General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 121

If you're caught up in the mess, and you're armed, but have lever shot a living thing before (especially human), the likelihood of you actually succeeding without any incident is very slim.

 

Relevant

 

The "good guys" with the guns came and shot a bunch more people, according to reports


Doesn't give me a lot of confidence

 

I don't think you need to put good guys in quotes but that's just me - I generally think someone that is willing to put their life on line and get shot at by an assault rifle in the hope of saving lives is actually indeed a good guy. They were put in an extremely difficult if not impossible situation.

 

I agree, but you have to admit that the good guy will potentially hurt other's in the process. If he didn't intervene, those people might not have been hurt.

 

Yes that's one possibility - but another possibility is that they do nothing and the gunman kills off the rest of the people in the club in the meantime.

 

I think the point he's trying to make - or at least what I'd say, I shouldn't speak for Wharf - is that at the end of the day, both the good guys and the bad guy had the same effect - they shot innocents. One did so unintentionally, but this highlights how without sufficient training (there might not even be a length of training that's adequate) the good guy with the gun argument is largely mythical, and ought to be disregarded when discussing these shootings because they're exercises in fantasy

 

If multiple "good guys" fired back in the darkened Aurora movie theater, I can't imagine how many unintended targets would be hit

 

Fact is, people largely overestimate their ability with a gun for multiple reasons (Dunning Kruger effect, games and movies misrepresenting guns, idealized target shooting conditions). Factor in biases people make about who are likely victims and targets, adrenaline clouding decision making ability, moment to moment chaos in an emergency, there's just no way it improves things, as we've seen in many shootings.

 

Agree 100%

 

New Harvard study says media rewards Trump, harms Clinton

http://theslot.jezebel.com/the-media-built-up-donald-and-tore-down-hillary-accord-1781955760

 

There would be nothing to suggest the hypothetical "good guy" is any better or worse with a gun than a trained police officer. Cops and infantry miss and hit unintended targets all the time. There seems to be this misconception from television and movies that cops can jump through a door way with a pistol and hit a moving target, mid air, right between the eyes. The truth is a police officer has more training and knowledge than the average person on how to hold and aim a gun, but in a firefight it isn't like they are Jason Bourne or anything. Any rural kid who grew up hunting probably is just as skilled with a gun, if not more so, than your average cop.

 

You gotta think on some level members of the media want Trump to win. He provides them with so much content.

 

Am I the only one to notice that the media (CNN and the times anyway) seems to be really focused on pointing out how his wife, friends, and family might have known but did nothing...when the focus should be on how his contact with authorities and the FBI did nothing to prevent this.

 

In my area there are people who are hardcore Bernie/Hillary supporters, there has already been violence for anyone who even considers Trump, so I'm curious what's going to happen come voting day where I live.

 

and how he passed the Florida mandated checks at the gun shop.

 

You'd think Fox News and conservative talk radio want Clinton to win. They got so much content out of Obama in the last eight years.

 

The grievance industry is strong.

 

Is there any more detail on the FBI investigations? Like, is it just known that they happened/why they happened, or are there details about the conclusion? ie. did they decide, "he's fine" or "we need to keep watch"

 

Philosophically, I want to support concealed carry, but the numbers show that the good guy intervening rarely helps and usually either escalates, hits another person, or both. Just here a couple years ago, two bystanders were killed during an armed robbery and neither one were hit by the robbers' shotgun. Both were killed by gunfire or ricochet from a hero patron. Another former client got their jaw blow away by similar good intentions.

 

I also agree philosophically with concealed carriers but let's be real. That idea relies on the idea that all gun carriers will be white and treated as such.

 

Just to clarify, you still are supportive of law enforcement using guns to dispatch an active shooter correct?

 

Let a white dude walk down the street with a gun on his hip, then let a black dude do the same thing, see who ends up arrested/shot.

 

Well that's absolutely absurd. How do you think civil rights activists defended themselves against white terrorists in the 50s and 60s? Civil rights activists would brandish weapons to protect elderly people of color while the registered to vote, or children as they entered schools.

Guns were very important to the civil rights movement.

 

The Racist Roots of Gun Control
The Secret History of Guns