PM me so we can get the story straight.

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Never let a crisis go to waste.

No, but MANY prominent people are pushing the Reddit/4chan/Alex Jones narrative. And need to be called out being as wrong and as inflammatory as they are.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Who?

Jack Kingston, Donald Trump Jr., Limbaugh, the NRA leadership, Fox News commentators like Hannity.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Why no full auto guns?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Is the answer "How not to use the quote function"?

Confirmed

When you're not exposed to a certain group of people you count on second hand stories and media for a description and that is often the worst of the bunch.

I'm guilty of it.

I think almost everyone is guilty of this....and the people who aren't as annoying as hell until you realize that their questions and comments just kind of unspooled your perception of some other group.

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Can I get an answer?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I'm going to give a quick reply to DS's original post as others have echoed this idea:
The reason why gun owners are looked at the way they do is the availability heuristic, the people that first come to mind when I think 'gun owner' are the ones who we think of as 'gun nuts' because they are the ones that are seen and heard. For example, when I think gun owner, the first person I think of is the person who lives out in the country here with a flag that has an AK-47 on it that says underneath it 'come and get it' and then has a sign at the driveway that says 'trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again.' I can hear this guy every weekend morning shooting his semiauto guns outside and he lives a few miles away from here. Is it fair? No. It puts the burden on the silent majority to rise up and show that these people are not the normal gun owner. I understand this and try not to jump to the activated stereotype for this group (or any group for that matter). However MANY do not which is why we get the 'all gun owners are nutjobs' and 'all liberals are socialists.'

But what do I know about stereotype activation?

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I get that one, but add to it the 17 yr olds that all got gun muscles in the late 80s early 90s in this city. Kids that before guns got mad and did nothing, then got mad and started shooting because they could.

First kid I knew to get shot and killed was after a thanksgiving college party in 1987. Within 6-7 years, I'd had more friends and acquaintances killed than my own father had friends & acquaintances who had died. And that was a discussion that shocked (only) him.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

RR brings up a good point about personal experience with firearms. My only experience is through the lens of hunters. Growing up on the north shore, I didn't see any guns nor anyone who had them (that I knew of). My view has evolved from total ban to more of a common sense regulation such as DS proposed in another thread.

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There is no other social issue I am more passionate about than gun control. However, I also understand and can appreciate that "taking all guns away" is both unrealistic and unfair.

I have never owned nor fired a gun. I have no desire to do either. My father never owned a gun, nor did his father. It's just not something that was part of our family, so I have never been exposed to the perceived benefits of owning one, even for sport.

When I meet a gun owner, I am meeting someone who has an interest in something to which I simply cannot relate. The gun owners I know keep their firearms hidden, locked away, completely out of sight. It's a taboo subject for them, almost as if it was a secret that nobody should talk about. The impression I am given is not one of openly exercising one's 2nd Amendment right.

But then there are a select few whom I have met who cannot wait to talk about owning a gun. "Let's go to the shooting range!" "Look at this animal I killed last weekend!" Again, leisurely activities that speak to a mentality and upbringing that is completely foreign to me. For this demographic, owning a gun is something to be bragged about as opposed to exercising a right or to protect one's family. I perceive it no differently than I would someone lifting their pickup truck or installing an expensive sound system in the back of their hot hatch. It's annoying.

So holding that perception -- right or wrong -- automatically gives me a negative outlook on how people choose to spend their time. It's unfair to the gun owner, but it's a stereotype I hold based on my life experience (or lack thereof, depending on your view).

We really don't, which is the problem. And yes, when the loudest are the fringe community then the whole will get labeled as such. I'm guilty of complacency. I'm a gun owner but the most effort I've made is to never join the NRA and occasionally shit on them via posts on CSFMB. I know, what a change agent.

I happen to look at golf as a serious waste of natural resources. Huge expanses of land that could be used to build low income housing and tremendous amounts of water used to keep grasses green in even the most arid climates in an era where fresh potable water is becoming increasingly more rare. Its just notsomething mmy father played. Or my grandfather. It's not part of my culture.
I see guys bragging about their new fat drivers and awesome grips and I just think... it's annoying. Why waste hours on something that costs thousands of dollars a year that realistically speaking you'll never be good enough to hold the worst golfers jock (not that they wear them) on a tour.
But I don't want to take anyone's clubs or oversized bags or fruity shoes.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Well the next time somebody walks into a school and kills 17 kids in matter of five or six minutes with a 7-iron, let me know.

