Firstly, I don't think anyone is recommending absolutely no government. However, the US government of 1800 was pretty close, and things seemed to work out pretty nicely.

Secondly, we do have examples of actual anarchy. Almost never is it 'Mad Max style', at least not for any amount of time (and when it is, it's because of the transitory period, just like you see with any other transition between governments). The truth is, people don't poop where they eat, and most people don't need the government breathing down their necks to remember that.

I'm quite certain that I am more free than my grandfather who could buy as many guns as he pleased...

well how can you be more free if you can't buy as many guns of whatever sort as you please? what freedom have you gained that was not availible to your grandfather?

Nothing really---though it may give you some insight into how gun control may work in the future (as politically charged topic that it is). Also---this is dumpshock, be prepared to go off topic....

Given that this has come up like three times now, I have to ask, how many people really fire with their off hand? In some high speed capacity that precludes the ability to move your safety device from one wrist to the other?

AFAIK the proper way to shoot a pistol involves holding it with both hands anyway, so I really don't see this whole 'off hand firing' thing being a real issue.

I'm also rather curious what freedoms you have that your grandfather didn't. Looking at my own situation, I can't think of any (well, except the freedom from having to actually talk to people face to face to do all my banking and have all my food delivered directly to my house).

Umm, because it makes sense that part of a person's punishment includes the loss of certain rights. Prison, like the death penalty is not the only way to punish somebody. It is like taking away a drunk driver's drivers license.

There are two parts to what makes up a sentence: the punishment factor, and the deterrent factor.

Three, actually. You forget the rehabilitative factor.

and by doing so everyone else is punished with the excuse of trying to keep firearms out of the hands of felons. This is also done at great expense and much bigger govt and much more involvement of the govt in places it has no constitutional business.

As a sound bite from Command and Conquer said "AK-47s for everyone!"

Here, maybe this will help. So hold a handgun the "proper" way, and what happens? You've got your arms sticking out in front of you, between your center of mass (where most folks will be trying to shoot) and whoever it is you're shooting at. Right? What's that mean? It means folks get shot in the arms an awful lot, in gunfights. And it means you need to train at how to keep shooting with just one arm or the other -- and you don't get to choose which, the bullets do -- including with just your off-hand. You might not see it in action flicks real often, but that doesn't mean you also won't see it at serious training camps.

And any time you have to shoot with just your off hand, it's safe to say it's "in some high speed capacity" that means you don't want to stop and fuck around with an ugly wristwatch, too, just to be able to keep shooting.


Why not?

You can either trust the people of your country (in which case they're citizens), or you can't (in which case they're subjects). Just because you don't know enough about firearms to be safe carrying one around doesn't mean the rest of us should have our rights to do so taken away.

Why does it tend to be those who know the least about firearms that are the most eager, and strongly opined, when it comes to taking them away from those who do know about them?

If you use an unknown item unprepared, it will end up in your dominant hand.

If you willingly choose the hand used, you know the reason why.

Someone has been eavesdropping on my dreams...




In my games (SR4), the average ganger defaults on his firearms tests. He generally doesn't have any training, nor does he actually shoot enough to gain enough experience to get any meaningful skill rating. The senior gangers...lieutenants, gang bosses, etc., will probably have Rating 1 or 2 in their firearm skill of choice, but probably not much more.

Organized crime personnel are more likely to have at least semi-formal firearms training. Rating 1 is going to be common amongst the soldiers...possible 2, with higher ratings belonging to the vets.

Cops (Lone Star beat cops, specifically) should be rating 2 on the average. They just don't train/shoot that much to be rated much higher on average. Some officers will be marksman...the type that personally owns several firearms, and spends tons of free time on the range...yes, he should have a skill of 3. A skill of 5 for beat cops is obnoxiously stupid and even breaks with SR's own skill level definitions



Your average 12-man SF ODA burns through more ammo at the shooting ranges in a month than my entire Infantry Company (~140 men) normally did in a year. Keeping up that level of skill requires you to shoot ALL THE TIME. Just like highly skilled athletes have to practice ALL THE TIME. Michael Phelps swims ALL THE TIME. My brother is a cop in New Orleans, and there isn't a single cop he knows that even shoots as much as I did back when I was in the Army.

The way I see it, a skill rating of three represents either A.) Having had very high levels of training, but only actually using the skill just enough to maintain proficiency or B.) Having a skill that you use pretty much every day. I'm a sys admin, so I work with servers and networks every day. If I only did it as a hobby and MAYBE touched a network/server once a week instead of 40+ hours a week, I don't think I could justify having a skill of 3 or higher.

