Gun laws and control

[Vyn]

... but I do know it's many and out of control, especially since the Sudanese have migrated here. Thankfully they can't gain access to guns as they can in your country.

That's no shit. Whereas Sudanese migrants in Victoria account for one half percent of the total population, they account for one and a half percent of arrests for violent assaults. Plus, over half of those Sudanese are men under the age of 25, from fragmented families (because Australia brought them in as a humanitarian effort, the young men's families being left behind or dead).

Turnbull stated recently that the African gangs are the root of the problem in Victoria. To the extent that people are afraid to go out in the evenings. Imagine if those gangs had ready access to firearms? Those folks the PM talked about would be even more afraid.

Of course, the opposition party claims differently, but who is one going to believe? The PM or some folks who want to be the PM?

[Typhon]

^^^^^
So much for humanitarian efforts. 

[Zzzptm]

Not to conflate the refugee issue with the gun issue, but I've got direct experience dealing with refugees. I've had students that were gang-raped by soldiers in their home countries, among other horror stories. Bringing in refugees is not enough - they must be given actual *refuge* in order to make better their shattered lives.

The Dallas area had a crime spike immediately following Hurricane Katrina, as we had a large internal refugee population come to us here from Louisiana. We bore it as part of the price we were willing to pay to extend aid to our fellow Americans.

[Billy Underdog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCo2QMJcsDg

[Zzzptm]

This did not go over well...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/06/kris-kobach-parade-machine-gun/

The fact that Kobach followed up with an unapologetic response to what he termed a "snowflake meltdown" only further illustrates how out of step with the times he and his party have become. Those snowflakes are now starting to vote. There have been waaaaaay too many school shootings of late for Mr. Kobach's presentation to have done anything but outraged that group, and I look for that to cost him at the polls.

GOP being out of touch with young voters is a larger issue, but this is part of that, a very large part of that. The currently up-and-coming generation is already being termed "The Parkland Generation", talk about your big hints there...

It's also an issue of gender, in a negative way. Most victims of domestic gun violence are women and children, just before the boyfreind/father/husband turns the weapon on himself. Guys like Kobach project that image, but the response is generally negative among people who consider themselves as targets. It's like somebody advocating cannibalism at a meeting of vegetarians. It's not going to be well-received.

And when women or people of color use their weapons in self defense or are otherwise carrying them legally, where has the gun lobby been to speak on their behalf?

Marisa Alexander used a gun to stand her ground against an abuser. She did prison time. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/us/marissa-alexander-released-stand-your-ground.html

Same state as Zimmerman, who killed Treyvon Martin with the same excuse. Alexander fired a warning shot and went to jail, Zimmerman shot to kill and walked. I remember the gun lobbyists being all about supporting Zimmerman, not a word about Alexander.

Bresha Meadows used a gun to stop a bad person, her father in this case. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/us/bresha-meadows-father-killing.html She almost got an aggravated murder charge, but was able to plead that down. Again, nowhere was a gun rights advocate to be found in her defense.

So all that talk about being able to use weapons in self defense seems like it's true only for white males. If you're a minority and/or female, you will face charges and quite likely incarceration.

I'm with the kids, there's no need to keep ALL the guns.

At the same time, there are kids who do spend lots of family time with their siblings and parents at gun ranges. It's not like the gun lobby is without allies in the younger generation. It's just that if the gun lobby doesn't find ways to make compromises, those allies won't amount to anything in mitigating what the coming generations are planning to do about gun control.

[Typhon]

Same state as Zimmerman, who killed Treyvon Martin with the same excuse. Alexander fired a warning shot and went to jail, Zimmerman shot to kill and walked. I remember the gun lobbyists being all about supporting Zimmerman, not a word about Alexander.

So all that talk about being able to use weapons in self defense seems like it's true only for white males. If you're a minority and/or female, you will face charges and quite likely incarceration.

  George Zimmerman is not white.

[Zzzptm]

Same state as Zimmerman, who killed Treyvon Martin with the same excuse. Alexander fired a warning shot and went to jail, Zimmerman shot to kill and walked. I remember the gun lobbyists being all about supporting Zimmerman, not a word about Alexander.

