Christie's Deletes Digital Art Department (news.artnet.com)
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Has Google ended support for plain HTML search? (google.com)
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Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah
344 david927 613 9/10/2025, 7:02:48 PM nbcnews.com ↗
By non-violent I mean neither celebrating violence nor excusing it, but also more than that: I mean metabolizing the violence you feel in yourself, until you no longer have a need to express it aggressively.
The feelings we all have about violence are strong and fully human and I'm not judging them. I believe it's our responsibility to each carry our own share of these feelings, rather than firing them at others, including in the petty forms that aggression takes on an internet forum.
If you don't share that belief, that's fine, but we do need you to follow the site guidelines when commenting here, and they certainly cover the above request. So if you're going to comment, please make sure you're familiar with and following them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I feel we're riding a knife's edge and there's a hurricane brewing in the gulf of absurdity.
====
Incidentally, I feel like this is why it is so hard to actually learn from history. You can read about the 1918 'Spanish' Flu, but you think "we're smarter now". etc.
Also, if your grandpa likes telling war stories, it's only because he survived.
There's the story about the guy who says he was the hardest working man in Vietnam, and then when pressed about what he did, he states he was a trucker to the great surprise of anyone listening.
When asked why he thought that, he says "well I was the only one."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_realism
Great quote. I feel the same way about 9/11 - the feeling of confusion, like "wtf is going on?!" IMHO, only those who lived it can really relate.
RIP Charlie Kirk, no human deserves that. The rest of us left are still not necessarily better people after that exact moment, hopefully everyone takes a pause.
My favorite poem, my -- my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:
"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country ...
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past -- and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of [people] in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.
And let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.
Bobby Kennedy, 1968
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2kWIa8wSC0
It's odd, you hardly see any on the left bring their values to the public square to invite debate. If you publicly disagree with them, you risk getting murdered. And they call the right fascists!
> TPUSA has been described as the fastest growing organization of campus chapters in America, and according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, is the dominant force in campus conservatism.
They've been quite influential, and those campus efforts likely contributed to the Gen Z turnout that helped win in 2024.
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I think a difficulty in searching for such answers is assuming that it was a well reasoned decision. I'm not sure how often attempting to take a life is a purely rational decision, devoid of intense emotional motivations (hatred, self-preservation, fear, revenge, etc.). And that's all assuming the assailant was of somewhat sound mind.
I think one of the dangers of more and more extreme divisions in society is that those divisions cloud our mental processes, threaten our emotional health, and take away opportunities for meaningful civil discourse. All of which can lead to more heinous acts that we struggle to make sense of. One of the scariest parts for me is that this can all be too self reinforcing ("Their side did this bad thing to our side, let's get them back!!!" repeat/escalate...). How do we break the cycle?
For a recent example less than a month ago the US suddenly suspended issuing visitor visas for badly injured Gaza children and their families who were being brought to the US by charities to provide medical aid.
They did this because Laura Loomer posted on a video showing some of the children and their families arriving and shouting with joy that they made it. She said those shouts were "Jihad chants" and the "the HAMAS terror whistle".
She also said that 95% of Gazans voted for Hamas.
Trump reads Loomer, and quickly after that the state department announced that the visas were being suspended for review.
It doesn't matter that she's saying stuff that is completely stupid, such as that claim that 95% of Gazans voted for Hamas. Trump isn't smart enough to realize that this is impossible [1], and anyone who tries to tell him risks becoming the target of a social media campaign from Loomer and similar other influencers that Trump follows.
[1] Hamas has not held an election since they took control in 2006. The voting age was 18. This means that anyone in Gaza who voted for Hamas is at least 37 years old now. Even if every one of them voted for Hamas that would only be about 20% of the current Gaza population.
Yes, you're wrong there (no offense). He's quite popular beyond X (formerly Twitter), particularly amongst the young (~20s) conservative movements. For example, he has almost 4 million subscribers on YouTube and similar on TikTok. I'd say X isn't even his most popular platform. He's much more popular on video.
I’d heard of him-I’ve lived my whole life in Australia, and although I have a Twitter/X account, I almost never use it, and that’s not a new thing, I dabbled with it but never committed.
Do most Australians know who he was? I don’t have any hard data, but my “No” to that is very confident. But I remember briefly discussing him (in person) with one of my old friends from high school, who is deep into right-wing politics (he’s a member of Australia’s One Nation party, which a lot of people would label “far right”, yet mainstream enough to have a small number of seats in Parliament)
Me too! I follow politics, elections, and world affairs very closely, but I am embarrassed to admit - I had no idea who he was. Although I had heard about 'Turning Point USA'.
He also lied about widespread election fraud among other things so there are many reasons a person would want to target him
Even if we assume those numbers are inflated, that's quite a bit of influence if someone is influential only on Twitter.
I wonder if he/she/they will ever be caught?
Some years ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._sniper_attacks
I always wonder if media hiding gore allows people to not get more upset about violence. The lynching of Emmett Till would not have had the same impact without his mother having an open casket funeral. Would things have gone differently if more people had been exposed to images from Sandy Hook?
It’s going to sound absurd, but right now, USA’s global image is a very good counter-ad towards “complete” freedom of speech.
There are unstable people of all political persuasions and the marked lack of widespread political violence is hard won by years of obeying political norms that include not resorting to violence within political systems.
In the United States there was first a fraying of norms and now there seem to be fewer and fewer norms people are willing to uphold each day.
To focus on calling people “Nazis” and “Fascists” is to miss the wood for the trees.
There's just less tolerance for discussing or exhibiting "extreme" or highly unpopular opinions, nowadays, it seems. Although, I could definitely be wrong -- people like MLK were shot for doing same long ago.
I mean, you're almost there realizing the recency bias. The 1970s, when the Skokie Affair occurred, were arguably the high point for political violence in the post-WWII US.
