Chas_P, on 2022-June-06, 17:32, said:
And the question remains, "What is inherently wrong with any of that?"
If you think that way, you and I have very different views. Pigs are sentient animals. They are amongst the most intelligent non-primates. They feel pain and fear.
If they’re pests, and can’t be kept away from crops, etc by non-violent means, get Ken’s professionals to kill them
If someone hunts them for food, rather than for the (to me) sick pleasure of killing a sentient animal, and if their populations are not at risk, then I’m okay with that. I wouldn’t do it, but I’m financially comfortable so don’t need to kill my food personally…I’m happy to eat the products of abattoirs.
But I once listened to an American boast about hunting from a helicopter in Alaska. So I’m pretty sure that these ‘sportsmen’ don’t give one good damn about the value of the pigs as food (as far as I know they don’t land and gather in the slain pigs) or the possibility that they’re pests. Nor do they give a damn about the pigs they shoot but which don’t die right away. They glory in inflicting death and pain, thinking it makes them ‘sportsmen’
In my eyes it makes them thugs.
And to do it with an assault rifle? From the air? What wonderful ‘sport’. What true exposition of hunting skill that must be.
I’m not a rabid animal rights activist (no matter which noun the word rabid qualifies in that sentence). I eat meat. I’ve eaten venison and other game animals killed by friends who hunt with hunting rifles, on foot, tracking prey through the forest, and with licences the numbers of which are governed by the population of the prey species in the area.
I know at least one of them is appalled at the idea of indiscriminate killing for the sake of killing, since I’ve discussed the American thug who shot animals in Alaska.I suspect that reaction would be near universal amongst most ‘hunters’ who track their prey on foot and use rifles rather than assault weapons.
As for your concern that one should only ban certain firearms and regulate others if somehow all such weapons could first be removed from and made impossible to obtain by ‘evil’ people?
Most mass shooters, from what I’ve read, were not ‘evil’ people. They were, especially in the days or weeks leading up to the killings, damaged. They may have had, in some cases, identifiable mental disorders but many were some combination of angry, depressed or under the influence of substances such as (legal) alcohol and/or (illegal) drugs.
Most of them acted in a manner similar to millions of people who never shoot anyone…right up until the end,
Does anyone think that Ramos is the only 18 year old who bought an assault weapon and a lot of ammunition right after his birthday? Take a look at ads run by republican political candidates showing their young, often very young, children holding guns. Take a look at some of those same candidates firing off weapons as part of their campaign ads.
Most of those who buy these weapons will never kill another human. But how is the seller to identify which will?
You can’t make it the responsibility of the seller. You can’t make it the responsibility of the parents of the killers. You can’t make it the responsibility of the health care system, especially in such a brutal health care system as you have in the US where many of the most vulnerable have no meaningful access to health care, especially preventative health care.
I was involved some years ago in the aftermath of a murder-suicide where the killer was estranged from his wife. He broke into the home where she was staying with her parents and her son. He knifed them to death (grandmother called 911 and those of us who had to listen to the recording heard her getting stabbed and dying) then stabbed him self in the heart.
Now that has nothing to do with guns and indeed is evidence that many murders are committed without the use of guns. But I learned during the inquest that in marriage breakdowns a very large number of men threaten to kill their partner should she leave. The problem is that only about one tenth of one percent do (the problem being how to identify and stop the ones who do). And there is no way of identifying who would be the one in a thousand. I suspect that this is similar to people like Ramos. For every kid who acts out, I’m sure there are scores, if not hundreds or thousands, who behave in similar ways but don’t do anything. Thus ‘keeping the guns out of the hands of evil people’ is meaningless drivel.
So the equation is actually pretty simple.
You either do your utmost to reduce access to such weapons by anyone who has not demonstrated both a proper need for such weapons and training in how to use and store them safely, or you keep as you are and accept that tens of thousands of innocent people will die every year.
Would rational regulation end mass killings? No.
But if you stopped the supply of new weapons, enacted compulsory buy-backs, maybe permitted those with a demonstrated need (?) and demonstrated competency and stability to own them under strict storage rules, and destroyed every weapon if seized, eventually you’d get rid of most of them.
We have mass killings in Canada. However, we have FAR fewer per capita than does the US and that statement is true of every developed nation.
But it’s idiotic to argue that ‘we can only support gun restrictions if they will reduce mass killings to zero’
If you reduce mass killings to say one a month, thats still grotesque but you’ll have saved tens of thousands of lives each year.
So, you tell me, Chas……is the right of some gun fondler to play with his penis substitute more important to you than the lives of thousands of your fellow citizens?
If so, why?
If not, why do you support the right of gun manufacturers to sell assault rifles?
As for not making them liable…that’s a sick joke.
Does tobacco kill every smoker? No.
Does it kill everyone exposed to second hand smoke?
No.
Yet cigarette manufacturers have been sued by virtually every State In the Union. Why?
Because they knowingly manufactured and profited from selling a product that was known to kill and severely harm many people. Can anyone argue with a straight face that those who make and sell assault weapons are being constantly astounded that some people use these weapons for the only purpose for which they were in fact designed?
The AR 15 is based on an actual military assault weapon. As such, it’s design philosophy was expressly to kill people as effectively as possible. So, sure some sick puppies like to prove their manhood by shooting animals from a helicopter, but that’s not what the military ordered when they sought the weapons.
So the manufacturers sell these weapons because the killings are a foreseeable and acceptable cost of doing business,, especially when those killings don’t in fact come at any cost to them. The cost is to the victims, their families, their friends, their employers and co-workers, the police and other first responders who have to deal with the carnage, and the health care system who have to try to put back together the merely wounded.
In fact, I’d not be surprised to learn that those who run companies who make assault weapons for sale to the public are very happy with the mass killings. How many of us would even know what an AR 15 was were it not for these killings? Don’t you think that maybe the Ramos’s of the world choose to buy these weapons precisely because they’re the weapon of choice for mass mass killers? And of course the gun fondlers loudly proclaim after every mass killing that the only answer is for everyone to buy more guns!
Why? Because of a twisted reading of a sentence written by politicians over 300 years ago who wanted to ensure that ‘properly regulated militias’ were able to be formed. At a time when militias were an important aspect of the armed forces of the nascent nation. What that has to do with the right to manufacture and sell weapons that the manufacturers known beyonfpd doubt will be used to slaughter people…..with no accountability…is beyond me
Make the manufacturers pay out a million dollars or more for every person killed by their weapons…..how long do you think they’d keep selling them?
'one of the great markers of the advance of human kindness is the howls you will hear from the Men of God' Johann Hari
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