This was so awkward I had to check if you were joking but nope, actual conservative who got his feelings hurt and retaliated with the two most generic right-wing insults there are.

I could teach your entire personality to a bird.

So your objection is that they call a mass shooting a mass shooting? What magic number would you like them to use?

Sure. So either 9 minutes of shooting children is acceptable or the police response to Sandy Hook was also unacceptable, which is not something anybody suggested at the time.

Personally, I’m going to go with “there is no duration of shooting children that is acceptable and the intervention needs to happen before they’re sold a gun”.

I’m done, because there’s literally no point at which you’re going to admit that a tool can’t force it’s own use

A tool can’t force it’s own use. I’m happy to admit it and have never claimed otherwise.

But you’re not arguing with me, you’re arguing with a gun control advocate that lives in your head and believes whatever the gun-lobby has told you they believe.

It doesn’t need to be profitable, let alone have every fraction of a cent squeezed from it.

It’s almost like it was just a lie they told to make all the school shootings sound worth it.

Don’t worry, gun owners have pinkie promised they’ll overthrow any tyrants, right after they’ve finished enthusiastically voting for them.

While the Ulvade police are obviously dogshit, better police didn’t mean a better outcome for Sandy Hook, because better police isn’t the answer.

You’re functionally suggesting there is an acceptable amount of time for a gunman to be shooting children that’s greater than 9 minutes but less than an hour and a half.

So it’s clear that the firearms by themselves do not cause the crime, but are only the tools used.

Except for all the murders you just acknowledged were lower with gun control, because guns escalate arguments and crimes into homicides since there’s no better tool for quickly and reliably killing someone.

What you’re trying to do is “cure” pneumonia with a cough suppressant, and hoping that the underlying pneumonia goes away on it’s own once you stop coughing

I sure hope you’re not a doctor, because treating symptoms is exactly what they do until the underlying cause is discovered and addressed. If it can’t be cured, managing symptoms is literally their entire focus.

Not in your hospital though. Turn up with a broken arm? “Sorry, pain is just a symptom so we can’t give you anything for it. We also don’t think the bone sticking out of your arm is the actual cause, so we’re not going to address it until you’ve had 6 months of chemotherapy and undergone a colectomy because cancer can cause pain too. We’re not actually going to perform those proceedures, but if someone else does, come back and see us so we can give you new excuses”.

Even if you took all the guns in the US, you’re not going to fix the violence, the gangs, the domestic abuse, the rape, or even the suicides.

No, it wont. It will reduce the lethality and frequency of every single one of those things instead – an improvement you oppose.

And yeah, conservatives oppose fixing all that shit too. So, good on you for agreeing with Republicans on that, I guess?

You seem to be confused again. Name every single moral, effective change you can think of to reduce violence and crime and I’ll openly support every one of them. Universal healthcare, addressing wealth inequality, improving education? No problem. You can even raise my taxes to help fund them.

Then when you’re all out of ideas, I will say “Gun control is another moral, effective way to reduce the amount and severity of crime and violence” and you’ll throw a fit about “not that one, we will kill you if you try and implement that one”.

Your views on that one issue align perfectly with both Republicans and the gun-lobby that donates $16 million each year to them – money you give them.

Which is not what I said, but okay.

It’s literally the next argument you make.

How about, ALL of my trans friends, and the overwhelming majority of my gay friends are armed, because they’ve got people that will happily murder them in the streets with their base hands

But they don’t use their bare hands, they use the guns you demand they are sold, significantly increasing the chances of your friends being killed.

How about the women I know that have had to get restraining orders against violent and abusive ex-husbands and boyfriends, and got armed and trained because cops do not give a fuck until his hands are around her neck?

Violent, abusive partners that you also demand are sold guns, despite domestic abuse being one of the strongest predictors of homicide.

How about the people threatened like my nephew that were threatened by a gang because he was a witness to a murder, and was compelled to testify in court?

What about him? 99% of guns used in crimes were either legally sold to the criminal, or sold to a “responsible gun owner” that failed to secure the weapons and promptly had them stolen.

The laws you’re leaping to the defense of armed the murderer, the people who threatened him and from the sound of it, guns only made his life significantly worse.

I’m not even sure how you think you’d solve this in your gun utopia. If your nephew was a child at the time, they wouldn’t be eligible to carry a handgun with them at all times. If they did have a gun, your expectation seems to be that he could have murdered the criminal back, which would have only made the trauma, threats and court appearances even worse.

