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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   27235 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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Ok so... i'm often seriously confused about what safety people actually care about.

I understand fear of handguns a handgun is an easy to procure object in a hurry that allows someone to commit a crime suddenly and violently.

But it seems any type of premediatated or planned operation is just super legal and easy to get? (except of course using it to commit a crime is obviously very illegal)

Nitromethane is freely available for purchase, which can be easily made into very dangerous chemicals using stuff you can buy in the hardware store. From there we have other things, while you have to either break the law or DIY it for a lot of parts you can make your own drone (or just use a kids RC helicopter toy, seriously it may not work for heavy payloads but you'd be shocked at how far you can go with mediocre toys these days.) and drop an explosive on anyone. You can also make actual war crimes in your basement by mixing iron powder, and sulfur then heating it, sealing it in a glass bottle with water as it builds up H2S. Alternatively if you want to make cyanide gas, buying sodium cyanide (i'd be willing to post links but I don't want this forum to actually get in trouble with the FBI, I already got searched once) and mixing it with sulfiric acid is doable (and ok like hyper dangerous beyond belief and you would have to basically get rid of it the moment you make it but....)

Again the delivery mechanisms for this stuff isn't complicated and the main limiting factor of these does not appear to be that obtaining the means of violence is hard it's that anyone smart enough to do this is also smart enough to realize that violence is a bad idea.

It's less about the people who are plotting to do evil, and know they are in the wrong (terrorist, school shooter, pre-meditated murderer). It's more about the people who think they are in the right ("I feared for my life!"), maybe even are technically within their rights, but morally should not kill a person in the situation. It's more about the people having a bad day, pushed past their limits (fired, cheating spouse), etc, and might do something they can't take back.

A gun being in play (in the glovebox, open or concealed carry) adds an option to the dialogue tree. "so anyway, I start blasting"

plus, the second-order effects of this. If you think someone else might start blasting, how are you going to prepare?

The gun being in the dialogue tree means the whole escalation path of society is way messier and more violent

Proponents will say that's good. It acts as a deterrent. Personally, I don't want the gun in the dialogue tree because I don't trust the average person to be in control of themselves at all times. Gun proponents will answer back that's exactly why they want the gun, and round we go.

But either way, it's a totally different thing than dangerous chemicals. No one is going to accidentally fly into a rage and manufacture explosives - at least not quickly

Exactly. To me the negatives of other people having guns far outweigh the positive of being personally armed

If you live in North America, the other people have guns whether you like it or not, though...

Not for long after the next (D) trifecta, as Virginia and Rhode Island are demonstrating.

The guns might not be legal, but even in Canada you do need to consider the possibility that anyone you encounter could be armed -- all the laws in the world can't change this.

The US has the state capacity for actual confiscation.

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It's more of an acknowledgement of the reality in the US. You can't remove guns from the dialogue tree of those most likely to be a problem - criminals who ignore gun laws. Making it legally harder to carry only impacts the law-abiding segment of the population, who very rarely instigate incidents.

Yes you can. It would likely trample on civil rights at least a little bit- and I'm very skeptical that you can have effective gun control without at least a continental-European level of laxity in civil rights regimes- but randomly searching ne'erdowells and charging them with a serious crime if they have a weapon works at controlling armed crime. But stop and frisk isn't allowed.

A handgun is a very convenient tool for the casual homicide. You don't have to be smart to use it, and it is a minimal inconvenience to carry it around while you go about your daily business until one day, you decide that someone needs to die (or be stopped from whatever he is doing) and can enact your decision within a few seconds.

There are plenty of other tools which can be used for murder in a pinch, you can use screwdrivers to stab someone, or hit them with a blunt object, or run them over with your car, or pierce them with sharpened Hufflepuff students' bones.

If a reasonably smart person wants to off her neighbor and does not care about the consequences to herself, she will probably find a way to do so. Most likely, it will not involve any flashy homebrewed chemicals. (H2S is a terrible choice in particular because humans can detect it in trace amounts and find it deeply unpleasant, and having your victim inhale HCN is difficult unless you have trapped them in a gas chamber.)

Of course, if she cares about not getting caught, she will most likely use a method which is already common (such as handguns), because anything clever and original will exclude 95% of the suspects immediately.

I think most of people who are afraid of handguns (I don’t mean people who just support gun control, I mean the ones who are genuinely scared of guns), haven’t been around much violence in general, so they don’t realize how easy it is to hurt someone with your bare hands or literally any object (just ask a prison guard). So to these people a gun is kind of like a magic totem of death.

Well, a gun could be described as a magic wand which any Muggle can use to cast a single spell, Avada Kedavra.

Sure, people kill each other with bare hands, but this requires either very bad luck or substantial intent on the killers part.

Suppose you see a road rage incident, with two agitated drivers exiting their vehicle and confronting each other. If both are unarmed, death is a possibility, but unlikely. If both are holding guns, that changes the dynamics entirely, now death is an outcome on the mind of any observer.

Prison guards need to worry about psychopaths, but in normal life they are actually quite rare.

Most people, including most criminals, have some built-in barriers.

  • Choking someone to death while they are struggling is hard.

  • Getting within stab range and stabbing someone is easier, but still not trivial. For one thing, you need to get into their range first.

  • Pointing a firearm at someone and pulling the trigger is comparatively easy.

  • Pressing a button on a joystick to have a drone fire a missile on a target you see on a computer screen is easier still.

  • Donating to an organization which kills kids is really easy.

The anti-gun people expect that a youth might start a fight with another one, but reasonably do not expect that once his opponent is down, the he will proceed to will crush their windpipe. This is not always true, of course, but it is true often enough to matter.