The same way it did for the last 250 years as the world's oldest Democracy. By respecting and upholding our Constitution, especially the 1st and 2nd Amendments.
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https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/115181934991844419
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From an outsider, it really feels like there's no middle ground in American politics. You either commit yourself to the full slate of beliefs for one side, or you're the "enemy".
I hope that Americans on both side start to see that either they need to tone down the rhetoric, work together and reach across the aisle, or just take the tough step of a national divorce due to irreconcilable differences.
Part of that is to stop giving a voice to the insane rhetoric, and stop electing *waving vaguely*.
However, both the established parties seem to have become totally incompetent to do that, in very different ways. One party got taken over by people who make public statements on a daily basis that would have been immediately disqualifying at any time since 1950 or so. The other party is so bad at doing politics that they're beaten in elections despite running against those people.
The truth is the US has been seen periods of extreme rhetoric and even political violence, including most obviously an actual civil war, and also key periods like the labor movement and civil rights movement. It will happen again even if things cool.
Political violence and assassinations are obviously terrible and should hopefully not happen as debate allows consensus or at least compromise to be reached, but the reality seems to be if you allow the people a stake in their government, passion and anger will be instilled in some subset of those people cause government policies have real world implications, and the end result is extreme acts, many of which are detestable like this one. I don't see a way forward other than to prosecute crimes and let the debate rage on.
It looks like Trump's term is going to end in either the end of America as we know it or a constitutional convention anyways. Anything is on the table given how America is currently being torn apart anyways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmteh_NChOQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrackingPoint
Between that and cheap quadcopter drones, I expect political assassinations to skyrocket in the future.
In my nonprofessional opinion, that is crappy aim. I can hit an apple from 100 yards away, with a black powder rifle, with an unriffled bore, with iron sights, standing up, repeatedly. I would expect a modern rifle with a riffled bore and a scope and a larger target to be much more accurate from a prone position.
The shooter had 1 target, and he delivered a 100% kill shot.
You could say "it wasn't impressive", but you can't say it was crap...
It was crap. I highly doubt the neck was the target. If the head was the target, then the same distance but in another direction, would have missed.
Regardless, it's still sad that someone died, especially in this manner (regardless of politics).
He could have been aiming for the skull for all we know. He could have been aiming for the chest. Hell, he could have been aiming for someone behind Kirk.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/04/politics/transgender-firearms...
I'm going to hug my family a little tighter tonight. 46th school shooting of the year, and the 47th also happening in Colorado.
(Very, very graphic death) https://x.com/_geopolitic_/status/1965851790714482943 (not safe for life / NSFL)
[Graphic description] What kind of gun could that have been? Incredible amount of kinetic energy—you can actually see a hydraulic pressure wave oscillating through his entire chest. This was obviously fatal, if anyone wasn't sure. Probably died instantly, given the neurological "fencing" response (suggests spinal cord was hit—never mind the artery, he was already dead).
Ironically the prevalence of AR-15s has made people underestimate the amount of power and damage that most deer hunting rifles possess. 5.56 is like the bare minimum you can get away with to reliably disable or mortally wound a human or similarly sized animal, which is why the military used it because it saves weight so soldiers can carry more of it even if they have to hike 20 miles to their objective. Most hunting rifles are serious overkill for killing their target because hunters want instant take downs, not an animal that is able to stand up and get an adrenaline boost and sprint away if even for just 15 seconds into the brush because the shot was a half inch to the left. .30_06, a common deer round and used in the M1 Garand of WWII, is just under twice the muzzle energy of 5.56.
A lot of the damage of a bullet is this concussive damage, not the piercing damage. Hollywood has been lying to you (apparently real gun experts hate the movie “shoulder shot” because there’s a lot of things to damage there, especially once you take the concussive force into consideration).
For those who are on the fence, don’t watch it. I just did and I regret it. Suffice it to say that the blood loss alone will be critical condition at the very best.
Also: smaller assault rounds like 5.56 can in fact do more damage than larger ones in some case because of its tendency to bounce around in the body.
There are many different kinds of ammunition design. Some pierce and punch holes, some fragment and tumble, some balloon and expand, some cause large tears and cavities.
Ballistic science is actually a fairly complicated rabbit hole
Could you expand on this? What does neurological "fencing" response mean, and what in the video indicates this is it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fencing_response ("Fencing response")
I mean, people are watching (I haven't) and wishing they hadn't.
But I also recognize it can possibly trigger anxiety (overwhelming, in some cases) for some folks, even if you don't realize that it might (until it's too late).
Not suggesting we turn to censorship. But at the same time, I guess I'm mostly looking out for folks that may not be aware of the effects it could possibly have (e.g. naive and/or not taking warnings seriously enough).
He was shot in the neck because the shooter is amateur and didn't account for the bullet drop on this distance.
If a person is against, say, laws against tobacco, that person doesn't deserve lung cancer. If a person argues for leniency on criminals, they don't deserve to be murdered.
I am baffled that I have to explain this. I don't think you understand the logic you are defending or its consequences.
https://www.jezebel.com/we-paid-some-etsy-witches-to-curse-c...
Let's say it wasn't witchcraft thing but something more widely accepted like prayer session at mainstream church/mosque or something of this sort. Wouldn't the devout people see this as a contract killing? What if the soother says he felt possessed? Shouldn't then he be let go in a religious society?
And with our Supreme Court, who knows if they'll say witches casting spells are assassins after all.
A comedian put it very well, talking about how some faiths interact with Revelation as if they are, “trying to trick God into coming back early.”
Genuinely curious for an example of domestic assassination working out well for anyone.
If they survive, they’re forgiven and quasi-deified. If they die, they’re martyred and replaced.
