‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
LEWISTON, ME—In the hours following a violent rampage in Maine in which a lone attacker killed at least 16 individuals and injured numerous others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Wednesday that there was no way to prevent...
I am aware this is satire. But this line is a direct quote from so many people, with a completely straight dace
There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this individual from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted
“But they could use a knife or a bat or a car!”
Without seeing the fact that having such free access to “tools” designed for the sole purpose of killing many people in as little time as possible.
Anyone against gun control is completely smooth brained. Anyone who complains about gun control, that the government shouldn’t control and regulate access, that they need multiple guns for “self defence” should not be allowed access to any gun.
Another common one is
“buh only criminals will have guns”,
except that never happens in any other developed nation.
Its for self defense
Sure. From other people with guns. And not a single shooting has been stopped by “good guy with gun™️”.
/rant
85The second amendment is nominally there to allow people to form state militias in case the United States get invaded. With that in mind (and ignoring the many ways in which this kind of militia is completely irrelevant for defense purposes these days) we can come up with a reasonable compromise.
Anyone is allowed to own any gun they want. Access to ammunition is strictly regulated; only the state and shooting ranges are allowed to own ammo at all and the latter are under very strict supervision. Unlawful possession of ammunition is a felony.
In case the US Army is overrun each state will conscript all gun owners and issue them ammunition from the stockpile so they can go out and engage any enemy forces susceptible to infantry attack.
I'm sure all fans of the second amendment are going to love this plan. /s
28That’s pretty much the setup that early colonists had, and it makes a lot of sense.
Ammo and muskets were kept in an armory, cuz it was dangerous to have powder laying around your candlelit home and muskets required frequent maintenance by skilled craftsmen.
Firearms were also somewhat collectively-owned, because they were primarily a means of collective defense.
Think about it: You’ve got the British in the ocean to the East, rival colonies to the North and South, indigenous tribes to the West, and the ever-present possibility of a mob of outlaws literally taking over your town.
It’s a very different world, and a very different relationship to weaponry.
7btw. i believe this is somewhat similar to how Switzerland handles assault rifles nowadays. There are situations where you are allowed to have an assault rifle at home or even carry it in public but the ammo has to be locked away at a central storage that is guarded. They can very quickly hand out the ammo to the holders if necessary, i.e. for training on the shooting range. I am not Swiss so this is only hearsay though.
1The second amendment is nominally there to allow people to form state militias in case the United States get invaded.
I want to add to this, because it's never mentioned.
As with most problems in the world (prove me wrong), it can be traced back to British colonialism. The British usually disarmed everyone in their colonies, but American colonists were allowed to have guns and form militias because they were actively forcing Natives off their land.
Basically everyone had guns or access to them, and every colony had militias. Without them, there's no chance the colonists could have then taken on the strongest empire in the world.
So now the line is that we need guns to fight tyranny, or whatever.
But... We did that. We won. We have a "democracy" now. We rounded up or killed all the Natives and fulfilled our Manifest Destiny™️. We have the most powerful military in the fucking visible universe.
Does my dumbass alcoholic neighbor Randy really need an AR to fight the gubmint?
0
Not entirely true. There was that guy in Colorado who drew his weapon, and took out an active shooter. Then the police rolled in, mistook him for the threat, and promptly killed him. Yay, armed society! /s
1Sad watching people like you type out a bunch of nonsense as though it's true.
I guess that's why people like you are so 'up in arms' about gun control; you're living in a fantasy world where you think that criminals don't have guns in other developed nations.
0It's weird, my guns have never committed a mass shooting, yet people say that they're a problem...
-4A 1km ball of enriched uranium has never committed murder, either. Should I drop one by your pillow at night?
5
Not a single shooting has been stopped by a good guy with a gun? Here's some light reading for you.
Indiana shooter stopped by civilian
Why would you make a claim that us so easily debunked? What purpose did that serve?
-6Over 500 mass shootings. And that's this year alone.
So yah, EXTREMELY light reading bro.
3I feel like there's some room to explore how many needless deaths have occurred the the hands of overzealous gun owners. I'll be honest, I don't know the statistics on "rightful" and "wrongful" executions.
There's at least two side to every argument, focusing on one side in any argument will only allow you to prove your own point.
2
I hope the writer for this article makes residuals. They're getting a lot of use out of it
61It would be darkly funny if they had an “____ Days Since We Had to Repost This” counter for it.
1It will be stuck at 0
1
That's the real American tragedy, that we've been beaten into believing that "nothing can be done to prevent this." Something COULD be done, it just won't be. I'm sure as we learn more about this reprehensible idiot who caused this sick misery, we'll come to find out there were all kinds of red flags on his social media posts and his emails and his past arrest records and yet nobody bothered to take them seriously, or cared enough about him to connect him with psychotherapy and medication. Sad. Because the truth is, this kind of thing is always ENTIRELY preventable - if only Americans were smarter about gun control and less obsessed with violence as some sort of solution (which it never is). A sad country indeed.
45He was committed to a mental health facility for two weeks in the summer of 2023. He's talked about hearing voices. He's threatened to shoot up a National Guard station. He and his associates are well-known local right-wing militia gun nuts that "people knew to stay away from." None of that was sufficient to restrict his access to firearms.