A handgun is a very convenient tool for the casual homicide. You don't have to be smart to use it, and it is a minimal inconvenience to carry it around while you go about your daily business until one day, you decide that someone needs to die (or be stopped from whatever he is doing) and can enact your decision within a few seconds.

Very true. When you work in the criminal justice system you will often have a sort of yo-yo on your positions on gun control as you see more and more gun crime. Initially you will see something like an armed robbery gone wrong and think gun control sounds pretty good. The fact is that most criminals do not have grand criminal plans, everything is basically a crime of opportunity, and disarming people in those situations would be a social good.

But then you realize those people just get guns anyways. Even after they are convicted felons. And you realize the only people who ever actually face consequences for violating gun laws are 45 year old tow truck drivers who use a revolver to stop a 20 year old punk from attacking him because he's towing the car the punk parked in a tow zone.

But then you realize those people just get guns anyways.

I would argue that it is somewhat harder in Germany to buy an illegal handgun than in the US, not that I have tried either, personally.

A lot of legal guns being in circulation makes it easy to steal them. I expect you need to break perhaps into 10 cars and search the glove compartments until you find a gun in the US. In Germany, you might have to break into 1000 cars instead because not only is gun ownership rare, legal owners are also required to keep their guns locked up. Not that this helps too much, you can probably still source illegal weapons from Eastern Europe. (I would expect most smugglers not to deal in illegal guns, because the risk-to-profit ratio is much worse than for drugs. If you sell 10k$ worth of cocaine, you can reasonably expect that the authorities will never find out, and if they do, they might have resigned to the fact that there will always be someone selling cocaine. If you sell 10k$ worth of handguns, your average customer will be someone who just likes to own a gun to feel manly or a drug dealer who wants a backup plan (but has no plans to shoot anyone), but chances are much higher that someone will use them in some flashy crime, and the eye of Sauron will fall on you.)

If you're interested, there's plenty of actual research on the supply chains for criminals to get their guns. The US could choose to crack down on these supply chains, and gun rights groups often support doing this, without affecting normie joe sixpack gun owner very much(the growth in concealed carry has drastically reduced the number of handguns left in cars; most guns used in crime are currently straw purchased, just like how teenagers get alcohol). This is never a popular proposition, because no one involved in the gun control debate in the US really cares about crime.

I expect you need to break into perhaps 10 cars and search the glove compartments until you find a gun in the US.

One in three USAian adults owns a gun. (Naturally, this proportion varies wildly between states, and probably between areas within states.) Therefore, your estimate that one in ten USAian cars contains a gun implies that one in three USAian gun owners leaves a gun in his car (rather than in his domicile or on his person) all the time. IMO, that's rather high. Why would a person buy an entire extra gun just to leave it in his car?

Some people have long guns in their car almost all the time. But they dont have much interaction with the criminal elements we are currently discussing. And you sure as hell don't want to be caught by one of them breaking into said truck.

(H2S is a terrible choice in particular because humans can detect it in trace amounts and find it deeply unpleasant, and having your victim inhale HCN is difficult unless you have trapped them in a gas chamber.)

This is why you homebrew phosgene or sarin. Although I think that explosives are better if you want to terminate someone with extreme prejudice.

Phosgene works best if your victim is hiding in a trench, which went out of style 100 years ago. And the synthesis of organophosphates is so impractical for murder and terror that only one group of crazies have done so. Homebrewed explosives are not that common either but definitely more practical than chemical weapons.

Sarin is quite easy to make from what I remember from high school. The hard part was surviving to deploy it.

Homebrewed explosives are not that common either but definitely more practical than chemical weapons.

If this is not a proof that department of education should be disbanded, I don't know what else could be. Organic chemistry is what - 8th grade?

Poisons are tricky, ask the Australian lady.

Low impulse control, high violence, tendency to react disproportionately, and a handgun - blast away first, ask questions never.

Also depends on whether you’re prepared to go to jail or not.

Modern science and autopsies have reached the point of technological advancement where poisons and chemical compounds are generally detectable in a homicide. There's nothing that I'm aware of that could kill you directly that an autopsy couldn't find eventually, which is why if you wanted to murder someone the best way would be to do it in a way that's circumstantially deadly but wouldn't look out of place. In other words, things that seem coincidental or could be mistaken for an accident, or go unnoticed at a first pass.

The best ones are the ones that break down into elements that occur naturally. Succinylcholine (SUX) and potassium chloride are two good examples that always come to mind. SUX causes asphyxiation and paralysis, but it’s a very painful death. Potassium chloride causes severe heart arrhythmias and mimics a heart attack. (Fentanyl incidentally also simulates cardiac arrest and wouldn’t be suspected in a sudden death unless it’s specifically looked for and there’s reason to suspect foul play). These break down to elements natural in the body and would easily be overlooked. Succinic acid and choline for SUX, potassium and chloride of course for potassium chloride which is common in heart attack victims due to muscle damage. The problem with this though is that both need to be injected and they leave an injection site, which is a problem if the victim doesn’t take any injected medicine or drugs.

Aconite is another good one that’s more well known. It leaves Aconitum alkaloids, but these can only be detected if a gas chromatography / mass spectrometry scan is performed. Death usually happens due to paralysis of the respiratory system (or cardiac arrest). It can be absorbed through the skin or consumed and it only takes about 2mg of pure aconite or one gram of the plant, to kill someone. It’s mostly undetectable as long as there’s no cause for a more comprehensive autopsy (and it can also be ingested).