Granted, this is a game, and I can see the need to artificially jack up the skill ratings of the opposition to make them a challenge to your runners, but every cop having a firearms skill of 4 or 5 is just plain fucking retarded.

Let's see...I don't risk getting arrested, tortured and/or shot for not agreeing with the government, I can crack jokes about the military without getting shot right away, can listen to foreign radio stations and not risk being dragged out of my bed by the Gestapo, and if I was a gay Jewish communist nobody would give a shit.
Oh, and if I want less gun control I can just vote a party which supports that, or found my own...

But I dont want an AK47! I would take one of those saigas though.

and as far as mandatory firearms training, well funny ya should mention. http://www.constitution.org/mil/mil_act_1792.htm
makes it mandatory for all ablebodied men to muster 2 times a year and mandates they must own a musket or rifle, in addition to a bayonette, bullets, powder and wadding for the weapon. It does not say how you must get the gear though. It was repealed though in 1903
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_Act_of_1903
instead of a full repeal though I think we should have just added the national guard.

It was repealed because it was *never enforced*, generally speaking.

Hate to say it, but the militia was worse than useless in battle in both the war of 1812 and every war afterwards up to the 1903 Militia Act.

The volunteers were better, but still nowhere near the quality of the Regular Army.

well yes. and it would probably be better anyway to have firearms training as part of a k-12 school requirement as reading and such are.

I'd support it. It's a lot more plausible and would prevent more deaths/injuries than stricter gun control laws, I would wager.

One problem with that: Many schools today are built on very limited parcels of land. Indoor firing ranges are a bad idea with kids due to lead contamination issues, if I recall correctly.

Where the heck would you put such a firing range?

It sounds like something that would work in the West (and perhaps the South) where there's lots of land and space...But it wouldn't work in the Northeast, Midwest, or Pacific Coast.

Forget the philosophical issues (how would it work with special ed kids, who maybe are blind or otherwise not safe to use a firearm? Would there be a philosophical exemption for pacifist kids?), I don't see how it'd be practical.

It's still more plausible than taking away everyone's guns. Handicapped kids get the same sort of exemptions they'd get for PE classes, which is to say, you'd make a case-by-case assessment. As for pacifists, who cares? They're shooting paper, not people. You allow that through, and every parent who thinks "Ewww... guns are teh ebil!" will be claiming their kid's a pacifist to get the exemption, which defeats the entire purpose in the first place.

Not so much for the Indians, I think.

Somalia?

So you admit that this is basically using the school to teach a political viewpoint. Religious freedom and similar inalienable rights be damned.

That's why I wager that were it tried, the courts would invalidate so fast there'd be a vacuum.

Face it: DC v Heller is the best you're going to get. The Second Amendment does not mean what you think it does. (It'd be illegal to take away everyone's guns, but there is precisely an allowance for the government to regulate the possession of firearms.)

I admit no such thing. It is the school teaching a skill and the basic safety associated with its use. If you think pacifism applies to putting holes in a piece of paper, you completely misunderstand the word "pacifism." As far as freedom of religion goes... well, I'v never heard of a religion that requires its practitioners not put holes in paper, nor of one that forbids the use of firearms, so I don't see what has to do with the discussion at hand anyway.

I find it ironic that people who balk at the idea of an armed citizenry enjoy playing a game wherein one of the central themes is that a disenfranchised segment of society empowers themselves through acquiring illegal arms and the skills to use them and then does so to commit crimes against the oppressive establishment.

Its kind of like how the liberal elite in Hollywood is so fond of gun control, yet they make their "obscene" fortunes (to use the populist lingo) off movies that glorify gun violence.

1-2 : one question about the restriction of firearms for ex-con : is it for life or only for a limited period ? If the latter I would consider ita form of probation - "You've the jail part of your sentence, but there's an observation preiod before gving back all your rights". I wouldn't have qualms with that. I wouldn't agree with a for life restriction

3) A slight impact by reducing the number of stolen, second hand and the like's availability would be my guess. On the number of crime, probably yes for spur-of-the-moment crimes (the 'I catch my wife in bed with someone, I grab my gun an shoot both sort of crimes'). Very little for premeditated crimes and criminal-vs-crimanal shootings. It can also provide a convenient way to get a ganger or the like behind bars for gun-related offenses while poking around for worse offenses (sort of like Al Capone and fiscal fraud).