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Well I'm pretty sure that wasn't the point.

Not to really get this thing too far off the rails but do you realize you could save 20 times the number of lives by installing alcohol interlock on all cars than you could by making all guns disappear? More kids died to abortion so far this year than gun violence over something like the last 5 years or more. I'm just saying that if kids lives were really the issue, we can save a lot more of them looking at those types of things.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

But that's just it. Unless you take all cars off the road, you aren't going to stop people from driving drunk. There have been many measures put into place to try to combat that though, and to my knowledge, its still a problem but things have improved.

Nobody has ever really advocated for getting rid of all guns, just like nobody has advocated for taking all cars off the road. For guys like Sork and Ogie to just throw up their hands and say "deal with it" is ridiculous, selfish, stupid, and comes across as disingenuous. It's also disservice to the legit gun owners like you and Kirkwood. Just because we (probably) are never going to eliminate all mass shootings, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do things to make our country a safer place.

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I assumed a false equivalency involving golf would be posted at some point as a response. I was not disappointed.

So anyone who disagrees with you is stupid, right?

Your entire post is just a series of empty platitudes, which is common in this debate, unfortunately. It serves no purpose other than for you to proclaim to the world that you are virtuous.

Yeah you're smarter than the room, Ugie, we all already knew it. You didn't need to reinforce it.

The point is I could give a damn what you think of my hobbies. Just like I pray to God you don't give a damn what I think of yours.

I you however find you quite passionate about a topic you admittedly know less than nothing about.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

When someone says to you "lets go to the shooting range" they're attempting to share a hobby with a friend. It's a bonding moment. Most people like to talk about and share their hobbies with their friends. My uncle posts pictures of the motorcycle he's building every day on Instagram.
When someone shows you their harvest they're sharing with you the extreme pride of engaging in the basics of what humans do to provide for their families. Although your meat always comes in under a cellophane wrapper there was a time not long ago when if you didn't kill your dinner you didn't eat.
You live a fortunate life Ugie. You'll never need to protect yourself because the cops will protect you when you need them. You'll never need to have hunting as a skill because there will never be an interruption to your food supply. You can mock others hobbies because yours are infinitely more interesting. There will never be civil unrest in your city or country. Your hobby isn't one in which people will call you names or assume you're just itching to hurt someone.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Why does it seem as though gun control advocates only want to talk about the "mass shootings" subset of the larger "gun violence" set?

Think about it (heh). If, when discussing "Meaningful gun control" when the topic is brought up, someone points out that the vast majority of gun homicides involve handguns, as does the vast majority of violent gun crime, and effectively prosecuting and jailing violent gun offenders would drastically reduce gun deaths in the United States overall, and that the focus on "assault rifles" and magazine sizes is unwarranted and arbitrary, respectively, the conversation grinds to a halt, and that person is labeled as "not getting it" or, worse, as "pro-slaughter".

So what's the deal with only focusing on mass shootings? Is it because MANY don't want to confront the uncomfortable (for them) thought that it is the system that would, say, give a previous perpetrator of felony gun violence a sentence of 2 years for being caught in possession of a gun and body armor, and then probation for his next criminal offense so that he was free to murder a police officer, which is the problem child driving America's gun violence totals, and not a spec build for a weapon?

Are your questions serious?

If minor changes like banning bump stocks or increasing the age for certain gun purchases is greeted with fierce resistance what do you thing any suggestion regarding handguns would be met with?

Is your solution to handgun violence harsher penalties through longer jail sentences? Where would the resources come from to police, prosecute and house these offenders? Would the ultimate goal be to reform these offenders or simply penalize?

Lock up the poor and minorities!

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

We reform weapon offenders and jail drug offenders currently. Perhaps we should flip that.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Resources: Stop so doggedly prosecuting non-violent drug offenses for certain re-classified (perhaps one day legalized) substances below reasonable "street" amounts, in the absence of violent criminal history especially.

Space: See above.

Approach: Active rehabilitation for current nonviolent offenders swept up in overzealous drug prosecution, increase incentives for businesses to partner with job placement and release programs for those individuals. Same will be available to violent gun offenders prosecuted under the above tactics, but the process is more drawn out to absolutely ensure rehabilitation. People who don't want to rehab will start doing 40 years, no day-for-day or good time.

Oh yeah, I forgot that arguments in favor of practical gun control aimed at reducing American gun deaths will be painted as racist.

City had a handgun ban.

MANY were not happy and it was overturned in 2010.

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