If you know their personal history, there are other ways to poison someone and make it look accidental. If they love seafood for instance, you could always poison them with tetrodotoxin (which naturally occurs but is generally removed by a skilled cook).

Never thought my chemistry knowledge would come in handy this way, but there’s all sorts of ways. In Russia, people are known to "fall out of buildings" in areas where there are no cameras; during critical times when they're about to reveal something damning on someone important. Pakistani intelligence has conducted assassinations in Sweden by drowning targets in unsuspecting situations. Unless you work as a case agent for the FSB or as some field or intelligence officer for a military branch of some government, you’re stuck with your own knowledge base and imagination. The former undoubtedly has access to all sorts of resources to commit undetectable murders. It's why a lot of politically motivated murders go unsolved. Usually a government is behind it. Any trained hospital physician has the knowledge to know how to poison someone undetectably. Literally, all of them. Getting had and found out usually has to do with other reasons or the knowledge the authorities have that you work in the medical field, gives them reason to perform an in-depth analysis of things.

Succinylcholine is the plot of a Tom Clancy novel.

Somewhat (in)famously just recently in Utah they found guilty a woman who tried the fentanyl thing exactly. And failed. Partially because the husband literally suspected her of poisoning him and told others as much, partially because obtaining the fentanyl when you don't previously have a drug network is nontrivial (the housekeeper who the lady knew to have had a prior drug conviction was hit up for some), and partially because more broadly speaking even smart people (idk if Kouri was though) don't kill people without a motive and motives are pretty legible. That's kind of a big one.

Regardless of the chemistry involved, I don't think there's much chance of getting away with this kind of murder. The authorities have access to other types of records -- surveillance footage; cell phone records; purchase records at stores; internet search histories; etc. If you have a motive to kill the person, e.g. you and your neighbor were having some kind of dispute, they are going to look at all this stuff carefully. And if it seems like you are probably the culprit, they are skilled at putting a case together, even if it entails doing ethically questionable things.

I agree, people who are not career criminals are literally trying to get away with murder for the first time in their lives. The detective on the case is literally looking at his hundredth stiff.

There's always a chance that the death is overlooked as a natural one, but if someone dies and the coroner finds the circumstances suspicious, the cops open their "solving poisonings" handbook on page 2 and go from there. "Who had access to the things that could've contained the poison?" is usually a good first question.

but if someone dies and the coroner finds the circumstances suspicious, the cops open their "solving poisonings" handbook on page 2 and go from there. "Who had access to the things that could've contained the poison?" is usually a good first question.

Yes, and of course "who had a motive to kill this person?" If one person satisfies both those criteria, they will almost certainly be called in for questioning. It's really hard to present a false story which is consistent and clear in the face of hours of interrogation by a practiced detective. The best choice is probably to assert your 5th amendment rights but if you do that, the police will likely see it as an admission of guilt. Maybe they can't use it against you in court, but they will very likely use it in deciding how to allocate investigative resources. And whether or not to (ethically or unethically) build a case against you.

True, but you can’t effectively convict someone on circumstantial evidence alone. Most criminals get caught because they’re desperate or stupid. The police don’t catch smart criminals. They catch the low hanging fruit, they’re getting the ones who can be caught.

Approximately half of all murders each year in the US end up going unsolved. That’s not the conviction rate you want with all the “… surveillance footage; cell phone records; purchase records at stores; internet search histories; etc. If you have a motive to kill the person, e.g. you and your neighbor were having some kind of dispute…” that you have at your disposal.

Having grown up in proximity to violent gangs I can tell you plenty of gang members exit the drug trade and go into legitimate businesses all the time and never get caught. The whole trope of “I’m going to only make a couple million and then quietly exit,” isn’t a myth. It happens all the time. You’ll find only 1-2 pictures of these people floating online. They have zero Internet presence. They aren’t extravagant or flashy. They’re normal by every appearance; there’s nothing for law enforcement to work with.

A long time ago I watched one of Michael Franzese’s videos and someone was interviewing him about people in that life who were known killers. He said a lot of it is grossly inflated by law enforcement and he can’t imagine some of the figures that were attached to certain suspects, because there are people in active war zones who don’t even kill that many people in the line of combat. There are active hoods in the United States of America that have murder rates higher than the we had at the height of the war in Iraq.

I have no problems believing the numbers suspected by these guys. I once observed a discussion someone had with a historian who just didn’t believe the Mongol’s genocide of the Islamic world was as large as it was because the logistics of it didn’t make any sense. And the historian replied back “You don’t need industrial facilities to commit a genocide. You just drag someone out to the back with a machete and kill them…” I think statements like the one you offered and of people like Franzese really just come from a failure of imagination and living closely on the ground to that kind of activity.

It’s really not the surprise people think it is.

Approximately half of all murders each year in the US end up going unsolved.

There are active hoods in the United States of America that have murder rates higher than the we had at the height of the war in Iraq.

What percentage of the unsolved murders are gang-bangers in the ghetto, getting away with it in large part because the authorities don't really care all that much? I don't know the stats, but I bet it's a pretty high percentage.

Here's what I said in my post:

Regardless of the chemistry involved, I don't think there's much chance of getting away with this kind of murder.

Do I need to spell out what I meant by "this kind of murder"?

True, but you can’t effectively convict someone on circumstantial evidence alone

So that I understand what you are talking about, would you agree that Bryan Kohberger was convicted (or would have been convicted) on circumstantial evidence alone?

What percentage of the unsolved murders are gang-bangers in the ghetto, getting away with it in large part because the authorities don't really care all that much? I don't know the stats, but I bet it's a pretty high percentage.

