The General Terrorist Rampage Thread

[gourimoko]

PIP, it is unfortunate that the same cast of characters can't pay well together. As they have shat all over this playing field, as they have the others, I think I am going to take my ball elsewhere.

People can message me if they too are annoyed at the current state of affairs and would like something positive done. If people continue to disrespect this site, and each other, perhaps it is time for some creative solutions.

Frankly, it doesn't take a genius to figure out the folks behind this. To them, I say, reconsider your behaviors. People have been watching and keeping note. Desist now. This is my final warning to you folks.

 

[gourimoko]

@billmac91

For Japan:

Wikipedia:

The weapons law of Japan begins by stating "No one shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords", and very few exceptions are allowed.[59] Citizens are permitted to possess firearms for hunting and sport shooting, but only after submitting to a lengthy licensing procedure.[60]After ten years of shotgun ownership, a licence-holder may apply to obtain a rifle.

....

theatlantic.com

How Japan Has Virtually Eliminated Shooting Deaths
Max Fisher
7-8 minutes
I’ve heard it said that, if you take a walk around Waikiki, it’s only a matter of time until someone hands you a flyer of scantily clad women clutching handguns, overlaid with English and maybe Japanese text advertising one of the many local shooting ranges. The city’s largest, the Royal Hawaiian Shooting Club, advertises instructors fluent in Japanese, which is also the default language of its

website
. For years, this peculiar Hawaiian industry has

explicitly targeted Japanese tourists
, drawing them away from beaches and resorts into shopping malls, to do things that are forbidden in their own country.

Waikiki’s Japanese-filled ranges are the sort of quirk you might find in any major tourist town, but they're also an intersection of two societies with wildly different approaches to guns and their role in society. Friday’s horrific shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater has been a reminder that America's gun control laws are the loosest in the developed world and its rate of gun-related homicide is the highest. Of the world’s 23 “rich” countries, the U.S. gun-related murder rate is almost 20 times that of the other 22. With almost one privately owned firearm per person, America’s ownership rate is the highest in the world; tribal-conflict-torn Yemen is ranked second, with a rate about half of America's.

But what about the country at the other end of the spectrum? What is the role of guns in Japan, the developed world's least firearm-filled nation and perhaps its strictest controller? In 2008, the U.S. had over 12 thousand firearm-related homicides. All of Japan experienced only 11, fewer than were killed at the Aurora shooting alone. And that was a big year: 2006 saw an astounding two, and when that number jumped to 22 in 2007, it became a national scandal. By comparison, also in 2008, 587 Americans were killed just by guns that had discharged accidentally.

Almost no one in Japan owns a gun. Most kinds are illegal, with onerous restrictions on buying and maintaining the few that are allowed. Even the country's infamous, mafia-like Yakuza tend to forgo guns; the few exceptions tend to become big national news stories.

Japanese tourists who fire off a few rounds at the Royal Hawaiian Shooting Club would be breaking three separate laws back in Japan—one for holding a handgun, one for possessing unlicensed bullets, and another violation for firing them -- the first of which alone is punishable by one to ten years in jail. Handguns are forbidden absolutely. Small-caliber rifles have been illegal to buy, sell, or transfer since 1971. Anyone who owned a rifle before then is allowed to keep it, but their heirs are required to turn it over to the police once the owner dies.

The only guns that Japanese citizens can legally buy and use are shotguns and air rifles, and it’s not easy to do. The process is detailed in David Kopel’s landmark study on Japanese gun control, published in the 1993 Asia Pacific Law Review, still cited as current. (Kopel, no left-wing loony, is a member of the National Rifle Association and once wrote in National Review that looser gun control laws could have stopped Adolf Hitler.)

To get a gun in Japan, first, you have to attend an all-day class and pass a written test, which are held only once per month. You also must take and pass a shooting range class. Then, head over to a hospital for a mental test and drug test (Japan is unusual in that potential gun owners must affirmatively prove their mental fitness), which you’ll file with the police. Finally, pass a rigorous background check for any criminal record or association with criminal or extremist groups, and you will be the proud new owner of your shotgun or air rifle. Just don’t forget to provide police with documentation on the specific location of the gun in your home, as well as the ammo, both of which must be locked and stored separately. And remember to have the police inspect the gun once per year and to re-take the class and exam every three years.

Even the most basic framework of Japan’s approach to gun ownership is almost the polar opposite of America’s. U.S. gun law begins with the second amendment's affirmation of the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” and narrows it down from there. Japanese law, however, starts with the 1958 act stating that “No person shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords,” later adding a few exceptions. In other words, American law is designed to enshrine access to guns, while Japan starts with the premise of forbidding it. The history of that is complicated, but it's worth noting that U.S. gun law has its roots in resistance to British gun restrictions, whereas some academic literature links the Japanese law to the national campaign to forcibly disarm the samurai, which may partially explain why the 1958 mentions firearms and swords side-by-side.

