With the Orlando shooting, there’s been a lot of screaming in Washington D.C. about guns. I originally wasn’t going to respond to this, but no one seems to be speaking from the moderate perspective. I felt the need to share my very moderate opinion.
________________________________
EXTRA INFO LINKS
Mass Shooting Data:
United States Constitution:
Invention of the Gun:
Anton Yelchin:
Prohibition:
_______________________________
SCIENCE ASYLUM STUFF
Support us on Patreon:
Advanced Theoretical Physics (eBook):
Merchandise:
More videos at:
Instagram: @nicklucid
Twitter: @nicklucid
Tumblr:
Facebook:
Google+:
Main Site:
________________________________
IMAGE CREDITS
Openclipart:
Anton Yelchin:
Bill of Rights:
Second Amendment:
I find it very easy to nestle into my 2nd Amendment corner because it has a nice and sturdy logic frame around it. Unless, of course, I allow myself to think too deeply. Sort of like the solid Newtonian logic until pondering into what's really going on. While I don't agree, I can certainly imagine finding it just as easy to nestle into the comfort zone of wanting guns to go away in the belief that only this will make everyone truly safe.
In that light, your more moderate perspective actually makes much sense. Won't completely solve the problems of violence but that's a fool's goal.
Mental health is only one of many reasons, and most seem to agree that people with certain mental health issues shouldn't have guns, and there's already a law for that. Missing is a damn list of who shouldn't have a gun which makes that law worthless. I realise that even this isn't a simple fix — if a physician puts a patient on a central "no gun purchase" database that person might also lose his or her livelihood. Should someone be a middle school teacher, for example, if their name shows up on this database during a routine background check? I don't know the answers, but seems to me that carefully crafted legislation to create such a database can include "use for gun purchase/gun permit purposes only" language.
Nick, you are awesome, your understanding of this issue is primitive and unsophisticated. You should stick to science stuff and talk about guns at with friends.
Nick, your insight is very good. In Canada, we have a high number of guns person but only a fraction of gun crime per person. The issue is one of social security. The NRA should actually move to the left, way left. If crime and murder went down, which would happen in a socially caring soceity, so would the continually present demand to repeal the 2nd amendment.
only a naive buy that FREE STATE argument. as if USA is the only free state in the world, where guns keep the state free. take a look at rest of the world , how many of their citizens recklessly stockpile guns in the name of freedom. USA is not the most democratic state, yet countries on top of the list dont have freedom to have guns. so gun advocates' logic fails miserably. second, 200 years ago people didnt think that people could buy so many unregistered guns. ( dont even argue with this fact)
if founding fathers witnessed all the shootings, they would think twice. weapon arsenal with unlimited ammo is what your founding fathers idea?. i think not
REPLY


I have what I think is a decently simple (though, not necessarily easy to carry out) solution for America's violence problem.
We need to reform our prison, justice, healthcare, and education systems to work more towards creating healthy, happy, well-educated people. Our media needs to be taken out behind the woodshed and given a stern talking to. With a hammer. And some chlorine trifluoride. Actually, just nuke it from orbit. We need to end the war on drugs and focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment. We need to work on lifting up the portions of our country stuck in extreme cyclical poverty. We need to address the growing wealth inequality and lack of social mobility. Literacy, poverty, and employment are especially important in all this. Righting some of these issues will have the beneficial effect of reducing religious extremism. Mental health care needs to be taken more seriously and it needs to be less stigmatized.
I would be willing to bet that if we tackled these issues (and a few tangentially related satellite issues), we would see a precipitous decline in gun violence without even needing to take people's guns away.
Make yourself more visible. Your country needs you. Especially now.
Sadly it's still going on…
Crazy sane!!
Very insightful video, especially today. My usual argument with people saying you can't change the 2nd amendment is that, it's an amendment… or to put it another way, the very statement itself is a change! Furthermore, technology has advanced enough to put protections in place which would stop idiots using guns incorrectly. If you own a gun to protect yourself, why not lock it down so that it'll only work within a certain range of the property it's registered at. Fingerprint technology can be used to unlock a phone, why can a gun not be locked down to only the registered and licensed keeper? Advances that are simple enough to put into a phone, a device designed to communicate, yet seemingly impossible to put into a device designed to kill. I suspect the real reason people own guns has nothing to do with protection or the aforementioned developments would be delivered and accepted by owners and NRA.
