nBodyProblem @ nBodyProblem @lemmy.world

Posts

2

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196

Joined

2 yr. ago

Oh look, they've done nothing.

I mean, have you asked yourself why? There was once a time that gun control wasn’t a partisan issue and those with knowledge of guns openly supported new restrictions. Gun advocacy groups were actively involved in helping to write the legislation.

What changed? The thing that changed is that those who were afraid of any and all guns fought tooth and nail to prevent the laws that didn’t work from being walked back. The gun owners were called names and accused of heinous things for having a different opinion. The result has been that restrictions continually get tighter, even when they clearly are not doing anything to help the situation. After a century of this, the knee jerk response is to try to prevent any and all gun control.

Look at your posts here. You have called me names and are assuming a whole lot of things about my views based on a few comments. I have done far more to advocate for liberal causes at a grassroots level than 99% of the people on here. I wager this includes yourself.

I have been a part of political activism for everything from ending marijuana prohibition to seeing the end of bans on gay marriage. I advocated for BLM and mask restrictions during the pandemic. I have ended up on the front page of the news chained to city hall in defense of liberal causes. You see that I disagree with you one one small thing and just start spewing hate.

In order for this to work we need actual meaningful discourse from both sides, and realistically both pro and anti gun people fail miserably at this because of how far things have devolved.

I think the first step in building mutual trust on this issue would be to accept some lessening of restrictions on the laws that don’t work. Take suppressors off of the NFA list, for example. Stop calling for an assault weapons ban when we previously had one and the FBI’s analysis showed it had zero meaningful impact. Maybe then we can actually talk to each other in a cooperative manner to make progress.

No it's not, it's a bullshit excuse to do nothing.

If your goal is to feel good about Doing Something then you are right. If the goal is to meaningfully reduce violence without curtailing the rights of law abiding citizens, you are dead wrong. The only effective way to go about this is to logically look at what the effect of a law would be.

Overwhelmingly, criminals, abusers and domestic terrorists are using legally purchased firearms to kill innocent people. Of the minority remaining that are using illegal firearms, they were stolen from somewhere and those people should be held accountable.

First of all, you are mistaken here. Guns used by criminal groups are most often straw purchases, which are very much illegal.

More importantly, looking at the problematic people and just banning whatever they have in their hands has a long history of failing to make any meaningful impact on crime.

As an example, let’s examine the long list of weapons banned in CA after the legislature associated them with “gang activity”. Martial arts tools like nunchucks, which have no practical use outside training, were banned, despite the fact that it should have been patently obvious that banning nunchucks would do zero to stop actual criminal activity.

Another example is prohibition. People saw the “immoral element” consuming alcohol and saw alcohol prohibition as a panacea. It’s well known that prohibition had wide sweeping negative effects at this point.

You have to predict the holistic effects of the law, long term, to see if it will have a positive impact.

"Oh but what about 3D printed guns and bombs and cars? They'll just use them instead" doesn't matter. They're not using 3D printed guns any more than they're using giant clown hammers.

… it kinda does

It’s not just a “what if” question, either. Even prior to the advent of readily available 3d printing, criminals in Brazil and elsewhere had developed a network of facilities manufacturing black market open bolt sub machine guns based on the Luty designs. Restricting legal guns had little long term benefit in Brazil at stopping crime with firearms.

It has only gotten easier to make them at home as time goes on. No manufacturing facilities needed.

Oh come on. Literally nobody is pro firearms for domestic abusers, let’s get off that straw man.

The justice system in this country is, and always has been, built on the premise that someone is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

This isn’t merely important for guns. It’s important for every aspect of criminal justice.

It only makes sense for cops to have an exemption if we first accept the premise that standard capacity magazines have utility for personal protection, and not just to shoot into crowds.

The police response to BLM riots is the perfect example of why I think it’s important for the populace to be just as well armed as the government.

This is the issue with politics in the US in general here.

I’m also a liberal gun owner. If you categorize people with a strict “with us or against us” mentality, where they are expected to agree with every one of your opinions, you cease to have useful discourse and become a part of the problem.

It’s relevant to the question of what would happen in the event of a gun ban.

