Gun Legislation, Crime, and Events

[chasfh]

23 hours ago, Archie said:

Exactly!  Any firearms person makes light of someone using the word "clip" to describe a magazine.  Using the word clip is a indication they don't know much about firearms.

[Archie]

A few people here have mentioned a ban on firearms or a mandatory surrender of firearms.  Let say that's a reality and on Jan 1, 2022 any and all firearms owned have to be surrendered to your local police.

The law abiding citizen will turn in their guns.  The gang bangers,  criminals and the like would not.  So how would this make us safer?  I think it would make us easier prey for the bad guns who are now the only ones with guns.

[Motown Bombers]

4 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Let's look at the premise of your question. What make you think there has ever been such a thing as integration in America? We have a veneer of social integration of upper class Blacks, but Blacks and whites still live overwhelmingly in separate places and more importantly, with separate legislative representation. We have an integrated social world, but we are still nearly completely segregated residentially, educationally, and politically.

Lets look at Detroit. A racist legislative system had been put in place decades before where all city council members were elected at large in order to prevent minorities from gaining council seats. Yet ironically that left every member vying for everyone's votes and there was a large stable black middle class in Detroit that had a measure of political influence. But Detroit was at heart a racist city (lots of southern transplants had come to work in the auto plants and brought it with them)  and when the school desegregation case threatened existing geographical segregation in the Detroit schools, ( while the city income tax helped trigger the exodus of small business) it triggered a wave of human and small business emigration that emptied more than half the city's population, destroyed it's tax base, and more importantly also destroyed the value of the financial equity that middle class black families had in their homes ( the average American's biggest investment) as neighborhoods collapsed all around the city. And once that population left, its state and federal political muscle left with it.

Is it so hard to fathom that the place and the population left behind ended up in a worse *economic* condition that prior to the civil rights era?

Its been very insidious that white America has managed to take things away from black American in every act in which it has apparently yielded something to it.

Detroit had a black mayor by 1974 when it was still well over 1 million people and still a viable city. I'm not sure what the racial makeup of the council was.

We go back to the city income tax when many cities have a city income tax. In fact, over 20 cities alone in Michigan have an income tax. Detroit is pretty low tax, relatively speaking, among most major cities. The black middle class you mentioned even left for whiter pastures when they started moving to Southfield and Oak Park. 

[Shades of Deivi Cruz]

Reading this thread annoys me. SOOO much deflection. Other countries have problems with racism. Other countries have drug problems. Other countries have access to the internet. Other countries have kids spending a lot of time on their phones. No other country has the gun violence and the crazy easy access to guns that the US does. But how do those two things go together... No one could ever know...

[Tiger337]

40 minutes ago, Archie said:

Anybody that can take a life without a thought is someone that doesn't value life.

I think a lot of the problems today is because of the digital age and the World Wide Web.  

We've always had guns and violent crimes but it increased a lot in the last two or three decades.  When I was a kid we play cops and robbers, cowboys and indians and army with our cap guns. None that caused any mental problems. We also played outside from sun up to sun down and later.  Today kids don't interact face to face or hardly play outside.  They have their faces buried in their phones nonstop and always playing video games that are very realistic. Its probably not 100% of the problem but has contributed a lot to the decline of society and humanity in general. 

Chicago has a huge problem, but it really hasn't increased much nationally.  We have been a violernt coutry for a long time.  We hear more about it now because of the internet.  

Edited December 6, 2021 by Tiger337

[gehringer_2]

9 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

it was still well over 1 million people and still a viable city. I'

but the city pop was approaching 2 million in 1960. The drain was already swirling by 1974 by any definition. another example - much of the prior commercial activity never came back to Grand River or Mi Ave after the '67 riots.

Edited December 6, 2021 by gehringer_2

[Motown Bombers]

3 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

but the city pop was approaching 2 million in 1960. The drain was already swirling by 1974 by any definition. another example - much of the prior commercial activity never came back to Grand River or Mi Ave after the '67 riots.

I wouldn't return my business to a place where it was looted and burned down. 

[oblong]

17 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

Detroit had a black mayor by 1974 when it was still well over 1 million people and still a viable city. I'm not sure what the racial makeup of the council was.

We go back to the city income tax when many cities have a city income tax. In fact, over 20 cities alone in Michigan have an income tax. Detroit is pretty low tax, relatively speaking, among most major cities. The black middle class you mentioned even left for whiter pastures when they started moving to Southfield and Oak Park. 

Blacks also had their middle class area wiped out by I-375. 

[Tiger337]

11 minutes ago, Archie said:

A few people here have mentioned a ban on firearms or a mandatory surrender of firearms.  Let say that's a reality and on Jan 1, 2022 any and all firearms owned have to be surrendered to your local police.

