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[Poll] Your outlook on gun violence in the US of A.

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by B-Bob, Oct 8, 2017.

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Which one or more of the following describe(s) your position on next steps wrt gun violence?

  1. Not much can be done. This is the price of true freedom in a country with violent tendencies.

  2. Not much can be done. The solution is obvious but we'll never have the political will.

  3. I think we should focus on handgun restrictions, despite scary mass shootings.

  4. I'm for minor steps: better background checks, closing a few loopholes.

  5. Major changes needed: Take the best-fit idea from another country and try it here.

  6. I think we should focus on mental health in this country, and that would help a little.

  7. Even if we made lots of new gun laws, they would not make much difference; bad people are bad.

  8. False flags, I tell you. Fake dead people, black helicopters, and the deep state.

  9. Other (explained in post below).

Multiple votes are allowed.
Results are only viewable after voting.
  1. B-Bob

    B-Bob "94-year-old self-described dreamer"

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    You can select up to three. I hope I got enough options for most of y'all. Honestly curious as to what resonates with most people.
     
  2. dmoneybangbang

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    Thoughts and prayers....
     
    justtxyank likes this.
  3. B-Bob

    B-Bob "94-year-old self-described dreamer"

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    Oh shoot. I knew I was forgetting something.
     
  4. conquistador#11

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    if a bad hambre wants to kill people, he's going to find a way, whether buying illegal guns or explosives/cars.
    I think mental health is where the focus should be but how do you help the ones that suffer from it if a) they don't come forward for help and b) politicians think there is no such thing as mental health.
     
  5. Space Ghost

    Space Ghost Contributing Member

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    Out of the list, I only found the handgun restrictions plausible. This is where we really should focus.

    We need a better focus on mental health, not just because of guns or violence, but because our nation is really struggling with this issue as a whole.

    One piece of legislation that I would pass is that every gun owner is required to own a gun safe. If a gun owner does not have a gun safe and their gun becomes compromised, then they can be held liable if their gun is used in a violent means.

    Secondly I would restrict guns and ammo (FFL dealers) to fewer groups. End this nonsense of pawn shops and walmart and sporting goods stores selling guns and ammo.

    Third I would find ways to encourage people to get licenses. I would not be opposed to restricting semi-automatic weapons to those who have a license, attend a class and pay a annual fee.

    This would start cleaning up the loose gun culture we have and start placing responsibility onto people.
     
    B-Bob likes this.
  6. B-Bob

    B-Bob "94-year-old self-described dreamer"

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    Thanks for sharing your two cents -- much appreciated. All three of those sound very smart to me. Do you think any of those would have a chance of becoming reality?

    I would guess the NRA would align itself against all three pretty strongly, but I could be wrong.
     
  7. Amiga

    Amiga I get vaunted sacred revelations from social media
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    Some others:

    If you own guns, you need to be responsible for it. Keep is safe and locked up. Too many are stolen every day. Kids killing kids and adults because of easy access to guns should be completely avoidable. Gun falling into thieves because they are left in your car should not happen. Have severe penalties that discourage these lax behaviors.

    National electronic database on all purchases at any place, including individual seller. It's crazy that we still use paper database. Speed up the process of background check (you can have an instant credit check but not a criminal check?). With that sped up, now you can expand the usage and close down all loopholes and you can crack down hard on anyone that violate the loopholes.

    Remove ban on gun violence studies by the government. Policies should be backed by data. Study, learn and improve safety over time. Without that, we are guessing half of the time.
     
    B-Bob likes this.
  8. FranchiseBlade

    FranchiseBlade Contributing Member
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    As I've said before in on this bbs. I think sensible regulations like banning extended mags, bump stocks, etc. may help the severity of accidents but probably not the frequency of the acts.

    What might have a chance to reduce but not eliminate the frequency would be requiring gun safety courses to own weapons and require more once every 5 years. The course should include a minimum amount of hours of live fire practice. This would help instill respect for the weapons, and how to handle them, and store them safely.

    That alone would reduce the number accidental shooting and deaths. But I think people who have a real respect for the guns and proper safety won't be as willing to use them to kill others. When people go buy guns and don't really have any experience handling them safely and think what they read, watch on tv or movies, play in video games is all there is to guns then they might be more likely to use them on another human. Have people's introduction to handling firearms be a safe one and that will be their association with firearms.

    There is a chance that the NRA might be more willing to agree to this because money can be made by firearms dealers offering the safety classes needed.

    I also think in order to propose legislation on gun control the legislators should be required to have hours of safety course including instruction on the range. This might help them approach legislation from a point of bit of knowledge rather than coming at the problem knowing very little about what their legislation really addresses.

    This approach might help all sorts of gun violence and accidents, not just the big media mass shootings.

    I have seen no movement to an approach like this at all, and so I hold no hope that it will be implemented, but it's the best idea of which I could think.
     
    B-Bob likes this.
  9. dmoneybangbang

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    Wind down the utterly disastrous war on drugs and replace it with the war on mental health.
     