Don’t know the percentages. But I can put it to you this way; the people in our hood growing up who were known to have been shooters or involved in them are either still free to this day or are doing time for non-homicide related offenses. Most murders in the US are not due to them being some kind of high organized special hit that requires military expertise or sophistication.

Do I need to spell out what I meant by "this kind of murder"?

You quoted yourself in your reply to me here, but I’ll go ahead and respond anyway.

You missed my point. The point I was implying is that if your goal is to “get away” with murder, provided you know what you’re doing, your knowledge of chemistry and physical science is one of the best places to make your bet.

So that I understand what you are talking about, would you agree that Bryan Kohberger was convicted (or would have been convicted) on circumstantial evidence alone?

I didn’t claim that it “never happens.” How many murders do you think are resolved purely on circumstantial evidence? Most don’t even make it to the courtroom.

But I can put it to you this way; the people in our hood growing up who were known to have been shooters or involved in them are either still free to this day or are doing time for non-homicide related offenses.

And is that mainly because these people were master criminals who carefully planned the perfect crime and succeeded in their plans? Or is it because when one gang-banger shoots and kills another in the 'hood, the authorities don't put a lot of priority on solving the crime and in any event there is a culture against cooperating with the authorities?

You quoted someone else in your reply to me here, but I’ll go ahead and respond anyway.

I quoted myself. The point is that when I was referring to "this kind of murder," I was referring to a specific kind of murder; the kind that attracts intense scrutiny from the authorities.

How many murders do you think are resolved purely on circumstantial evidence?

On an absolute basis? I have no idea.

On a percentage basis as to the kind of murders I am talking about? I would guess that a large percentage of the kind of murders I am talking about are resolved purely on circumstantial evidence. I think it depends on whether or not the killer hires a hitman to do it. When the killer hires a hitman, the authorities use circumstantial evidence to nail the hitman, then, if they can, they get the hitman to testify, e.g. the case against Charlie Adelson. If there's no hitman, then the authorities go by circumstantial evidence.

On a percentage basis as to murders in general? I would guess it's relatively low. A very large percentage of murders are just gang-bangers killing eachother in the 'hood. In those cases, the big question is whether witnesses will testify.

More comments

There was that lady in Australia that poisoned like five dinner guests and got away with it by claiming ignorance and that was an accident, despite her food being safe to consume.

There was that lady in Australia that poisoned like five dinner guests and got away with it by claiming ignorance and that was an accident, despite her food being safe to consume.

It looks to me like she was convicted. Maybe you were thinking of someone else?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdezzxnn7kjo

Edit:

If this is the person you are talking about, it seems like a good illustration of my point. There was some kind of family dispute which gave the woman a motive; apparently surveillance video showed her disposing of a food dehydrator which she later denied having; there was evidence that she had traveled to an area where poison mushrooms are available; etc.

It's just really hard to put together this kind of murder without leaving forensic evidence of guilt. The police are going to question you for hours and it's really hard to present a straight, consistent story. etc. etc.

Ah I was thinking of her, but misremembered the outcome.

She also turned out to be a multiple-time poisoner who hadn't been imprisoned previously for prior attempts which kinda swings the needle back to 'you will get caught if you go over the top but also people will kinda shrug a lot of stuff off'

She also turned out to be a multiple-time poisoner who hadn't been imprisoned previously for prior attempts which kinda swings the needle back to 'you will get caught if you go over the top but also people will kinda shrug a lot of stuff off'

If by "kinda shrug a lot of stuff off," you mean stuff that falls outside of what I refer to as "this kind of murder," I would agree. The authorities still have limited resources and they can't investigate everything with the kind of intensity used in situations like those of Charlie Adelson, Bryan Kohberger, etc. But if they do decide to go for a full court press, it's just really hard to get away with murder.

Some gangbanger fool on the street is highly unlikely to put the time and effort into making a bomb drone he'll have floating around with him in case he wants to mug me, or drop it on some other gangbanger and I'm in the vicinity.

That same fool can easily get a gun and start shooting and hit people not at all involved. CBS has an entire "drive by shootings" page for Chicago. And just being in the same area as when the bullets start flying gives you a good chance of being a victim:

A 7-month-old baby in a stroller was killed by a stray bullet Wednesday afternoon when a man on a moped shot at a group of people on a Brooklyn sidewalk, authorities said.

The shooting was believed to be gang-related and the child an unintended victim, police said.

Americans often make jokes online about the UK and "have you a licence for that knife", but it's the same principle. Guns are harder to get over here (though not impossible, in parts of Ireland we have our own native gang culture shooting away at each other), so stupid dumb teens tend to carry knives instead and when they get into a stupid dumb fight people end up dead, even if not intended to end that way, though overall knife homicides are falling (due to the police cracking down):

The average age of a young fatal stab victim is now 14, indicates an analysis of the causes of death among children and teens in England between 2019 and 2024, published online in Emergency Medicine Journal.

Those of Black ethnicity are 13 times more likely to be fatally stabbed than their White peers, while children living in the most deprived areas of the country are 7 times more likely to die of their wounds than those living in the most affluent areas.

Being smart and disciplined and patient and minimally skilled enough to make a bomb or plan how to use a drone is not the street-level thug who is the most dangerous to ordinary people.

Those of Black ethnicity are 13 times more likely to be fatally stabbed than their White peers, while children living in the most deprived areas of the country are 7 times more likely to die of their wounds than those living in the most affluent areas.

As is tradition, the passive voice leaves unanswered who is stabbing “those of Black ethnicity” and “children living in the most deprived areas of the country.”

