Is it too late?

[UnseenParticipant]

In a family Zoom call today (we do one every Monday), the topic of the mass murder by a mad as hell and she won’t take it anymore transgender in Nashville today came up. She killed three nine year old kids and three adults.

My sister wondered what it’ll take for us to do something about guns and my brother said “It’s too late. There’s no longer anything we can do about them. We have to learn to live with them now.” He went on to say there are too many guns and too many gun owners who won’t give up their guns, plus with a 3D printer you can even make a functioning firearm now. And 3D printers that can print guns are no longer priced out of the range of reasonably affluent people, especially if they pool their resources Three high schoolers with fast food jobs can afford to go together on a a 3D printer. A printer that can do the job costs $600 or less. The cost of materials will be, by comparison, more than manageable.

I agree with my brother. I don’t see a trajectory where much of anything can be done anymore. We’re past the event horizon now. America will always be a gun culture.

So, are we condemned to either living in an armed camp or becoming expats if we don’t want to live in fear of being perforated all day long?

[jakelafortParticipant]

Yes it is too late. America has more guns than books. Almost certainly not true but what has truth got to do with anything?

I’ve been a little disappointed with the sire, Gun Runner. Perhaps i jumped the gun. Then again first saturday in May should see a few Gun Runners run for the roses.

[_Robert_Participant]

Odd thing is that most Americans are in favor of tighter regulations. I am not sure how much good that’ll do really.

Here is the problem incarnate.

[UnseenParticipant]

You’d think that perhaps the recent The Tranny Got Her Gun incident in Nashville might spark the right wing to do something, though it might just be legislation to effectively exclude LGBTQ+’s from gun ownership based on their “mental defect.”

Strangely, counterintuitively, gun ownership has gone down from half of American households having a gun not so long ago to a situation today where only 33% of households have a gun. How is that even possible? Well, people sometimes own several guns, or many. Some people maintain private armories. I have an acquaintance, an ex-Navy SEAL, who collects guns. I gather that quite a few of them are sniper rifles and that he has no problem hitting a target accurately, under the right circumstances, from a half mile away. He is avidly against “gun grabbers” on the left.

Why can’t we rid ourselves of guns? Two reasons: 1) the 2nd Amendment and 2) the Senate, which disproportionately represents the interests of rural and low-population density states which have no murder rate problem and have valid uses for their firearms. Not much chance of changing either one of those.

I suppose there’s a 3) but it’s related to 1), and that’s a pretty conservative Supreme Court.

• This reply was modified 2 months, 1 week ago by  Unseen.

[UnseenParticipant]

SPOILER ALERT: It’s gun licensing. It’s imperfect but it’s been shown to at least reduce gun deaths. The problem: I’m not sure how licensing will fare if it ends up in the Supreme Court.

[_Robert_Participant]

I have an acquaintance, an ex-Navy SEAL, who collects guns. I gather that quite a few of them are sniper rifles and that he has no problem hitting a target accurately, under the right circumstances, from a half mile away. He is avidly against “gun grabbers” on the left.

As kids we were taught how to handle guns and shoot accurately. From pellet rifles to 12ga buckshot to 30-06 from an M1 Garand. I have seen so many movies where the hero is running just a few yards away from multiple shooters, and they all manage to miss. I’m not sure that many people know how accurate a sighted-in rifle really is. Even a 0.22 will consistently ‘donut a nickel’ at 50 yards. People were astounded that Oswald made those fatal shots. I have seen the recreated ‘sight picture’. It was not a miracle shot.

 

[UnseenParticipant]

@robert

And the other shooter was a pretty good shot as well.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

The “event horizon” was passed in the 1200s when someone in China created gunpowder from Potassium Nitrate (“Saltpeter” in ancient terminology,) Sulfur (“Brimstone” in case you’re wondering “What in the Hellfire is Brimstone?”), and Charcoal (wood burned in a vacuum.).

And Potassium Nitrate comes from decaying, dead organic matter, so you might say that Gunpowder is the ultimate self-sustainable industrial product. 😁

And the plans to make Gunpowder, Gun Cotton, and Cordite–as well as making an authentic Appalachian-style muzzleloader from wooden stock to blacksmithed barrel and action to finished product–can be found in the Foxfire series of books by Elliot Wigginton, along with other Appalachian “Affairs of Plain Living.”

And the U.S. Military makes available to the general public manuals not only on gun maintenance and repair, but manuals on improvised munitions and boobytrapping.

I think it was Thomas Paine who observed that once men know the truth, you cannot make them unknow it. I know he definitely said:

“The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside… Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them.”

Thomas Paine, The Writings of Thomas Paine, 1894

Our only choice in the face of evil like what happened in Nashville, TN yesterday is to use the knowledge that we cannot unknow in defense of the Individual Rights to Life, Liberty and Property and against any who would violate and destroy those rights. And sadly we can only do that as the threat arises.

It is also well to remember in all of this that the worst school attack in U.S. History was done, not with guns, but with explosives, not by a young person, but by an adult, not by one of “the disaffected” or “the radicalized,” but by a pillar of the community whose “red flag” behavioral patterns weren’t figured out until it was too late.

And as with the Nashville Christian school, there was plenty of prayer at that time and place and not a God to be found:

Bath School Massacre–Wikipedia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

• This reply was modified 2 months, 1 week ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Emphasis added
• This reply was modified 2 months, 1 week ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Grammar

[UnseenParticipant]

@Enco

Thanks for the history of gunpowder lesson, but it isn’t ignorance of it that makes the United States uniquely unable to keep its people from using each other for target practice.