  10. London'sBurning

    London'sBurning Contributing Member

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    Was looking for full ban on guns. Chose model other countries use that have banned guns like Australia. Would be for increased funding for mental health regardless of gun rights.
     
  11. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    I voted "Other". I think we need changes like a national gun registry, faster and more detailed background checks, restrictions on magazine capacity,banning of things that can convert a semi-automatic weapon to an automatic and etc.. I also think we need better mental health treatment, improved access to mental health, and better health insurance that includes mental health. I'm pessimistic though that much of those will get done. We already have so many firearms out there of all types that it is going to be very difficult to meaningfully reduce those and access to them. At the sametime while the pro-gun lobby might be willing to make some compromises like banning bump stocks I doubt they aren't going to agree to much more and will ramp up their lobbying and base to oppose most restrictions.

    On the mental health side we already see how hard it's been to get healthcare reform of any kind done. Many of those saying that we should focus on mental health instead of firearms are also the same people who oppose major healthcare reform and will decry costs and "socialized medicine" when proposals to put more money into health care, including mental health.

    It's probably going to take more killings and killings that are accross the whole social spectrum before we see real change.
     
  12. Sweet Lou 4 2

    Sweet Lou 4 2 Contributing Member
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    Until the majority of people start being traumatized by gun violence and losing family members or close friends to guns - there will be no change. It will need to get much much worse before it starts to get better.

    It's just a sad state of affairs.
     
    Granville likes this.
  13. WNBA

    WNBA Member

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    should be 100% ban on any firearm.
     
  14. Os Trigonum

    Os Trigonum Contributing Member
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    B-Bob, I don't see anything there about deglamorizing shooters by not publishing their names--at least as regards mass shootings. As far as gang-related killings in places like Chicago and Baltimore, I have no clue how to stop it, other than dramatically working to eliminate gangs and the drug trafficking that gangs are involved in. I think the poster above who said to stop the war on drugs is on to the real solution.

    https://www.livescience.com/60595-stop-naming-mass-shooters-say-scientists.html

    Experts Call for Mass Killers' Names to Be Kept Quiet
    By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | October 4, 2017 07:25am ET

    An open letter signed by 147 criminologists, sociologists, psychologists and other human-behavior experts asks that the media stop publishing the names and photographs of mass killers.

    Research has found that fame is a major motivation for many mass shooters.

    "They want to be celebrities," said Adam Lankford, one of the lead drafters of the letter and a criminologist at the University of Alabama. "We know that some of these offenders have said things like, 'The more you kill, the more you'll be known,' and 'Someone who is known by no one will be known by everyone.'" [The Science of Mass Shooters: What Drives a Person to Kill?]

    No notoriety
    After a mass killing like the one in Las Vegas on Sunday night (Oct. 1), when a shooter sprayed bullets into a music-festival crowd from a hotel window above, the identity of the perpetrator is often the first question. But "the particular sequence of letters that make up offenders' names, and the particular configuration of bones, cartilage and flesh that make up offenders' faces are among the least newsworthy details about them," Lankford and the other signatories argue in the letter. The plea is based on a proposal published in September in the journal American Behavioral Scientist by Lankford and Eric Madfis, a sociologist at the University of Washington, Tacoma.

    The researchers propose that media outlets avoid naming the perpetrator or using the perpetrator's photograph. Reporters should also avoid naming past killers in articles about more recent killers, they wrote. All other details — including possible motives, where such killers got their weaponry, the criminal's past and interviews with friends and family — are fair game, they said.

    These guidelines would be similar to existing policies against showing fans who run out on fields during televised events or publishing the names of sexual assault victims. In Canada, juvenile offenders' identities are not released, Lankford and Madfis wrote in their American Behavioral Scientist article. That policy covered a 17-year-old who killed four in La Loche, Saskatchewan, in 2016. Everyone in the small town knew who the killer was, Lankford said. He posted his intentions before the crime on Facebook and survived after to appear in court. But the newspapers still didn't run his name.

    Copycats and fame-seekers
    After data emerged that suicides can be contagious through the media and that reporting on one suicide was linked to a spike in later suicides, most reputable media outlets began changing the way they reported on suicide. For example, guidelines from the American Foundation to Prevent Suicide include avoiding sensationalistic headlines, downplaying focus on the method of death and including information on how to get help for suicidal impulses.

    The letter's signatories are asking for a similar voluntary effort. Some prominent academics who backed the request include Harvard cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker and Katherine Newman, an expert on school violence at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

    "As scholars, professors and law enforcement professionals, we do not agree on everything," the letter reads. "Some of us believe that by denying mass shooters fame, we would deter some future fame-seekers from attacking. Some of us believe that by no longer creating de facto celebrities out of killers, we would reduce contagion and copycat effects. Some of us believe that by no longer rewarding the deadliest offenders with the most personal attention, we would reduce the competition among them to maximize victim fatalities."