White cisheteropatriarchy is murdering them via other Black Bodies.

The above sentence is unironically the critical theory position on this matter; it is not a weak man.

This seems like a relatively extraordinary claim, so you should at least present some ordinary evidence like an instance of this claim being made by a believer in some relatively authoritative critical theory venue.

I don't think that this is an extraordinary claim. I will say that most critical theory don't consider people to be puppets, so they won't say "we are only automatons" and thus the individual murderer bears some blame. At the same time, the consensus belief in critical theory is that the negative outcomes that African Americans have is as a result of discrimination/injustice from the system. It follows that this individual outcome, the murder rate which is committed mostly by other African Americans, is downstream of discrimination. Hence, my above quote.

It may be a bit of a spicy framing, and there are tweaks around the edges a professor would make, but I still think my above framing is pretty accurate to the critical theory framing of black-on-black crime.

I don't have citations because I am not a link collector, but while @burkeboi's framing is a little uncharitable, it's not really far off. When it's pointed out that most black victims of violence are victims of other black people, the leftist response is that this happens within a system of institutionalized racial oppression that created the conditions in which black people are killing each other- so yes, it's white people's fault, and critical theorists frame that as some variation of "white cisheteropatriarchy."

Similarly, when the "Stop Asian Hate Campaign" revealed that most assaults on Asians were being committed by blacks, I definitely remember some critical theorists literally saying that this was white supremacy in action. Essentially the same argument as above, that if anyone is doing violence inside a white cisheteropatriarchy system, it's the fault of the white cisheteropatriarchy system, even if none of the participants are white.

Americans often make jokes online about the UK and "have you a licence for that knife", but it's the same principle. Guns are harder to get over here (though not impossible, in parts of Ireland we have our own native gang culture shooting away at each other), so stupid dumb teens tend to carry knives instead and when they get into a stupid dumb fight people end up dead, even if not intended to end that way, though overall knife homicides are falling (due to the police cracking down):

A modest proposal: legalize duelling again.

But it seems any type of premediatated or planned operation is just super legal and easy to get?

Nobody does that. /thread

Seriously, I don't understand how you think this is a dunk on the hypothetical person you're mad at. Your argument actually makes the safety standards seem very reasonable: they restrict only those tools of crime that are actually commonly used to commit crimes, and not those that are not commonly used to commit crimes even though they could be. The restrictions target the minimum reduction of liberty necessary to secure a large reduction in crime.

Would that be the case, but safety people seem to end either end up fixated on very specific, relatively rare crimes (see magazine limits, long guns/assault weapons vs. hand guns), aesthetics (assault weapons) or narratives (suppressors, 3d printed guns) with a limited sense of balance. To the OP, folks using any of those alternates are more likely to kill themselves then anyone else. The low hanging fruit is a pressure cooker and some fireworks (see the Boston Marathon bombing) which any idiot could acquire.

This seems to be specific to the US. In Europe, most people are just not allowed to own guns, with very few exceptions (e.g. hunting, security, sport shooting), and of the exceptions most are not allowed to carry in public.

The 3d printed guns thing is a stupid moral panic, the correct point to consider legislation would be if murdered with printed weapons become common. Assault weapon bans, magazine limits and so all target mass shootings, which are simply the flashiest events of gun violence. I don't think that this is entirely unreasonable. The median victim of gun violence is probably some gang member, and the public does not care very much about them. By contrast, they care a lot about school shootings, and banning AR-15s (which some cops find too scary to face) or large magazines (which allow attackers to shoot more people without becoming vulnerable while reloading) can help lower the casualties there.

The safety people are concerned about is usually downstream of their political paranoias and conspiracy theories.

Middle class fratboys are "rape culture", but afghan hill people are "diversity of consent". etc

The left-wing focus on guns is mostly a dodge to redirect public anger over black crime and liberal judges throwing violent criminals into the population at law-abiding Republicans who own guns. If only Billy Bob couldn't buy an AR, DeQuarious wouldn't be shooting LaShontrakayze with a Kel Tec.

Well the left gets funny in the head when you move their own logic onto other areas of concern. How many times have you heard someone in that camp say the right has a problem with gun “culture,” yet if you point to a group and say these people have a problem with “gang” culture, they stare at you blankly or quickly pull on the arrow in their quiver to smear you with whatever label they think will stick in the moment.

Middle class fratboys are "rape culture", but afghan hill people are "diversity of consent". etc

Yeah, “rape culture” is a thing to the extent you don’t ask further questions as to who is committing the raping, or the raping can be blamed on white males with plausible deniability. A similar example is how #StopAsianHate quickly died when it became too undeniable who was actually committing the acts of Asian hatred.

The left-wing focus on guns is mostly a dodge to redirect public anger over black crime and liberal judges throwing violent criminals into the population at law-abiding Republicans who own guns.

When black men commit gun homicide it highlights socioeconomic inequities and why we need to fight for racial justice and impose greater gun control.

When white men commit gun homicide it highlights white male entitlement and why we need to combat white male privilege and impose greater gun control.

I’ve grown up in the hood. One thing the blue tribe doesn’t understand is a lot of minorities carry guns in these environments as a way to protect themselves. Neighborhood gangs originally ‘began’ as ways for communities beset by widespread violence to protect themselves. And if your stricter and more stringent gun control measures demand harsher and more punitive measures against people that own them, guess who’s going to be more disproportionately wrapped up in your legislation and find themselves in jail more because of it? The very people you “claim” to be supporting.

widespread violence

Was an abstract cloud of violence brutalizing these communities? Or was it people? Where did these people come from?

