Like a dictator, Obama threatens unprecedented gun control by executive order

Executive Order 13438

Spoiler

http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/orders/

Trampling the 5th Amendment? All well and good. But keep your hands off our high-capacity magazines you damn dirty fascist moslem.

Whatever.

 

Who said you have to be illogical about control/takeaway ?

Special? Car negligence is obviously examples of speeding excessively. In just one state, the number of deaths attributed to reckless speeding can be in the hundreds a year. Another example is the hybrid threat of alcohol with the driving. Lots of children deaths there...in fact the threat to the people is ridiculously high. If we truly wanted to make sense about taking away and controlling, you would start with the greater threat to adults and children..

 

First off, I don't believe in taking away more and more just to "feel safe" when the threat of a death by mass murder thru guns is even less likely than being killed by lightning (if you look at how many deaths happened over the last 10 years vs. mass shooting deaths)..

And lets say I did believe in that thought process. It would make much more sense to me to attack greater threats to the public than something much further down the list. That is logic. That should be embraced. If...you really care about the children.

 

All of these? You really think a doctor should be asking people about guns in the home? That's like your psychiatrist asking what kind of toilet paper you use.

These executive orders are a "feel good" act that will cost us billions, that accomplish nothing... all while the president overreached his bounds. I'm not afraid of the things he passed, I'm afraid at the precedence it sets.

I was against this as well... just as I'm against the Patriot Act and the entirety of the Department of Homeland Security.

 

Nothing says people who are fighting for gun control aren't fighting for numerous other causes. In fact, I would surmise that people who are fighting for one cause will likely fight for many others.

This call to call on others to act on everything before they act on one issue is patently impractical, and forces an unreasonable burden on others debating---because you diverge completely away from the topic. You're no longer debating gun control on the merits because (I assume) you have no arguments on the merits. Instead, you try to lay a red herring there and here, and a "think of the children" somewhere. This is an incoherent debating method that disguises an unwillingness to confront the issue at hand.

no dunblane, no Australia, no empirical studies---just "think of the children".

 

...you are aware of the 5000+ executive orders issued, starting from George Washington himself, aren't you?

 

I don't mind a decree when:

1) It's good policy

2) The legislative system is broken beyond repair as to make effective policy creation impossible

 

That is all fine. I want to fight for lots of causes as well, but you should do so from the standpoint of logic and priorities.

Wrong again. I simply ask the take away and more control crowd to pause, take a deep breath and apply logic by prioritizing this mindset. if they do, they will certainly apply that mindset to greater threats BEFORE addressing taking away and more control of the 2nd admendment rights.

I made my stance clear. We can take away/control in the name of saving lives in much better ways such as a mandate to all drive cars incapable of speed over the speed limit, limit or ban alcohol sales, but instead the pro takeaway/control people would rather spend such resources in an area so further down in comparison to saving lives that it makes me feel the actual goal isn't really to save lives at all....admit it, saving lives isn't really the goal here. It is to simply affirm to a political parties' position on their displeasure at the 2nd admendment

Maybe you should do more of that.

 

What, are we assuming everyone's cognitive abilities are so limited that they can only address one cause at a time? I hope you haven't stereotyped that onto people who can fight for multiple causes, and don't have to limit themselves to skirting debates on one topic alone.

You still haven't addressed anything about the actual debate, you've just tried to skirt around it.

Your arguments are so faulty, I don't know where to begin. a) They're completely red herrings and irrelevant, b) They don't address gun control at all, and c) They fail even on their own merits, because you can't seem to even consider benefit/cost---with your thread of illogic being that we should ban cars (???) before banning all guns (which very few people want to do anyways). um, cost/benefit? Benefit of guns=no Hitler in America I suppose. Benefit of cars=UHHHHH.

If you feel like I'm being hard on you, don't. I don't mean this to be personal. But this thread of illogical smoke and mirrors is what is parading around as a substantiated "pro-gun" argument these days---which is really a sad reflection with regards to evidence, facts and reasoning from that side.

 

...oh yeah, totally. The liberal left just wants to piss on Jefferson's grave. It's never been about lives---it's always been about just disrespecting the founders for no reason.

Can I assume you will never argue about anything that doesn't involve lethal force? Don't bother arguing about economics, philosophy, or the debt. Austrian economics hasn't killed anyone (yet). Surely, to think of the children, we must focus all of our efforts on cardiac arrest and automobile deaths.

 

I'm well aware of executive orders.