At this stage, anyone with sufficient desire to do so can manufacture an effective and reliable firearm using readily available tools at home, using no purpose built firearm components. Magazines are dead simple in comparison.

Under this logic, why do we have exemptions for police? Why does almost every single police department issue handguns with a capacity of 15 or more?

like focusing on red flag laws so nutbags don't buy rifles, abusive fucks don't keep their handguns? yeah none of that matters. you fuckwit.

They want due process to have their personal property taken from them? Man. That’s just crazy!

If you are considering two modes of transportation for a airplane-suitable trip, the per-trip stat is effectively irrelevant. If we consider a 1,000 mile trip and want to choose the safest manner of travel to the destination aircraft will statistically be the safest transportation method.

I’m gonna have to disagree with you on that one, bud.

I have been to places where the only reasonably close food is a piggly wiggly or a dollar general and that’s it, but most towns over ~35,000 people have some sort of grocery store with a bakery department. The vast majority of the US population lives less than 20 minutes drive from such a town.

I’d also argue that if you don’t live near a decent grocery store you have likely accepted a lack of amenities and would make your own bagels if that’s something you really cared about.

This is because they know if you are buying a bag of pre-sliced bagels you don’t care about quality and they figure they can just phone it in.

This is just what the basement of their mom’s dungeon looks like

You don’t think that was implied when I said they vastly outperform human pilots?

There are numerous advantages to letting a flight computer do the piloting. Higher allowable G limits is one of them, albeit far from the most important.

You’re right on all counts here.

Computer algorithms (such as AI) can’t replace organic judgement-based decision making, but they vastly outperform humans when there is a well defined cost function to optimize against, such as, “hit this target in the minimum possible time”.

I think you can compare it to autonomous cars. They can drive from point to point while avoiding hazards along the way, but they still need the passenger to tell them where their destination is.

Yes of course there are limits in the same way that no character can lift a mountain regardless of their strength score.

However, I don’t think it’s appropriate to base the success of my persuasion on my real-life ability to come up with a convincing argument. That’s the whole point of DND, characters can do things that people IRL could never accomplish. If my character is remarkably persuasive, they could come up with arguments more persuasive than my own.

As seen in OPs meme, you don’t base the success of a strength check on the real life player’s ability to lift a big rock or whatever. It’s unreasonable to treat charisma any differently. Personally, I just stopped trying to act out scenarios and saying, “I want to persuade them of this let me roll for it”, because the success rate was much higher.

IMO, if you want players to act out the scenario you need to give a very large fudge factor to the success of arguments based on a charisma roll.

My complaint is when I have a PC with an insane charisma score and the DM wants me act out the conversation, then I fail in my persuasion without rolling. “The NPC would not be convinced by that”

Maybe I am not being very charismatic, but my PC is! Let me roll for it! You don’t make a mage fail in their spells because they can’t do magic in real life, do you?

I am an engineer and used to struggle pretty hard with mechanic things because my instincts say that if something isn’t doing what I want that means I’m doing it wrong and forcing it will break it.

The thing that broke that block was a coworker at a startup who was both an engineer and our aircraft mechanic. He told me, “in my experience the best aircraft mechanics are basically just big dumb apes that wail on airplanes with hammers until they do what they want.” Sometimes I would help him do aircraft maintenance and would balk at a task worrying that I’d break a $2M airplane. We had another tech that would say, “who cares? I promise you can’t break it bad enough that we can’t fix it after”

Those things have stuck with me for years and I am no longer afraid of pulling out the big boy breaker bar when I need it.

Yet another reason why America is #1

Have you guys not had the salty “cheese foam” you can get on boba? It’s like stabilized whipped cream.

This doesn’t sound bad at all.

Prices for an equivalent model car really haven’t changed much after adjusting for inflation.

Hondas aren’t the best example because they have steadily been moving more upmarket as a brand. However, in 1991 a base model civic cost an inflation adjusted $15,600. A 2023 base model civic costs $23,750.

Another example that comes to mind is the Mazda Miata since people often complain about how sports cars have gotten too expensive and it’s the archetypal affordable sports car. A 1991 Miata cost an inflation adjusted $35,600. A 2023 Miata starts at $28,000.