The gun restriction: Basically in the US, if you're convicted of a felony (a crime where the sentence is imprisonment of greater than a year), you can't possess a gun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_Control_Act_of_1968

I should note that the viewpoint expressed here of allowing convicted felons to own firearms?

Even the NRA disagrees with that, last I checked.

This also extends to certain non-felony crimes in some states, like domestic violence.

I know a woman who's now-ex-husband attacked her when he came home and she was changing the locks. In self defense she hit him in the head with the old door knob as he rushed in to choke her. When the cops arrived he was bleeding so they charged her too. She had no prior criminal record and spent less than 24 hours in jail but the end result is she can no longer own a firearm.

there is no data to back up the myth that reducing guns reduces violence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA_7UaZ3Lg8
is a graphic case about what happens with no guns.

and in somalia they are getting less violent among themselfs. last year I even saw a few news articles about them having a pirate exchange where one could invest in a pirate venture and when the company or country paid the somalies off there would be a payout to the investors. also its africa they cant seem to be peacable.

Good lawyers are expensive. Bad lawers are much more costly.

what state was this in?

Because they think it's a Wand of Magic Missile in a world filled with level 0 fighters.

Yeah, I guess it's pretty much clear that in SR3 the Lone Star cops were pretty over-powered, with their Pistols 5 skill and their magical Ruger Thunderbolts that were pistols but had more firepower than the vast majority of SMGs and at the same time the PCs were discouraged from owning. Heh, grudge monster!

I think its more like why some people liked the plot of "The day the Earth stood still" they like the idea that they can give up all their freedoms and gain perfect security. I want all the freedoms I can get because I know without them I do not have any security.

I'm failing to see how the federal government saying "it's okay to take these peoples' land, we'll send the army to back you up" is an example of how weak government hurt people. To the contrary, it seems that if the federal government were weaker, the Native Americans would have suffered less (no standing army means no invading army). And since the US was doing basically the same thing every other European power was doing (all of whom had very strong central governments) at more or less the exact same time, your argument really fails to hold any water.



Somalia was a transitional state. I specifically cited that as the exception, and noted that the same thing results from ANY major government transition. You're welcome to find another example, but I'm guessing itll be the same. The actual number of actual anarchist territories and nations is pretty small, once you exclude 'anarchy because the last government fell to the new government, who hasnt moved their furniture into the palace yet' situations.




It's a lifetime ban. So yes, get caught hitting your girlfriend, carrying more than three ounces of pot, embezzling more than $5,000, etc., and you lose the right to self defense. I can understand doing it during probation - if you can guarantee the safety of that individual. But a lifetime ban seems impossible to enforce for the bad guys, and a cruel punishment to the good guys.

Has nothing to do with knowledge of firearms, and has everything to do with firearms being used for crime.

Check it out, how many times have firearms been used in the US to rebel against the government in a way concurrent with the constitution? And how many times have firearms been used to commit a crime?

I think the first number is basically 0 and the second number is at least several million. Now I just know someone is going to pull out a number for all the people that own guns and don't commit crimes, but I don't really care about that. Point is that the only real reason to own an AK-47 is to commit a crime or rebel, and the statistics point towards it being far more likely to be used to commit a crime, so generally I'd prefer that we not hand out the ability to obtain assault weapons without trouble.

Now I'm going to have to install that game because I really want to use mobs with AK-47s to rule to world.

self defense is a legitamite use as well. and even if criminals had only baseball bats or even just thier fists I want an m14 and M1911 to defend myself.

also mexico is a nice example of harse gun control laws and criminals still getting plenty. Heck they even get rpg's, machine guns, and grenades.

for personal safety you gun control types like to say police provide that, well most police are over 100 lbs and 200lbs. I cant carry one of those around even if I could afford to. I can afford to carry and physically carry a pistol.

Since progressives are the ones who want gun control and the whole philosophy of progressiveism is to slowly get change because it doesnt work to just come out and demand things how they want them; I dont want to give in any on the subject because the progressive types want no guns in the hands of civilians. That I can not abide.

And how many times has the government tried to violently subjugate the people on a massive scale?

-------------------------

It would be interesting to see what would happen in the large, anti-gun costal cities if the government ever collapsed. My bet is all those well armed gangs would run the show because no one else is able to stop them (much like they did in the wake of Huricane Katrina).

And I suppose you have data which suggests that arming everyone reduces violence? If those teenagers had had guns, Derrion Albert would have been shot to death instead of beaten to death. How is that better? This is my problem with giving everyone quick and easy access to guns: some jackass is having a bad day, doesn't like the way somebody else is looking at him, and shoots that person dead. Sure, you can still kill a person without a gun, but it's harder, and that's the point. Guns don't cause violence, but they do make violence easier.

yeah- Switzerland. They have ~1 gun per 3 people, just about everyone is trained to use them and their gun crime rate is so low they don't even keep statistics.