If you didn’t make all these people up, it’s clear you’re just using them as props. It’s genuinely surreal that you could have at least 7 people in your life that you ostensibly love, all of whom have been the target of violence, yet you support their abusers and oppressors buying handguns and semi-automatic rifles.

America has a violence problem, period. It’s not a gun problem, it’s a violence problem.

Nobody advocating gun control thinks it will end all forms of violence, nor do they oppose other forms of violence reduction.

They oppose supplying violent people the tools they use to maximise their violence, with near-zero consideration of the risk that poses to innocent people.

They ask themselves “How many people would have died at Pulse nightclub if the killer only had a bolt-action? What about if he only had a knife? What about if we lost our minds and let the pro-gun community pick up a 6 pack of hand grenades like many of them openly support?”.

But the pro-gun community doesn’t. They just say “49 killed and 53 wounded is fine. 61 dead and 400 injured is fine. 21 children mutilated beyond recognition is fine. 3 women a day is fine”, because none of those people matter as much to them as their guns do.

To rephrase that, why are you concerned only with affecting murder, rather than affecting ALL violent crime

Which violent crimes am I blocking reduction efforts for? I will support any moral and demonstably effective method of reducing violent crime of any sort. The current gun laws meet neither of those requirements.

So, why the focus on a single issue?

I’m focusing on a single issue because that’s the issue we’re discussing, not because it’s the only one I support.

Why do people only drown at home when they have bathtubs, and not people that just have showers?

Because showers have a near zero drowning risk and bathtubs don’t. Beaches and swimming pools have a higher drowning risk still, which is why we have systems in place to mitigate those dangers through lifeguards.

If you think this simple concept is “nonsensical”, we’ve probably isolated why you think gun laws are perfect just the way they are – you’re completely unable to identify different risk levels, even when they’re extremely obvious.

Defensive gun use only shows up when you ask gun owners because non-gun owners don’t have guns to use defensively.

Which would have been a great point if I’d suffered a traumatic brain injury and actually asked “why don’t people without guns use their guns defensively”.

Defensive gun use must inherently prevent a crime and the pro-gun community has been completely unable to demonstrate this crime reduction statistically.

Only 8% of firearm researchers agreed that 'In the United States, guns are used in self-defense far more often than they are used in crime

And, BTW, since you are familiar with DGU, you know that conservative estimates are around 1.5M per year in the US

Which is roughly the number of violent crimes reported in America each year. You’d think if 50% of all violent crimes were prevented by guns, that would be trivial to prove.

Instead, we end up with figures that say things like “only 3% of all mass shootings are ended by a good guy with a gun”.

Of course, it’s going to take you about a minute and a half to load if you’ve practiced, so maybe don’t miss with that first shot? Oh, and you’re going to want a spotter to help you aim, and you’ll need to find a way to tow it around, since it weight a couple thousand pounds.

With a cannon that takes a crew of four people to operate effectively, and has a range less than a decent bolt action rifle? 'Kay.

Congratulations, you’ve accidentally realized that different weaponry comes with different risks to the public and that those risks are significantly reduced when weapons are less portable, lower range and have a lower rate of fire.

But of course, your little story about cannons doesn’t actually represent your views on guns, otherwise you’d oppose handguns and semi-automatic weapons, aligning your opinions with the most widespread gun control laws across the globe.

You said “artillery”. Should we go through different forms of artillery and you can either say “Yes, I support anyone who can pass a background check owning that with no training or safety requirements” or “actually it turns out I’m not an arms absolutist after all and some weaponry isn’t worth the social risk”?

Gun control laws, sure. Since those are almost always intended to and disproportionately affect minority groups.

So now that those racist laws are gone, there’s no more race problems right? All the Black Panthers are living happily ever after and definitely weren’t executed by the state, guns or no guns.

Because it sure seems like your guns didn’t fix shit for them.

Police still execute them in the street and if they had a gun on them, there isn’t even an investigation. Hell, if they fired at the police, those police would probably get a medal for killing them.

But if you know the magic proceedure to follow to stop police brutality using cool guns, I’m all ears. You’re a black man, you’ve been stopped by police, you have a legal firearm in your pants. When do you start blasting?

Be specific, because the lives of people you don’t give a shit about are on the line.

Once you’ve sorted that, you can explain how selling guns to neo-nazis with a history of domestic violence helps them.

You missed Finland, which is likely more heavily armed than the Swiss

Here’s their gun laws.

What a surprise, they require gun licenses which won’t be granted for self-defense, guns that are not appropriate for their stated purpose or applicants with a history of mental health issues, violence or substance abuse.

All of that is gun control, which the pro-gun community opposes.

