Rooty-tooty point and shootys

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Yoji
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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby Yoji » Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:54 pm

So, is now a good time to talk about gun control? Or should I just pencil it in for "never?"

ETA: Call me crazy, but an old episode of Awkward Zombie comes to mind. Vital systems are failing, but at least we're armed to the teeth.
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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby Bal » Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:56 pm

Mothra wrote:Anyone talked with Defenestration since last night? I don't expect he was anywhere near the strip, but I'd like to get confirmation he's alright.

I sent him a text message, and a message on Slack. I'll let you guys know if he responds to either one.


He works four ten hours shifts a week (three days off), and he's in the middle of that right now. So I don't expect to hear from him until fairly late in the evening.

Hardly Ideal wrote:So, is now a good time to talk about gun control? Or should I just pencil it in for "never?"


"Never" sounds, not right, but probably accurate.

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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby Mongrel » Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:27 pm

Hillary, please just shut up.



Shut up. As in "close your mouth and stop talking".
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Cait
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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby Cait » Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:38 pm

There is literally a bill under consideration in Congress to remove existing limitations on purchasing silencers right now. It seems like a pretty good time to call attention to bullshit like that.

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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby IGNORE ME » Mon Oct 02, 2017 4:12 pm

What's that boy? You say Hillary made a valid and topical point in the most off-putting way possible? Gee whiz!

(Also chat confirmed that Defen is alright, don't worry.)

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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby Mongrel » Mon Oct 02, 2017 5:04 pm

Well, suppressors don't actually do all that much, because hollywood silencers =/= real-life silencers, but it also shows that she's not really reading about the accounts of the shooting.

Even if we ignore that and pretend suppressors work the way they do in movies, pretty much every witness video or statement I've seen has said that people became aware of the shooting not because of gunfire, but because they heard screaming from people getting shot. They couldn't hear gunshots 300 feet up, at a loud concert with thousands of people, in the middle of a city.

I basically agree with this:

Her tweets read like they were written with a carefully considered tone of indignation to go after meaningful gun control, and then one of her aides told her that it would be much safer to just attack silencers, which don't really do anything, and then she just did that instead without editing the rest of the tweets to strike a more appropriate tone with this new and laughably limp compromise position.


Silencers are a niche issue. If you want real gun control, demand real gun control, instead of trying to hamhandedly use a horrible tragedy for some placebo victory that will seriously do nothing to stop any similar massacres in the future.

It's a valid and topical point in the sense of pointing out your car has a slight coolant leak after smashing into a wall at 100kmh. I mean, that radiator probably needs fixing, but.
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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby IGNORE ME » Mon Oct 02, 2017 5:34 pm

Well then. You win, but I don't think you've won what you hoped you'd win.

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Bal
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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby Bal » Mon Oct 02, 2017 5:44 pm

Silencers are pretty close to movie silencers, especially these days (see Mythbusters if you care), and at the distances we're talking about it definitely would have made a difference. However, you're right that it's tangential at best to what really needs to be done.

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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby Joxam » Mon Oct 02, 2017 5:56 pm

Lets also not lose sight of the fact that the WHITE HOUSE has already come out and said now is not the time to talk about gun control, so tangentially related might be the best we get honestly.... as shitty as that is, don't get me wrong I'm not for that in any way.
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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby Yoji » Mon Oct 02, 2017 5:58 pm

I've heard it said that real life suppressors reduce the sound to the level of "a textbook dropped from head-level onto a dining table." Like, loud enough to wake everyone in the house vs loud enough to wake everyone in the neighborhood.

I dunno. Today's been too lousy a mix of feelings to think too clearly. But to hear about a mass shooting with deadly weapons and then hear about Congress trying to make them even deadlier, my knee-jerk reaction is some shrill variant of "No!"
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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby Bal » Mon Oct 02, 2017 6:12 pm

Obviously they shouldn't pass that bill, but whether they do or they don't it wouldn't have any effect on mass shootings, past or present. Silencers have never been the issue there.

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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby Mongrel » Mon Oct 02, 2017 6:43 pm

I don't really think it's worth talking about silencers much further, but if you're curious, the last data I saw said that the average noise level of a gunshot is about 160db and that a suppressor reduces it to 130db but anyway, here's a video:



I mean the thing about the Hillary tweet is that it just sounds really fucking crass and opportunistic and tone-deaf to me in ways that it wouldn't if she'd just tweeted about demanding gun control in general and then maybe added a comment about, "But we're still making gun laws looser, not stronger, for example, there's a silencer bill before the Senate right now."

It's like... like so many people, she's given up being mad about the shootings and is just angling for a political compromise, when, no, you should be angry! I would respect a leader who was mad! Hopping fucking mad! As you should be when this happens so regularly that people have become numb to it. Not this.... wishy-washy nonsense.

