Is it time to talk about guns?

Machine guns, aka fully automatic firearms, are so heavily regulated as to be virtually illegal. They really shouldn't be part of this discussion. And since you can reply here without a quill and inkwell, I can enjoy the benefits of a modern self loading rifle or pistol.

 

And the government doesn't allow us to own firearms, they're just not allowed to infringe on our right to have them.

 

Yet you did because.....?

 

Please try and follow along and keep track of all the posts and their context. Things sometimes move quickly here.

 

Like a lot of other tools, the benefits outweigh the negative aspects.
Evil people will always do some evil shit.

 

Choking down the need to say something is a tough one, but separates the people who only listen to respond from the people who listen to learn.

 

Machine guns? Like Rambo-style Vietnam era M60 machine guns? You’ll never get gun manufacturers to stop making semi automatic weapons, simply because US military is the primary buyer of these weapons. These weapons and their lethal capabilities are needed on the battlefield- those are never going away- ever.
No, I’m not saying lawmakers and law enforcement agencies should fear gun owners, I think imposed regulations should be measured and sensible. Are you not paying attention to what people have been wearing? The morale patches, t-shirts and hats that say:





What kind of bullshit do you think these folks are up to?

 

The civil war ended 157 years ago, the flag above should have been relegated to the dust bin of history 157 years and 4 months ago. To let a racist symbol and worse, racist mentality go on that long was colossal mistake. Shame. The assassination of Lincoln insured that recovery would be neither swift nor sure. A fair part of the gun culture is married to racism…they are not the patriots….they are the subversives.

 

Fake

 

I mentioned the same thing several posts ago- about assault weapons shouldn’t be sold to the general public. Why did I post those pics of people wearing those messages? That’s what law enforcement has to deal with if they are told to go door to door and seize weapons. That’s the point I was trying to make. I would think that after several attempts at it, and after numerous shootouts with citizens who refuse to comply- police officers will more than likely fear for their lives as they see their coworkers become casualties. There’s millions of theses weapons out there, not a few hundred, or a few thousand. How do you justify going to every single house in America to make sure no one possesses these weapons? It’s a crazy idea and a waste of time and resources.

 

No. I don't.

I'm just gonna stop you right here. I know plenty of people, yours truly included, who have played all three of those games in their youths quite a lot, and have NEVER EVER picked up a gun, or a knife, or some sort of club or other bludgeoning tool to kill, or in some way physically assault or maim another person. In fact, in my country, no acts of violence, by young or old, have ever been linked to violent video games, and we've had UNcensored versions of some of the most over-the-top violent titles widely available. Games such as Resident Evil, Soldier of Fortune, Blood, Duke Nukem 3D, Carmageddon and the Grand Theft Auto-series have all crossed my hard drives too at certain points in time, and I'm not aware of one single incident of violence triggered by these games, despite their gory content. What, however, has been discovered, is a very strong link to issues like domestic violence, untreated mental health problems, poorly handled cases of autism, alcohol and drug use, school bullying and poverty. All of these being issues which pervasively keep appearing as very common motivators in these numerous shooting incidents plaguing the American society, because America just handles these issues so poorly.

The 2012 Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza was an autist (Asperger's). I've studied his case a little bit, and everything would seem to point to the fact that his parents, and even the so-called professionals working on his case didn't have a fucking clue how to handle him. All this led to him getting stressed and anxious, which triggered him into killing. WITH THE HIGH-POWERED GUNS THAT WERE JUST MUCH TOO EASILY AVAILABLE TO HIM because of his mother's gun obsession.

Now, Adam Lanza did play video games. But do you wanna guess what was his favorite of them all? Dance Dance Revolution, a dancing game he reportedly played religiously at the local mall. A reaction game with no shooting segments in it, and no guns in sight anywhere in the game's code. So, by your logic, do we now ban Dance Dance Revolution?

I did have a look at those links you provided for me. Link number 1. (apa.org) is from the year 2000 and even by today's standards, badly outdated. The date makes me suspect that it's precisely the type of hysterical crud that got churned out in the wake of the Columbine High School massacre, which took place on the previous year (1999), for people who wanted comfort and answers. But even the APA article admits that the aggression-causing effects are just temporary, and only affect young men who are habitually aggressive, meaning somebody, who'd be predisposed to this type of behavior anyway. It's fucking nothing!

And then you have link number 2. (britannica.com), which, in the interests of fairness, also makes a long list of things that are GOOD about video games, even the violent ones, and among other things, admits that "Violent video games are a convenient scapegoat for those who would rather not deal with the actual causes of violence in the US.". A.k.a. guns are much too easily available, down and out people on the fringes of society don't get the help they need, and people outright resist correcting their bad and wrong attitudes, because they feel this is their prerogative as Americans.

The list of negatives on the Britannica-article is in many places full of nonsense that is not backed by anything. This in particular caught my eye: "By inhabiting violent characters in video games, children are more likely to imitate the behaviors of those characters and have difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy.". I'm sorry, but even as a kid, I didn't know any videogamers, who'd be this detached from reality. Nor do I know any now, as an adult. Where I come from, people are level-headed and can tell fact and fiction apart, understand that real life is not a video game, and that if you shoot somebody, they die for real. But maybe the Americans missed the memo?

BTW, you still haven't answered my question: whence came the wanton violence of the 19th century and before, where violent movies and video games didn't yet exist?