So, it's the next day (barely) and I can't sleep.
This is not a thread for emotional reactions. That's for the other thread.
This is not a thread for people who have already made up their mind. Frankly, the inability to see other points of view is really fucking up the only thing this country was ever good at: Compromising. Hell, our greatest work (the Constitution) is a bunch of people meeting eachother half-way.
This is a place for us to try and come up with solutions to the problem of guns and violence in the USA. And there is one. Seriously.
I've recently been punted one that I find myself really quite taken with...
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2007/01/brin-classics-jefferson-rifle.html
The basic gist is: A lot of fear about removing the right to own guns is based off a fear that the government will be able to act with more impunity, and that a well armed population is a fantastic counterbalance to tyranny. Whether this is true or not, I do agree with Brin that it is a big part of why people want to hold onto their guns. I could be wrong, but...hey, Bullshit said it.
And those guys are always right!
(That was not a serious statement. Bullshit should be taken with a grain of salt. Which...just sounds wrong...)
So Brin offers...a compromise.
Basically, if we need to fight the government, then there's two basic options. 1) The military, being made up mostly of people who are...people and not robots, wouldn't use napalm and carpet bombs on their homes.
Or 2) The military, being made up mostly of robots who are not people, WOULD use napalm and carpet bombs on the GPS coordinates fed to them.
In the first case, then the military would NOT be able to hold down large sections of the country, even if they were only armed with hunting rifles.
In the second case, we are so FUCKED that even if everyone had an AK-47 and an RPG-7, we'd still be fucked seven ways from sunday.
As Brin points out, bolt action rifles and basic shotguns are unwieldy, hard to conceal, have a slow ROF. They're basic and cheap and make great hunting weapons, home defense weapons. You can kill people with them, but you sure as hell can't wreak the kind of mass slaughter we're all so fucking familiar with.
Why not restrict the semi-autos and autos and keep bolts around?
(As a side note, I was recently doing re-writes in my sci-fi novel. In it, a woman uses a rifle to defend her home from brigands. The rifle has a holographic interface, caseless smart-ammo and is made entirely out of carbon composites and other future materials that make it light, cheap and nearly unbreakable.
It's also bolt action. Because anything higher is illegal.
I wrote this two days ago.
DAVID. BRIN. IS. STEALING. MY. IDEAS. BEFORE. I. HAVE. THEM.)
So...
Yeah. We need a discussion. We need a compromise. I hope we can find one, or at least come close.
Then we just need to convince everyone else!
This is not a thread for emotional reactions. That's for the other thread.
This is not a thread for people who have already made up their mind. Frankly, the inability to see other points of view is really fucking up the only thing this country was ever good at: Compromising. Hell, our greatest work (the Constitution) is a bunch of people meeting eachother half-way.
This is a place for us to try and come up with solutions to the problem of guns and violence in the USA. And there is one. Seriously.
I've recently been punted one that I find myself really quite taken with...
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2007/01/brin-classics-jefferson-rifle.html
The basic gist is: A lot of fear about removing the right to own guns is based off a fear that the government will be able to act with more impunity, and that a well armed population is a fantastic counterbalance to tyranny. Whether this is true or not, I do agree with Brin that it is a big part of why people want to hold onto their guns. I could be wrong, but...hey, Bullshit said it.
And those guys are always right!
(That was not a serious statement. Bullshit should be taken with a grain of salt. Which...just sounds wrong...)
So Brin offers...a compromise.
Basically, if we need to fight the government, then there's two basic options. 1) The military, being made up mostly of people who are...people and not robots, wouldn't use napalm and carpet bombs on their homes.
Or 2) The military, being made up mostly of robots who are not people, WOULD use napalm and carpet bombs on the GPS coordinates fed to them.
In the first case, then the military would NOT be able to hold down large sections of the country, even if they were only armed with hunting rifles.
In the second case, we are so FUCKED that even if everyone had an AK-47 and an RPG-7, we'd still be fucked seven ways from sunday.
As Brin points out, bolt action rifles and basic shotguns are unwieldy, hard to conceal, have a slow ROF. They're basic and cheap and make great hunting weapons, home defense weapons. You can kill people with them, but you sure as hell can't wreak the kind of mass slaughter we're all so fucking familiar with.
Why not restrict the semi-autos and autos and keep bolts around?
(As a side note, I was recently doing re-writes in my sci-fi novel. In it, a woman uses a rifle to defend her home from brigands. The rifle has a holographic interface, caseless smart-ammo and is made entirely out of carbon composites and other future materials that make it light, cheap and nearly unbreakable.
It's also bolt action. Because anything higher is illegal.
I wrote this two days ago.
DAVID. BRIN. IS. STEALING. MY. IDEAS. BEFORE. I. HAVE. THEM.)
So...
Yeah. We need a discussion. We need a compromise. I hope we can find one, or at least come close.
Then we just need to convince everyone else!