A real leader should be fighting tooth and fucking nail for actual real gun control, and even if it gets shot down now, they keep hitting it again and again. If the Republicans can do it for something as awful and petty as the Obamacare repeal (remember all those years under Obama they passed meaningless repeal bills?), why can't the Dems do it on something a lot more meaningful? The NRA is a cheap and easy target here for cheap and easy points - everyone hates the NRA, even a lot of Republicans. Why not pass strong gun legislation and make the GOP vote against it! Make Trump veto it! That way there's no ambiguity about who's responsible here. Show some fucking backbone!

But no, we wouldn't want to offend any potential voters after some random asshole machine-guns over 500 people.
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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby IGNORE ME » Mon Oct 02, 2017 6:55 pm

My father lives in Las Vegas. He keeps three handguns in the house, loaded. Whenever I visit him, he makes a point of putting a loaded gun on the nightstand next to the bed I take. The last time I visited my sister in North Las Vegas, he asked me without a trace of irony if I wanted to take a loaded gun, and was surprised when I declined. He has recounted one instance of pulling a handgun on a threatening, but otherwise unarmed man. The police basically told him "good job".

My father is not Joxam, Malikial, Grath. He is not an afficianado. He has no interest in safe or responsible usage. He has also always lacked two basic life skills: how to defend himself, and how to not piss people off. Whether or not he admits it, his ownership and open carriage is motivated by two things: political expediency (because it's in his interest to be as Conservative as possible), and defense against the consequences of his actions.

So with the environment in the city right now, I feel confident in the truth of these two statements:

* If my father could buy and attach a suppressor to his weapon, he absolutely would.
* If my father had a suppressor on his weapon, he would become more likely to use it.

So yeah, ideally, I'd say the time is right to start kicking people's doors in and taking their dedicated anti-personnel devices. But since we can't do that, I'd say the time is right to do whatever it takes to keep my father from either becoming murdered or becoming a murderer.

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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby Mothra » Mon Oct 02, 2017 8:50 pm

Silencers serve absolutely no other purpose than making it easier to shoot people without larger groups of people being able to find you.

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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby Lottel » Mon Oct 02, 2017 9:01 pm

Good friends of mine were supposed to be at the concert but got the time wrong.

Jesus.
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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby Grath » Mon Oct 02, 2017 10:00 pm

Mothra wrote:Silencers serve absolutely no other purpose than making it easier to shoot people without larger groups of people being able to find you.

Being able to have a shooting range which 1) doesn't have as large a bubble of inhospitable noise and 2) dramatically reduced risk of hearing damage. I have tinnitus in my left ear from times when I was at the range, had my hearing protection off to talk to people I was there with, and someone at the other end of the range started shooting without giving any warning. In Britain, which has VERY strict gun control, silencers are no more restricted than any other firearm device and it's considered a dick move to go to a range with a gun that doesn't have a silencer.

(Also if you take the stance of defending your own home with firearms, silencers would allow defending your home with less damage to your hearing.)

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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby François » Mon Oct 02, 2017 10:22 pm

Mongrel wrote:I don't really think it's worth talking about silencers much further, but if you're curious, the last data I saw said that the average noise level of a gunshot is about 160db and that a suppressor reduces it to 130db but anyway, here's a video:



Here's something a little more modern. Actual shooting starts 5 minutes in.



Not quite a Hollywood mouse fart, but also not quite something I would guess is a gunshot if I heard it out of the blue.

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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby Mongrel » Mon Oct 02, 2017 10:43 pm

That's pretty amazing, but uh... if it's already legal to buy a pistol with a suppressor built right in (and which does appear to be more effective than one which has been screwed on), uhm, I'm not even sure the bill's all that relevant, whether you're for or against.
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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby Grath » Tue Oct 03, 2017 1:39 am

Mongrel wrote:That's pretty amazing, but uh... if it's already legal to buy a pistol with a suppressor built right in (and which does appear to be more effective than one which has been screwed on), uhm, I'm not even sure the bill's all that relevant, whether you're for or against.

It costs $200 (because that's what a Tommygun cost in 1934), takes about a year for the government to go through the bureaucracy of all the paperwork, requires extra paperwork if you ever move across state lines, and several states (such as New York) have local bans which people are trying to get federally preempted.

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Re: Rooty-tooty point and shootys

Postby Mongrel » Tue Oct 03, 2017 3:03 am

Grath wrote:It costs $200 (because that's what a Tommygun cost in 1934)


... wait, what?

The guy in the video quotes a price of $1500. I thought maybe you meant something about grandfathered guns, but, uh, AFAIK, Thompsons were not known for being particularly silent?
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