Of course, Japan and the U.S. are separated by a number of cultural and historical difference much wider than their gun policies. Kopel explains that, for whatever reason, Japanese tend to be more tolerant of the broad search and seizure police powers necessary to enforce the ban. “Japanese, both criminals and ordinary citizens, are much more willing than their American counterparts to consent to searches and to answer questions from the police,” he writes. But even the police did not carry firearms themselves until, in 1946, the American occupation authority ordered them to. Now, Japanese police receive more hours of training than their American counterparts, are forbidden from carrying off-duty, and invest hours in studying martial arts in part because they “are expected to use [firearms] in only the rarest of circumstances,” according to Kopel.

The Japanese and American ways of thinking about crime, privacy, and police powers are so different—and Japan is such a generally peaceful country—that it’s functionally impossible to fully isolate and compare the two gun control regiments. It's not much easier to balance the costs and benefits of Japan's unusual approach, which helps keep its murder rate at the second-lowest in the world, though at the cost of restrictions that Kopel calls a “police state,” a worrying suggestion that it hands the government too much power over its citizens. After all, the U.S. constitution’s second amendment is intended in part to maintain “the security of a free State” by ensuring that the government doesn't have a monopoly on force. Though it's worth considering another police state here: Tunisia, which had the lowest firearm-ownership rate in the world (one gun per thousand citizens, compared to America’s 890) when its people toppled a brutal, 24-year dictatorship and sparked the Arab Spring.

..

So, I guess the question is, could this be done here?

 

[PIP]

Look every time I’m frustrated, I focus my Latino, Asian, Black and White ass into the dance...

I encourage you all to channel any frustrations into the Zizic thread...

 

[Wrathe]

Look every time I’m frustrated, I focus my Latino, Asian, Black and White ass into the dance...

I encourage you all to channel any frustrations into the Zizic thread...

Can you weigh in on political threads? Are they back open? Like, it's pretty confusing to say it's not allowed when, well, above goes on.

 

[billmac91]

@billmac91

For Japan:

Wikipedia:

The weapons law of Japan begins by stating "No one shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords", and very few exceptions are allowed.[59] Citizens are permitted to possess firearms for hunting and sport shooting, but only after submitting to a lengthy licensing procedure.[60]After ten years of shotgun ownership, a licence-holder may apply to obtain a rifle.

....

theatlantic.com

How Japan Has Virtually Eliminated Shooting Deaths
Max Fisher
7-8 minutes
I’ve heard it said that, if you take a walk around Waikiki, it’s only a matter of time until someone hands you a flyer of scantily clad women clutching handguns, overlaid with English and maybe Japanese text advertising one of the many local shooting ranges. The city’s largest, the Royal Hawaiian Shooting Club, advertises instructors fluent in Japanese, which is also the default language of its

website
. For years, this peculiar Hawaiian industry has

explicitly targeted Japanese tourists
, drawing them away from beaches and resorts into shopping malls, to do things that are forbidden in their own country.

Waikiki’s Japanese-filled ranges are the sort of quirk you might find in any major tourist town, but they're also an intersection of two societies with wildly different approaches to guns and their role in society. Friday’s horrific shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater has been a reminder that America's gun control laws are the loosest in the developed world and its rate of gun-related homicide is the highest. Of the world’s 23 “rich” countries, the U.S. gun-related murder rate is almost 20 times that of the other 22. With almost one privately owned firearm per person, America’s ownership rate is the highest in the world; tribal-conflict-torn Yemen is ranked second, with a rate about half of America's.

But what about the country at the other end of the spectrum? What is the role of guns in Japan, the developed world's least firearm-filled nation and perhaps its strictest controller? In 2008, the U.S. had over 12 thousand firearm-related homicides. All of Japan experienced only 11, fewer than were killed at the Aurora shooting alone. And that was a big year: 2006 saw an astounding two, and when that number jumped to 22 in 2007, it became a national scandal. By comparison, also in 2008, 587 Americans were killed just by guns that had discharged accidentally.

Almost no one in Japan owns a gun. Most kinds are illegal, with onerous restrictions on buying and maintaining the few that are allowed. Even the country's infamous, mafia-like Yakuza tend to forgo guns; the few exceptions tend to become big national news stories.

Japanese tourists who fire off a few rounds at the Royal Hawaiian Shooting Club would be breaking three separate laws back in Japan—one for holding a handgun, one for possessing unlicensed bullets, and another violation for firing them -- the first of which alone is punishable by one to ten years in jail. Handguns are forbidden absolutely. Small-caliber rifles have been illegal to buy, sell, or transfer since 1971. Anyone who owned a rifle before then is allowed to keep it, but their heirs are required to turn it over to the police once the owner dies.

