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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Apr 27, 2016 - 05:55pm PT
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You can tell it's an "assault hammer" by the style of grip. And those should be illegal for the common climber to own. Who needs an assault-style hammer except for the professionals?
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Escopeta
Trad climber
Idaho
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Apr 27, 2016 - 06:00pm PT
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Locals only.....braj
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 27, 2016 - 06:30pm PT
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Obama will now take yer hammer away.
Only pin head hammers allowed for Americans ....
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overwatch
climber
Arizona
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Apr 27, 2016 - 06:31pm PT
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post deleted due to poor taste
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Apr 27, 2016 - 06:52pm PT
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HAHAHA Richard !
Congratulations on all that thinking that led you to compare a hammer with an automatic rifle.
HAHAHA Jim!
Congratulations on all that thinking that led you to think that the tool of choice is the problem.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Apr 27, 2016 - 07:31pm PT
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Apr 27, 2016 - 07:53pm PT
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And I'm humbled in your effort to restate and confirm my point !
Perhaps as humbled as I am by your efforts, but doubtful.
Oh, wait. I'm not doing it right....
But DOUBTFUL.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Apr 27, 2016 - 08:51pm PT
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Congratulations on all that thinking that led you to think that the tool of choice is the problem.
Saying there is no difference between a hammer and high powered semiautomatic rifle with a 30 round clip (well you didn't say that be we are paraphrasing here right?) is ridiculous. How many mass killings were committed with a hammer?
Mental illness is the root of the problem, but the tool available is a huge problem when NRA types won't allow any limits to keep those tools out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them.
I'm not for banning "assault" rifles, but I am for reasonable regulations that will keep them out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Apr 27, 2016 - 09:41pm PT
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How many mass killings were committed with a hammer?
Or clubs? Or fire? Or whatever? Depends on what country you're in.
Mental illness is the root of the problem
Regarding "mass killings" (properly defined, since the common definition of "3 or more" is a ridiculous line to draw), you're probably right. But as a nation we've now fully conflated moral failings with "mental illness." The phrase has become a catch-all that is frightening in its ubiquity.
... keep those tools out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them.
"Shouldn't have them" as defined by who? More on that question in a moment.
I'm not for banning "assault" rifles, but I am for reasonable regulations that will keep them out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them.
Your "line" seems more reasonable to me than most, but it's just YOUR line. While I might agree, that would be just MY line. But why should WE (even a majority, as defined in Federalist 10 as "majority faction") get to decide regarding the rights of others? That question leads directly to....
"Shouldn't have them." Quick story.
A man in my church just two weeks ago told me that he had gone in to buy a handgun. The background check found that he was on the federal terrorist watch list, so he failed the background check and was declined the sale.
Now he's in the very process of trying to figure out WHY he's on the list and get OFF of it! Meanwhile, without ANY due process of law or conviction of ANY crime, he is denied the exercise of his constitutionally-guaranteed right.
He's just one example that happens to be "close to home," but these sorts of cases will multiply. And when you get the (itself whacked out) mental-"health" industry involved, you'll have more and more cases of people who should NOT be denied their right, but they will be, just because "somebody" said, "shouldn't have them."
"Oh, Joe seems angry to me this last week. I'm gonna call the authorities and have them take Joe's guns. I know, it's just my 'assessment,' but I'm frightened, and my feelings necessarily trump Joe's rights." We're already THERE in some states, and the feds WANT that slippery slope to end up all the way to the bottom.
Furthermore, if you take drug-related and gang-related shootings out of the statistics (which are not going to be "solved" by ANY proposed legislation), and you take suicides out of the statistics (more on that in a moment), you are MORE likely to be killed by walking... that's right, walking, than being killed by a gun. I posted the WHO statistics on this on one of the gun-control threads.
Regarding suicides, you might say, "Classic examples of 'shouldn't have them," but you face at least three problems there:
1) You usually cannot tell enough in advance in order to "ensure" that a suicidal person isn't going to gain access to a gun.
2) Even if you can, and you succeed in "preventing" the suicide at that point in time, will you then forever after deny that person access to a gun (as if you could)? No? Well, then, you have "prevented a suicide" in one narrow time-slice for a subset of potential "victims," but you will not keep somebody intent on offing themselves from doing so unless you "make it harder" enough that you just keep them in a padded cell. And, fundamentally, it's our RIGHT to off ourselves at will (although I fully grant and have repeatedly engaged in the efforts to talk people out of it).
3) What gives ANY of us the right to legally deny such a person their constitutional right to a gun, when they are not a danger to anybody else's rights? Educate, counsel, intervene... yes, yes, and yes. But legally deprive somebody of their rights without due process of law just because "somebody" asserts that somebody else "might be suicidal?" I mean, where can you possibly draw principled lines here?
So, yes, suicidal people will "more easily" kill themselves with access to a gun. That's a lot of (at least temporarily) "preventable" tragedy if only guns could be completely eliminated! But guns cannot be eliminated, and even if you could somehow legislate just the right lines around just the right people (all the suicidal ones, and not any that are not really suicidal), you could not keep guns out of their hands. As an example of legal access, no proposed legislation would have kept even Holmes from access to the weapons he used.
