Mass shooting in the middle school Vladislav Ribnikar in Belgrade

[Irreligious Atheist]

Personally, I support looser gun regulation in the US and anywhere else, whether it makes the country "safer" or not. Rights and freedoms come at a price and I can accept the current price.

Lol as if you get to be the one that gets to say what price in human life is acceptable. Sorry, the price of your twisted view of freedom is too high.

Ok, let's put the US aside for a second. Trudeau attempting to ban certain hunting rifles. Do you support this, and why is this action necessary? Would this action actually protect Canadians?

Now back to the States. We can't compare gun prohibition to alcohol prohibition, because where there's a will, there's a way to find or manufacture alcohol, so prohibition doesn't work. But let's say we're in an alternative world where prohibition of alcohol did actually work. Would you then be ok with banning alcohol, if you knew doing so would for sure result in saving thousands of lives? Or do we care about quality of life over quantity? How do we weigh human lives vs our rights and freedoms that we cherish so much? Saving lives at any cost is not something that hardly any of us support. Because what's life if we're not allowed to have a sip of alcohol here or there, and have certain other rights? Murder in the US by rifle is 4 percent of the murders. Why is the 4 percent the basically only focus of politicians?

[The Architect Of Fate]

You have once again managed to write a rant that addresses nothing I wrote 

Just more of your usual twaddle.  

[FlatAssembler]

The point is that outright gun prohibition will, if the Gary Kleck's 1995 study is anywhere close to right (and I see no reason to think it's wrong by an order of magnitude), massively increase the risk of gun deaths, rather than decrease it. Gun prohibition which is supposed to make us safer would make us far less safe.

Personally, I support looser gun regulation in the US and anywhere else, whether it makes the country "safer" or not. Rights and freedoms come at a price and I can accept the current price.

As far as the anti-gunners, I concede to the argument that one is more likely to be shot or have a family member shot by having a gun in the home. Though much of that does come down to people being responsible with their guns or irresponsible with their guns. I've never personally owned a gun, but I wouldn't consider it irresponsible to bring a gun into the home. Keep them being manufactured and handed out like candy, as our dear friend Brian at the forums would say. The more guns, the merrier.

And what do you think about the Gary Kleck's study that tried to estimate the number of people saved by guns each year? To me, it seems like a brilliant idea. The usual argument for gun prohibition is something along the lines of "Guns kill 40k people each year in the US, and they should therefore be banned.". A natural response to that is "But how many lives are saved by guns each year in the US?". It is undeniable that guns at least sometimes save lives. And Gary Kleck has done a good job proving they save more lives (probably around 300k per year in the US) than they take.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Gleck didn't prove any such thing. His study was garbage.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

And that is a very stupid take 

So, mass shootings are more likely to be done by people with no aberrant mental processes? This means that Safir Ahamdi Musthaveanibble who shoots up a dozen Israeli schoolchildren because he believes that will create a Palestinian homeland is a perfectly sane, rational person.

Think it through, whydoancha?

Boru

What exactly are you using as a definition of mental illness?

For this discussion, the belief that otherwise innocent people need to be violently killed.

Boru

[arewethereyet]

A second grader and her fourth grade sister died in this shooting in Allen. Their mother is still in the ICU.

Walking around a mall shouldn't be a life or death matter.

[Angrboda]

And that is a very stupid take 

What exactly are you using as a definition of mental illness?

For this discussion, the belief that otherwise innocent people need to be violently killed.

Boru

Well, the mentally ill of America will be glad to know you've defined away their problem. This is begging the question, nothing more. I'd like to think you're better than this, but today I'm not so sure.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

For this discussion, the belief that otherwise innocent people need to be violently killed.

Boru

Well, the mentally ill of America will be glad to know you've defined away their problem.  This is begging the question, nothing more.  I'd like to think you're better than this, but today I'm not so sure.

'For this discussion'. Clearly, not all mental problems lead to patients becoming mass shooters. But it seems equally clear that carrying out a mass shooting is indicative of some sort of mental illness.

Boru

[Angrboda]

Well, the mentally ill of America will be glad to know you've defined away their problem.  This is begging the question, nothing more.  I'd like to think you're better than this, but today I'm not so sure.

'For this discussion'. Clearly, not all mental problems lead to patients becoming mass shooters. But it seems equally clear that carrying out a mass shooting is indicative of some sort of mental illness.

Boru

Doesn't change a thing. Your argument: mass shooters are mentally ill, by which you mean that a person is mentally ill if they are a mass shooter. It's nothing but circular garbage.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

'For this discussion'. Clearly, not all mental problems lead to patients becoming mass shooters. But it seems equally clear that carrying out a mass shooting is indicative of some sort of mental illness.

Boru

Doesn't change a thing.  Your argument: mass shooters are mentally ill, by which you mean that a person is mentally ill if they are a mass shooter.  It's nothing but circular garbage.

Yes, I think mass shooters are mentally ill. And?

Boru