Anonymous wrote:We can’t mental health our way of this. We can stop certain guns from being manufactured. We can smelt guns used in commission of a crime.
We can improve the background check system
We can restrict ammunition.
We can offer buy backs
We can ignore long winded a holes who look at pics of Uvalde and their only response is smug condescension.
We can do it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
He can claim he didn’t mean to draw comparisons, but he still picked that specific cause of death. Just weird and frankly a little gross.

I wonder if Mr Registered Democrat would at least support keeping guns out of the hands of the deeply mentally ill and domestic abusers.

Yes, I ABSOLUTELY would suggest going REALLY hard after anyone who tries to buy a firearm in violation of any of the stipulations on the ATF form 4473. That form includes straw purchases, anyone adjudicated mentally defective, drug users, and misdemeanor (or greater) domestic violence. And for that matter, expand the 4473 list to include a lot more exclusions for theft, burglary, DUI, etc. Then give hard prison time to anyone in violation.

Anonymous wrote:Do we as a society even have the ability or desire to declare people mentally defective any more? We cannot even do anything about the guy who lives in the trees near a grocery store and poops there too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
He can claim he didn’t mean to draw comparisons, but he still picked that specific cause of death. Just weird and frankly a little gross.

I wonder if Mr Registered Democrat would at least support keeping guns out of the hands of the deeply mentally ill and domestic abusers.

I picked it out of the list of low-incident causes of death because it’s a good example of something that (I would imagine) practically nobody has ever dealt with firsthand, and certainly nobody irrationally loses sleep over.

I doubt that my acquaintance who has a rifle-related panic attack upon hearing sirens has considered that the paramedics are MORE likely rushing to resuscitate her husband who was doing that. Actually I may have to use that line to mock her hysteria.

Yes, I ABSOLUTELY would suggest going REALLY hard after anyone who tries to buy a firearm in violation of any of the stipulations on the ATF form 4473. That form includes straw purchases, anyone adjudicated mentally defective, drug users, and misdemeanor (or greater) domestic violence. And for that matter, expand the 4473 list to include a lot more exclusions for theft, burglary, DUI, etc. Then give hard prison time to anyone in violation.

As much as the stories of “someone suddenly snapping” grab the headlines, they are extraordinarily rare statistical outliers. Almost all violent crime is committed by a very small number of aberrant individuals with a long history of aberrant behavior.

Agree that it would be good to go after people who lied on their 4473s for straw purchases, drug use, misdemeanors or greater relating to domestic violence, threats or anger management issues. and, there are also a huge number of people who own guns, have been clinically diagnosed with mental issues involving psychosis, delusions, paranoia, threatening behavior, inappropriate aggression and violence to others or self-harm, but who have never been formally adjudicated in a court in any way that would bar them from owning a gun. All told, those numbers are easily in the millions of people who own guns, who are being allowed to buy guns, but who really shouldn't be allowed to have guns.

The problem, however, is that we have completely hamstrung the people responsible for checking and enforcing it. They do not have any easy way to detect straw purchases, because there is no persistent, searchable database of purchases. And the systems also lack the connections and data to make appropriate determinations on many of the other issues as well. And, it's not just crippled investigations and prosecutions, the courts do far too little as well. Far too many purchases just get rubberstamped in the 4473 process for lack of adequate systems to do appropriate background checks and tracking of gun purchases.

Anonymous wrote:
Agree that it would be good to go after people who lied on their 4473s for straw purchases, drug use, misdemeanors or greater relating to domestic violence, threats or anger management issues. and, there are also a huge number of people who own guns, have been clinically diagnosed with mental issues involving psychosis, delusions, paranoia, threatening behavior, inappropriate aggression and violence to others or self-harm, but who have never been formally adjudicated in a court in any way that would bar them from owning a gun. All told, those numbers are easily in the millions of people who own guns, who are being allowed to buy guns, but who really shouldn't be allowed to have guns.