    There is at least some evidence for all these positions. Lankford has found that killers often reference one another. The shooter at Umpqua Community College in Oregon in October 2015 mentioned as an inspiration the man who killed a television reporter and cameraman in Roanoke, Virginia, and posted the video to Facebook in August of that year. That Roanoke killer mentioned the white supremacist shooter who killed congregants at an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, two months before.

    Shooters also compete for the most attention by killing the most people, Lankford said. In a 2016 study in the journal Aggression and Violent Behavior, he found that mass killers who expressed a celebrity-seeking motive killed twice as many people as those who did not. There is also a direct correlation between the death toll of a shooting and the news coverage received, Lankford told Live Science. [The History of Human Aggression: 10 Innovations That Changed How We Fight]

    There is also statistical evidence that mass shootings inspire copycats. A 2015 study found that every school shooting inspires 0.22 more school shootings, and every mass shooting inspires 0.3 more mass shootings. The decimals reflect that not every inspiration is one-to-one; rather, shootings tend to cluster so that when you have four school shootings, you're ripe for a fifth.

    There are times when a name will have to be released, Lankford and his colleagues wrote, such as when a suspect is at large. And the full details of mass shootings should be publicized, so that family and friends know the kinds of behaviors to look for before an attack. But after the fact, leaving out a name and picture doesn't have to be a sacrifice, Lankford said. In his papers, he refers to dates and locations rather than killers.

    "I'm someone who publishes about the lives of these people in-depth for my career," Lankford said. "I've probably written more about public mass shooters than the vast majority of the media, and I'm saying I can do this, and our 147 signatories are saying they can do this, without the names."

    Originally published on Live Science.
     
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  15. okierock

    okierock Contributing Member

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    I 100% agree with this but like everything else in the media, they will push anything that sells without concern for who is hurt. There is no way the media gives up the "right" to market this kind of death and carnage... no matter who it kills.
     
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  16. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    I accept and understand the argument against glamorizing the killers but I don't think this is a good idea. I think it is in the public interests to know who these people are and as so much debate there is regarding issues like ethnic, religious, and social background about killers that such info should be public knowledge. At the same time given how prevalent and pervasive conspiracy theories are if the names of the killers weren't released it will likely lead to rampant speculation on who these people are including misguided speculation that feeds into misinformation and stereotypes. Finally with the ubiquity of social media the names will likely be leaked already and for fame seeking self-aggrandizing killers they will just seek to get their names out through various social media means that might make things more dangerous. For example a killer that knows that their name won't be published by media might decide to live stream their killings.

    I understand that the amount of media attention given to mass murders very well might feed into the sick need of people who are both sociopaths but also crave attention. I think withholding such info though might lead to more harm.
     
  17. B-Bob

    B-Bob "94-year-old self-described dreamer"

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    I just don't think you can stop the media coverage of perps. Most people are interested, so even if major outlets wouldn't discuss him (almost always male), other outlets would post info for all the clicks they'd receive.
     
  18. Cohete Rojo

    Cohete Rojo Contributing Member

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    Major gun-rights legislation needs to be met with some sort of compromise on "other-side-of-the-aisle" issues - like immigration, off-shoring, etc. Gun-ownership rights are laid out in the 2nd Amendment. It may as well be our 2nd Commandment.
     
  19. Deckard

    Deckard Blade Runner
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    Definitely need a major focus on mental health and purchasing guns. National background checks, gun registry. A requirement that all firearms are locked by the owner when not in use, either in a safe, a locked closet with a deadbolt, a locked trigger guard, and if inside a car or truck, but not in a locked trunk, they should also be locked. This could help limit "road rage," in my opinion. A limit on ammunition purchases of 200 rounds per purchase, per caliber, with those purchases going on the national gun registry. If the number of rounds reaches 1000 in a year per caliber, a red flag goes up if a permit allowing larger ammo purchases isn't obtained.

    A ban on assault rifles, except for valid collectors with a permit, and that would also go on the national gun registry. A limit in the size and number of ammo clips allowed, except for valid collectors (see above). Have a federal tax on gun purchases and on the purchase of gun related equipment to help pay for mental health services. A requirement that a gun safety course be taken (liked the idea above), with a refresher required for each gun purchase, unless you have proof of taking a gun safety course in the last 5 years.

    I'm sure I've forgotten something, but it is a start. These are weapons, not toys, and this is coming from a gun owner of decades standing.
     
    FranchiseBlade likes this.
  20. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    Cities are getting more dense in the coastal areas while people are becoming more detached in urban areas. The internet is raising a generation of inward people with safe boundaries and exploring "without risk". Not good mental health wise when they're out in the world making a living in those crowded cities.

    In the matter of raw numbers, it takes fewer and fewer rotten apples (in proportion) to cause more tragedies like these (in number).

    Banning guns would solve a lot of mortality issues (understatement, but it wouldn't come close to uncovering the motivators for making these people extremely violent.

    That doesn't mean we shouldn't enforce some sort of gun control. It's more like this is a prescription and not the treatment to our ailing culture of hyperglorifying violence.
     

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