The only cases where this has worked is when it’s a state wholesale wiping out the other side’s political leadership, e.g. Roman proscriptions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetsuya_Yamagami
Unless you don't count it as assassination because they held the flimsiest short kangaroo court before it happened, just to fuck with him.
This isn't to say this has any bearing on this event though.
Indira Gandhi? Rajiv Gandhi?
I’m not a public figure but I support the 2A, would you feel sorry for me if I was shot giving a speech?
Would you feel different if Charlie was murdered by a machete or hand grenade?
But in _recent_ memory, the one that comes to mind immediately is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi not too long after 9/11. His death disrupted Al Qaeda in Iraq which almost certainly was a net benefit.
Bin laden himself also comes to mind but it's unclear how much more potential he had to inflict terror on the world at the time in his life when he was assassinated.
Giving rise to ISIS.
> Bin laden himself also comes to mind but it's unclear how much more potential he had to inflict terror on the world at the time in his life when he was assassinated.
Political theater at best.
However if you are a nihilist, none of this matters anyway.
This happened long ago. Politics is exhausting (constant campaigning), poorly paid (unless you can leverage your position to sell bestselling books and speaking engagements later), and you have to check your logic and common sense at the chamber door. You have to have unlimited optimism to not become overwhelmed with cynicism and demotivated by despair from the sausage making process. Overall, politics is a shitty job mainly practiced by hucksters, psychopaths, and well-meaning but naive people who turn into a huckster or psychopath.
Let me reiterate. Violence is not the answer for one reason and one reason only. Once it starts and everyone joins, it will be very, very hard to stop.
edit: be
The gunman made his own gun, in a country with ultra-strict gun laws. The Unabomber made his own bombs. The Seattle mall Islamist knife attacker refused to stay down after being shot multiple times.
My takeaway: political terrorists are particularly motivated. Secondly, gun laws slow them down but don't stop them.
I don't believe this is the same thing.
One is an adversarial problem where a living thinking being is evil and trying to attack you.
In traffic, most people are just trying to get somewhere, and then accidents happen.
We have removed violence far from our lives so that the powerful people can just do corruption without having consequences.
In the past year-or-so we have seen two assassination attempts on Donald Trump, the assassination of the CEO of an insurance company, the assassination of Rep. Hortman, and now this. That's five political assassinations/attempts in a year.
It would seem fair to argue we are now firmly in a state of contagion which is unlike the situation in 2012 when Giffords was shot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Capital_Jewish_Museum_sho...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Boulder_fire_attack
Additionally, I’ve seen a troubling amount of online sentiment positively in favor of the Trump assassination attempts, the murder of Brian Thompson. The sentiment in response to Charlie Kirk’s murder looks like it might be similarly troubling.
I imagine that a lot of the political thuggarry we're seeing today is a direct result of him coming within an inch of having his brains blown out. No one comes that close to death without being fundamentally changed.
I haven't noticed a fundamental change.
US customs are now _worse_ than they were a month after 9/11 and this time it's not just the ones at airports.
I know plenty of people who will be giving NeurIPS a miss _on the advice of their governments_. This _did not_ happen during his first term.
You mean that time when millions of American citizens were placed on the No Fly List with no recourse essentially at random? You can't be serious. After 9/11 was far worse.
I've been in and out of the US several times this year through several ports of entry and it has been hassle-free so far. They don't even ask me questions, they just wave me through.
He and his enablers played that argument during his 2024 campaign as well, but everyone is missing a crucial aspect of it. During his first term, he was surrounded by a large number of career administration staff, who put guardrails around him. This time it's all 'Yes men' and his well-wishers. Notably, no one from the previous admin staff had endorsed him for 2024. That should have given a clue to people. But, nope.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/former-trump-officials...
Apologies, but "citation needed"?
(As a non-US citizen) I flew into JFK earlier this year and did my (first) Global Entry interview. It was the shortest and most polite immigration interview I've ever had anywhere, and I've had a few.
I would like to hope that you recognize that registration of political affiliation is just one data point. Spring it does not make. You know how I got registered as a republican? I got incorrectly registered as one during judge election volunteering.
I am not saying it means nothing. What I am saying is: some nuance is helpful in conversations like this.
Crookes basically handed the election to Trump.
Rising up with your fist clenched right after you were shot isn't something you train for either. That's a natural reaction from instinct.
It's morbid curiosity to analyze it, but I don't think it would have had the same net effect if it was Harris.
Disclaimer that this is early and I may be wrong, but I read that he had a security detail (which seems rather likely). I doubt an attacker with a knife would have had success.
Unbadged and masked 'ICE' operators kidnapping people from public spaces is political violence.
More directly, when violence becomes a normalized means of politics, it doesn’t benefit the bourgeoisie.
I meant the bourgeoisie as in the middle class. A lot of idiots think rolling out guillotines will hurt the rich and help the poor.
It won’t. It almost never has in the last millennium. If violence becomes a tool of politics, the rich will command violence at greater scale and with more impunity than anyone who cannot command an audience at the White House.
I actually wish that were the case.
The problem today is that we've scaled up the damage that a single attacker can do. I won't go too far into it, but think of it this way, what happens when someone wakes up to the fact that they can use autonomous ordinance (e.g. - Drones)?
We made a big mistake with this whole "incivility is cool" thing in public discourse. In retrospect, it's kind of obvious that it set us on a slippery slope.
I remain a fan of bringing back the Athenian institution of ostracism. If more than a certain fraction of voters in an election write down the same person’s name, they’re banned from running for office or have to leave the country for N years. (And if they can’t or won’t do the latter, are placed under house arrest.)
Despite the constant braying of right-leaning people, left-wing violence is a tiny fraction of domestic terrorism compared to the right. I think their insistence of the opposite is a form of projection.