Contrary to what right wingers tell us, we don’t need an armed populace to control government, we need a government that can listen to the people and then do something. In Israel, people took to the streets without guns to object to Netanyahu’s plan to neuter the Israeli judicial system and forced him to back down. It’s looking like throngs in France may soon force the French government to back down on moving the retirement benefits age forward by two years. Both governments are well-armed and the people in the streets are not. People taking to the streets against guns in the U.S. would be doomed to failure because of our unique situation.

As I pointed out, the unique situation in the United States is the Second Amendment supported by a Supreme Court interpreting it in the strongest possible way and a Senate that primarily serves a segment of the population that doesn’t suffer from inordinate gun violence and knows that even if it did something, it would be unlikely to get past the Supreme Court.

Do you have another theory as to why this problem (if you even view it as one) plagues the U.S. so much more than anywhere else?

Your reference to the Bath School Massacre is beside the point for two reasons. First, I wasn’t writing exclusively about massacres. By far most gun casualties aren’t in mass shooting situations, they are gang shootings, shootings during robberies, disputes of various sorts (domestic and otherwise) ending in gun violence, and of course suicides and gun accidents. Secondly, other forms of murder and mayhem will be easier to address since they are not protected by the Constitution and captive Senate. But those other forms of murder and mayhem are not the persistent and pervasive problem guns are.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

The point of my history of gunpowder lesson is that it is an act of futility to attempt to stop the manufacture and possession of arms. The knowledge is there and, once acquired, you cannot unknow it, and once spread, you cannot unspread it. Suppressing firearms totally would require suppressing the knowledge and processes that made them possible.

As for the Vox video on keeping arms out of the “wrong” hands, some 90 + % of guns used in the commission of a crime are not legally purchased, but stolen. No licensing scheme would prevent such criminals from having arms. And the murderer in Nashville TN had legally purchased the weapons used in the massacre, so that goes double for that case. No mental health screening could stop someone from purchasing arms and subsequently going off the rails and no psychology or psychiatry presently in existence can accurate predict that or stop that.

And what would such mental health screenings do for someone like the lady in the movie Gaslight or Gays who lived prior to the 1973 removal of Homosexuality from the DSM and whose psychiatric records were never expunged? Wouldn’t that leave them disarmed in the face of predation and violence? And would pot smokers or sex workers with records for violating laws against victimless vices also be disarmed as well?

There have many such schemes to keep arms out of the “wrong” hands, but the results were not what you may have in mind.

Under Islamic Sha’ria Law, Christians and Jews were forbidden to ride horses or bear arms as well as hold any position of administrative authority in an Islamic regime. Consequently, they were second-class and third-class citizens and subject to enslavement and periodic massacres and pogroms.

America’s first gun control laws were laws keeping arms out of the hands of slaves and freedmen. The entire history of slavery, Jim Crow, and lynching is testiment to what resulted.

And throughout the Twentieth Century, hatred combined with government power and disarmed citizenry has ended in genocide for 170 million, as the chart here shows:

Death by “Gun Control”
https://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/deathgc.htm

Concern for the victims of evil, whether in Nashville, Kyiv, Istanbul, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing, or Penom Phen requires support for the victims having the means to defend themselves. Gun control ultimately assists the aggressor and leaves victims helpless.

[UnseenParticipant]

@Enco

You and I agree, as the topic of this thread which suggests that guns won’t be banned in the U.S., in my case for the reasons I gave at the beginning: 1) The Constitution, 2) The Senate, 3) The Supreme Court, and 4) anyone can make a gun now, and you for the reasons you give.

If I were younger, I’d take the advice of my gun-loving acquaintances, which is generally expressed as “If you don’t like it here, why don’t you move?”

And, no, it wouldn’t be Russia as Robert seems to imply. Probably someplace like Italy.

• This reply was modified 2 months, 1 week ago by  Unseen.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

Italy’s gun laws didn’t stop Mahmet Ali Aga from shooting Pope John Paul II, nor did Italy’s gun laws stop The Red Brigade’s terrorism in the Seventies and Eighties. Not do gun laws stop the Mafia in Sicily or here in the States or worldwide.

Criminals get their guns, law or no law. Peace-loving and freedom-loving people should have just as much access to the means of protecting and preserving their values. There’s no tourist route for getting away from this reality.

[UnseenParticipant]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

Unseen,

Italy’s gun laws didn’t stop Mahmet Ali Aga from shooting Pope John Paul II, nor did Italy’s gun laws stop The Red Brigade’s terrorism in the Seventies and Eighties. Not do gun laws stop the Mafia in Sicily or here in the States or worldwide.

Criminals get their guns, law or no law. Peace-loving and freedom-loving people should have just as much access to the means of protecting and preserving their values. There’s no tourist route for getting away from this reality.

You’re making a very dumb argument. And if you think there’s any parity between the United States and Italy, consider this: The U.S. has 4.2 gun deaths per 100,000. Italy has .2. Where would you feel safer?

Palestine, India, Libya, and Lebanon have lower per capita gun homicides.

Great food and 21 times less chance of being shot dead. I’ll take it.

• This reply was modified 2 months, 1 week ago by  Unseen.

[UnseenParticipant]

Make your own AR-15:

[RichRaelianParticipant]

Hi! Its never to late we’ve got a abundance of time on our side.

[Author]

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