 

What is wrong with prioritizing? I hope you never plan on being an E.R. Doctor because you will focus on the sprained arm patient before the patient having a heart attack with that line of reasoning. That thinking and approach is so moronic and makes zero sense. I am so against the takeaway/control mindset, but I'd respect that thought process a tad if it was logical and prioritized.

Address what? I am against the takeaway/control mindset. The desire to apply that mindset is beyond faulty if the priority is to save lives.

What is irrevelent is the thinking that taking away and more control equals such a impactful benefit to the public to begin with when more people died from lightning in the last 10 years than mass shooting, I cannot see the need to address gun control if we are basing it on mass shooting. I cannot.

What I can see is, wait a sec, did I say "ban cars" ...okay I didn't. Anyways, what I can see is limiting or even banning alcohol and mandating all vehicles no longer are capable of exceeding the highest posted speed limit. That way, we can save as many lives from mass shooting over the last 10 years in just about 10 days.

P.s. And I don't take it personal, my wife hates guns but still puts up with me for some odd reason.

 

The only person this makes any sense for is people in legislative capacities who do have a finite amount of resources in carrying out actual changes. For people debating these measures and trying to turn the dialogue around, there is virtually no more marginal effort towards taking a position on gun control, as there is one on taking a position on speed limits. In fact, one lends itself to the other---work on one leads to sharper thinking on the other.

Your line of reasoning fails because it implies a finite line somewhere on the issues debated. Prioritization is a very weak argument because well, it isn't an argument at all, and it is illogical because it assumes things of people that simply aren't true. People aren't wedded to one idea or another, and energy spent debating one topic can actually make one more ready for debates on others.

I dislike this thread of thinking immensely, because it masks away substantive debate, and implies that one should stick to only one or two topics at a time.

 

You really want to compare asking questions about guns and asking about toilet paper? You do realize that making comparisons like that only further weakens your position?

 

You would have reasoning if gun control took place in conjunction with car negligence control or combined alcohol abuse control. The problem is there is nothing ...absolutely nothing to suggest an application of more control towards these greater threats. It is misplaced if we want to focus in one area that is way down the line on actual threat, and that is what you propose.

My stance is no further gun control is needed when A. That area of attack is a bill of right to begin with, and B. the hysteria and misplaced fear of mass shooting is marginalized compared to lightning over the last 10 years... I just don't acquiesce with the ideology of taking away/more control as an answer to solutions especially when that ideology could be better targeted at something else first.

Prioritization is far from a weak argument because that is what we have in front of us. A govt priority to ban/limit firearm rights. If the idea was brought up about banning or limiting alcohol, and limiting vehicle top speed, you may have had something in your response as "aren't wedded to one idea or another" but you have nothing because the only rhetoric of doing something to save lives is based on focusing exclusively on gun control. You give no evidence that there is a willingness to impact greater control on much more significant threats. None.....

 

If this is really and truly what you believe your opponents seek, then it explains a lot of the difficulty in the conversation. I don't blame you for thinking it, but I don't know anyone who feels that way.

I don't know anybody who hates the 2nd Amendment or wants it taken away. And I don't think it's so much a political party thing, truly. Okay, more democrats are willing to make changes, and more Republicans get NRA funding for their campaigns, but I know a lot of Republican voters who don't think anyone needs a large magazine.

As for your continued reiteration of the statistics... We have to admit, if you take all the pure hobbies (or security measures, if you like: let's say alarm systems) and take them all together, guns do cause more death in the US than all the others.

We've already said why cars are tolerated: they have great day-to-day utility for everyone. We put up with their awful costs (wrecks) because they're integral to getting our work done, our child-rearing done, etc, etc.

We've already pointed out that we have a bigger gun violence problem than any other would-be advanced modern nation, by far. One of the executive orders that makes the most sense, hopefully to everyone, is to just let the normal research branches *study* the issue. Wow, who would argue with that, aside from the NRA?

Finally, in terms of lightning and those statistics (just for mass shootings, versus all gun violence*): we can't do a lot about lightning, but by analogy, we try to tell people not to wave metal golf clubs around in a storm. We try to take basic precautions. With guns, by one of us waving the golf club around, lightning can strike a bunch of other people. And even though "mass shootings" may fall way down the list (even though total shootings are pretty high), these events are like mini-9-11's, or Oklahoma City: they are terrifying events that paralyze the entire nation, invoking fear. So their "negative value," we have to admit, is higher than other dangers, even if that's illogical. The total number of Americans killed by Islamic terrorists over the last 25 years is microscopic when you consider how much money we spend on it now -- we even created a whole new agency for it! It's because of the psychological issue and the general feeling of being well-defended. These mass shootings should basically be called terrorism, since the effect is the same. We can spend billions on Islamic terrorists, who ultimately do very little actual killing of Americans, but we can't spend much of anything on domestic mass millings, also rare, because the NRA freezes the discussion.

