America, Beers, and Gun Talk Times

they don't take them out except for practice or, heaven forbid, self defense. Any other time they're locked up, in one friend's case with three locks.

The CDC SHOULDN'T have jurisdiction over guns. It's the Center for Disease Control. As much as people like to say "guns are a disease" they aren't. They aren't a virus. They aren't bacteria. I wouldn't want the Food and Drug Administration telling me if I can drive or not - yes, what I eat or take can affect that, but that's a Department of Transportation issue, not an FDA issue. If any department had jurisdiction, it should be the ATF.

However, if I lived in a big city, I don't care what the stats are. I'd rather put myself on an equal playing ground with an intruder - whether that's a gun, a crowbar, or even wasp spray to the eyes, I want a weapon available equal to what he has. I want a fighting chance to dictate what happens to me and my family. If I'm gonna go I'd rather go fighting to protect my loved ones and possibly give them a chance to escape.

(Your whole part about a well-regulated militia)

I'm not sure how the cost is related. I don't see anything about guns being free in the Second Amendment. Just that you have the right to own them if you choose. Bit of a strawman there if I'm being honest.

We as humans seem to be scared of those who are different.

However, I fully recognize that that is not the experience most people have in this country. It's fucked up and needs to change.

I have weird conflicting thoughts on this whole topic - probably a result of my two country influence going on. If we could revoke the second amendment and guarantee every gun in this country could be removed and absolutely nobody would have one, I'd probably be behind that. However, banning things in this country has NEVER worked - see prohibition, weed, collecting rainwater. We as Americans naturally want to do the things we're told we can't. So banning guns will never work on that front alone. People will just want them more here.

I always found this contradiction amusing. Gun safely stored away in a safe, or lockbox, etc. So if you do need it in an emergency, you get to fuck with locks instead of calling 911. Not much use as a self-defence tool if you have a gun to your head before you can get yours out of your damned safe.

Lol, my safe has a number code on it that takes two seconds to punch in and open. But yeah, let me inform the intruder I dialed 911 so we can wait ten minutes for them to get here.

I always found this contradiction amusing. Gun safely stored away in a safe, or lockbox, etc. So if you do need it in an emergency, you get to fuck with locks instead of calling 911. Not much use as a self-defence tool if you have a gun to your head before you can get yours out of your damned safe.

- See Texas's comment on this.

You definition and understanding of the CDC is too limited. From the CDC's site:
"CDC is the nation’s leading science-based, data-driven, service organization that protects the public’s health."

This is literally what researching and making recommendations about gun violence is about. PUBLIC HEALTH. The ATF is a law enforcement agency. It has nothing to do with public health, just as the FBI has nothing to do with trafficking legislation. It's strictly about enforcement. (That and if you think gun violence is a mental health issue, mental disorders could just as easily easily fall under diseases)

- Yes, mental health could. But does this mean the CDC should work with designing airbags in cars? No, that's a separate agency. Maybe we're lacking an actual department for this, but it should not be CDC.


And the stats don't care about your intention or feelings. As I said in my misinformation section, that SOUNDS nice, and clean, and simple. But it's not supported by facts and reality. In all probability, your "fighting chance" will dramatically increase the odds that you end up dead in that encounter. Possibly your loved ones as well.

- And how many of those encounters are those who're poorly trained? If I did actually have a gun for protection you'd be damn sure I'd be trained and ready, not some shaky scared person who can't hold the gun straight.

If it's 2 ideas as you claim, it would be 2 sentences. It's not. The idea is introduced in the first words "well-regulated militia", then it continues. If it were disconnected, it would be a new sentence or a colon. If it's 2 ideas, there is literally no reason whatsoever to include both of those pieces of information in the same sentence. And that's not even getting into the deep-dive dissection of how asinine it is to use a 200-year-old notion of what "arms" are as the cornerstone of what some consider a religious text. Beating a dead horse talking ad neasuem about how firepower, magazine capacity, range, lethality, etc would be unrecognizable to the founding fathers if they saw or imagined what we have today. I think it's a damned safe bet they would have put a restriction on nuclear weapons in the constitution, had they known such a thing could exist. But alas, it's now one of the arbitrary things we decide is a random exception to this golden #2A rule.

- So we're basing a whole viewpoint on punctuation choice? When language has changed over the years? Also, when has political bills actually been written in a way that makes sense logically and grammatically? Freedom of the press is VASTLY different now too - the whole Boeing stock drop at one point because of an incorrect article claiming they had lost product as an example. Should we now regulate newspapers to only be print?