The problem, however, is that we have completely hamstrung the people responsible for checking and enforcing it. They do not have any easy way to detect straw purchases, because there is no persistent, searchable database of purchases. And the systems also lack the connections and data to make appropriate determinations on many of the other issues as well. And, it's not just crippled investigations and prosecutions, the courts do far too little as well. Far too many purchases just get rubberstamped in the 4473 process for lack of adequate systems to do appropriate background checks and tracking of gun purchases.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You may be a math guy. But you are not an engineering guy. When we design a system or anything else, we don’t only look at the statistics and compare across statistical families. We look at risk. Which is probability (what you are talking about) multiplied by impact (how catastrophic is it). In the case of mass shootings, the impact is very high. The dead victims of course, but also the emotional upheaval, the loss of a perceived sense of security, the tearing apart of communities, etc. Kids dying for no reason at all tends to provide a sense of trauma that you don’t seem to be able to appreciate.

Aha, a good and intelligent reply!! Thank you!!

What you’re touching on here is the concept of utilitarianism, of which I’m a fan. There is *absolutely* significant disutility when children are killed versus adults. Or, when people are killed at random versus doing something where “they should’ve known better”.

In my mind, though, there are a couple problems with using utilitarianism to formulate policy.

The first is irrationality. We don’t have to look far to find people who become so emotionally distraught over something that it becomes akin to a mental illness. Like being afraid to go into the water because you watched Jaws. Or my acquaintance who gets a case of the vapors when she hears a siren. At some point that becomes Robert Nozick’s “utility monster” thought experiment, but with public policy being driven by the most easily-scared / neurotic members of society.

The other issue is measuring that disutility, which is impossible. And you’d have to measure the positive utility on the flip side of the discussion. Another acquaintance uses a wheel chair but stays very active. If he goes someplace isolated, like a self-storage facility, he may find much emotional comfort if he carries a pistol, even though he will probably never use it. In a utilitarian sense, he *has* already used the un-fired pistol, because it gave him the freedom of movement in a condition when he can no longer physically fight someone.

Now take those perceptions (both rational and irrational) and multiply by hundreds of millions of people. The only way to proceed is how we do, in a representative democracy where we vote though our ballots, our activism, and our financial contributions via purchases and donations. Anything other than that is NOT true liberalism. It’s illiberalism, which I cannot stand, and it’s why I feel so many of my fellow self-proclaimed liberals have gone off the rails. We’re on the wrong side of this one issue. We weren’t so much in the 1960s, but things shifted to becoming the party of neurotic, narcissistic old biddies.

Which is why I started off by saying this is no longer a serious discussion. It’s resolved. Those tens of thousands of Gen-Z high school trap shooters are flummoxed by the likes of the fat suburban woman — the one who has “AR” related panic attacks, but is actually going to die from her diet, and who doesn’t know the difference between a shotgun and a rifle. All they know is that someone so confused can’t be trusted to propose common sense gun control. In fact, they find her use of the term “common sense” to be rather ironic.

There are fat trap shooting suburban women that are fighting hard for increased gun control laws. They are not confused or flummoxed. Not even by some obnoxious gun nerd on DCUM.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You may be a math guy. But you are not an engineering guy. When we design a system or anything else, we don’t only look at the statistics and compare across statistical families. We look at risk. Which is probability (what you are talking about) multiplied by impact (how catastrophic is it). In the case of mass shootings, the impact is very high. The dead victims of course, but also the emotional upheaval, the loss of a perceived sense of security, the tearing apart of communities, etc. Kids dying for no reason at all tends to provide a sense of trauma that you don’t seem to be able to appreciate.

Aha, a good and intelligent reply!! Thank you!!

What you’re touching on here is the concept of utilitarianism, of which I’m a fan. There is *absolutely* significant disutility when children are killed versus adults. Or, when people are killed at random versus doing something where “they should’ve known better”.

In my mind, though, there are a couple problems with using utilitarianism to formulate policy.