A reason that the left has been less violent is that there's a general ideological belief in taking on systems instead of people. That, combined with the general left/liberal stance on gun control, has historically meant that guns are viewed as not an option.
The last decade or so, the left has completely lost faith in the democratic party and the liberal establishment. There's a real sense of "we need guns to protect ourselves."
I'm afraid that we're already past the point of no return.
I think you are mistaken in thinking that 'left' ( quotation, because while I want to keep the identifier for clarity's sake, I think it does not properly reflect US political spectrum ) is not violent or that somehow their violence is lower in percentage.
The reason I am hesitatant to go for that discussion is because it has a good chance of derailing the conversation.
Can we just agree this is a bad thing for now instead?
Many have a blind spot when it comes to state violence. Engels coined the term "social murder" for things where a series of decisions spread across many people directly kill people. Denying people life-saving medical care, shelter, food or water kills people. But that's OK (apparnetly) because someobdy else profits.
The US supplies unlimited weapons to another state to commit genocide. So far in less than 2 years, we don't know how many have died but it's in the hundreds of thousands. For no other reason than somebody else wants their land.
The biggest factor in gun violence in the US is the availability of guns. This country has soundly rejected any form of sensible gun control. Kirk himself somewhat prophetically said a guns deaths are worth it for the second Amendment [1]. His organization is part of the movement to defeat gun control.
I don't support or condone this kind of political violence but I won't shed any tears either.
[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-says-gun-deaths-worth-...
Hmm. Do you know why? Having seen the basic pattern of action of anti-gun people, I have come to realization that nothing is ever enough. They will just keep pushing for more stuff regardless of 'wins' they score.
Granted, some of it is various organizations and they really don't want to say 'mission accomplished'. Still, my point remains. I no longer really accept any changes to status quo.
The origins of hyper-individualism are complex. I ssupect the frontier nature of the US played a big part, directly and indirectly. Think about it: who left Europe for the US? Largely people who were escaping the social systems of the Old World for various reasons. There's a selection bias here. We as a country fetishize the Wild West. It's a core part of the American mythology.
But that doesn't mean we want everyone to have guns. Oh no. Famously, then California Governor Ronald Reagan famously passed the Mulford Act in 1967 because the Black Panthers began open carrying weapons [1].
For more contemporary examples, we can look at how certain deaths are treated differently. One famous example is Amir Locke who owned a legal firearm. The police served a no-knock warrant so didn't identify themselves and he was shot by police when he stirred from sleep with his weapon.
This was a legal firearm owner at home who was executed by the police. Where was the NRA outrage for that? What about other Second Amendment defenders? What could be different about this particular firearm owner?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Amir_Locke
https://www.kff.org/mental-health/do-states-with-easier-acce...
"Firearms are the most lethal method of suicide attempts, and about half of suicide attempts take place within 10 minutes of the current suicide thought, so having access to firearms is a suicide risk factor. The availability of firearms has been linked to suicides in a number of peer-reviewed studies. In one such study, researchers examined the association between firearm availability and suicide while also accounting for the potential confounding influence of state-level suicidal behaviors (as measured by suicide attempts). Researchers found that higher rates of gun ownership were associated with increased suicide by firearm deaths, but not with other types of suicide. Taking a look at suicide deaths starting from the date of a handgun purchase and comparing them to people who did not purchase handguns, another study found that people who purchased handguns were more likely to die from suicide by firearm than those who did not--with men 8 times more likely and women 35 times more likely compared to non-owners."
The other break in your statistic is people who own guns and commit suicide, and people who own guns and have a family member steal them to commit suicide. The later is far more common. Which suggests that part of the issue is unrestricted access to firearms by children in the home of a gun owning parent.
Sure. But one of those reasons is "I feel very bad and I have access to a gun".
"The rate of non-firearm suicides is relatively stable across all groups, ranging from a low rate of 6.5 in states with the most firearm laws to a high of 6.9 in states with the lowest number of firearm laws. The absolute difference of 0.4 is statistically significant, but small. Non-firearm suicides remain relatively stable across groups, suggesting that other types of suicides are not more likely in areas where guns are harder to get."
This is perhaps one of the worst ways of looking at it. People kill themselves slowly by many means, including alcoholism, smoking, risky activities (reckless driving, etc.). These are grouped broadly under the term "Deaths of Despair" (see: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8221228/). It may be more informative to look at other countries, such as Russia, Norway and Finland, which have incredibly high rates of alocholism leading to a high rate of deaths of despair.
There are many ways to reliably kill yourself. Guns are just the quickest. A serious discussion on the topic cannot avoid this fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...
Federally, only specific categories like fully-automatic machine guns and short-barreled rifles have to be registered.
Tons of guns are not those limited categories, so they are not required to be registered.
Its entirely possible to sell a gun in the US without any kind of paperwork depending on the type of firearm sold, the buyer of the firearm, and the seller of the firearm. I'm in Texas, so I'll use that as an example. Lets say I want to sell a regular shotgun I currently own to a friend. IANAL, this is not legal advice, but my understanding from reading the applicable laws would be all I have to do is verify they are over the age of 18 and that I think they are probably legally able to own a gun (I have no prior knowledge of any legal restrictions against them owning the gun). We can meet up, check he's probably over 18 and can probably legally own a gun and is a Texas resident, he can hand me cash or whatever for trade, I can give him the gun, and we go our separate ways. I do not need to do a background check. I do not need to file any registration. Nobody would know this guy now owns this gun. I do not need to keep any record of this sale at all. This shotgun has been an unregistered gun for its entire exstence.
This wouldn't necessarily be true if I trade some certain amount of guns as then I would probably need a federal firearms license and thus have some additional restrictions on facilitiating a sale. This also isn't necessarily true in other states which have additional restrictions on gun sales. But if I haven't done any gun sales in a long while, such restrictions wouldn't apply (according to my current understanding of the law, IANAL, not legal advice).