49I don't even really care about guns. I don't like them and wish there were far fewer of them, but if reducing the number and availability of guns is off the table, there's still plenty of room to work -- and if this political conversation had even one shred of honesty, we'd be working even with that constraint.
Even in gun policy, there's so much reform we could make to reduce danger that doesn't impact someone's ability to own a gun. For example, universal registration, repeal the Dickey amendment and fund research, impose strict liability to gun owners for crimes committed with their guns.
And most people seem to support red flag laws and universal background checks, but for some reason we can't expand those either?
Not to mention that it is a simple matter of fact that the US can and does ban all kinds of arms. And, aside from a tiny lunatic fringe, no one really thinks it is an issue. You can't just have and bring with you a fighter jet, a tank. You can't open carry explosive ordinance. You can't go to a gun show and buy chemical WMDs or bio-weapons. You can't drive around with a full machine gun mounted to the flatbed of your 3-ton pickup. We have rules that are uncontentious, and the idea that maybe some types of modern guns should be in the same category is fiddling with a line in the sand.
And guns are only a small part of the picture. We need poverty intervention and social welfare. We need consent-based policing and the better training that comes with it. We need to fix our urban design so people have better third places and are less isolated from one another. Yet if you try to do anything like this, the same people that fetishize guns will absolutely refuse to even think about it and will indeed try to roll back what does exist to make the problems worse.
At the end, it's a very two-sided debate. One side wants to test and try changes to make things maybe even just a bit better. The other refuses to do anything and would like for it to even be a bit worse.
13"if only Americans were smarter" we can just leave it at that. This fucking country is full of idiots who will never do any good in this world because they're too stupid to even know where to start
5
"We did nothing and we are all out of options!"
20Well that's a huge problem in my view. You SHOULD care INCREDIBLY about the horrific proliferation of guns.
What scares me most today is that people have this blinder on that keeps them from being able to see guns as the atrocious, and utterly ugly death-dealing devices they truly are. Sure, people can inadvertently kill someone with a car by misusing it while high or not paying attention - people can use bats, chairs, cleavers, knives and other inanimate objects. But there's a huge difference. Those things aren't MADE to be lethal weapons. A gun however has only ONE purpose, to create a lethal wound to cause death. It IS MADE TO BE LETHAL WEAPON. PERIOD.
And that should terrify you - but for some reason (and this really is horrifying) it doesn't. And that really is horrific to contemplate. Guns are not just a small part of the picture. This culture of gun worship and loving the way guns kill and maim things - it's really the most perverse sort of filth imaginable, it should horrify the LIVING SHIT out of you and all decent people!! ALL DECENT PEOPLE!!
Yes some very mentally disturbed people do fetishize guns, which to me is like fetishizing child rape or necrophilia, only I'd rather have those two than people slobbering over a love of guns - because those two things are fixable. A fixation on guns seems to be only fixable by extreme measures such as shock treatment or incarceration of the individual for life.
We DO need to expand and support red flag laws. But even more so, we need to revolt against the corrupted filth pedalled by the NRA and its folllowers and show gun nuts for the crazy, sick, wanting to kill mentality, the horrid and debilitating illness, that it truly is. There are NO two sides to this debate. You DO NOT get to have it both ways -- LOVE GUNS and then be shocked when kids and people on the street get mowed down "just for fun."
Anyone who loves guns has no right to feel bad about these mass shootings!! The blood of all these kids is on THEIR hands forever.
5Comparing it to cars just makes it even more obvious. You need a license to drive one. If your eyesight is too bad, they won't let you drivr. Your doctor can advise against you driving for many reasons and your license gets revoked.
4The only reason I did is because people always reply, "well cars are deadly too and nobody is trying to ban THEM." And my point is, cars are not designed to be deadly, in fact, they're designed with safety features specifically to avoid that happening. Yes they get misused by people who are drunk or going too fast and not paying attention - so why would you give someone who could carelessly turn a non-deadly object into a deadly one, access to a GUN???
1
Honestly in this last one I think the proper authorities really dropped the ball. As soon as this guy went into a mental facility he should have been flagged for having guns and steps should have been taken to restrict his access to them. You're using a very broad brush to paint all gun owners one way when it's absolutely not the case. Some people take self defense extremely seriously. Look out at human history. Look out at the natural world. Killing is a serious constant in life. If you want to see what people are capable of when one group of people have guns and another doesn't, look at Israel v Gaza. Look at slavery. Small groups of people can control large groups of people solely for having guns. So coming back to self defense, the gun is the greatest equalizer, unfortunately. I believe in having smart, efficient, and effective gun laws, but at the end of the day I only put 100% faith in myself for protecting myself.
I think everyone I've talked to who carries a gun hopes to never have to use it in a life or death situation. I love guns and hate people who use them to kill.
2The passive voice in the second sentence is very telling. Who should have flagged him? Who should have taken steps to restrict his access to guns? Who had access to that information in order to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and take action? Our society and government doesn’t have a proactive mechanism to so. It is explicitly not the duty of the police. Our system is reactive; some private citizen could have petitioned a court of law, but who has the time, money, and interest to do it?
1