Agreed, proper gun control is always important. Using two hands is better than one.

Yep. Always treat it as if it's loaded, keep your finger off the trigger, don't aim at anything you don't want to hit and know what's behind your target. Too many accidental firearm deaths / injuries each year so this kind of gun control is definitely worth knowing.

That, and the legislation and policy regulating and restricting the manufacturing, transfer, sale, acquisition, ownership and use of firearms.

Why can't I own an M60

You can in plenty of states since they were produced before 1986. It's just a lengthy and expensive process. If you've got the money, a clean criminal record, a seller and don't mind hopping through a bunch of hoops and checks, you can have a go at it with your own M60 in a year or so.

Quote from: FatherlyNick on August 20, 2019, 07:43:26 AM

Quote from: Genghis Khan on August 20, 2019, 06:26:03 AM

It would be making law abiding citizens more difficult to defend themselves from criminals.

Second amendment is not for self defense tho. Its intended use is to resist tyrannical governments.

That's why you can't infringe gun rights, like banning assault rifles for instance.

It would also make it more difficult from non-law abiding citizens to get guns which are by far the best tool to commit crimes with. And the AWB has been challenged and upheld as constitutional numerous times, although it's unclear how that would go now after Heller.

can we not make fun of shapino? he's just a little guy, he can't defend himself.

Hey now, that's not nice to say. Ben is perfectly capable of defending himself when he's allowed to talk over first year college kids and bait them into misunderstandings because they've never had any media training and don't have the slighest clue on how to debate or respond to him immediately taking control of the argument and dragging it to a point favorable to him. This information assymmetry is what most of these alternative media personalities heavily rely on. It's the same with Crowder's stuff where he challenges completely random people to a debate on a certain topic. He prepares extensively beforehand and picks only sources / arguments that favor his position so that he can pull out some statistic or study and shut them down instantly even if it's heavily disputed because the opposition simply doesn't know any better.

-  Random person: Stricter gun control would be good
-  Interviewer: "According to research and official government numbers, there's up to 3 million cases of people defending themselves and saving lives with guns every year while only 40,000 people die by guns - suicides included, so you'd be crazy to think gun control is good since CLEARLY they're used more often to defend"
- Random person starts hesitating, doesn't know what to say, walks away

LEFTIST OWNED WITH FACTS AND LOGIC

In reality, the 3 million number is the highest estimate ever and dates back to a largely refuted phone survey by a notorious pro-gun and gun lobby funded researcher done 30 years ago that has been challenged by heaps of more recent research (ranging from the 60k to few hundred thousand range), some of which done by the Department of Justice itself putting the estimate at just 55,000 a year. Comparing it to gun deaths is a misleading point because not every case of a defensive gun use is a life saved (although that's the impression he wants to leave you with). Instead, when comparing it to actual criminal uses of firearms, there's around half a million cases of gun violence / gun crime each year according to DoJ statistics, which would put it 10 times higher than its estimate of defensive uses. And then there's also the dozens of high profile studies finding positive effects from a wide array of gun control measures.

But of course, the average person has no clue about any this so an entirely valid position ("stricter gun control would help") is immediately countered by an argument that only looks at one single aspect of the debate, presents a very one-sided perspective with questionable and easily countered sources they suggest are authoritative and essentially "facts". In an online setting, that person could simply take 2 minutes to read the Wiki article on Defensive Gun Use and realize how misleading the interviewer's point is, but in a real-time conversation they're just shut down.

Looks like Donohue is publishing another study shortly that found more evidence that the previous AWB had a positive impact on mass shooting deaths and frequency. Comes at a good (or bad) time depending on how you look at it.