The US is at 120.5 guns per 100 civilians, and Canada is at 34.5
I think being ~4x the ratio of guns per capita, (and 30x the total!) has to do something, right?
Australia: 0.854/100k
USA: 5.763/100k
i.e. about 1/7th the amount of intentional homicides.
America is an amazing country & objectively the best place to live in the world rn, but your gun culture just scares the crap out of me, I get the good guy vs bad guy with a gun argument, but how about the suicidal guy with a gun who has nothing to lose and wants to take people out, or the mentally deranged etc etc Yes people die everywhere, and im not saying I cant get shot in europe but its super rare, to me gun control sounds like a no brainier
- uniform background checks including private purchase
- waiting periods
- red flag laws
- raising the age to 21
No army in the world including the US could stop a civilian uprising of even a million people who have just rifles and the will to fight. They don't need nukes, tanks, or airplanes. If a large enough percentage of people, say 2% of the population, decided to fight a civil war, the US army/gov would fall in a few months if the rebels knew what they were doing.
It would be a guerilla war. And all of the critical infrastructure in the US could be destroyed in a month. No gas. No electricity. Smaller uprisings would be easily squashed.
Now, would this ever happen? Unlikely. Americans can barely get their fat asses out of bed much less do military operations for weeks at a time. Things would have to get incredibly bad and a leader would have to organize it. But it is possible.
I imagine it more a weakened government (but still with a functioning military) supported by civilian militias backing the government, versus various large and small insurgencies possibly with foreign backing.
No?
They'll use it on the next one then?
No?
The US practially isn't going to use nukes on the US. Its practically not going to use nukes on pretty much anyone.
How about: "I don't want the Trump administration to be the only ones with tanks in this country."
Are you going to buy some tanks? How about F35s?
Some guys with AK-47s kept the world's most powerful military pretty busy for 20 years, so I wouldn't underestimate the value of a few rifles against authoritarianism.
Either of these situations are going to be stochastic and with difficult attribution.
Something to consider is that even though one can, the vast majority do not. Typically, the only time I see people utilizing their right to open carry are the exact types of people you think would do that. They are a very small number in the real world. However, they get so much attention that it distorts the perception that everyone does it. I'm certain there are more people carrying concealed weapons than I pay attention to, but it's not like it is the Old West where you have to leave your weapons outside before entering the saloon.
If this is how you think it is, then you have fallen for the hype machine. Yes, lots of people own weapons. Some of those people own lots of weapons. Only a small number of them carry like you seem to think.
Most of the mass shooting events are not these open carry types. That seems to also confuse things
Here's the top 10 states percentage wise:
Alabama, 27.8% Indiana, 23.4% Colorado, 16.55% Pennsylvania, 15.44% Georgia, 14.48% Iowa, 13.82% Tennessee, 13.15% Florida, 13.07% (residential permits only) Connecticut, 12.67% Washington, 11.63%
a lot of people in Texas do not bother with a conceal permit because it is already an open carry state yet the vast majority of people do not walk around with a pistol on their hip or a rifle slung on their chest.
not really sure what comment you read, but you clearly didn't read the one I replied to
It's essentially the same thing, except unique to the US. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but your exasperation is essentially the same as my exasperation, as a non-drinker, that I or my children can be randomly killed by someone driving under the influence - and everyone is somehow kinda OK with that.
It's much higher because of the US unique car culture and car-centric infrastructure:
Sure, drinking is a problem. But people drink in other countries too (as much or more). But they don't have to drive a car everywhere because they have more sensible infrastructure.Let's compare with the homocide rate in the US: 5.9 - 6.8 / 100K (depending on source)
Yes, that's half the car fatality rate, but not all car fatalities are due to alcohol abuse.
But the big takeaway is that you have 3 times as much chance of dying from a gun in the US as dying from a car in Japan.
sure tools make it easier, but gun control didn't stop the pm of japan from getting assassinated.
if people weren't so desperate, polarized, and angry, i would bet my entire life's savings gun deaths would be decimated
There is no but. There are 700x more gun homicides in the US vs the UK, with just 5x the population. You are the only developed country in the world where active shooter response training is a thing. Tools do make it easier, so it should be hard to get them, especially when they are specifically made for no other use than killing people.
Like, he built it out of PVC and duct tape and random parts. He didn’t buy a legal weapon, and he didn’t obtain a consumer firearm illegally.
As a US guy, it still baffles me the EU don't see the irony of the talking points they make in their gun-free utopia at the exact same time that they can't manage the geopolitical situation in their own back yard. Nor the fact that they have to hire law enforcement to openly carry fully automatic firearms in city streets due to the threat of terrorism (Something which is quite unusual of in the US).
I don't. People are rarely objectively good or bad. Good people can have a bad day. Good people can have a drink or two and turn into bad people. Good people can have their guns stolen from them by bad people. Good people can leave their guns unlocked where their children can find them and do who knows what with them. etc.
Fact is the cat is out of the bag. FGC-9 can be 3d printed and the barrel and bolt carrier made out of unregulated parts available anywhere with shipping access to China, or with a bit more effort anyplace with a lathe.
Gun powder is more an issue, but even then black powder is easy enough to make and with electronics can be ignited electrically without any sort of special cap or primer.
It can be culturally changed, but even then, if the criminal culture doesn't changed -- now you have a bunch of criminals with guns smiling that the rest of people are disarmed.
- "When seconds matter, police take minutes"
- "Guns are the last line of defense against tyranny"
- "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun"
- "Your home, your property, and your family must be your right to protect"
BTW, those gun control laws don't always work in Europe either. Sweden has the third highest rate of gun homicides per 100,000 residents (after Albania and Montenegro). ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/1465188/europe-homicide-... )
It's also true that seat belts don't prevent road deaths.