As an American who has spent a good bit of my life in places where governments are doing bad things or in places where people run to, to get away from those bad things. I'm a big fan of the personally owned firearm.
I like to think that my reasoning is rather good. Because it is based on rooting for you.
So, when bad men do bad things. And they will. I want you to be as dangerous as possible. I want you to be the hardest person possible to kill, rape and maim. For that you are going to need a firearm. Anything less and you are easier to kill, rape and maim. And buddy, there is a great deal of killin', rapin and maimin' goin' on.
Be the threat from thugs, governments or as a good buddy of mine ran into. A black bear breaking into your house looking to eat your children. I want you to have a gun.
You seem like a pretty together guy. I don't have any evidence that you are going to go forth with a firearm and kill, rape or maim. And if you honestly asked yourself. You would find that you wouldn't need a gun to do those things. There is a world full of physics that end in dead folks. It just takes a little thought.
When folks move to my little slice o' heaven, from lands abroad. I always suggest that they buy a gun. Because you can, because i want you to be safe and because if you had one back in the old country. You might not have had the bad shit go down that made you move here.
Finally, a gun is a tool. Much like a hammer, a chainsaw or an atomic bomb. Those items can be used for good, or for evil. But they can do nothing with out the will of the human using them. That is what makes a gun a tool, but the man the weapon.
Keep up with the science!
It's much appreciated.
And don't forget to have an Airborne kinda day!
To sum up the second amendment, guns keep people free from a totalitarian regime. It doesn't take fancy English to figure out the intent of the founding fathers. A well regulated Militia, being NESSSARY to the security of a FREE STATE, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed
Yes guns were invented to kill people. However that's not a bad thing. Ask the starving north Korean people if they wish they had guns, maybe they could have a revolution and a regime change, but due to there being no people with arms there they live in internment camp status.
Far more people should see this video.
I just wanted to say that I respect your moderate opinion, and I just wanted to leave some evidence and data that shows when firearm bans are instituted, over time violence goes up. I think that in a well armed society, people are less apt to want to hurt one another for cause of being hurt themselves. It's similar to the principle of mutually assured destruction, if you're gonna get hurt hurting someone else, you have more reasons telling you not to hurt someone else. There's larger and weightier consequences. Thank you for your videos and your perspective. =)
https://crimeresearch.org/2013/12/murder-and-homicide-rates-before-and-after-gun-bans/
https://crimeresearch.org/2014/03/comparing-murder-rates-across-countries/
Cars kill more people than guns and nobody is bothered that their dad owns a car. Heck, nobody even asks dad to slow down and drive at a speed that wouldn't kill everybody if he crashed.
what I can't hear anything from the sound of 50. call and full auto glock going off in the background "Sal stop shooting the people"
Guns themselves don't kill people. It's the unstable individuals behind them that are doing the damage. I speak from personal experience.
I've always thought the solution was better education, including education on the proper uses and handling of fire arms, and most importantly, better handling of those with non-conventional educational needs.
Not to be pedantic, but there's really no way of knowing whether or not knives (and other tool/weapons) were invented for killing or not, since their invention predates the written word. We do know that they were used for killing basically as soon as they were invented though, so there's that.
The real issue is, as you said, a violence problem. We need to figure out why people feel justified going on a murder spree (with guns, IEDs, arson, or just old fashioned fists and knives), and why most people don't go on murder sprees.
Slate Star Codex does some pretty good analysis of the gun debate:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/06/guns-and-states/
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/10/guns-and-states-2-son-of-a-gun/
tl;dr Europe and Canada have a lot more guns than one might expect, and they're perfectly fine.
Not sure I agree on the gathering of more information on people without cause, innocent until prove guilty and all that. But in general agreed on most points. I have a belief technology is neither good nor bad, but how it is used. For hunting and self defense guns can make sense, but where to draw the line on in what is appropriate for a civilian to own I do not know nearly enough to begin to comment on that. Sadly the calm and reasoned reaction doesn't get attention, glad you put one out there even if I don't agree 100% with it (probably 90% 🙂 )
See.. That's a sensible idea. It mirrors my opinion quite well. Which means it probably will not work. But I wish it would work. Thanks, Nick.