the other. So you have to decide whether you really want consistency, or you really want the law to be what you most care about, without regard for principle or consistency.

 

[jamil]

You read it wrong. Having an ID is required for most all of the acts you listed. Voting is an exception that shouldn't exist.

When I posted that, I had the video in mind that GFGT posted. If you think ID should be required to do all those things, then you can have your cake and eat it too. I do like that the guy brought up the gun argument. And the gentlemen that took issue with it did not understand that the discussion was not about guns, but was primarily about making them own the inconsistency of their positions.

They were arguing that requiring ID to vote disenfranchises black people's right to vote. But then the congressman made them essentially admit it's not really about requiring the ID to exercise a right, because they didn't give a **** if it was required to exercise rights they don't care about. I wish he would have made that point clearer when the guy at the end insisted that hearing was about voter rights. If you really think voter ID suppresses rights. Be consistent or STFU.

 

[Phase2]

Be consistent or STFU.

??? Here, have a Snickers bar.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

??? Here, have a Snickers bar.

I think he was speaking in general, not about you personally.

 

[jamil]

??? When you ban me from the site, then I'll STFU.

Perhaps you misunderstood. I'm not saying you're inconsistent. I was saying the people on that panel in the video that GFGT were inconsistent for not agreeing that if it's disenfranchising to require ID to vote, it's disenfranchising to require ID to exercise any right. If you say it's only disenfranchising for one, it's not consistent.

 

[jamil]

??? Here, have a Snickers bar.

Calm down. No one's telling YOU to STFU.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

I think he was speaking in general, not about you personally.

Yeah.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

Consistency works both ways. If voter ID suppresses minorities right to vote, an ID required to do anything suppresses whatever the thing is that it's required to do. If you need an ID to vote, and that requirement suppresses your right to vote, and you need an ID to ****, then logically it would suppress the right to ****.

But then expand that to firearms. Obviously if it suppresses one thing, it either suppresses the other thing as well, or neither. So then, if you're going to argue in favor of voter ID, and that it doesn't suppress the right to vote, then it makes it hard to argue that requiring an ID to do other things suppresses that thing. Like ****ing. Or the right to own and carry firearms.

You can't argue that requiring ID does not suppress the right to do one while arguing that it does suppress the right to do the other. So you have to decide whether you really want consistency, or you really want the law to be what you most care about, without regard for principle or consistency.

It would have been nice to watch him go into such detail with these willful ignoramuses. But he’s limited on time as you heard the chair call him on. So, about all there’s time to do is point out their hypocrisies through some sort of Socratic method. Planting seeds by asking questions, I think is all he was doing and all that he had time to do.

 

[jamil]

Yeah.

If people only read the STFU part, I could see how it could be mistaken. But if you read it all, I have no idea how that would be taken personally.

 

[jamil]

It would have been nice to watch him go into such detail with these willful ignoramuses. But he’s limited on time as you heard the chair call him on. So, about all there’s time to do is point out their hypocrisies through some sort of Socratic method. Planting seeds by asking questions, I think is all he was doing and all that he had time to do.

Agreed. I would liked for him to respond to the guy saying it's about the voting, with "it IS about voting, AND about consistency. It's either disenfranchising for every right which requires an ID or it's disenfranchising none of them."

 

[Dead Duck]

If you’re old enough to be conscripted, you’re old enough to vote, drink, smoke, own firearms, and drive a rental car. Okay. Maybe not the rental car. That’s probably going too far.

Rental cars should be accessible to boys over 18.
Girls shouldn't be allowed to drive anything until they're 25 or 30 something.

 

[jamil]

Rental cars should be accessible to boys over 18.
Girls shouldn't be allowed to drive anything until they're 25 or 30 something.

yeah, I've heard that the Koran says women shouldn't drive.

 

[Expat]

yeah, I've heard that the Koran says women shouldn't drive.

I may have some muslim blood in me...

 

[ArcadiaGP]

Good read from the "No one wants to take your guns" subreddit.

Your future if they take your guns: the reality of owning a gun in The Netherlands, Europe.

As a legal and law-abiding Dutch gun owner, I thought I'd chime in and give you a realistic picture of what's in store for you if you one day lose this important political cause. Reddit is full of opinionated left-leaning Europeans who have never even touched a gun, so anything they say should be taken with a big grain of salt. It's a long read, but there's a lot to unpack here, and I promise you it's shockingly absurd enough to override any potentially short attention spans out there.