The first is irrationality. We don’t have to look far to find people who become so emotionally distraught over something that it becomes akin to a mental illness. Like being afraid to go into the water because you watched Jaws. Or my acquaintance who gets a case of the vapors when she hears a siren. At some point that becomes Robert Nozick’s “utility monster” thought experiment, but with public policy being driven by the most easily-scared / neurotic members of society.

The other issue is measuring that disutility, which is impossible. And you’d have to measure the positive utility on the flip side of the discussion. Another acquaintance uses a wheel chair but stays very active. If he goes someplace isolated, like a self-storage facility, he may find much emotional comfort if he carries a pistol, even though he will probably never use it. In a utilitarian sense, he *has* already used the un-fired pistol, because it gave him the freedom of movement in a condition when he can no longer physically fight someone.

Now take those perceptions (both rational and irrational) and multiply by hundreds of millions of people. The only way to proceed is how we do, in a representative democracy where we vote though our ballots, our activism, and our financial contributions via purchases and donations. Anything other than that is NOT true liberalism. It’s illiberalism, which I cannot stand, and it’s why I feel so many of my fellow self-proclaimed liberals have gone off the rails. We’re on the wrong side of this one issue. We weren’t so much in the 1960s, but things shifted to becoming the party of neurotic, narcissistic old biddies.

Which is why I started off by saying this is no longer a serious discussion. It’s resolved. Those tens of thousands of Gen-Z high school trap shooters are flummoxed by the likes of the fat suburban woman — the one who has “AR” related panic attacks, but is actually going to die from her diet, and who doesn’t know the difference between a shotgun and a rifle. All they know is that someone so confused can’t be trusted to propose common sense gun control. In fact, they find her use of the term “common sense” to be rather ironic.

Anonymous wrote:
You may be a math guy. But you are not an engineering guy. When we design a system or anything else, we don’t only look at the statistics and compare across statistical families. We look at risk. Which is probability (what you are talking about) multiplied by impact (how catastrophic is it). In the case of mass shootings, the impact is very high. The dead victims of course, but also the emotional upheaval, the loss of a perceived sense of security, the tearing apart of communities, etc. Kids dying for no reason at all tends to provide a sense of trauma that you don’t seem to be able to appreciate.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
He can claim he didn’t mean to draw comparisons, but he still picked that specific cause of death. Just weird and frankly a little gross.

I wonder if Mr Registered Democrat would at least support keeping guns out of the hands of the deeply mentally ill and domestic abusers.

I picked it out of the list of low-incident causes of death because it’s a good example of something that (I would imagine) practically nobody has ever dealt with firsthand, and certainly nobody irrationally loses sleep over.

I doubt that my acquaintance who has a rifle-related panic attack upon hearing sirens has considered that the paramedics are MORE likely rushing to resuscitate her husband who was doing that. Actually I may have to use that line to mock her hysteria.

Yes, I ABSOLUTELY would suggest going REALLY hard after anyone who tries to buy a firearm in violation of any of the stipulations on the ATF form 4473. That form includes straw purchases, anyone adjudicated mentally defective, drug users, and misdemeanor (or greater) domestic violence. And for that matter, expand the 4473 list to include a lot more exclusions for theft, burglary, DUI, etc. Then give hard prison time to anyone in violation.

As much as the stories of “someone suddenly snapping” grab the headlines, they are extraordinarily rare statistical outliers. Almost all violent crime is committed by a very small number of aberrant individuals with a long history of aberrant behavior.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
He can claim he didn’t mean to draw comparisons, but he still picked that specific cause of death. Just weird and frankly a little gross.

I wonder if Mr Registered Democrat would at least support keeping guns out of the hands of the deeply mentally ill and domestic abusers.

I picked it out of the list of low-incident causes of death because it’s a good example of something that (I would imagine) practically nobody has ever dealt with firsthand, and certainly nobody irrationally loses sleep over.

I doubt that my acquaintance who has a rifle-related panic attack upon hearing sirens has considered that the paramedics are MORE likely rushing to resuscitate her husband who was doing that. Actually I may have to use that line to mock her hysteria.