Fortunately, the people of Finland don’t. So after a two school shootings using pistols, police were grilled about why the gun licenses were issued, then legislation was updated to require two years of active, documented hobby shooting before being issued a pistol license, as well as being over the age of 20.

So there’s no good reason to believe that a Swiss person couldn’t easily jump through the hoops to get an SIG 550 (or use their military-issued rifle, and the military-issued ammunition) to commit a mass murder

Crazy. It’s almost like those “hoops” filter out mass murderers.

If the state subsidizes the cost of storage, sure, I’m fine with that.

Nah. You want to be a “responsible gun owner”, so its time for you to take responsibility.

there’s no country I’m aware of that requires firearms to be stored in a container that would be considered a burglary-resistant safe.

You shouldn’t have any trouble finding countries that would revoke the gun license – if not criminally charge – anyone found keeping a handgun in a glovebox or sock drawer and an AR-15 in a closet.

Millions of Americans do, and it sounds like you’re among them. It sure seems like “responsible gun owners” hate the thought of that responsibility being mandatory.

No one is arguing that people convicted of a domestic violence offense should be allowed to be armed

The pro-gun lobby are, and they’re both funded by you and representing you.

Convicted is the key term here.

Did you tell all those “women you know” at the top of your comment that you still support their ex-partners owning firearm, even though they have a restraining order? Did they ever speak to you again? Because I certainly wouldn’t if someone told me “I’d rather risk your murder than risk temporarily depriving an innocent person of an inanimate object”.

I have already demonstrated that countries without any realistic path to gun ownership can still have very high violent crime rates, even if the murder rates are lower

Yes, you have demonstrated that countries with gun control have lower murder rates (which is exactly my point) despite still having other crime (which I never claimed gun control would eliminate).

It seems that way because it is. It’s a for-profit media company, owned and run by rich neoliberals, who are shareholders in other for-profit companies owned by neoliberals, reporting on someone who is a genuine threat to that system.

Most of the “left vs right” in politics and media is just an elaborate pantomime to vie for market share. The moment someone is a genuine threat to neoliberalism, watch them all unite to take them down.

Because it’s one of the most effective ways to turn public funds into private profits.

Here is your saviour using far-right insults and homophobic slurs to try and hurt my feelings by calling me effeminate

Please just get a mail in ballot if you feel unsafe.

By the way, the fact that the GOP benefits from the gun lobby is YOUR FUCKING FAULT

Looks like that was the bit that upset you, but you couldn’t think of an excuse until you remebered the “it’s your fault I’m a bad person” defense that’s so loved by abusive partners the world over that they teach it in schools as a red flag.

Nevermind, being able to control your emotions isn’t a requirement for owning a gun and as long as you own a gun, you’ll never need a personality.

That is the biggest bunch of pussy-assed pathetic cuck bitch whining I have ever seen in my life. Get out of my country, you pansy.

What a surprise, the gun owner is a cunt. I absolutely love the insults you chose though.

Not because they’re good, but because they reveal so much about who you are under all the posturing.

I hate to break it to you, but just because you’re insecure in your masculinity, doesn’t mean I am too but hey, at least we worked out why guns and looking like a hero are so important to you.

You’re going to have to do better than “Trump voters favorite insult, borrowed from white supremacists” and a homophobic slur.

You’re missing the point, intentionally

It’s a promise gun owners make, that you give them a free pass on, despite them clearly never delivering on it, which is a common theme through all your arguments.

Starting immediately with…

Which is also worse tools for defending themselves. So, again, not a win.

If guns made people safer, America should be the safest country in the world by a huge margin, not shrugging off mass shootings every month

So why is the crime rate in America practically identical to countries with gun control, except that America’s homicide rate is 400% higher?

Why do these “defensive gun uses” only appear when you ask gun owners how often they’ve experienced them and never in any kind of statistics?

To put it bluntly, Americas gun laws disproportionately help assholes be assholes – something that does show up in statistics.

But “responsible gun owners” rush to be their useful idiots anyway, deliberately oblivious to who they’re actually helping but demanding to be looked upon as heroes anyway.

Imagine you wanted to donate to the Democrats, but for $1 donated, it was mandatory to donate $4 to Republicans.

Would you rush to social media as Republicans won over and over again, insisting it wasn’t your fault, you were only helping the Democrats?

Would you advocate people donated every dollar they could to the Dems and then shame them when their candidate lost?

If the Dems won 3 out of every 100 elections, would you claim it was because the laws around donations were the best in the world?

Private citizens could quite legally have artillery under the interpretation of the constitution that existed until 1934

Don’t worry, you’re not actually shocking me with that response, I just wanted you to say that idiocy out loud.