There is a saying: An armed society is a polite society. As flippant as that might sound there is some truth to it. In the US states with more guns per capita tend to have lower crime rates because criminals are hesitant to use violence when they know there is a good chance their target is armed. There are studies that show that "right-to-carry" states have lower overall crime rates, lower murder rates and lower burglary rates than those that prohibit concealed carry.

Also legally armed firearms are used in self defense ~2 million times a year. Thats 5 times the number of gun crimes.

why assume only the murderers would be armed? lets assume the kid was or maybe some bystanders were? There would be alot of dead gang members. sure some innocents might have died but that happened anyway. And I do stress 'might' if bystanders were armed.

as far as statistics I'm looking but it doesnt seem to be published in a manner useful to determining if firearms help or hurt criminal action.

I think this is a serious mis-understanding. I once thought like that because I was growing up in New York City and attended prep schools and there was kind of a cultural bias towards that kind of thinking.

But as I've grown older, lived different places, and had life experiences my perspective on that exact issue changed. Without going into tiresome hypotheticals I will say right off the bat that I own a AK-47, and that I purchased it for the following reasons:

1.) It is cheaper to operate than an AR15 as it can feed Eastern European steel-cased ammo no problem, therefore I can practice with it.
2.) It's durable and I don't feel bad about dropping it or banging against something by accident, so it means that I feel comfortable using it for "tactical" classes and courses that would include any sort of outdoor obstacle course segment.
3.) Since it's simple in design and the parts are inexpensive I will use it to learn about maintaining and changing parts in a firearm. I can experiment with different stocks, sights, and other parts, and again I don't have to be fearful of somehow breaking an expensive rifle, like I might be if I were using some high end $2000 AR.
4.) It requires less cleaning to function reliably so if I'm going to practice a lot that pretty much saves me time. As a counter example I have to clean my 1911 every time I shoot and if I don't I get malfunctions.

So my desire for owning an AK 47 has everything to do with being able to practice and train and participate in classes or sports without worrying about fragility or ammunition costs.

If someone decided that AK 47s are dangerous and should be restricted, they would probably greatly drive the costs of my hobby up, and make it harder for me to get into recreational legal modification of firearms.



EDIT: And HELL YEAH, I am absolutely going to relate this to gaming!

Coincidentally today I participated in USPSA qualifiers for the first time in my life and IMO I shot really crappily. Since I was stressed everything seemed to be happening in slow motion and I actually could palpably feel myself reverting to jerking the trigger and other bad forms because I seemed to be moving so slowly that I just tried to speed myself along.

Since I think about games all the time of course I immediately thought that one problem with FPS games is that they don't implement errors in gun handling, such as trigger jerking under stress. I feel like in a game that has upgradeable skill levels for firearms, they should also implement a stress level and then if your skill level isn't high enough you start to jerk the trigger, or you jerk the trigger if you left-click too fast for your skill level.

And, everything I said above about AK 47s versus ARs also can be applied back to gaming. Why is it that in the vast majority of FPS games they never have a situation where your gun realistically malfunctions, or your gun breaks when it gets hit by incoming fire? Given the volume of fire that the player dispenses in a typical FPS game, if someone realistically went around shooting like that they'd start to get failures on their typical AR whereas the AK would handle that a bit better. What if you had failures in a FPS and you had to tap different keys to, for example, lock the slide back, tap the magazine, sweep the port with your hand, etc? That could be realistic and cool and people might pick weapons for reliability over accuracy.

One thing I learned today is that when you shoot a pistol at a target 50 yards away, you must begin to compensate for bullet drop. Pistol bullet drop is cool and should be implemented in more games.

Of course pen and paper RPGs is really where you could go hog wild with this, with extensive background notes all written up so the players can understand all about firearms. It would really add a lot of depth to gameplay and also character development as it would relate to what weapon what character decides to choose.

As a progressive standing firmly against disarming the populus, I feel the need to vocally disagree with this statement... well, the first part, anyway. Just because the people who want more gun control laws tend to be on the left is no reason to paint the left being anti-gun. Just sayin'.

Edit: I consider any reason other than "to commit crimes" to be a valid reason to won an assault rifle. Yes, that includes "I thought it would look cool above the mantle."