Yes, I ABSOLUTELY would suggest going REALLY hard after anyone who tries to buy a firearm in violation of any of the stipulations on the ATF form 4473. That form includes straw purchases, anyone adjudicated mentally defective, drug users, and misdemeanor (or greater) domestic violence. And for that matter, expand the 4473 list to include a lot more exclusions for theft, burglary, DUI, etc. Then give hard prison time to anyone in violation.

As much as the stories of “someone suddenly snapping” grab the headlines, they are extraordinarily rare statistical outliers. Almost all violent crime is committed by a very small number of aberrant individuals with a long history of aberrant behavior.

You use a LOT of words to say absolutely nothing.

And why do I sense that your “registered Democrat” means that you’re actually a fairly far right winger who just likes the idea of wreaking havoc in Democratic primaries. Oh I know why - you say a lot of words to mean nothing and end up sounding like one of those right wingers high on his own supply.

One thing’s for sure. The longwinded PP likes the sound of his own voice. And thinks he’s smarter and more rational than everyone else.

Sure sounds like it to me.

I find myself without a lot of patience for people who think the murder of children isn’t a big deal just because the numbers are small. That’s… that’s a weird way to announce a person is a sociopath.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
He can claim he didn’t mean to draw comparisons, but he still picked that specific cause of death. Just weird and frankly a little gross.

I wonder if Mr Registered Democrat would at least support keeping guns out of the hands of the deeply mentally ill and domestic abusers.

I picked it out of the list of low-incident causes of death because it’s a good example of something that (I would imagine) practically nobody has ever dealt with firsthand, and certainly nobody irrationally loses sleep over.

I doubt that my acquaintance who has a rifle-related panic attack upon hearing sirens has considered that the paramedics are MORE likely rushing to resuscitate her husband who was doing that. Actually I may have to use that line to mock her hysteria.

Yes, I ABSOLUTELY would suggest going REALLY hard after anyone who tries to buy a firearm in violation of any of the stipulations on the ATF form 4473. That form includes straw purchases, anyone adjudicated mentally defective, drug users, and misdemeanor (or greater) domestic violence. And for that matter, expand the 4473 list to include a lot more exclusions for theft, burglary, DUI, etc. Then give hard prison time to anyone in violation.

As much as the stories of “someone suddenly snapping” grab the headlines, they are extraordinarily rare statistical outliers. Almost all violent crime is committed by a very small number of aberrant individuals with a long history of aberrant behavior.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
He can claim he didn’t mean to draw comparisons, but he still picked that specific cause of death. Just weird and frankly a little gross.

I wonder if Mr Registered Democrat would at least support keeping guns out of the hands of the deeply mentally ill and domestic abusers.

I picked it out of the list of low-incident causes of death because it’s a good example of something that (I would imagine) practically nobody has ever dealt with firsthand, and certainly nobody irrationally loses sleep over.

I doubt that my acquaintance who has a rifle-related panic attack upon hearing sirens has considered that the paramedics are MORE likely rushing to resuscitate her husband who was doing that. Actually I may have to use that line to mock her hysteria.

Yes, I ABSOLUTELY would suggest going REALLY hard after anyone who tries to buy a firearm in violation of any of the stipulations on the ATF form 4473. That form includes straw purchases, anyone adjudicated mentally defective, drug users, and misdemeanor (or greater) domestic violence. And for that matter, expand the 4473 list to include a lot more exclusions for theft, burglary, DUI, etc. Then give hard prison time to anyone in violation.

As much as the stories of “someone suddenly snapping” grab the headlines, they are extraordinarily rare statistical outliers. Almost all violent crime is committed by a very small number of aberrant individuals with a long history of aberrant behavior.

You use a LOT of words to say absolutely nothing.

And why do I sense that your “registered Democrat” means that you’re actually a fairly far right winger who just likes the idea of wreaking havoc in Democratic primaries. Oh I know why - you say a lot of words to mean nothing and end up sounding like one of those right wingers high on his own supply.

One thing’s for sure. The longwinded PP likes the sound of his own voice. And thinks he’s smarter and more rational than everyone else.