The marketing seemingly appeals to men on the same grounds as video games -- there's some great protagonist who saves everyone with their powerful and timely shooting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwood_Park_Mall_shooting
My man was only 22 year old, no CCW license, even broke the rules of the mall and carried anyway. And he smoked a mall shooter before he could barely even get started, with a pistol from like 60 feet away.
Thought I’d provide a follow on. They could make noise, protest, support court cases, criticize politicians, …. All short of actually using the arms. Crickets.
-Charlie Kirk, 2023
https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-says-gun-deaths-worth-...
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-its-w...
https://edition.cnn.com/us/live-news/charlie-kirk-shot-utah-...
Audience member: “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?”
Kirk: “Too many.”
The same audience member went on say the number is five, and proceeded to ask if Kirk knows how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years.
Kirk: “Counting or not counting gang violence?”
Seconds later, the sound of a pop is heard and the crowd screams as Kirk gets shot and recoils in his seat.
Remember: The vast majority of mass attacks in the US have no connection to transgender people. From January 2013 to the present, of the more than 5,700 mass shootings in America (defined as four or more victims shot and killed), five shooters were confirmed as transgender, said Mark Bryant, founding executive director of the Gun Violence Archive.
Then there are the ammosexuals and they're the ones that honestly scare the shit out of me and need their guns confiscated. Like I'm all for the purchase and enjoyment of stupid shit, God knows I own my share of things other people would call ridiculous; but guns are unique in that inflicting harm to others is literally why they exist. It's the only reason you'd have one, and the way these guys (and it is far and away mostly guys) talk with GLEE about the notion of being able to legally kill someone for breaking into their houses... if I wasn't already a hermit, this shit would make me one.
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You're referring to a steak knife, correct?
The problem isn't so much the tools, but the lack of enforcing social norms across society.
Guns allow you to kill 1) multiple people, 2) from a distance, and 3) with nobody aware of the imminent threat.
Of course other weapons can also be used to harm people. Of course no solution is perfect. But it's absolutely incorrect to say "the problem isn't so much the tools." The tools undeniably and irrefutably play a role in every study that has ever been conducted on this topic.
See here for the impact of Australia's gun buyback program, which saw zero mass shootings in a decade after their removal, after 13 mass shootings in the 18 years prior the removal, as well as an accelerated decline in firearm deaths and suicides: https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/12/6/365
I don’t know what the answer is for reclaiming the guns, but I think logistically it’ll be hard to implement in the USA even if there wasn’t bad faith attempts to try to thwart regulation (and arguing that there’s still violence with knives and guns aren’t the problem is definitely bad faith/uneducated arguments)
What do you mean? If you go to any public place in the world, you can get very close to hundreds of people in a very short time. Knife assassinations happen all the time.
If you want to have a society, you have to care about and for the people.
Hint: it's not even close to the number of people killed with a firearm
Guns (handguns, rifles, etc): 13,529
Knives or cutting instruments: 1,562
Hands/fists/feet/etc: 659
Clubs/hammers/etc: 317
How many European politicians are knifed?
The only one I can think of is Amess.
Stop this false equivalence argument, I absolutely despise it
I can't really think of any situation were someone done something evil with a knife that would have worked out better if that evil person had a gun instead.
Really? By what objective metric? Certainly in the top 50%, but the best?
I feel like you were just patronizing the crowd and this is pablum, but the US is one of the angriest, most dissatisfied countries on the planet. It always does poorly on happiness metrics, doesn't do great on corruption indexes, and has a median lifespan and child mortality rate more in the developing country range.
In no universe is there an objective reality where it's the best place to live.
But too much is made about deadly weapons. Every one of us has access to knives. Most of us drive 5000lb vehicles, with which a flick of the wrist could kill many. We all have infinite choices in our life that could take lives.
But we don't, because ultimately there are social issues at play that are simply more important than access to weapons. Loads of countries have access to weapons and it doesn't translate in murder rate at all.
I'm not promoting guns by saying this, but that can describe a whole lot of things that aren't even usually designated as weapons.
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There are people willing to go on murder sprees, and they number in the tens of thousands (or more) if anyone attempts this. Many of them are waiting, nearly holding their breath, hoping that the government tries such a thing. Quite possibly, a few of the mass shootings you've heard of were just those who "jumped the gun" (forgive the expression).
There was a day when I woke up, a few days into the trip, and felt very, very light. Just "weight off my shoulders" lighter. Oddly euphoric.
Took me a few hours to realized that it was the subconscious realization that it was extremely unlikely that anyone around me, for miles and miles, was armed with a gun.
To answer your question: we survive it the same way any human being under perpetual stress survives it. We get on with our day and we don't even notice how bent-out-of-shape we are until and unless we're in a circumstance where we aren't anymore.
https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-says-gun-deaths-worth-...
I'm American and a frequent international traveler, and I could not disagree more. Almost every other country I've been to has been superior in every way that truly matters. The only reason I stay here is because I don't want to abandon my loved ones.
Of course, maybe Thailand is better than the US in some or even a lot of the ways that matter, but not all of them.
GDP per capita (PPP):
Thailand: 26323, USA: 89105
GDP per capita (nominal):
Thailand: 7767, USA: 89105
Human Development Index:
Thailand: 0.798, USA: 0.938
Second, you can walk or drive on a street. Every passerby in a car could kill you if they wanted to by colliding with you. It rarely happens. Stand next to a tall ledge or overpass with crowds walking by and watch the teeming masses - you're unlikely to see any of the thousands of people walking by leap off to their end. Similarly, in life, even though basically anyone could kill you, it's very rare to encounter someone who is in the process of ending their own life, and killing you would basically end, or severely degrade, their own life. Almost nobody wants to do it.
