fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2187 ]

[ SECRET POST #2187 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2187 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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05. [repeat]

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[ ----- SPOILERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]

06. [SPOILERS for Once Upon a Time]

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07. [SPOILERS for amazing spiderman]

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08. [SPOILERS for Nu52 Stormwatch]

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[ ----- TRIGGERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]

09. [WARNING for rape, sexual assault, gore]

[SCP Foundation wiki]

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10. [WARNING for rape]

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11. [WARNING for abuse]

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12. [WARNING for child sexual abuse]

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13. [WARNING for rape]

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14. [WARNING for violence, RL deaths]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #312.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 (not broken, but being reported as malicious?) - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - personal attack ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Dude. I'm assuming you're a dude just because.

Dude.

I support gun ownership. Including the scary black guns with magazines and such. Even I think this is a stupid point. You might notice that most of the shows with good guys shooting guns paint the good guys as cops, for starters.

Aside: we had fucking slavery and the murder of native Americans. We had lynching. We beat up gay and trans kids. Women couldn't even vote until 1918. Anyone blaming America's culture of violence on the presence of GUNS as if getting rid of them would fix it is a moron. The country's full of millions of guns. Banning them doesn't eliminate them.

Unless you think banning cocaine totally keeps people from overdosing.

In my country, women couldn't vote until 1946. Homosexuality became legal in 1982. We colonised half a continent, tortured in time of war and threw protesters off a bridge. After WWII, people ran out in the streets and lynched the people they thought to be accomplices to Nazi Germany, hanging them and killing them, shaving off the women's hair. We have three political movements that demand regional independence, one of which has used and is still using bombs. We had slavery and profited on it. Two months ago there was a demonstration against gay marriage and adoption in which priests and far-right parties members marched and some of them hit pro-gay marriage opponents who stood in their way.

And yet, in 2005, only 2105 people died because of a gun. Out of this number, 653 people used their gun to kill themselves. America has a culture of violence, yes. But such a widespread gun culture facilitates its perpetuation.

Moreover, gun control doesn't mean "no guns for you!". It means regulating gun ownership. More thorough background checks. Not allowing military types weapons into the hands of civilians. Ensuring that every person with a gun knows how to use it and how to use it responsibly. It's not a simple answer and gun control certainly is not the only answer that will prevent tragedies. But it's part of it.

Did you have the same amount of guns there that we currently have here?

I guess part of my issue is that banning assault weapons doesn't ban assault weapons. It bans them from civilians. Cops can still use them against you. So can the military.

Of course the military and cops wouldn't do that now--at least if you're a member of the majority--but who knows about fifty years from now? I study American History. Not too long ago the government was gunning down union protesters.

You seriously think you'd stand a chance against a military who fully wants to kill you, and has the public will to do so (otherwise they wouldn't have the backing of the police and military in the first place), with fucking small arms?

Fuck, even in that scenario which won't occur, you'd have significantly more success with IEDs then you would guns. See the IRA, or pretty much any modern insurgency against the US forces (and those are playing nice on non-home terms).

Banning guns would be long term, obviously not short and even then it would not entirely eliminate it, sure, in the UK and most countries with strict gun control laws a large percentage of the weapons are stolen from either the military or police. Eventually though, all those guns in existence are going to start to degrade, you put out strong incentive schemes to trade in your weapons, etc those numbers start coming down.

The cocaine comparison isn't really fair. It's very easy to manufacture, the profit margins are huge, and people have a real present need for it. (it's a really fun experience you can't replicate with anything else) rather then a vague requirement, that can be met, just not so effectively, by other sources.

So, wait. Let me get this straight.

We should ban automatic weapons because bombs--which have a much higher chance of killing innocents--exist. I realize we wouldn't stand much of a chance but even the chance to be a nuisance is a bit of a deterrence.

Anyway, here's a well known IRA song about conducting an insurgency with small arms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHY14OVk7r0

Edited (Might have been misunderstood.) 2012-12-29 03:05 (UTC)

You're suggesting that there's a possibility of a need to lead an insurgency because america is going to become a dictatorship in which that is the best, or at least partially effective solution (i.e. worse case scenario). Therefore we need to keep a huge number of guns in circulation, to prepare for the black helicopters, and this outweighs the current and present damage done by this ongoing situation (ignoring everything else, suicide would be dramatically reduced if you could effectively get rid of the majority of firearms).