So all that talk about being able to use weapons in self defense seems like it's true only for white males. If you're a minority and/or female, you will face charges and quite likely incarceration.

  George Zimmerman is not white.

He was whiter than Treyvon... also more male than the other two ladies mentioned...

[Vyn]

Hrm...cherry picking is every bit as much a fallacy of reason as bandwagoning. Seneca spent a lot more words describing the latter

I do have trouble understanding how a hispanic man is "whiter" than an African-American man. What's really funny about that sentence is the three different domains those race descriptors come from. One is a color, another is an origin, the other is some loosely applicable nonsense.

So I guess really it should be a brown man is whiter than a black man. On the color wheel, brown certainly contains more white than black does.

But, really, this is silly.

Oh, the gal that fired the warning shot? That's what sent her up the river. "She couldn't have been in fear for her life, because she fired a warning shot, otherwise she would have just shot the dude." That's how the prosecution frames stuff like that. It doesn't have to make sense.

 

[Typhon]

Same state as Zimmerman, who killed Treyvon Martin with the same excuse. Alexander fired a warning shot and went to jail, Zimmerman shot to kill and walked. I remember the gun lobbyists being all about supporting Zimmerman, not a word about Alexander.

So all that talk about being able to use weapons in self defense seems like it's true only for white males. If you're a minority and/or female, you will face charges and quite likely incarceration.

  George Zimmerman is not white.

He was whiter than Treyvon... also more male than the other two ladies mentioned...

Oh, I remember Treyvon now.  He's the guy who had George Zimmerman pinned to the ground and was beating his head in. 

[Zzzptm]

So here's an incremental, rather than sweeping argument:

This last shooting was done by a guy that had already made death threats against his targets. The victims complained about the death threats and the police said that there was nothing that they could do. To me, that shows a need for a law that provides the police with a path forward, not a brick wall.

Make a law that makes a death threat a crime of conspiracy to commit murder. Pursuant to evidence of such a crime, police would be able to search the premises, vehicle, workplace, etc. of the perpetrator as part of a search done for a crime in progress and/or to prevent harm. Anything bigger than a butter knife can be gathered up and sent to the evidence locker. Perpetrator's name goes on the list of people to not sell guns to.

If someone is crazy enough to make a direct death threat, that person is crazy enough to not have access to weapons.

The next gray area is where someone drops hints about killing or makes threats about violence in general. Well, maybe we shouldn't be doing those, either. We will still be surprised by cases where there are no signs of danger, but most shootings don't come out of nowhere. There are signs and behaviors that precede most mass shootings. Use those patterns, criminalize them, and then there's a corresponding, targeted, reduction in violence.

[Billy Underdog]

^^^ I mostly agree with the way you're thinking, but were to draw the line? The police can't come sweeping in each time some nutters yells out "dude, i'm gonna kill you".

[Zzzptm]

^^^ I mostly agree with the way you're thinking, but were to draw the line? The police can't come sweeping in each time some nutters yells out "dude, i'm gonna kill you".

If he's a nutter, maybe they should...

[Typhon]

Tough call.  At a minimum, I think the police can check to see what weapons the guy owns and a system could be put in place by which the police are notified if the guy purchases guns or ammunition.  Kind of a watch list like we have now for terrorists.

[Billy Underdog]

^^^ I mostly agree with the way you're thinking, but were to draw the line? The police can't come sweeping in each time some nutters yells out "dude, i'm gonna kill you".

If he's a nutter, maybe they should...

Would require ALOT of extra police work, though. And by "nutter" i mean someone just saying the phrase without thinking about what it even means, and not meaning it. You know there's alot of them...

[Zzzptm]

I like the watchlist idea, especially if the police read a canned statement to the person and give a heads-up to local vendors that this guy can't buy ammo or additional weapons.

As for the offhand remarks, if someone says it enough so that a target records the video or gets an email or facebook post/message, then I think we can elevate that to the level of "I think this guy is serious."