Charlie Kirk is/was kind of an extreme example. He said many things that severely angered hostile people. He went into big crowds and said provocative things many times before being shot. I think in most situations you have to push pretty hard to get to the point where people are angry enough to shoot at you. If you can avoid dangerous neighborhoods and dangerous professions (drugs and gangs) and dangerous people (especially boyfriends/husbands) then you are pretty unlikely to be shot and you benefit from being able to carry guns or keep guns in your home to protect yourself and your family.
For one example, consider the "Grooming gangs" in the UK, where thousands of men raped thousands of girls for decades with the tacit knowledge/permission of authorities - and despite the pleas of the girls and parents for help. Such a thing could be handled quite differently in a society that was well armed. If the police wouldn't help you, you might settle the matter yourself.
On a population-weighted basis, this is not everyday life in America.
Do you think anyone actually believes that? Or is it just cynical marketing everyone goes along with?
Does Canada scare the crap out of you? What about a country 22% more dangerous than Canada? Because if you look at only the non-Hispanic white homicide rate, it is 2.79 [1], while Canada's (total) homicide rate is 2.273.
So is it really gun culture that scares you?
Source for homicide rates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
Source for racial distribution: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... (excludes cases where no offender information is known, that is why it undercounts homicide)
[1] US homicide rate * FBI reported non-Hispanic white fraction of homicides / non-Hispanic white fraction of the population
In America, we know that no one is going to come save us.
Trump was shot surrounded by (in theory) some of the best-trained armed guards on the planet. Uvalde saw several hundred "good guys with a shitload of guns" mill around for over an hour while schoolchildren got massacred by a single shooter.
I can't say I get it.
There was a shooting at a protest in SLC in June[0] in which a volunteer working with the group organizing the protest shot and killed an innocent man while trying to hit someone carrying an assault rifle. (Primarily due to a misunderstanding that could have been avoided.) His intentions were good, thinking he was saving people from someone else who had bad intentions.
I was personally about 50 feet away from the incident. It's hard for me to imagine what a good guy with a gun actually does in practice.
0: https://apnews.com/article/salt-lake-city-no-kings-shooting-...
Something like this?
> A brutal stabbing at a Walmart in Traverse City, Michigan, left 11 people injured on Sunday, but a much larger tragedy was averted thanks to the courage of two bystanders. Leading the charge was former Marine Derrick Perry, now hailed as a hero across social media.
Verified video shows the suspect cornered in the store’s parking lot, motionless as Perry kept him pinned at gunpoint until police moved in.
https://www.news18.com/world/hero-ex-marine-stops-walmart-st...
I find the characterization of the shooter having good intentions to be a bit too generous; the person he intended to shoot wasn't doing anything more threatening than just carrying a gun (as the shooter was also doing): https://bsky.app/profile/seananigans.bsky.social/post/3lrp66... . It wasn't being "brandished" or pointed at anyone.
I can't imagine any justifiable reason to fire a gun in such a thick crowd, when no one else has fired their weapon.
This is kinda missing the point, from my perspective. The reason the shooter thought Gamboa (the guy with the assault rifle) was a threat is because he was walking with an assault rifle in his hands rather than slung over his shoulder. It's the same difference as someone holding their handgun (down pointed at the ground) versus keeping it holstered and it's in how quickly the wielder could aim and fire. It didn't need to be brandished at the moment because it could have been in less than a second.
All things considered, I don't think Gamboa had bad intentions but I do think his actions that day were stupid. The shooter made a bad call for a bad outcome but it still doesn't make sense to pin the blame entirely on them.
Note, that to shoot this man, the police officer also held his gun in his hand. I hope you're at least consistent, and would also say "it doesn't make the sense" to put blame "entirely" on someone if that someone goes around shooting police officers as soon as their hands touch their guns.
The shooter was a civilian volunteer.
A Democratic state representative in Minnesota was brutally murdered and another attacked by the same man only a couple of months ago, back in June. How many can name them? How long did their deaths stay in the headlines? How much coverage were they given, and how much coverage will Kirk be given?
My cynical side suspects we are about to hear a lot about "violence from the left" in a way we did not about the right back in June.
The better question to ask is, how many subscribers did the Democratic state representative from Minnesota and the other have?
Just sad.
"you know, I could be nice and call him [Governor Walz], but why waste time?"
https://www.startribune.com/trump-says-he-will-not-call-walz...
It was an attempt to quell the No Kings protests scheduled to happen the same day.
The far right developed stars, stallions and philosophers that are effective in the popular culture no matter how vile some of those can be. There are up and coming leftist Americans but they will need to hustle to develop intro strong leaders. The mainstream figures from the American left like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders are just too lightweight.
Edit: funny how this comment fluctuates between 0 and 2 points. This edit will probably tip the balance though :)
This is a meme that needs to die. Its just not true.
The Democratic party in the US is right in line with Labor/Socialist/Whatever Mainstream Leftist Party you want to point at in Europe. It has members who end up on various sides of the left-wing spectrum. There are no "far left" parties in the US because we have a two party system.
There are obviously topics where this is not true. But that goes both ways: almost no country on Earth has the level of abortion access that the Democratic party in the US demands. And there are examples of European right wing parties who fight for zero abortion access, which is not the GOP platform currently.
I couldn't have named Kirk if I saw him or heard about him before he shot and it entered the news. Not sure what that tells us -- we should know more who our representatives are, or know about various "influencers" in politics and such?
EDIT: I saw you initially mentioned two representatives who were murdered but now it looks like there is only one. So even though you criticize others for not knowing who these murdered representatives were, it seems you don't even know who they were or if they were even murdered.
> Don't want to talk in bad taste by going to this so early, but...
Well this is how usually talking in bad taste early starts ;-). It's kind of like saying "No offense, but ... $insert_offense_here".