I'm pointing out that even if we grant the need to fight the power, your going to have very limited success with small arms, and far more with explosives, something which are comparatively easy to produce. So the need for small arms even if we grant your original scenario, is unnecessary.

Explosives as a method, are used far less in interpersonal disputes, suicides, mass killings by lone individuals, and etc.

A propaganda song by terrorists, doesn't really change the efficacy or methods actually used by them. To be honest, I'm not really that interested in discussing modern insurgent techniques, there's a whole wealth of literature out there.

Well, no. Not exactly. We already have a huge number of guns in circulation, and banning them won't get rid of them. My thoughts on the subject are purely historical: no, I don't think there's a fricking conspiracy. Conspiracies are kind of rare. I don't think guns would reduce suicides that much.

Bombs are used in mass killings all the time?

I linked the song because it's a song. Don't read too much into it.

Here's another song about guns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf47DQj_2Gg

It will, long term.

No the guns won't be gone the day after the ban, but for reference until dunblane the UK had incredibly lax gun laws. How many are there now? For clear reasons this isn't a straight comparison, none the less the point remains - good social engineering with a goal of eventually reducing to negligible numbers the firearms in circulation is certainly possible, albeit difficult. Politics not practicality is the issue there.

Suicides would drop tremendously. We perceive suicide as solely being the product of long term, well planned out, act of desperation. This isn't really true. And by banning guns you reduce one of the easiest most effective methods of spur of the moment act. You would think other methods would be used, but for whatever reason, they're not - or at least not to the same extent.

http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/7791644 yo http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/risk/index.html

Don't have the stats to hand, however, are you really suggesting that explosives are used even close to the same extent as guns in mass killings, interpersonal disputes, etc? After all, no-one is saying banning firearms is the perfect solution and no harm will ever be done again, just that it reduces it.

Edited 2012-12-29 04:00 (UTC)

The point here is that an automatic weapon in your hands during the apparently-inevitable fascist takeover of the United States isn't going to protect you from the military. At best, you'll end up justifying an officer or cop's decision to shoot you (or a military panel's decision to send a drone over your area, which in these days would be far more likely).

I can tell you're a student of U.S. history, but...do you know anything about U.S. sociology or military policy? Or are you -- and I'm asking this history-student-to-history-student -- the kind of historian who tries to invent alarmist ideas of the future based on vague extrapolation from past events?

No we didn't, because we have stricter gun regulation laws in place. Similarly, policemen are forbidden to use their guns unless under extreme duress (that's why they also have alternatives and non-lethal weapons). Every time a policeman's gun is used, it has to be justified. Reports have to be written.

My country had several revolutions and near dictators, often supported by militias and the military. Cops have been guilty of killing and beating protesters in the past. In a city down South last month, an entire unit of cops was dismantled because they were blackmailing civilians. And yet we're trying to make it work, as a society. That doesn't mean we don't demonstrate when we're unhappy (and we do that a lot), but peacefully, on both sides.
Today we believe in a democracy and a republic that can be sustained without a mutual violent coercion, without anger. We seek appeasement. It's not easy, but we'll get there someday.

Okay--that's fine. But you have to understand that the US is in a different situation. The very people I don't like having weapons are those least likely to obey the federal Bureau of Alcohol and Firearms when they say to please get rid of the guns. We have millions of guns here already, and you can't really close pandora's box. If we were somehow starting civilization anew I'd agree with you.

I can't speak to your country because you haven't said which it is, but I'd be worried about a country whose cops have killed and beaten protesters that is really adamant about disarming potential protesters.

We have a huge legacy of public protests and demonstrations. Violence, on any side, never serves any cause.
We know that intelligence agencies infiltrate demonstrations. Sometimes they disguise themselves as protesters to start trouble and lay the blame on the whole movement. I've seen it. I've been in marches since I was 15. Only extremists use violence. If the police is violent and the protesters aren't? They will be blamed by the public, not the protesters.

That's why unions have developed extra-tight security during marches. Weaponless security. They notice people who look like they're just here to fight and just take them out of the march or tell them off. A peaceful, massive march is much more efficient in terms of political gain than direct violent confrontation, this, we've had to learn.

I understand that changing the US as a society is extremely complicated. And yet, the status quo cannot remain unchanged forever. I hope you (the collective you) can find an answer.

