State Sen. Nathan Dahm (R-OK) has penned several bills loosening gun restrictions, including the nation’s first anti-red flag law. He thinks these bills protect the Second Amendment – and that they make us safer. We think it's probably one or the other. Watch it on @AppleTVPlus. pic.twitter.com/T7fLFLjTQ5
— The Problem With Jon Stewart (@TheProblem) March 3, 2023
‘Nuff said.
Nice points, but I wonder what the gun guy said to the closing statement.
I could only watch a few minutes of this “debate”. Jon Stewart did not listen to Dahm and constantly put words in his mouth. It was as profound as listening to a drunk at a bar. Perhaps it got better but I didn’t want to waste my time.
I’m sorry, pwdm@3, but I don’t follow, can you please elaborate?
Loosening restrictions in Oklahoma? That sounds horrifying. I assume the restrictions that they had were already quite minimal.
Also, is Jon arguing in favor of limiting gun rights to protect cops? If he’s doing it as a devil’s advocate argument because he thinks it might be persuasive to a conservative audience, fine. However, if he really believes that trite, fuck him, and fuck cops.
And fuck this Nathan Dahm guy for trying to make a shitty semantics argument for why voter registration is not a violation of the constitution but gun owner registration would be.
Ah, the dude is a True Believer. In his case, gun rights. In others’, nuclearisation of the power grid. In others’, alien visitations.
Same dynamic, different subject. Pesky facts are irrelevant, logic is irrelevant.
@6.
The main reason cops are the problem they are in the US is they have guns. They have guns because they have a reasonable suspicion that everyone else does too. Cops are human and have the right to go home alive. Restrict guns, you remove cops’ excuse for all having guns.
#6 Gerrard
Seems like an excellent argument to get through to some conservatives.
#9 sonof
No, it’s a combination of guns plus shitty ‘fear everyone’ training.
My transcript:
Jon: “When the police go to a domestic call — the most dangerous call they can go — in your world, if they knew that there were firearms in the house, that’s a safer call.
Is that what you’re saying?”
Freak: [Shakes head]
“No, because [blah]”
—
So, no, not even slightly arguing in its favour.
@11:
Thanks for that. Useful contribution.
This chap is an absolutely perfect example of deciding your conclusion in advance, then bending reality into whatever shape is necessary to back up that predetermined conclusion.
#13 sonof
The existence of armed police forces that are not a menace to their population prove that your analysis is overly reductive.
One example of a force that polices a population as heavily armed as that of the US, please.
Ut tut tut, you said “The main reason cops are the problem they are in the US is they have guns.” So, the only example I need in order to show that this claim is reductive is any regularly armed police force that manages to not be a menace to the population it polices.
And to that I would say, name any police force with guns that serves in a developed and stable nation. This list might help; even when adjusting for populations, nations such as Denmark, Germany or good ol’ Straya don’t even approach USA’s hail of lead despite having armed patrol officers.
Hey, maybe training plays a role?
You say “reductive”, I say “concise”. Tomayto, tomaato.
Maybe training police to assume the population is armed and dangerous plays a role, yes. One example of a force where that training with that assumption would be valid.
Apart from the US, where it definitely is a valid assumption, obviously.
More than just police having guns. Attaboy.
sonofrojblake
I refuse to grant the false premises of your argument. Being a cop in America is a pretty safe profession. Being a truck driver is more dangerous than being a cop in America. They drive more, and therefore they have more traffic accidents, which is IIRC like 1/3 of all deaths on the job for American cops. Thus, because being an American cop is safe, talk about the threat of violence from guns is just feeding their delusions about the danger that they face which is one of the true cause of police violence.
Thing is, traffic accidents are a qualitatively different kind of risk, in both perception and reality. There’s not really a lot you can constructively DO about the risk of traffic accidents if you have to drive. You just have to take it as a hazard of the job. Whereas there’s definitely something you can do about getting shot by someone, which is you can shoot them first.