There was no presidential message expressing sympathy and outrage then and complete radio silence from Republicans in general. And the amount of misinformation from the right was incredible. Even in this thread of nominally intelligent people, they're still repeating falsehoods.
Any expression of shock and dismay from conservatives now is pure theater. The right wing is absolutely fine with violence. Accusations of the violent left is of course a talking point projection as usual.
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-its-w...
Same sentiment. For a lot of people, freedom is more valuable than even life itself.
Political violence cannot be deterred with strict gun laws. Remember, it is only law abiding citizens who are affected by the gun laws. Criminals by definition don't need to follow the law and they don't need the 2nd amendment
Definitely, considering what is happening in Nepal ATM. However, some kind of ban on gun supply (not just controlling them) definitely has an impact on your country's murder rate. You can't just expect 20 million guns produced in the USA for consumers not to get in the hands of people who want to do bad things with them. Really, I would be happy if they just lowered that number a lot (to say 1 million) without any other gun control laws, the murder rate across the whole continent would fall.
If a simplistic definition of political violence is targeted killings of political leaders, then this is trivially false. Look at Europe, Australia and other countries with comparable statistics to US and look at the number of events you'd classify as political violence. It is likely zero. The only person I can think of from recent memory is Shinzo Abe.
In the US alone, thanks to no gun control, we have attempts at Presidential candidates, and successful killings of state-level law makers, CEOs, and now, political influencers.
talking about gun control as a form of solution is talking about spilled milk under the bridge. There are 100 guns per capita in the US and even if gun sales are banned, the black market will be enough to supply guns for another century
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. " - The US Constitution
Neither do private citizens.
What part of "well regulated militia" is unclear? Maybe all of it if you have a political slant, but no literate person who didn't set out with an agenda actually takes the second amendment to mean "any lunatic with $100 and an axe to grind should be allowed to own weapons of mass destruction without even proving they're sober and sane."
It means what it says, not what some gun owners like to pretend it says and the simple truth is that making them harder to get does actually reduce crime every single time it's been tried.
That said, I would argue that the definition should be updated to include women as well.
Madison said "the advantage of being armed," together with "the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of."
Source: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt2-2/ALDE_...
What part of "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" is unclear? If you're going to base your argument on the first few words you can't win against the opposition does the same with the last part.
> Maybe all of it if you have a political slant, but no literate person who didn't set out with an agenda actually takes the second amendment to mean "any lunatic with $100 and an axe to grind should be allowed to own weapons of mass destruction without even proving they're sober and sane."
What WMDs can be had for only $100 that would actually fall under firearm regulation?
Maybe I have a coupon? Is the price really the part of this that sticks in your craw?
>If you're going to base your argument on the first few words you can't win against the opposition does the same with the last part.
I'm fine with not infringing on the well regulated militias rights. Exactly as it was written.
well regulated = properly functioning, like a watch is well regulated when it keeps good time
militia = everyone, all citizens. In counterpoint to the army, professional paid soldiers.
No it doesn't. Even then that usage was uncommon. This is something later scholars made up to justify their position.
Again, common sense says that it means what it says and you don't get to ignore the bits you don't like.
Still, violence has been the answer in many (most?) political revolutions, including the American revolution and separation from Britain.
TL;DW Gandhi knew that to resist the British, they would need a critical mass of people resisting (armed or not). Armed resistance against a superior force is futile. His whole idea of Satyagraha was intentionally self-sacrificial for the nonviolent protestors who would die, because he knew it would stir the masses to action.
I also agree that violence is tragic and we should always take care not to glorify or idealize it, but we should also contextualize it when used by people resisting systems of oppression. As Nelson Mandela said:
> A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.At a point, one can only fight fire with fire
Violence and politics are both on a spectrum and means to the same end of asserting your will. Vom Kriege is obviously not the forefront of philosophy anymore but it’s a good place to start if anyone reading this hasn’t come across that idea and wants to learn more.
Even your non violent examples of King and Ghandi has very violent wings on the side showing society that if a resolution wasn’t achieved by peaceful ends then violence it is. Remember that the civil rights act didn’t get enough support to be passed until after King was assassinated and mass riots rose across the nation
Violence is sometimes the answer. Domestic assassinations almost never are. Kirk is about to become a martyr.
The Confederacy tried to replace their Constitutional government and the policies instituted by the leaders elected by the people with a violence-enforced new state inside the territory of their existing one and got (justifiably) multi-generationally brutalized for their trouble. The town I grew up in and moved away from was still raising funds to rebuild some of the places that were burned to the ground in the war. That was fundraising in the 1980s.
Every time someone points to the 1776 war as a success story I feel compelled to point out that half the descendants of that war's victors tried a very similar thing in 1861 to absolutely ruinous result.
(On this topic: Fort Sumter is an interesting story. While it was never taken during the war, it basically became a target-practice and weapons field-test location for the Union navy: every time they had a new technique or a new cannon they wanted to try out, they'd try it on the fort. By the end of the war, the fort was "standing" only in the sense that the bulk of its above-ground works had been blasted flat and were shoved together into an earthworks bunker; the Confederates were basically sheltering in a hole that a lobbed shell could fall into at any time.
And while the fort and its northways sister kept Union ships out of the harbor, it didn't stop them from firing past the fort into Charleston itself, since "war crimes" and "civilian populations" weren't really a concept yet.
People very much went into that war thinking there wouldn't be consequences for ordinary folk. They were very much wrong.)
Can’t find quotes of him calling for direct violence given the the search engines are all showing the latest news, but I’m fairly certain he’s made allusions to it like that “the revolution will be bloodless if the left allows it” guy did
You may not think it’s appropriate to ever call for someone’s death but you can at least see why someone wouldn’t care that an advocate of hurting other people en masse lived by sword and then dies by it