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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   13411 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026

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Anything can be used as a weapon, I agree. But giving civilians the ability to shoot a hundred rounds in a minute simply gives the psycho or terrorist a force multiplier that allows him to kill hundreds before anyone can stop him. I don’t see knives or handguns as a problem in the same way because you cannot kill as many people as fast as you can with a machine gun.

I mean, if you take a look at the evidence, far more people die of handguns than the big bad rifles you see used in those shootings. Even if someone could mow down 100's of people hypothetically, thats not really something that happens statistically. 5 guys killing 2 or 3 with a revolver every now and again happens way more often than one dude mowing down 25 people and you'd be saving far more if you just banned hand guns.

I generally don't like this argument.

If the 'plan' is to engineer society to carefully balance individual freedoms alongside a high enough bar of entry so that stupid psychos can't do maximal damage when the screws fall out then lets make that the plan and operationalize that. Rather than alluding to that being the plan but not dealing with the nitty gritty of it.

So far the gun toting looneys of the US have managed a sub par result compared to Islamists driving trucks of peace in the EU. The only one that even compares is the Las Vegas shooter, and that shooting is to this day an anomaly. A much easier solution before you ban trucks or high capacity magazine rifles would be to stop importing foreigners from populations that hate you.

But there's our problem. Some people really like importing foreigners. So they're not willing to give that up. Just like some people are not willing to give up their rifles. So when push comes to shove, those who allude to the 'plan' are generally not planning on sacrificing the liberties they hold dear themselves. People can generally smell that, so the 'plan' never goes anywhere.

I'm sure one can easily draw up a politically balanced 'plan' that makes everyone unhappy. I'm less certain for one that anyone actually likes.

Speaking very generally, as the rate of fire of a firearm increases you quickly hit diminishing returns and then get into negative gains.

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