As an aside, let me point out something incredibly important that no-one ever seems to talk about when it comes to discussions of this nature: the psychology of gun control (and by extension) of self-defence. "Progressivism", almost by its very nature, is the embodiment of the slippery slope argument. Progressive generations rebel against what is considered the status quo, until they settle on something they personally consider reasonable. Sometime later, a new generation is born and grows up with the new progressive ideals being considered status quo, leading to a new wave of political rebellion that settles on yet a more progressive societal paradigm. The compromise between standing still and moving forward is always moving forward, even if only a little bit at a time. More on that later.

I've picked out a few of the more laughable or totalitarian-sounding things that are part and parcel of living in a country with strict gun control.

Joining a club

To own a gun, you must have been a member of a shooting sports club (pretty much a gun range that requires you to become a permanent member) for at least a year. During this year, you'll have to pass two club-internal "background checks" of sorts. The first one happens right after you sign up to join a club. A designated committee arranges a meeting with you, where you're seated opposite the committee and answer a lot of vague, personal questions. The meeting is aimed at determining if they consider you to be sound of mind and if they feel confident accepting your application to join the club.

The committee consists of people with no professional or otherwise relevant experience in psychology or social work. Any member of the committee may veto your membership application without having to explain their decision to you or their fellow committee members. As you can imagine, this is a recipe for discrimination on the basis of personal antipathy or prejudice with no accountability or transparency. The second meeting with the committee happens right after you apply for a private gun ownership permit (after your first year at the club is over), and is nearly identical in set-up and execution.

Government Background Checks

The first time you'll notice the truly totalitarian undertones of the whole gun control system is during your government-mandated background check, which follows if you successfully went through the aforementioned steps. The best example of this is the "e-screener": an online, fully automated psychometric test/questionnaire that the government charges a ridiculous $60 for. A few examples of questions (I'm not making this up):

"Do you always wash your hands before dinner?"

"Would you litter paper waste if there were no trash can nearby?"

"Do you have lots of friends?"

On the basis of your answers, the test passes a legally binding judgement. Remarkably, you may also fail the test by giving "too many socially acceptable answers", i.e. by being too well behaved. The common thread in the test is supposedly to test for impulse control, though it's obvious the test is an almost comical Orwellian masterpiece (make no mistake though: this ridiculous abomination can make or break your ambitions of becoming a firearm owner) whose diagnostic outcome depends purely on a subjective, government-approved template personality - and, of course, on political compliance.

One of the more sinister case-questions that stuck out to me was one where a scene was depicted in which you were going for a walk through a dark forest late at night with your wife. Your wife is then charged by a man with the intent to rape her. You carry a (legal) pocket knife on your person. What do you do? I'll get back to this question when I get to the psychology of societal restrictions on self-defence, and what that means to your country if you budge even a centimeter (or inch) when it comes to gun rights.

Spoiler: if you answered the above question with "I'd use my perfectly legal pocket knife to protect my wife against violent rape", you could have kissed your plans of owning a gun one day goodbye.

You've got your gun: now what?

In terms of storing your gun, you've got two options. One is to store it at your club, the other is to install a gun safe at home that must be approved by the National Police (equivalent of feds). The safe must be bolted into the floor and walls, or must weigh 200 kg (about 440 pounds). Ammo and guns must at all times be stored separately.

The police have the right to show up at your door unannounced to check if you're (still) storing your firearms and ammunition properly.

Say you've been at the gun range, and want to swing by your local supermarket to pick up some groceries on the way home. Or you want to pick up your kids at the in-laws. Congratulations, you just lost your firearms license. As per law, you are required to take the most direct route home when transporting your firearm. Stopping for gas is allowed only if you can prove it was absolutely necessary, and if you can prove it's en route to your home. In addition, during transport, your firearm and your ammunition needs to be separately stored at all times.

Screw the details: the psychology and sinister reality of vilifying self-defence.

You could spend all day picking apart the absurdities of the details, but the totalitarianism inherent in this whole thing extends far beyond guns, and IMO, is more important than squabbling about things such as gun safe requirements.

Sidenote: as everyone in this sub knows, once you subtract suicides and gang-related homicides (which we don't have in The Netherlands for reasons that are entirely cultural and societal, unrelated to gun control), you'll come to find that our homicides per capita aren't significantly lower than those in the US. In any case not enough to warrant the far-reaching gun control we have.