The cost is a separate issue that basically undercuts everything people say about why people should have the right to bear arms. If a fundamental right in the country is that you should have the right to protect yourself with a weapon, the cost of which should not be prohibitively expensive for the poor. Being that the country was founded on equality (except in the case of human property), it seems even more likely the amendment referred to the regulation of a militia, rather than "any one rich enough to buy a gun can have one and everyone else can literally be held hostage by those who can afford em." Similarly, if the right was just that you have the right to own them, why don't we have amendments for the right to own cattle, or lodgings, or clothing, or smithing tools, or literally any other piece of property or tool? I would argue, because they aren't talking about individuals owning a tool, they are talking about the right to regulate the damned militia and the government being prohibited from passing any law restricting the right of the country to have a militia (again, consistent with the Revolution, and why the country separated from the British in the first place.

- I have a right to own a car. Not necessarily to drive it, but to own it. Doesn't mean I can. They had to specify it because cattle, lodging, clothing, smithing tools, etc. weren't needed to protect ourselves from the country we were liberating ourselves from. Guns were, and will be if a civil war were to break out (sadly looking like a possibility nowadays).


It's not inherant to humanity as a whole. It's a part of social conditioning. Since we are social creatures, we strive to be part of groups. Groups like to reinforce their collective solidarity by creating an "other" - one who is "not us". This helps them have a unified group, and also clearly defines the "one of us" binary that people find comforting. Race has long been the socially constructed means through which people have most easily done this. As with race itself, the binary, and the othering is all an artificial construction with no real biological or inherent psychological basis within humans themselves. As you went on to say, it's about upbringing, and what we are taught. We fear things that are different, yes, but we are TOLD that people who look different ARE different. Children will say, "Why is that person dark, light, etc", but it's the answer to that question that will shape their outlook. If the individual is described as a human who looks different (like how we all have different eye colour, hair colour etc. (thus "one of us"), vs. that being a black person, or some other racial slur (which either adds a qualifier to them being a person, or more extremely, discounting them from being a person all together.


- If I walk up to a tribe of people who've never seen an outsider before, they will be scared of me. Because I'm different and unknown. A lot of it is conditioning but there is a small element of nature to it too.

And the frustrating thing in this day and age is the racism is steering so strongly into systemic misinformation that it's not as simple as "hate black people" kind of old school KKK racism. It's shit like all these politicians running on "Anti-woke" agendas. The idea that BLM is a terrorist group. The perpetual vilification of any POC or POC community that tries to draw attention to systemic racism, and the immediate backlash that gets before it even has a chance to become a movement. It's insidious, but incredibly effective. (see my point about how oversimplifying an issue to reject it outright is easier than dealing with it in a real and complicated way) I'm gonna stop my race thing there, because having studied race and systemic racism for about the past 20 years, that would be another, much larger essay in and of itself. But just suffice it to say, racism is in far more places than we grew up thinking it was, and it has a much broader definition and implications than most of us think it has.

- Oh agreed. No arguments here. 

To summarize, I agree that will never work, which is why it starts with re-education and de-sexualization of the gun. When I had more faith in America, I would have said increased documentation of the violence and destruction guns have in all contexts would have pushed people to want to change laws or increase restrictions, simply because literal fucking children are being shot in the literal fucking faces. After Sandy Hook, I think I lost pretty much all faith in the United States. I think that was when, in my eyes, the country reached an important crossroads with who it wanted to be, and how it wanted to live. And it took the road marked "Shithole Country", and hasn't turned back since.

- Our political system has pushed the "us vs. them" rhetoric so far that we're at a breaking point. Trust me, if I was in a position to leave I would, but sadly my life has me here. Despite all my arguments I'm not happy or proud of this country. I want out, but I can't easily leave. It sucks. If life was different I'd be back in Australia right now.

Lol, my safe has a number code on it that takes two seconds to punch in and open. But yeah, let me inform the intruder I dialed 911 so we can wait ten minutes for them to get here.

Be that as it may, you are still statistically much safer to not have a gun in your home.

Not my opinion, just those pesky, inconvenient facts rearing their ugly head again.

The worst thing about how shitty everything is, is when people from other countries are pricks to us like we can do something about it. We've already said we agree with you guys on most of the things, but you are still acting like we're villains or something.