Are we talking SR3 or SR4, here? Because giving veteran gangers (their leaders and enforcers and such) a 1 or 2 in a combat skill in SR3 is whole worlds different than giving them the same skill level in SR4. In an SR3 game, I'd say you're lowballing 'em something fierce.

It's also worth pointing out -- while I agree with your general assessment of skill levels, working off the assumption we're talking SR4, here -- that there should be quite a few exceptions to your rules. The way some gangs are treated in Shadowrun, having the majority of members fielding 3-4-5 or so in combat, even firearm, skills should be fairly common, unless you tone down the innate Marysuishness of some of the organizations. It's silly for the default Tir soldier to have a firearm skill of X, for instance, if the default Ancient (when so many of them are Tir soldiers) has X minus 4...that sort of thing. Just like the real-life MS-13 (and, sadly, a growing number of other gangs, due to lots of our military being flooded with gang recruits), plenty of Shadowrun gangs are full of combat veterans not only from the urban skirmishes and tough-guy flexing nonsense of growing up on gang turf, but of actual former enlisted men who've seen the elephant in the Desert Wars, etc.

Just don't let your players get TOO comfy assuming every single gangbanger's gonna miss, is all I'm saying. There's plenty of fluff and real-world justification for the occasional gang member to be a genuine badass.


Wow. I was close to ignoring everything you had to say (about gun control) as wildly ignorant before, but this one pretty much sealed the deal. Please do me a favor, and do a little research somewhere besides the Brady Campaign website, or something, before the next election. Please. Please. You've got a terrifically skewed world-view when it comes to armed citizenry, and that scares me as much as the AK and Glock in my closet and on my nightstand no doubt scare you.

In Germany on the other hand it's much the same crime-wise, but gun ownership here is tightly limited. Relating crime rates to a single factor is just nonsense, no matter whether that single factor are video games, earth rays, or the presence/absence of firearms. Cum hoc non est procter hoc.


I might also point out that in Switzerland people are not issued ammunition along with their SIGs any longer. And when they were, those 50 rounds were kept in a sealed pack which was only to be opened in case of a mobilization. So while lobbyists like to cite Switzerland as an example for "enlightened" gun control, establishing such rules in their own country would surely make the NRA flip out...not to mention the idea of a draft.

Yeah, I was specifically talking SR4. I agree, the skill ratings would be higher in SR3.




Yes, there are exceptions...there are always exceptions. I even mentioned the cop who is a marksman and shoots every day...especially if he is prior service or somesuch. But exceptions are just that. Exceptions...not the rule, not commonplace, and not the most commonly occurring denominator. Yes, if you have a brand new member of the Ancients who used to be a Tir Soldier, he is probably going to have a higher skill than that 17 year old elf teenager who grew up in the barrens with no skills and no training.

I suppose that in my games, firearm skill rating means a bit more than most. I just don't see how Pray-and-spray drive-bys build skilled marksmen. It's probably my personal bias that leaks into my gaming.




I agree totally. I never meant to make people think I don't allow for exceptions. But "Pistols 5" is not something you are going to see from the AVERAGE ganger/cop/security guard. MAYBE from the average Special Forces Operator/Tir Ghost/Ares Firewatch, but not from people without that level of training/OPTEMPO.

Also, in my games, a ganger with an average AGI (3), Skill 1, smartlinked predator is throwing 6 dice. And since I play with thresholds, if you don't have cover and are in short range, you can still be in a world of trouble.

No, that is optional, and primarily upto to criminal in question.

I was talking about the sizable population of Indians already under domination of the United States, but the issue I was considering applies to those yet to be conquered as well.

The army didn't go in first. After the uncontrolled yahoos and land grabbers went in first, ignoring treaties and even the few, sham laws that upheld rights of non-whites, got the natives riled enough to fight back and kill a few, then the army went in. This applied equally to those already conquered and those yet to be conquered.

As has been true since the first democracies of ancient Greece, in the United States of the 1800s the 'universal' truths of freedom and justice applied only to the privileged few, not the many who had stuff they wanted. The weak government was unable and unwilling to apply its own founding ideology to benefit those who needed it the most.

Luckily many stores in Switzerland sell ammunition.

I think a fully armed A-10 Warthog would look fabulous in my driveway. Can I have one? Pretty please?


Now, this is an interesting idea. If we interpret the Second Amendment "as the Founders did," technically speaking, you're allowed to own a flintlock rifle or musket. After all, that's what they had back when the Constitution was written, and surely what the Founders had in mind when referring to the arms you're allowed to bear.