People organize into groups, and groups oftentimes take on an unlife of its own that is stronger than any individual's decision to continue to put forward the group's goals or not.

cloud of violence

That’s climate change for you.

Typically the pattern is unorganized crime-> gangs-> reduction in random street crime-> organized crime problems. A bit like using fireants as a pest control tool- it's retarded because you now have worse problems, but it does work at the original problem.

How do you behave when living among violent people? Bullies only respect power. You speak to violent people in the language they understand. This is what continues to perpetuate the cycle of violence. Why did the kids I know join or remain adjacent to gangs growing up? For the same reason I did. You had to do it to survive.

If you just want the single factor hereditarian explanation to do all the work for you, you’ve still got to answer the question of why these same people also leave gangs all the time when they have the chance to get out.

I think this is applying conflict theory where mistake theory would be more appropriate.

Handguns are, in practice, orders of magnitude more dangerous than long guns, looking at (murder, suicide and negligent) death tolls. The difference between America and other broadly pro-gun countries like Switzerland and Canada is that America has ubiquitous legal private handgun ownership, and lots of people shooting themselves or each other with said handguns. The pro-gun movement in America largely consists of people who routinely carry a handgun for personal self defence (or would like to if it was legal in their jurisdiction). And they (you?) are winning politically.

And yet the anti-gun movement's best argument is to point at spree killings and call for bans on scary-looking and/or high-powered rifles, because blue tribe normies who are susceptible to anti-gun messaging are not actually worried about the chav-on-chav shootings going on in the rough parts of their own cities, they are worried about the spree shootings they see on TV.

If the anti-gun left were serious, committed gun-grabbers at both the elite and mass levels, I don't think they would be so stupid about guns. I think normie fear of spree killings is very real, is largely driven by media amplification (which in turn is driven by if-it-bleeds-it-leads incentives, not partisan bias), and is grossly disproportionate to any real threat. But the pro-gun right don't have a very persuasive response to it - the real argument they believe is "one classroom of dead kids in a every 4-5 years in a country of 300 million is a good tradeoff for the advantages of widespread rifle ownership for shooting sports, hunting, rural home defence, and tyranny prevention." And that is a non-starter in the public debate because most people are innumerate. [FWIW, I think the tyranny prevention argument is mostly bullshit and I still think the tradeoff points in favour of broadly legal long guns. But if I got my sense of how common spree killings actually are from the MSM, I wouldn't]

tl;dr - the reason why the debate about long guns isn't as one-sidedly pro-gun in the US as it is in Switzerland is because normies overstate the risk of spree killings, not because of a conspiracy of evil gun-grabbers.

But the argument falls apart if you don’t use spree shooting simply because it then brings up the question of who’s doing the shooting (and it isn’t white midwesterners carrying in the grocery store). They literally cannot make the argument where it would actually make sense because they lose. Once they say handguns, they NRA’s best play is to simply point out that the vast majority of handgun shooters are gang members in the urban core most of whom have miles and miles of rap sheet and were out on parole at the time of the shootings. Easy to make the uncomfortable connection and to ask “why won’t the liberal DAs put those guys in jail and actually keep them there.”

one classroom of dead kids in a every 4-5 years in a country of 300 million

WP says it is more like about a classroom of dead kids per year, though not all of them might are part of mass shootings. Sadly, kids are also vulnerable to guns outside classrooms, with a couple of thousands dying every year. The most common way a minor is shot is because his fuckwit parents owned guns and did not secure them adequately.

I would have to disagree with this. The anti-gun types could get a lot of concessions and/or enhancement of their credibility if they agreed to national shall-issue concealed carry. The data is pretty overwhelming that automatically issuing concealed carry permits to anyone who passes a background check does not result in a significant increase in crime.

What concessions do you realistically think the pro-gun people would be willing to make?

No private sales(closing the 'gun show loophole') has been offered in exchange for concessions more than once, and always rejected when it was clear the gun control side was going to have to offer something. I suspect waiting periods would also be on offer. The NRA wants national concealed carry reciprocity and de-listing silencers from the NFA in exchange.

It's entirely possible that de-listing silencers from the NFA has already happened, depending on how the cases over the tax being reduced to zero go, and in any case we're close enough on that one that I for one would not consider it a valid bargaining chip. Don't trade to gain things you already have, or will have shortly in any case.

Sure, this is an 'off the top of my head' memory from the last time the NRA offered a grand compromise.

What concessions do you realistically think the pro-gun people would be willing to make?

In exchange for national shall-issue concealed carry? At a guess:

  1. No private sales of firearms -- all sales must go through a registered dealer who does the necessary background checks;

  2. Laws that handguns must be kept secured while not in use if there are minors living in the same residence;

  3. Laws limiting purchases of handguns to one per month.

Obviously I don't speak for all pro-gun types, but I'm pretty confident that the anti-gun types could get at least 1 out of those 3, perhaps even all 3 if they agreed to national shall-issue concealed carry.

By the way, I asked you a question in the last thread and I am still waiting for an answer. Do you have any case authority for your claim that 18 USC 1014 applies only in the context of credit applications? Do you concede that in the past, people have been prosecuted under that provision for opening up fictitious bank accounts?

Yeah, I'll get to the question later. I've been working quite a bit and didn't have time to give a proper answer. Hopefully I'll get to it later today.

The Brady campaign is currently a numerate, cogent, reasonable organization aimed at gun control supported by the data(they didn't used to be, but they are at the moment).

They are not popular or influential, because gun politics in the US is 100% partisanbrained conflict theory. The NRA and the Brady campaign are both doing things that meaningfully(but perhaps not massively) reducing gun deaths with things like safe storage campaigns and range instructor training. They're not the most popular organizations on either side.