But the problem comes when you think gun laws do anything. The guns in the Connecticut shooting were stolen from a lawful owner, the shooter's mother. The guns in the Winnenden (Germany) shooting were also stolen from a lawful owner.

The US's gun culture cannot be considered too important a factor as school shootings have occurred in countries such as Canada, Germany, Finland, Denmark, the UK, the Netherlands, Greece, Norway, Hungary, France, New Zealand, Israel, Australia, Brazil, and Argentina. The most common theme isn't a shared gun culture but mental illness.

There is literally no point in talking about changing gun laws in light of the Connecticut tragedy because the guns were not lawfully acquired. Shockingly, the guns are a means to an end, not a catalyst. Remove guns and we get stabbing sprees like the attack in Chenpeng (China) the same day as the Connecticut shooting or the Sasebo slashing (Japan). The effects are less deadly, there's no denying that, but it's like declawing a cat to keep it from scratching: you're solving the symptoms of the problem, not the problem itself, which, in this case, is usually mental illness.

Let me correct you on that: the school shooting that occurred in France (I'm assuming you're talking about the school shooting in Toulouse) was the result of religious fanaticism. Not a mental illness.

And there's a line between having guns and being legally able to buy assault rifles. The shooter in Connecticut had an AR-15 type rifle that fired automatic bullets. The kind of bullets that shred a body. And the kind of rifle that is just a civilian version of a military issue rifle. That gun was lawfully acquired by the shooter's mother and made easily available to her son.

What use could any civilian find in an assault rifle? Yes, treating mental illness is a HUGE point. But not the only one.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're not GLBT if you think violence against us is a thing of the past. Just saying. You might pick a better example next time.

Beat up was meant as present tense. A thing we do now.

It's one of those words.

You sandwiched it in between two clearly past tense examples of oppression in America. It wasn't unreasonable of me to assume you meant it in the past tense too. Agreement of items in a list is generally seen as a grammatical rule.

Edited 2012-12-29 02:29 (UTC)

Okay, I just want to make this clear: you're scolding me because I didn't structure a list in the best possible way. This is a list where I put violence against gay and trans people in the same category as slavery and attempted genocide.

Edited (Typed "as" twice in a row.) 2012-12-29 02:31 (UTC)

I didn't scold you. I pointed out that violence against GLBT people isn't a discrete past event, series of events, or time period in the same way government-supported genocide against Native Americans or women lacking the right to vote is. Way too many people act like being attacked for being queer (which is kind of something *some* of us have lived through. tyvm.) is something that only happens is "those other places" in Africa or South America, while in the US it's all sunshine, roses, constant forward movement, and fighting for nothing more substantial than marriage equality. The way I originally read your post (which I was just pointing out *is supported* by the normal rules of English grammar) supported that actively harmful view, so I corrected it.

Edited 2012-12-29 02:35 (UTC)

But I was saying this is a present tense thing.

I'll drop it. But you could've just said "Okay, just wanted to make sure," and gone on with this good info. I acknowledge that the wording wasn't clear but geez.

Why are you using GLBT instead of LGBT? I know this is entirely off-topic and I'm not nit-picking or anything, I'm just curious.

Was there a big meeting about changing the order of the acronym and I missed the memo?

I prefer to switch the order around whenever I use it (so sometimes LGBT, sometimes GLBT, sometimes TLGB, etc.) because I don't feel any one group of people represented is more important than the others. If there are meetings, I'm certainly not invited to them, which is a shame. I'd make a great lesbian overlord (overlady?).

ETA: Which isn't to say that other people are placing more importance on any one identity when they use LGBT consistently. It's just that since unlike, say, QUILTBAG or another initialism where the words form something, there's no functional reason for the order used here, so I think of trying to mix it up (when the meaning will still be clear) as a personal reminder that each of those identities is truly important. I never want to find myself rendering the "T" silent, or pretending that the "B" is unimportant or "not queer enough" or making any of those other mistakes commonly made by members of the community, so that's just one way I remind myself not to.

Edited 2012-12-29 05:02 (UTC)

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2012-12-29 14:14 (UTC) - Expand

By jove, I think your right. We should just lift all bans on everything! No laws at all!

And yes, I am aware of my grammatical error. Thanks.

I AM THE LAW

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