The only guns that Japanese citizens can legally buy and use are shotguns and air rifles, and it’s not easy to do. The process is detailed in David Kopel’s landmark study on Japanese gun control, published in the 1993 Asia Pacific Law Review, still cited as current. (Kopel, no left-wing loony, is a member of the National Rifle Association and once wrote in National Review that looser gun control laws could have stopped Adolf Hitler.)

To get a gun in Japan, first, you have to attend an all-day class and pass a written test, which are held only once per month. You also must take and pass a shooting range class. Then, head over to a hospital for a mental test and drug test (Japan is unusual in that potential gun owners must affirmatively prove their mental fitness), which you’ll file with the police. Finally, pass a rigorous background check for any criminal record or association with criminal or extremist groups, and you will be the proud new owner of your shotgun or air rifle. Just don’t forget to provide police with documentation on the specific location of the gun in your home, as well as the ammo, both of which must be locked and stored separately. And remember to have the police inspect the gun once per year and to re-take the class and exam every three years.

Even the most basic framework of Japan’s approach to gun ownership is almost the polar opposite of America’s. U.S. gun law begins with the second amendment's affirmation of the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” and narrows it down from there. Japanese law, however, starts with the 1958 act stating that “No person shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords,” later adding a few exceptions. In other words, American law is designed to enshrine access to guns, while Japan starts with the premise of forbidding it. The history of that is complicated, but it's worth noting that U.S. gun law has its roots in resistance to British gun restrictions, whereas some academic literature links the Japanese law to the national campaign to forcibly disarm the samurai, which may partially explain why the 1958 mentions firearms and swords side-by-side.

Of course, Japan and the U.S. are separated by a number of cultural and historical difference much wider than their gun policies. Kopel explains that, for whatever reason, Japanese tend to be more tolerant of the broad search and seizure police powers necessary to enforce the ban. “Japanese, both criminals and ordinary citizens, are much more willing than their American counterparts to consent to searches and to answer questions from the police,” he writes. But even the police did not carry firearms themselves until, in 1946, the American occupation authority ordered them to. Now, Japanese police receive more hours of training than their American counterparts, are forbidden from carrying off-duty, and invest hours in studying martial arts in part because they “are expected to use [firearms] in only the rarest of circumstances,” according to Kopel.

The Japanese and American ways of thinking about crime, privacy, and police powers are so different—and Japan is such a generally peaceful country—that it’s functionally impossible to fully isolate and compare the two gun control regiments. It's not much easier to balance the costs and benefits of Japan's unusual approach, which helps keep its murder rate at the second-lowest in the world, though at the cost of restrictions that Kopel calls a “police state,” a worrying suggestion that it hands the government too much power over its citizens. After all, the U.S. constitution’s second amendment is intended in part to maintain “the security of a free State” by ensuring that the government doesn't have a monopoly on force. Though it's worth considering another police state here: Tunisia, which had the lowest firearm-ownership rate in the world (one gun per thousand citizens, compared to America’s 890) when its people toppled a brutal, 24-year dictatorship and sparked the Arab Spring.

..

So, I guess the question is, could this be done here?

To answer your question bluntly, no it could not be done here. I like the extreme barrier to entry, in the sense that it would really hamper the "outside fringes" from getting a gun.

I struggle with what Japan does and our freedoms though.

I don't need to explain it to you, but we aren't the United States of America without the collective effort of a group of people willing to risk their lives against the English Army. It's part of who we are.

That being said, rational people see the difference in warfare today, and how pointless a semi-automatic weapon is in the face of a drone attack should it become people vs. the state. Like...c'mon, in the event we needed to fight our own government, I don't see the few people who have been loading up on assault weapons saving us from the Defense Department.

So I struggle with it....

There is absolutely a balance that can be struck (and yes some people on the fringes will be pissed) but you make assault weapons illegal to purchase from this date forward, and new background check legislation is put into place.

I really don't think that many people would be that upset or off-put by this.

And interestingly enough, while he has a base to please, Trump throughout his life hasn't been very pro-gun. I don't want to bring politics into this, but the guy is a career New Yorker and said in the past he's anti-gun. Allegedly his sons swung him around to "pro-gun" positions because they're big hunters. But people close to him have said he's anti-assault weapons and actually quite pragmatic as it relates to the current gun landscape.

We'll see what happens, but it's time for change.

 

[MediumBaller]

I'd just like to say that I haven't used the report button at all in either this thread or the media bias one since they've been active again the past couple days. So, if anyone thinks I had a part in it, it wasn't me.

 

[Hurl Bruce]

I'd just like to say that I haven't used the report button at all in either this thread or the media bias one since they've been active again the past couple days. So, if anyone thinks I had a part in it, it wasn't me.

Well, I'm not a toddler whose feelings get hurt to the point I need to run to mom or dad, so it wasn't me.

