• HelixDab@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Obviously the problem is that there are too many knives in China, and it’s too easy for civilians to get knives! No one needs a knife; the only purpose of a knife is to cut and stab. The only solution is to completely ban all knives in China.

    …Or they could seriously address the social issues that lead to certain segments of their population committing this kind of atrocity.

    Hmmm. I wonder where else that could be applied…?

    • Anomandaris@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Yeah man, let me just get my kitchen gun or my box shooter or my letter pistol.

      Oh wait, sorry, it’s not guns I’m thinking of that has many completely harmless uses, it’s knives!

      • Lols [they/them]@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        grabbing my full automatic tactical assault bread knife to fire indiscriminately into the crowd, killing a dozen at long range

        wait no, thats not how knives work

      • HelixDab@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Love that people just ignore that violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and since violence must happen in a vacuum without any causes at all the only solution is to remove the tools.

        Guns are tools. A knife is a tool. A car is a tool. Even high explosives are tools.

        BTW, I do have a kitchen gun, because that’s where I need it when there’s a problem bear outside. (Yes, bear - one of those 300+ pound animals with teeth and claws that are sometimes extremely aggressive.)

        I assume that you want safe communities; would you be open to solutions that increase safety if they didn’t involve removing firearms, or is that the only solution that you’d accept?

        • Anomandaris@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Calling a gun a tool is intentionally misleading. A gun’s sole purpose is as a weapon, using it any other way is a misuse of that “tool”. Whereas knives have various practical purposes. Which was obviously the purpose of my initial reply.

          In some cases, yes, having a gun is entirely legitimate (assuming used safely) such as protection from dangerous wildlife. But the number of legitimate cases does not even come close to justifying the number of guns, or the gun culture, in America. Violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum, the presence of guns, the acceptance of gun culture, and the normalization of gun violence are things that contribute to the frequency of gun crime.

          The removal of guns, and restricting of them to legitimate use cases IS dealing with the underlying social issues. But it’s definitely only part of the solution, that alone is not enough, but nothing else will have a strong effect while so many guns are on the streets and easily accessible.

                • Anomandaris@kbin.social
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                  1 year ago

                  Yes, technically weapons are tools, that’s because the definition of a tool is so broad, just a device used to carry out a particular task.

                  That’s why I never said he was wrong to call a gun a tool, I said it was misleading, which it is. When a reasonable person thinks of a tool they do not think of a gun, you think of a wrench or a screwdriver or a swiss army knife, or something like that.

          • HelixDab@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            You’ve avoiding the question.

            Would you be open to solutions that do not involve removing guns, or is that the only solution you would accept?

            • Anomandaris@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              But it’s definitely only part of the solution, that alone is not enough, but nothing else will have a strong effect while so many guns are on the streets and easily accessible.

              No I didn’t, I think I was pretty clear. We need to reduce the number of guns available, nothing else will be effective until we do. I do believe any solution that does not involve removing guns at some point is incomplete. But removing guns on its own is not enough.

              • HelixDab@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                No, you were quite clear; you aren’t actually interested in real solutions, you’re interested in gun control for the sake of gun control.

            • sensibilidades@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              I love how you go from ‘guns are just tools’ to ‘I think about fighting all the time’ in like three sentences. I’ve had guns, I used to be a member of the NRA, I’m also not a dipshit who thinks a gun is just as much a tool as a hammer is. They’re designed to kill things, it’s not weak to admit that’s what they’re for.

              • HelixDab@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                I used to be a member of the NRA too, but I’m not willing to pay for some dude’s $15,000 suits while he’s kissing the asses of people that want to overturn every part of the constitution that isn’t 2A rights. I’m slightly more okay with SAF and GOA, but they still often shill for Republicans.

                The fact that a gun has a ‘purpose’ of killing is reductive and not useful. Killing is, by itself, neither good nor bad. Killing can be justified and moral, or it can be deeply immoral.

                So, as I asked originally, if you could reduce the number of illegal and immoral uses of firearms without reducing the ability of people to exercise their civil rights, would you be open to that?

                Fewer guns doesn’t, by itself, mean less violence. We can see that in Australia and in England, where the combined rates of all violent crimes (battery, robbery, forcible rape, murder) are comparable to the US, and possibly higher, but the lethality is reduced. On the other hand, reducing the amount of violence in society, through programs that attack root causes in the most affected communities (which, notably, is not harsher policing and sentencing, but more like community improvement and poverty reduction), reduces both rates of violence and the homicide rates. Chicago actually had a pretty good violence intervention program going for a number of years before it was senselessly defunded.

    • nxfsi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’ll do you one better: simply stop reporting incidents like these and the problem just goes away like magic!

      /s in case of idiots