Either way, the psychology of firearm bans is a dangerous and insatiable one. Liberals in the US, who to their credit don't discredit mainstream science nearly as much as most republicans do unfortunately, turn out to be surprisingly unscientific when it comes to this discussion. Terms are made-up on the fly (assault weapons), statistics are ignored (i.e. the efficacy of firearms bans), the cultural component of the debate is avoided completely (i.e. the issue isn't guns, it's gang violence unique to a developed country such as the US).

The same is true with my friends here in The Netherlands. They recoil at the sight of a gun. I have friends who refuse to even touch one of my completely legal and unloaded guns, or who are visibly shocked if I pull one out of my safe in preparation of going to the range later that evening. I keep it to myself mostly.

Guns, and by extension weapons, are a symbol of masculinity, of violence, of aggression to them. These people inherently don't like them because they inherently don't like the feelings they associate with them.

And, as is to be expected, they will ban anything else that evokes similar feelings. Just look at the state of knife laws in the UK, or more specifically London. Turning to my country: here is a forum run by our National Police Corps where ordinary citizens can ask questions, and where qualified policemen can answer. The OP lays out a few situations in which physical violence is imminent, and asks in which situation he's allowed to use violence for self-defence (e.g., being surrounded by guys who are clearly about to use violence, or being grabbed by someone).

The answers are the stuff of horrors.

1. You have an obligation to try to flee first. Defending yourself while you also had the opportunity to flee will always be considered excessive violence in a trial.
2. If you really, really don't have any other options but to defend yourself, be prepared for a lengthy 2-year long lawsuit that will cost you your savings.
3. This one, as explained by the last post in that thread, is the worst one: hitting someone to defend yourself after they've assaulted you is not allowed, because it is not certain the assault will continue past the first punch (hitting them would be categorized as proactive violence, which is unacceptable). The only thing you're allowed to do in case you cannot flee, is to parry the punches (i.e., become a pro-boxer and parry potentially devastating punches). Anything beyond parrying is violence, and only a judge can evaluate whether you were justified in using it (see item 2.)
As you can see, violence has been abstracted away into a process that only makes sense on paper and in judicial terms. Imagine having to flee knowing your attacker might catch up to you (men who assault or rob people usually aren't overweight 70-year olds), because that's your duty as per Dutch law. Imagine having to accept the risk that the guy who's punching you might knock you out and stomp on your head - causing lifelong brain damage (we've had a slew of such incidents happen here) - because you're not allowed to neutralize your attacker - you're only allowed to keep on parrying until you find a chance to flee, or until your attacker just gives up.

In the case of a home invasion, your guns are useless. Ammo and firearms are stored separately, so you'd have to open up two safes, load everything up, and get to the scene in time. Not to mention that, by Dutch law, you are required to allow the home intruder to flee first (with your belongings) or else any defensive violence that you use to protect yourself and your family will be deemed potentially excessive (see item 2.)

As for the question on that e-screener test? The one about your wife getting assaulted by a rapist? Yeah, forget the pocket knife. You two have an obligation to flee the scene first. At most you can try to parry the attack, but that will of course quickly end up becoming a scuffle, at which point you better suit up for court. To successfully pass the test, grit your teeth, swallow your principles, bend over, and answer the way the government wants you to answer. They're not stupid. They know what lots of people are thinking. But that's not the point. The point is to drive home that you're under their thumb, and that you'll publicly declare what they want you to declare. Swallowing your principles is exactly the intended psychological effect.

Alienating people from their right to defend themselves is the most inalienable right of all. All other rights follow from this one intrinsic capacity of humans. Don't allow anyone to take your guns. Everything else will follow. By necessity.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NOWTTYG/comments/fcex4m/your_future_if_they_take_your_guns_the_reality_of/

 

[KellyinAvon]

Then there's this:
[h=1]O'Rourke endorses Biden at Dallas rally on eve of Super Tuesday, as ex-VP appears to offer gun-control role
[/h]Biden, taking the microphone after O'Rourke spoke, then announced, "I want to make something clear -- I'm gonna guarantee you, this is not the last you're seeing of this guy -- you're gonna take care of the gun problem with me, you're gonna be the one who leads this effort. I'm counting on you, I'm counting on you, we need you badly."


O'Rourke has previously said he would like to seize all Americans' AR-15 assault rifles, promising: "Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47," at a Democratic primary debate last year, shortly before his campaign collapsed.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-rally-texas-buttigieg-klobuchar-endorsement

 

[KLB]

Good read from the "No one wants to take your guns" subreddit.



https://www.reddit.com/r/NOWTTYG/comments/fcex4m/your_future_if_they_take_your_guns_the_reality_of/

That is insane.