The law abiding citizen will turn in their guns.  The gang bangers,  criminals and the like would not.  So how would this make us safer?  I think it would make us easier prey for the bad guns who are now the only ones with guns.

That's not realistic.  While we would be a safer country without guns, they have become too big a part of our culture to just wipe them out.  We are stuck with them.  We can make incremental changes though.  My general suggestion is to not allow such easy access to guns.  If someone is not a responsible person, they shouldn't be able to own a gun.  I would center laws and enforcement around that. 

 

[gehringer_2]

12 minutes ago, Shades of Deivi Cruz said:

Reading this thread annoys me. SOOO much deflection. Other countries have problems with racism. Other countries have drug problems. Other countries have access to the internet. Other countries have kids spending a lot of time on their phones. No other country has the gun violence and the crazy easy access to guns that the US does. But how do those two things go together... No one could ever know...

The problem is that there is a perfectly sound counter argument, which is that there are plenty of places in the US with plenty of guns and little murder (at least the 'normal' crime kind - again keeping the mayhem events in their own class). That is why it is so easy to get derailed. In a huge sense you are absolutely correct, remove the guns and we don't need to worry about the complexities underlying why they are being used. But OTOH, if you have people on the gun side actually serious about trying to solve the issues around their use, I'm not going to complain about getting to anything that helps keep more kids alive.

[chasfh]

3 hours ago, mtutiger said:

I would add that it's the one political issue where requisite knowledge is often treated as a requirement to opine, at least by some.

Because people comment on Healthcare, taxes, monetary policy all the time without knowing what the fuck they are talking about.

It's a not-uncommon rhetorical tactic people use for many other topics, too. I remember some years ago on MTS we were talking about healthcare and I made the case that health insurance is a form of what people called at the time "socialized medicine", because people pay insurance premiums into a pool (managed by a for-profit company), and then the benefits funded by the premiums get doled out based on who needs their healthcare subsidized at the time of need. IOW, health insurance (all insurance, really) is a socialized asset collection and redistribution scheme.

One of the regulars there kept trying to invalidate my argument by trying to trip me up on the term "risk pool". Specifically, did I know what one is? We went back and forth for a few pages on the relevance of the question (I said it wasn't; he ignored relevance and kept pushing the question) and I said, let's say I don't know what it is, so now what? His reply was that since I didn't know what a risk pool was, then nothing I had to say about the topic could possibly be valid, since to his argument I was ignorant on what a risk pool is.

The strategy of course is to ignore the core point in a bid to win the entire argument on a strictly semantic point. It's what people who have a weak case throw against the wall hoping it sticks.

[Motown Bombers]

4 minutes ago, oblong said:

Blacks also had their middle class area wiped out by I-375. 

I thought the black middle class neighborhood was on the west side near Russell Woods and Woodbridge? There was also Conant Gardens but I find it hard to believe a one mile stretch of freeway set back the entire race of the 4th largest city in the country at the time for decades to come. 

[gehringer_2]

8 minutes ago, oblong said:

Blacks also had their middle class area wiped out by I-375. 

Correct - a natural* political outcome when commuters have more political clout than the affected locals.

*natural in the sense of political decisions easy to defend as simply 'serving the larger constituency' despite the obviously disparate racial impact.

Edited December 6, 2021 by gehringer_2

[buddha]

31 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

What was the origin of the gangs and drug trade?  

ask al capone.

the fact that drugs are illegal and are sold on the black market and that market is governed by violence instead of traditional legal contractual methods.

[gehringer_2]

13 minutes ago, buddha said:

ask al capone.

the fact that drugs are illegal and are sold on the black market and that market is governed by violence instead of traditional legal contractual methods.

The conventional wisdom on the history is that banning opiates and cocaine was a response to their increasing use in the middle classes - such as was depicted contemporaneously in Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, but in retrospect I wonder if the problem was ever as bad or the solution as effective as touted.

Edited December 6, 2021 by gehringer_2

[Archie]

15 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

That's not realistic.  While we would be a safer country without guns, they have become too big a part of our culture to just wipe them out.  We are stuck with them.  We can make incremental changes though.  My general suggestion is to not allow such easy access to guns.  If someone is not a responsible person, they shouldn't be able to own a gun.  I would center laws and enforcement around that. 

 

I agree that gun owners need to be responsible people (so do owners of many other things too) but how do you decide that?  I'm not sure the Crumbley parents are really criminally guilty of anything but they are very irresponsible people. The ATF form specifically asks questions who the gun is for, drug use and domestic violence.  Unless something bad happens like it did, some of its hard to know about without charges brought.

Speaking of the ATF form, that might be the best chance they have for prosecuting the parent who purchased the gun. I don't know how they answered the questions but if they lied it can be a big fine and several years in jail. 