 

[MediumBaller]

Well, I'm not a toddler whose feelings get hurt to the point I need to run to mom or dad, so it wasn't me.

I think it's poll time. Let's see who everyone thinks it is.

 

[MediumBaller]

I do think it would be beneficial to know whether these conversations are allowed on here again though. I think that's where a lot of the disagreement from me and others has stemmed from the past two days.

 

[Jack Brickman]

If this discussion moves forward, can we talk about why shooting a lot of people is cool among young people? You have millions spending hours having fun on COD..Perhaps some percentage of these can't distinguish the difference between virtual and reality?

Blaming video games, movies, music, and other forms of media has been and will always be a cop out. Was there no violence before video games? Please. Was there no violence before movies? Don't make me laugh. There has been violence all throughout the history of mankind, and there will be violence for as long as we end up lasting in this universe. The only difference between today and a hundred years ago is that it's laughably easy to procure weapons that can easily kill dozens, hundreds of people in a short amount of time.

The problems are with the individuals that commit these crimes and the ease with which they are able to access weapons to enable them to commit them. This is not and will never be the fault of movies, games, or music. Those things are a very convenient scapegoat, though, and people love to bring them up in order to shift the narrative away from the root of the problem: guns themselves, our gun nut culture, and the mental health of the people in this country.

The bottom line, though, is that basically every other first world country on Earth consumes the exact same violent media that we do, and many have their own equivalents as well (like the Italian series Gomorrah, which is every bit as violent as any American show I've seen). Yet, this problem is almost entirely exclusive to our country. Why do you think that is?

 

[Huber.]

Edit: It would have been reported

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

That being said, rational people see the difference in warfare today, and how pointless a semi-automatic weapon is in the face of a drone attack should it become people vs. the state. Like...c'mon, in the event we needed to fight our own government, I don't see the few people who have been loading up on assault weapons saving us from the Defense Department.

The correct opposing argument is not that that armed citizens could actually defeat the military.

But military forces often are less reliable when used against their own citizens than are police forces. The real potential of armed citizens is to put up sufficient armed resistance so as to require the involvement of a military that may either splinter, or actually side with the citizens.
I think that is entirely possible.

But regardless, I personally would never get around private ownership of guns for personal protection. I think that's a fundamental right. The old "God made men, but Sam Colt made them equal" line actually signifies something important. Guns give the old and weak the ability to defend themselves against the aggressive and strong. Depriving everyone of guns just means that physical strong criminals will be able to take advantage of the weak with relative impunity.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

I do think it would be beneficial to know whether these conversations are allowed on here again though. I think that's where a lot of the disagreement from me and others has stemmed from the past two days.

I think that is likely what is going on with the report button. The rules are unclear, so people are clicking the report button when they otherwise might not, in part to report violations of the no politics rule.

I would suggest to whomever is doing that right now that they give it a rest of the next day or two. You're not just getting back at the people you're reporting, but you're bugging the mods who are just ordinary guys trying to do a pretty thankless job.

 

[billmac91]

Blaming video games, movies, music, and other forms of media has been and will always be a cop out. Was there no violence before video games? Please. Was there no violence before movies? Don't make me laugh. There has been violence all throughout the history of mankind, and there will be violence for as long as we end up lasting in this universe. The only difference between today and a hundred years ago is that it's laughably easy to procure weapons that can easily kill dozens, hundreds of people in a short amount of time.

The problems are with the individuals that commit these crimes and the ease with which they are able to access weapons to enable them to commit them. This is not and will never be the fault of movies, games, or music. Those things are a very convenient scapegoat, though, and people love to bring them up in order to shift the narrative away from the root of the problem: guns themselves, our gun nut culture, and the mental health of the people in this country.

The bottom line, though, is that basically every other first world country on Earth consumes the exact same violent media that we do, and many have their own equivalents as well (like the Italian series Gomorrah, which is every bit as violent as any American show I've seen). Yet, this problem is almost entirely exclusive to our country. Why do you think that is?

I think the argument is that in the early 1970’s, gun ownership was MUCH higher (nearly 50% of men owned a firearm in early 70’s). Today 32% of men own at least 1 weapon, but mass shootings have gone through the roof.

So the question becomes, if gun ownership has declined, why have mass shootings increased?

That’s where the argument about a more violent society (video games, TV, copy-cat killings) come into place. I think there is some merit to it....Most the copy-cat element.

Prior to 9/11 nobody viewed commercial airliners as an actual weapon. Now you could find thousands of people who’d be willing to crash an airline into the side of a skyscraper if given the access.

 

[Hurl Bruce]

Just curious...what are these gun ownership figures referring to? Is it the number of people who own guns? Is it the number of guns per person? Is it the number of guns total?

I'm not sure if one of those categories is more significant than another, but would the fact that there are way more people total in the country than 50 years ago skew the significance of some of those statistics?