Thus, you're left with some statistical realities:
1) The majority of murderous shootings CANNOT be prevented by any slate of gun-control, because the people doing the shootings are druggies/gangland types that laughingly flout the law already. So, the people you would agree are MOST "not supposed to have them" are the very ones you cannot in principle keep from having them. You can't even make it "somewhat hard" for them to have them!
2) The suicides will largely not be prevented by any slate of proposed legislation, because you will either have to keep "such people" in a padded room forever or finally agree that their "right to bear arms" is restored, at which time they can yet again enter a suicidal state from which you won't rescue them the next time. Meanwhile, they are no threat to others, and the government is NOT about protecting me from myself (otherwise we had better have sweeping anti-fat, anti-free-soloing, etc. laws IMMEDIATELY); it's about protecting the rights of people from the infringements of others (which, ironically, it seems to forget in its present lust to infringe the rights of law-abiding citizens in its quest to "solve" completely the wrong "problems").
3) Take (1) and (2) out of the mix, and you're left with a higher probability of walking yourself to death than dying by gunshot. So, it's a problem NOT in need of a solution, particularly not at the federal level!
And if you could somehow manage to eliminate guns, or "keep them out of the hands of those who shouldn't have them," then we'd become like countries where people kill each other with knives, fire, and, yes, hammers. And we WOULD do even that more frequently than many other countries, because we have an epic GANG problem and other problems that many other countries do not have, which are problems of PEOPLE rather than of implements.
And, yes, just as Australia found, when you reduce mass-shootings, the perps then proceed to kill about as many people using fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Australia
Look at the implement of choice following the gun-ban of 1996. Count up murders in the relevant years prior to and following the buy-back and ban in 1996, and you'll see nary a difference in the numbers, just in the implement of choice. Fire (mostly), stabbing, clubbing, and a few people shot.
The gun-ban had zero statistical effect on mass murders in Australia; it simply changed the implement.
So, I have zero confidence that we even CAN "keep them out of the hands of people that shouldn't have them" for many reasons, and even if you could, we have zero reason to think that it can be done without violating a LOT of legitimate peoples' rights, as "shouldn't have them" is already misused and will only become more so.
Now, can somebody tell me how my friend is supposed to PROVE his "innocence" and get off of a watch list he should not be on? He can't go to trial, because he's not on trial. He's CHARGED with nothing whatsoever! Yet, just being on the list denies him his rights. Please explain this one to me, with solutions!
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MisterE
Gym climber
Small Town with a Big Back Yard
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Apr 27, 2016 - 09:50pm PT
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Anyone else notice how the fire of conviction has been lit under Jim Brennan's ass in the last year or so?
He used to be a moderate-posting kind of guy.
What changed Jim? A little SADS? It's what drove me out of the PNW.
Maybe a drier environ would suit you?
I know it did wonders for me - just sayin'
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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Apr 27, 2016 - 10:28pm PT
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MB-Furthermore, if you take drug-related and gang-related shootings out of the statistics (which are not going to be "solved" by ANY proposed legislation), and you take suicides out of the statistics (more on that in a moment), you are MORE likely to be killed by walking... that's right, walking, than being killed by a gun. I posted the WHO statistics on this on one of the gun-control threads
For argument sake- let's summarily dismiss the most prolific cause of gun violence (drugs and gangs) and because this source of violence does not statistically include middle aged men like myself, let's also consider gun legislation for inner cities as having no affect on white middle aged men.
So let's move on to the overriding subject matter; because I have waved my well manicured, pink hand- the notion of gun legislation is an exercise in futility (as it statistically relates to me). I say divert more revenue towards sidewalk repair in suburban areas!
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Apr 27, 2016 - 10:55pm PT
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For argument sake- let's summarily dismiss the most prolific cause of gun violence (drugs and gangs)
If only we could.
Well, actually, we could address this "most prolific cause."
Consider that "the epidemic of gun violence" and gangs were essentially non-existent prior to prohibition. What did prohibition get us as a nation?
1) Gangs, specifically an organized approach to crime that was virtually unknown in this country.
2) Income taxes and an IRS to enforce them in Gestapo-like fashion (remember what got Capone).
3) Ultimately the end of prohibition but not the baleful results of it.
A few decades later, we go for "prohibition" regarding "drugs" (well, the arbitrarily-defined subset of them). And what motivated that new prohibition?
The case is compelling that it was largely racially-motivated, as an effort to wave a legislative wand over "minorities" and thereby criminalize them.
What did we get as a nation from this new prohibition?
1) GANGS! Epic levels of gangland activity and its associated non-drug-related crime and associated violence at levels never-before seen.
2) Filled courts and prisons (mostly by non-violent, mere-possession "offenders").
3) No perceptible reduction in the quantity of available drugs nor frequency of usage.
4) Increased types of drugs made available to an eager (black) market.
5) Hundreds of billions spent and thousands of lives lost in this utter failure of a "war on drugs."