Sorry for ramble! But I don't think anyone hates the 2nd Amendment! We've always drawn a line somewhere as to "arms." You need to admit that. The line moved in the 30's on machine guns. The line moved in the 60's (more restrictions.) It moved back in the 80's (everything but, at the last minute, machine guns.) It moved in 1994. Then again in 2004. So this is really just not a big hairy deal! Based on our entire national history, nobody but nobody is going to take your guns, ROXRAN.

 

Could you please find yet another way of rationalizing ownership of assault weapons? Or are you running out?

"Um, you have more chance of getting devoured by a great white shark....in a swimming pool...than you do of getting gunned down in a movie theater or school."

"Edward...."

"MOM, DON'T TOUCH MY GUNS!"

"Um, dear, turn off the Internet and come down to dinner, okay?"

"MOM, they can't have my guns."

"No one's taking your guns, dear. Come to dinner."

 

Not true.

Gun death through suicide, homicide, and unintentional shootings take about 30,000+ deaths a year in America. Great white sharks about -1. Mass shootings are merely the tip of the iceberg on a wider problem.

But yeah, if your point is that Hollywood shouldn't run movies about Jaws and Shark Week, I'm on board with that.

What the hell? The ATF, age limits on driving and drinking, severe punishments for DUIs? I mean if you feel so bad about those issues then stop skirting around this issue and go attack those---as your prioritization seems to be wack.

Seriously, this prioritization junk has to stop. If you don't think something that causes 30,000 deaths is a priority, you don't think anything is. So, ROXRAN, next time I see you debating about the debt, economics, the Federal Reserve, global warming, homosexuality, sharks---I will remind you that your finite cognitive resources should only be spent on the top 3 causes of death in America---besides diseases that is motor vehicle accidents, prescription/recreational drug abuse, and gun deaths. The third carries with it the most intentionality, unless your "car negligence" theory also carries with it the Freudian "I wanna kill ppl with my car, and piss on the 2nd amendment" argument. It is also where America is the most behind on exploiting beneficial cost/benefit positions because of an irrational attachment to guns. It is a field where empirically, regulation has been seen to be effective.

The second is interesting because it has exploded on scene. If you want to strengthen the FDA so that they stop releasing non-binding opinion statements and get all "stop prescription drug abuse or ima kill you brand pharma", then let's go ahead and fight for that.

Priorities. Enough of your car negligence (really, you're still gonna use that terminology).

 

B-bob, I think you are speaking from your perspective and that is reasonable. But there are certainly those out there who would be absolutely fine with totalitarian eradication of 2nd admendment rights. You are correct that it is not a pure political thing. Americans like their guns. Several posters on the left enjoy gun use. Harry Reid has a more favorable NRA grade than some republican politicians. I know this...the problem I have is the call to ban ar15 rifles when it is the best home defense rifle on planet earth. What makes it have so much utility is the round it fires. The .223 is basically a .22 on steroids. It is a super small bullet but it fragments whenever it hits even the mildest hard structure. In other words, it will not pass thru a house like the other rifle rounds will do. Because of this fragmentation, it has tremendous stopping power on a home invader. Sometimes it takes multiple shots to stop an attacker, and 10 rounds of 9mm is barely enough for me for defense, especially if there is more than one home invader. There is only one gun that probably has one shot almost guarantee stopping power and that is the 12 gauge shotgun. The problem is many women can't use it due to the kick.
If you really put me up against it on what I might be willing to concede on as a compromise it would be to stop private selling, close the supposed gun loop, and make anything 20 round capacity and under legal,...20 rounds max is sufficient for even multiple attackers, and missed shot scenarios, but to KEEP the AR15. It is actually a great home defense gun, and useful for hunting. If you want to ban something, ban the ak47 types. Those have no utility for home defense. The round won't fragment and will pass thru cinder blocks and keep going. If we did this, I think there would be greater chance of agreement.

Keep in mind I'd rather not move an inch, but I could accept the above in a hypothetical situation.

 

Running out? I'm just getting started ...assault weapons is a broad term, but let me think of the AR15.,.. For one it is highly useful for home defense as I discussed. It is great for hunting, but it does real well inside the home to stop attackers. It has a lot more usefulness than other things that we rationalize owning.