"one classroom of dead kids in a every 4-5 years in a country of 300 million is a good tradeoff for the advantages of widespread rifle ownership for shooting sports, hunting, rural home defence, and tyranny prevention."

If only this innumeracy applied to "a few dozen mauled kids every year in a country of 300 million is a good tradeoff for the advantages of widespread dog piss, dog shit, dog slobber, dog barking, dog dander, dog odor whatever people see in these things."

I think conflict theory is apt here. At the end of the day, if most people liked guns at even 0.1% of their emotional investment in dogs, they'd overlook the tradeoffs too. Some people just really like guns and are fine with a couple classrooms paying the tradeoff ("Some of you will die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make"). Other people don't care at all about owning guns, so for them no societal cost is really worth it. But a blanket gun ban costs these people absolutely nothing. They were never going to own a gun anyways. Ask them how many babies mauled by dogs per year is acceptable before they're willing to let the government take away their precious doggos and you'll get a very different attitude.

I think dogs, like guns, are not all created equally. A pitbull is orders of magnitude more likely to maul a kid than a golden retriever.

And there is certainly a legislative push to restrict ownership of the more dangerous breeds, at least in Europe.

Personally, I would push for a license requirement to keep any kind of mammals (including kids) for animal welfare reasons alone, and ways to mitigate danger to third parties could be easily added to such a process.

At least in the US, enforcement on rules regarding dogs is basically non-existent. I doubt any amount of legislation short of an outright ban would make a significant change. It's too easy to lie about breed or claim service dog status.

But the broader point is that if my feelings on dogs range from outright disgust to begrudging tolerance, then it's easy to sit here and sneer at the societal cost of allowing them at all. I'm sure others would say some of my hobbies have too many negative externalities relative to their benefits, but my threshold for the acceptable level is higher than theirs just because I like the activity. These sorts of debates are just motivated reasoning and conflict theory all the way down.

At least in the US, enforcement on rules regarding dogs is basically non-existent. I doubt any amount of legislation short of an outright ban would make a significant change. It's too easy to lie about breed or claim service dog status.

It’s like a horror comedy how normalized it is nowadays in various countries across the world for people to bring their precious doggos into public spaces like airplanes, restaurants, supermarkets.

In an era where the “oppressed” and the disabled are usually fetishized, people with dog allergies are basically told “sucks to suck” and to suck it up. And people who merely dislike dog odor, having dog fur/slobber on them or in them, or touching surfaces where a dog’s asshole has been stand even less of a chance to have their preferences considered than those with dog allergies.

Can't forget the dogs that eagerly rub their noses into fresh piss puddles then get brought into grocery stores to shove that same nose all over various people and items.

Dog-obsession is one of the few cultural issues where most liberals and conservatives are in complete agreement. I know plenty of vocally liberal people who will bend over backwards stressing the importance of accommodating every dietary restriction and neurodivergence under the sun except when it would cost them a chance to subject you to their dogs. Inclusivity is paramount, but not when the doggos are at stake.

As somebody from a country with very low levels of Civilian gun ownership and who has fired a firearm like... three times maybe in my whole lifetime which was cool to tick off but not some profound experience I need to revisit. I get the nominal self-defense argument, but I also feel like widespread gun ownership in the USA has a bunch of secondary and tertiary effects creating a loop of 'there is more violence since people expect guns to enter encounters since people expect more violence'.

If I'm personally exceedingly unlikely to own a gun I'd rather be in a disarmed society since IMO PR(Random encounter happens where somebody else belligerent is armed who wouldn't be otherwise) is significantly greater than PR(Random Encounter where I both have a gun and have an occasion to use it prosocially to successfully defuse something)

In the United States, gun control is so conflict theory that nobody even tries to convince anyone anymore. When Democrats get power, they simply implement all the gun control -- Virginia demonstrates this perfectly. Anti-gun states have been banning AR-15s (most popular RIFLE in the US) and Glocks (most popular pistol) left and right. Republicans, being divided on the issue, sometimes reduce gun control, sometimes do nothing, and sometimes increase gun control. But the convincing stage is long since over.

You make some good points, but I don't think it quite addresses the, as you say, unseriousness of the anti-gun left. They used to lean much more deeply on the crime angle, but there are too many fatal weaknesses to that take for it to be effective in a less controlled/favorable media environment. The normies get upset about spree-killings, but not in a way that obviously and naturally leads to blaming the tool. One can easily imagine a slightly different world where the mass media blame was displaced onto, say, SSRIs, possibly with a "greedy, overprescribing pharma companies" angle. But the pattern for sprees is something hitting the news bigly once every 2-3 years, with maybe a few copycats in the following weeks, and then most everyone goes back to not caring. That doesn't translate into political will.

The reason there are safety people at all seems much more driven by outgroup dynamics. Gun are red tribe totems, and attacking enemy totems is always a fun time.

Police tools and surveillance have gotten to a very advanced state in the US. Many murders go unsolved, but I'm not sure it's so much that police can't solve the murders. I note that after Mangione's assassination of Thompson, police went all-out. They take assassinations and terrorism seriously. And there are cameras everywhere. In people's pockets, on the walls of buildings.

Basically, it's hard to get away with any kind of political violence. That reduces the number of people who are willing to do it.

I broadly agree with your point, and I suspect the great majority of unsolved murders are gangland killings or other situations in which “The Community” has some code of omertà which prohibits cooperating with the police. But the Mangione case is a uniquely bad example here: he very nearly got away with it, and easily could have if he had been just a little smarter about disposing of the weapon and establishing an alibi.

