It's not specific, because the reactions are the same for the whole gamut.

Maybe this is the adversarial thread and I was mistaken. Or the "have a specific, hard and fast stance on everything while never taking a half step back to gain perspective" thread.

Another thing I'd really like to see is helping a future generation fix this, considering how far away we are. People often say things like "there are already 300 million guns out there, there's nothing to be done"

That might be true, but allowing hundreds of millions of more guns to keep flooding the market will only keep this problem a lot less manageable in the future.

Then again, I suppose the people who say that don't even think there is a problem in their heart of hearts

"If you don't understand these terms already, why should you care? You should care because when you misuse them, you signal substantially broader gun restrictions than you may actually be advocating"

I pulled this from KC's link, and the key takeaway is that broader restrictions than I believe in could literally not exist.

You're going to get real frothy once you read up on 3D printing.

The gun debate is a nice distraction though, until the first successful suicide bombing here. I figure it's happening within five years.

You spend too much time in politics. Routinely resort to bad faith arguments.

It's much more bad faith to turn every discussion into a semantic debate. Nobody here is writing laws and we don't need to make sure every detail is covered perfectly. It was obvious that I meant "the type of gun used" in my post. It's irrelevant whether or not that's an assault rifle or assault weapon.

I would have much rather read a response about why maybe my reasoning was wrong and there's no harm in keeping those rifles legal. When one side is constantly hurting the efficiency of the discussion it's usually a pretty good indicator they don't have a real leg to stand on.

Maybe I have spent too much time there, but there's a difference between reporting on the existence of a bad faith argument that has been made dozens of times over the years and making one myself. Ikes among many love to disqualify any opposition that slips on things the pro gun crowd considers terms of art, regardless of any larger point.

Well if "make the bad things illegal" argument is irrefutable, might as well lock this bitch up.

It's not, but ikes didn't attack that argument at all. He elected to trumpet superiority over TuT by knowing the legal definition of "assault rifles," a term which TuT used colloquially instead of abiding by the precise legal definition. Is TuT's argument that we could consider outlawing guns like those used in this case automatically wrong because they didn't meet the precise legal definition of assault rifle?

lol trumpet superiority. #thathappened

Yeah, that link was terrible and not at all compelling. Anyone who says something like "we should ban assault rifles" clearly means "we should ban those guns designed to kill humans that shoot tons of bullets really fast."

Not having dip**** gun enthusiast type knowledge doesn't preclude anyone from being equipped to discuss basic gun control laws. Just lol

Wood,

The point is, the type of gun used isn't really any different than most hunting rifles. It looks bad ass and is all GI Joe'd up in terms of aesthetics, but other than that, it's just a semiauto rifle. Which 99.9% (note: not a sourced claim) of which are owned by civilians will never kill anyone, and which are already heavily regulated.

If all you want to say is "maybe if no guns were legal, this might not happen", then fine, just say that. Getting specific when you don't know what you're talking about just ends up confusing people who are into this at more than a topical level.

Remember when hoya had a really sensible post about NOT taking hunting rifles away? And then linked that nyt editorial? Well, the solutions proposed in that piece would in fact result in the confiscation of lots and lots of hunting rifles.

So I'd argue no, it's not just semantics, nor or terms just artful dodges to get around issues. Just say what you mean.

This is some sort of coordinated parody, right?

Am I being had? Are there silly geese in our midst?

Cho took out twice as many victims with handguns.

And while you might be right about it not being that big of a deal for laypeople, I'd concede that point. But when the gov't defines and uses the language in its laws, and then various gov't officials and papers of records routinely use the terms incorrectly, it's a problem.

So what? Restricting or banning assault rifles isn't assumed to be The Great Solution To Gun Violence. It's just something that seems reasonable and could slightly help while having absolutely zero downside.

How many lives were lost becuase they didn't charge at the gunmen/women?

Trump speech being covered on msnbc right now. Making no sense. No substance. Just quoting alleged poll numbers over and over. Amazing.

Oh ok, in that case you're right there is absolutely nothing we can do to limit the amount of people killed by high powered semi automatic rifles

Nice link KC

Oh and wook I'm sorry I didn't get to finish, but pointing out that TuT doesn't actually know what guns he'd like to ban or what a ban that would cover this gun would look like is most certainly an argument against his position.

Lol ikes.

Oh and the proposed ban was ALREADY IN EFFECT

Pretty hilarious. Also very slimy by MSNBC to even be showing this. They want him to win so bad lol.

Don't agree with the jargon argument because of reasons stated by wookie and tut, and because at least some of the restrictions people want (such as stricter background checks) don't hinge at all on specific types of firearms.

I do agree with the second argument. I don't like the current interpretation of the Second Amendment, but if an individual right to bear arms is indeed a fundamental right (in both the colloquial and legal sense) then you can't just take away that right capriciously