6) Ever-increasing government involvement in the lives of everyday citizens (under the rubric of keeping us "safe").
"Prohibition" of any item-for-sale for which there is an eager market must necessarily fail, and the resulting black market will necessarily empower and enrich those ruthless enough to "rise to the top" of the supply side.
Legalizing drugs (as was done with alcohol after the end of prohibition) would produce a legitimate revenue stream (rather than cost billions in wasted dollars) and remove a significant gangland revenue source. Legalize other "vices" such as prostitution and gambling, and you undo the revenue streams and motivations of gangland America.
It is the federal involvement in criminalizing (thereby moralizing about) particular victimless behaviors that has fed the emergence and violence of gangland America. And, yes, with those hundreds of billions, we could have fixed a lot of sidewalks (thereby actively reducing walking deaths).
Laws that exist to protect people from themselves qua individuals are doomed to fail, and we can only thereby create black markets. These "wars on" are a waste in every sense.
I want the feds legislating LESS, even undoing obviously failed laws that they had no right to make in the first place. Let them do THAT rather than to perpetually make more laws to "fix" the messes their previous laws caused!
As Tacitus said: "In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous." A perhaps better translation is: "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."
Quit with the "prohibitions" of "moralizing," and, amazingly, the FREE market will make gangs (and their associated violence) largely a thing of the past.
Finally, I see a great irony in pro-choice people actively fighting laws designed to "make otherwise legal abortions so difficult to obtain that they are functionally illegal," while these same people want to "make it difficult" for law-abiding citizens to exercise a right explicitly recognized and mentioned in the Bill of Rights (recently interpreted, and rightly so, by the SCOTUS as an individual right).
Somehow the argument that, "if you make it difficult to obtain, you will reduce the incidence of abuses" seems to "work" for them regarding guns but not abortions (which are nowhere mentioned in the constitution).
My point is that "prohibition" does not work! It doesn't work with alcohol, drugs, abortions, OR guns. And you can't honestly cherry-pick among the "wars on" your particular moral leanings happen to "support" as "necessary."
Yup, let's fix some sidewalks and quit "prohibiting," particularly at the federal level!
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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Apr 27, 2016 - 11:15pm PT
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I'm pleased you didn't blow up at my wise-ass barb- but Tacitus? I want to debate each and every point so bad but your late night filibuster wins the day...
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Flip Flop
climber
Earth Planet, Universe
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Apr 28, 2016 - 02:45pm PT
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Mad presents a moderately cohesive argument, or so it seems. His biggest trick is to suggest that we want anything more than the 'regulation' guaranteed by the constitution. "Well Regulated".
Then he shows his true colors by bringing up Women's healthcare and his "Religious Establishment Laws" against abortion.
He's a conservative white guy who regurgitates the best of a very poor argument to promote a punitive authoritarianism based on an arbitrary and capricious creation mythology.
He is a wordy anti intellectual.
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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Apr 28, 2016 - 02:58pm PT
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Climber kills another climber with a hammer Eric Sloan- Perhaps you may want to rethink your dream of a "climber's camp" at Yosemite?
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aspendougy
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Apr 28, 2016 - 05:03pm PT
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In Australia, after a number of mass shootings, they had a country-wide gun turn in, where a lot of people who really did not need guns, turned them in. Deaths from gun violence went down. I believe it was voluntary, but I don't know the entire story.
In China, a man went berserk with a knife and stabbed 25 people or so, but they all survived. With a high powered automatic, the same man could have killed 25-50 people. He was mentally ill, that is the root cause, but it is still true that guns make it possible for these people to kill a lot more than they can without one. Private citizens are not allowed to own artillery, grenades, or nuclear weapons, don't know why people are so ga-ga about guns.
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Gunks Guy
Trad climber
New Paltz, NY
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Apr 28, 2016 - 05:27pm PT
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You guys are awesome. A simple update on a tragic/bizarre event involving the climbing community morphs into a wide ranging discussion on pathos, politics, and personalities. This is why, like a moth to the flame, I stop by here almost every Fukking day. Carry on.
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ionlyski
Trad climber
Kalispell, Montana
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Apr 28, 2016 - 05:28pm PT
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His biggest trick is to suggest that we want anything more than the 'regulation' guaranteed by the constitution.
His biggest trick is to write such lengthy and argumentative nonsense, known as the Wall of Richard that readers just give up, not really wanting to read his entire rant and that's how he wears you down. In the end he kind of thinks he won on intellect but mostly people just give up. Kind of like WOS.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 28, 2016 - 05:37pm PT
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His biggest trick is to write such lengthy and argumentative nonsense
Not really.
I bet you anything he can type very fast, almost as fast as his mind moves.
He has a good intellect.
Thus folks who can type fast will have lengthy posts.
LEB was a fast typer too.
The problem many of you have is you get too twisted by reading those posts.
I can speed read pretty good but can type like maybe 10 to 20 words a minute ever.
I type so slow that I'll lose my original thoughts by the time I finish one sentence.
I'm useless ....
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