It’s important that people know that supporting the pro-gun community is supporting elevating the far-right from mass shooters in to a homegrown Hamas.

And yes, I think that most felons should be allowed to be armed, because the law is structured in such a way that even non-violent felons have their rights stripped from them.

“Well it doesn’t matter what you think, because its been ruled constituational”.

You don’t get to make that argument for guns and then handwave it away when you don’t like it.

Okay, so you’re saying that there is no amount of evidence that would ever change your mind. Is that correct?

The evidence I’ve been waiting 25 years for? Sure, you could change my mind with it, but if you actually had it, you wouldn’t be desperately latching on to semantics to try and make me sound unreasonable.

So even if I could show you that other countries that have high levels of personal firearm ownership don’t see violence rates like the US does, you wouldn’t see that as relevant, because it doesn’t involve removing guns.

Sure, you can do the “b-b-but Switzerland” thing if you want to, but I’ll just point out what their actual laws are, so you probably shouldn’t unless you support gun control measures like:

• Purchasing a semi-automatic, handgun, lever-action or pump-action requires a permit
• Getting a permit involves a background check on the applicant to ensure that they are not a danger to themselves or others, which includes consideration of their mental health, character and history of domestic violence, not just “have you done a felony”
• A “genuine reason” must be provided if a firearm isn’t for recreation
• All firearms must be registered with the government, as must all transfers and sales.
• Purchasing ammunition has the same requirements as gun purchases, unless you’re at a range or event and it will be immediately fired.
• All ammunition purchases are tracked by authorities
• High capacity loading devices require a may-issue permit
• Guns must be securely stored and transported, including unloading
• Mandatory military service

Some of them, you’ve already openly opposed, such as prohibiting grenades and artillery.

Others, the pro-gun community actively opposes, such as safe storage and denying guns to domestic abusers.

But if you want to replace America’s gun laws with Switzerland’s, I’m happy to officially congratulate you on becoming a gun-control advocate.

Do I have that about right?

Nope, but it gave you the premise you needed to push misinformation, which is all you were really interested in.

Sure they do. You might only be a fraction of their profits, but those profits are made up of millions of fractions.

So how much of that are you comfortable donating to the Republican party, currently represented by Donald Trump and in the middle of attacking womens rights and the LGBT+ community?

It looks like if you bought a gun in 2022, around a dollar of your money most likely ended up in a Republicans election fund.

Of course, much more of your money would have gone towards legally opposing the red flag laws that should have prevented multiple mass shootings by far-right extremists, all of which are now openly celebrated in neo-nazi chat rooms.

But I’m sure you’re going to undo all of that damage by parading around a polling place with a gun, which you haven’t actually said you’d be doing and would accomplish nothing except further repressing votes.

You sure do help fascists a lot for someone who ostensibly opposes them. “Murdering minorities” and “preventing people from voting” are their two favourite activities in the whole world and you’ve given them guns, funding and aid they need to do both.

I absolutely adore that you replied to your own “have you had a stroke?” comment.

And of course in a plot twist to shock nobody, you’ve told yourself to further increase the profits of the gun lobby.

I guess if you just donated to Republicans directly you wouldn’t get a new toy to play make believe with.

I think the fantasy is “I go to vote and some far-right extremist, intent on gunning me down for being trans, gets an argument against doing that promptly offered or constantly visible in opposition instead of simply killing me.”

Cool idea, but if it actually worked then America would be the safest country in the world for minorities (and by a huge margin).

Seriously, am I supposed to want you watching me get murdered saying “at least no centrists got hurt” over IHadTwoCows keeping me from getting murdered or, hell, shooting the person who did it?

IHadTwoCows openly supports the gun laws that arm far-right extremists in the first place.

The Club Q shooter was a legal gun owner. He’d previously been arrested for making bomb threats. None of the people who stopped the shooting were armed.

The pulse nightclub shooter was a legal gun owner, despite losing jobs for joking about bringing a gun to class and in a different incident, threatening to shoot other classmates because his food may have touched pork.

What are you gonna do for your “expendable minority” other than just watch them die? Seems like you’re the one happy to throw people’s lives away for nothing.

I’ve physically defended a trans friend from violence and verbal abuse. I strongly oppose the current gun laws that routinely arm violent bigots, resulting in a homicide rate 400% higher than comparable countries. I’ve never voted Republican and never will.

IHadTwoCows arms neo-nazis and makes it extremely clear that you’re nothing more than bait to him.

Don’t worry, there’s no intelligence test for buying a gun.