Again the delivery mechanisms for this stuff isn't complicated and the main limiting factor of these does not appear to be that obtaining the means of violence is hard it's that anyone smart enough to do this is also smart enough to realize that violence is a bad idea.

I mean the Unabomber was quite smart, and also opted for bombs over guns.

Nitromethane is freely available for purchase, which can be easily made into very dangerous chemicals using stuff you can buy in the hardware store. From there we have other things, while you have to either break the law or DIY it for a lot of parts you can make your own drone (or just use a kids RC helicopter toy, seriously it may not work for heavy payloads but you'd be shocked at how far you can go with mediocre toys these days.) and drop an explosive on anyone. You can also make actual war crimes in your basement by mixing iron powder, and sulfur then heating it, sealing it in a glass bottle with water as it builds up H2S. Alternatively if you want to make cyanide gas, buying sodium cyanide (i'd be willing to post links but I don't want this forum to actually get in trouble with the FBI, I already got searched once) and mixing it with sulfiric acid is doable (and ok like hyper dangerous beyond belief and you would have to basically get rid of it the moment you make it but....)

I'm not sure how wise it is to be giving such recipes on this forum either. I doubt you'll direct the Eye of Sauron our way, but it never hurts to be safe, especially when your point could have just as easily have been made by simply saying something like, "You can make homemade C4 out of materials that are freely available in the US, and then delivering it via a drone would be trivial" or something like that.

Ok so... i'm often seriously confused about what safety people actually care about.

I do think it is lucky that people who want to hurt others are mostly uncreative. I have definitely come up with ways of doing mass damage that I'm surprised have never actually happened in the United States, since I wasn't thinking particularly hard about the problem. It just seems like we are lucky that when humans are high in the desire to do mass violence, they mostly tend to be low in traits like intelligence that correlate with successfully perpetrating the most harmful kinds of mass violence.

That's one of the worrying things about AI for me. While I know all of the big AI labs test for this, and have their own systems in place to detect users trying to use LLMs in this way, I really worry about what will happen if someone is able to manufacture a bioweapon they otherwise wouldn't have been able to manufacture thanks to an LLM.

I mean the Unabomber was quite smart, and also opted for bombs over guns.

He also wasn't a very effective killer as a result.

You can also make actual war crimes in your basement by mixing iron powder, and sulfur then heating it, sealing it in a glass bottle with water as it builds up H2S. Alternatively if you want to make cyanide gas, buying sodium cyanide ...and mixing it with sulfiric acid is doable (and ok like hyper dangerous beyond belief and you would have to basically get rid of it the moment you make it but....)

Fortunately, the type of amateur idiot trying this is indeed more likely to blow their own face off in their basement or garage before they can get around to leaving their bombs in a public place. Handguns are different.

That's one of the worrying things about AI for me. While I know all of the big AI labs test for this, and have their own systems in place to detect users trying to use LLMs in this way, I really worry about what will happen if someone is able to manufacture a bioweapon they otherwise wouldn't have been able to manufacture thanks to an LLM.

Agreed. I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of ways to cause absolute chaos which generally don't get pursued because 99% of people don't have the experience, intelligence, and diligence to do it. And the few people who do have the skills are, for the most part, not interested in being terrorists. Why would they be? For the most part, they've achieved high status in life and they've done so by being rule followers. And in any event, most people are not psychopaths.

The obvious areas are making bombs, poisons, and bio-weapons. But even people who are skilled in areas like law, finance, and banking could cause a lot of issues by creating phony documentation.

AI potentially offers the opportunity for low-discipline people to get around this soft but very real obstacle.

I'm not sure how wise it is to be giving such recipes on this forum either.

ok but you'd actually probably kill yourself if you used my recipe to do anything

Also discussing hyper narrow techniques is fun at the end of the day nobody is going to actually do any of this, this is all elaborate textual role play to me. There's no way anyone is stupid enough to try to make cyanide gas in their parents garage, or get on a government watchlist for buying nitromethane.

I really worry about what will happen if someone is able to manufacture a bioweapon they otherwise wouldn't have been able to manufacture thanks to an LLM.

Using Pliny prompts I have been able to get it to teach me how to do fun very dangerous experiments then go to the local college chemistry lab and confirm they work. ~~PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME

they mostly tend to be low in traits like intelligence that correlate with successfully perpetrating the most harmful kinds of mass violence.

yeah aside from the 9/11 highjackers and the Unabomber I can't remmber a single smart terrorist. Even the unabomber wasn't the smartest at actually carrying anything out.

yeah aside from the 9/11 highjackers and the Unabomber I can't remmber a single smart terrorist. Even the unabomber wasn't the smartest at actually carrying anything out.

The unabomber got what he wanted- he promoted his ideology so that future critics would pattern match onto it, establishing kleos influence that pushes towards, eventually, what he wants. He's replaced Thoreau in the popular consciousness, which gives him influence broadly.

There's no way anyone is stupid enough to try to make cyanide gas in their parents garage, or get on a government watchlist for buying nitromethane.

Nitromethane is the main component of fuel for some model airplanes and drag racing cars, which leads to lawful excuses for having it.

Lots of people are stupid enough to make poison gases and explosives in their parents' garage, though usually all they do is end up harming themselves.

yeah aside from the 9/11 highjackers and the Unabomber I can't remmber a single smart terrorist. Even the unabomber wasn't the smartest at actually carrying anything out.

The IRA and the old-school PLO had a lot of smart terrorists.

As usual, Gwern has the canonical post on this topic.

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