Now: you might say that the risk of a cop getting shot is low… but compared to what? Compared to the risk of traffic accidents? Apples and oranges. How about: how likely is an American cop to get shot, compared to a cop in the UK? I don’t think you’d like those odds. And those are the odds at a time when ALL US cops carry guns. Can you even imagine the death toll if US cops were routinely armed with just pepper spray and a stick, like UK cops?
Ultimately, a large part of the problem is guns, guns, guns everywhere. You’re never going to convince a US cop (or more importantly, their union) that carrying a gun isn’t an absolute requirement, while there are more guns in the country than people.
I don’t care. This sounds like a bootlicker excuse to me.
You are an extremely bad driver if you actually believe this. Protip: It’s called “defensive driving”.
Slightly moving the goalposts. I thought this was about excessive use of police force. Maybe you take it as given that if cops carry guns, then it necessarily follows that they’ll use excessive force? I don’t think that’s a position you’re going to endorse if pressed.
Then it’s pointless pursuing a discussion.
I’ve done three defensive driving courses thanks to three different employers. There are some things you can do to reduce your risk a bit. But if you think you can reduce it significantly, you’ve been oversold. Other people drive too, and sooner or later you have to drive near them.
Anecdote, presented to me by one of the instructors on my first course, an advanced driving instructor and former traffic cop. He had, by chance, arrived at the scene of a minor collision. He stopped to see if there was any assistance he could render. He fairly quickly established that there wasn’t, but even in that short amount of time a colleague had arrived in a police car and stopped for the same reason. (UK police car -- white, largish saloon car, with a high vis stripe down it and lighting bar on the top). Cop gets a feeling there’s something slightly wrong about one of the drivers, so he casually asks him if he can read the number plate on the police car, gesturing toward it. Before you move on to the next paragraph, consider for a moment what are the absolutely worst three words you could respond with to that question.
Made your guess?
If you said “What police car?”, well done. Cop walked him to within less than ten yards before he was dimly able to perceive that there was a car there, much less read the number plate. Needless to say, he did not drive away from that encounter. The point the instructor was making was: those people are out there. They are driving cars. You can do things to mitigate their complete unfitness to drive, and must operate on the assumption that EVERYONE is that bad, but you have to accept that if someone like that is about to pull out from a side road and they don’t see you -- and they won’t see you -- then you’re going to get hit.
Oh that’s what you thought? I can just wait here while you read the original post, watch the video, and read YOUR response to it at post 6 again. Then when you understand what this conversation is actually about, we might (possibly) get somewhere.
You did read post 9 -- I know that because you responded to it. And yet you seem to have missed the point entirely. Once again: The main reason cops are the problem they are in the US is they have guns. *Yes, absolutely my position is that if you equip a power-crazy racist with a gun they will necessarily use it excessively, because they’ll use whatever you give them excessively -- pepper spray, a stick, stop-and-search powers. Do you really disagree with that? Because you’re going to have a hard time justifying that position, I think.
*And yes -- a cop didn’t use a gun to kill George Floyd, I know. I do think, though, that if that cop hadn’t had a gun on them, and the authority to use it, it’s at least slightly more likely that one of the many, many bystanders watching/filming Floyd be killed might have stepped up saved him.
“The main reason cops are the problem they are in the US is they have guns.”
Back to being reductive. How does this explain those police forces that fail to be similarly menacing to their own population, despite being armed?
Yawn.
It doesn’t, because it’s one sentence in a short reply to a blog post. If you’re looking for a comprehensively analytical thesis, what the fuck are you doing complaining that you can’t find it here, in one sentence?
“It doesn’t, because it’s one sentence in a short reply to a blog post.” Hm, you weren’t so sanguine regarding the short replies others made to this blog post. I might even say you were contemptuous of those that suggested there might be more to it than just having guns. Yet now you seem to admit that there is indeed more to it than just that? Progress.
Also, all I did was suggest a single additional parameter, hardly a demand for a “comprehensively analytical thesis”.
It’s like pulling teeth. Holms said what I would have said.