[Tiger337]

 

2 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

The conventional wisdom on the history is that banning opiates and cocaine was a response to their increasing use in the middle classes - such as was depicted contemporaneously in Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, but in retrospect I wonder if the problem was ever as bad as the solution has turned out to be.

When middle class whites become addicted to drugs, it becomes a mental health problem rather than a crime.  When Blacks were addicted to cocaine in the 80s and 90s, they were put in jail.  When doctors were handing out opiates like it was candy in the 2000s, it was primarily white middle class, so it became more of a mental health problem.  The Blacks didn't get any of the legal stuff because doctors were reluctant to prescribe it to them or because they didn't have the right insurance.  They got lucky for a change!  Now that they have stopped giving opioid prescriptions so easily, the illegal trade has picked up and everybody can join in the fun.  

[gehringer_2]

4 minutes ago, Archie said:

I agree that gun owners need to be responsible people (so do owners of many other things too) but how do you decide that?  I'm not sure the Crumbley parents are really criminally guilty of anything but they are very irresponsible people. The ATF form specifically asks questions who the gun is for, drug use and domestic violence.  Unless something bad happens like it did, some of its hard to know about without charges brought.

Speaking of the ATF form, that might be the best chance they have for prosecuting the parent who purchased the gun. I don't know how they answered the questions but if they lied it can be a big fine and several years in jail. 

don't you think this gets a little nutty though? OK, lets say the 'responsible' gun owners agree to a law that any gun in a house with a minor has be kept in a safe or at minimum with a trigger lock - then how much good is that gun against the home invader coming in the window? It's seems you can't secure guns and still have guns available for the purposes that people say they want them for. Doesn't that argue that getting rid of them (handguns that is) is probably the better course? That the collective security of a less armed society improves everyone's quality of life more efficiently? And maybe it takes 30 yrs to get the numbers low enough the get to where they want to be. So what. I'd still love to be able to leave that legacy to my grandchildren, or even my great grandchildren.

[Archie]

20 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

don't you think this gets a little nutty though? OK, lets say the 'responsible' gun owners agree to a law that any gun in a house with a minor has be kept in a safe or at minimum with a trigger lock - then how much good is that gun against the home invader coming in the window? It's seems you can't secure guns and still have guns available for the purposes that people say they want them for. Doesn't that argue that getting rid of them (handguns that is) is probably the better course? That the collective security of a less armed society improves everyone's quality of life more efficiently? And maybe it takes 30 yrs to get the numbers low enough the get to where they want to be. So what. I'd still love to be able to leave that legacy to my grandchildren, or even my great grandchildren.

All new firearms today are sold with trigger locks. I don't know how many people use or keep them but I think its a fairly low number. I dont use them.  There are ways to safely store a gun and have it quickly and easily accessible. 

I also beleive if you have firearms in the home, your spouse and children should know the basics about how to use them and store them safely. If you forbid children from seeing or doing something I beleive that makes them more curious.  I wanted my children to know about firearms and wanted them taught properly.

Parents also need to spend time with their children to see any red flags of their behavior. This is important even if you don't have guns in the home. The oxford shooter had more red flags than a Chinese military parade and the parents should have recognized this and realized arming the boy was a recipe for disaster.

My previous comment about banning or surrendering guns was purely hypothetical.  There are so may firearms in this country it would never happen. Even if you couldn't buy a gun they can be made fairly easy.

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, buddha said:

ask al capone.

the fact that drugs are illegal and are sold on the black market and that market is governed by violence instead of traditional legal contractual methods.

What is the SES of the victims?  

[buddha]

3 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

What is the SES of the victims?  

what does ses mean?

[Tiger337]

8 minutes ago, buddha said:

what does ses mean?

Socioeconomic status.  

[pfife]

1 hour ago, Archie said:

A few people here have mentioned a ban on firearms or a mandatory surrender of firearms.  Let say that's a reality and on Jan 1, 2022 any and all firearms owned have to be surrendered to your local police.

The law abiding citizen will turn in their guns.  The gang bangers,  criminals and the like would not.  So how would this make us safer?  I think it would make us easier prey for the bad guns who are now the only ones with guns.

cool story

[chasfh]

2 hours ago, Archie said:

A few people here have mentioned a ban on firearms or a mandatory surrender of firearms.  Let say that's a reality and on Jan 1, 2022 any and all firearms owned have to be surrendered to your local police.

The law abiding citizen will turn in their guns.  The gang bangers,  criminals and the like would not.  So how would this make us safer?  I think it would make us easier prey for the bad guns who are now the only ones with guns.

So you're turning in your gun to the government if they tell you to, are you?

[buddha]

20 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Socioeconomic status.  

i imagine poor.  why?