Guest Post by Scott Adams
I’m pro-gun, but mostly for selfish reasons. Some people (such as celebrities) are probably safer with defensive weapons nearby. But I acknowledge the reality that guns make people less safe in other situations. No two situations are alike. That’s partly why the issue can never be fully resolved. Both sides pretend they are arguing on principle, but neither side is. Both sides are arguing from their personal risk profiles, and those are simply different. Our risk profiles will never be the same across the entire population, so we will never agree on gun control.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
That said, I want to call out the worst arguments I have seen on the issue of banning bump stocks. If you are new to the conversation, a bump stock is a $99 add-on to an AR rifle that turns it into an automatic-like weapon for greater kill power. The Vegas gunman used bump stocks. They are legal, whereas a fully automatic rifle is not.
Many pro-gun people in the debate seem to be confused about the purpose of laws in general. Laws are not designed to eliminate crime. Laws are designed to reduce crime. The most motivated criminals will always find a way, and law-abiding citizens will avoid causing trouble in the first place. Laws are only for the people in the middle who might – under certain situations – commit a crime. Any friction you introduce to that crowd has a statistical chance of making a difference.
Humans are lazy and stupid, on average. If you make something 20% harder to do, a lot of humans will pass. It doesn’t matter what topic you are discussing; if you introduce friction, fewer people do it. With that in mind, let’s look at the least-rational gun control arguments I am seeing lately.
Chicago Example
Gun advocates like to point out that Chicago has strict gun control laws yet high murder rates. This is an irrational argument. The only valid comparison would be Chicago with gun laws in 2017 versus Chicago without gun laws in 2017. Any comparison to other cities, or to other time frames, is pure nonsense. Nothing is a rational comparison to Chicago. There is only one Chicago. And because Chicagoans can easily buy guns from nearby places, the gun ban is probably useless in that case.
Gun opponents use a similarly irrational argument. For example, anti-gun folks might point out that London bans guns and has fewer gun crimes. That’s as irrational as the Chicago argument. There is only one London in 2017. You can’t compare it to anything.
In general, any argument that says, “Look at that one city” is irrational, anecdotal thinking. It has no place in policy decisions.
Criminals Will Break Gun Laws Anyway
As I explained up front, laws are not designed to stop the most motivated criminals. We’ve never seen a law in any realm that stopped all crime. At best, laws discourage the people on the margin. Gun control is no different. The objective is to add some friction and reduce the risk that someone angry enough to pick up an AR doesn’t also have a bump stock in the house.
The Vegas gunman had over 40 guns yet he used bump stocks on his weapons instead of buying illegal fully-automatic weapons in the first place. He also did not purchase grenade launchers, which would have been ideal for his purposes. The reason in both cases is that there was more friction for acquiring the illegal weapons. It wasn’t impossible. It was just harder.
You can Make a Bump Stock on a 3D Printer
No, I can’t. I don’t own a 3D printer. Neither do most criminals. What you mean is that the few people who own 3D printers and have the skill to use them can print bump stocks. Chances are, you’re not one of those people. Again, laws are not designed to stop the most motivated super-criminals. They have lots of ways to get weapons. A 3D printer might be an ideal solution for a few super-criminals. But it won’t have much impact for a number of years on the average person who flips out and wants to start shooting today.
Rubber Bands and other Bump Stock Workarounds
Yes, I know you saw on Youtube a video in which someone rigged an AR with a rubber band on the trigger, or some other clever device that increased the firing speed. I’m no weapons engineer, but I’m fairly certain the rubber band method is less reliable than the bump stock method. And the other workarounds have either more friction (it takes some talent and tools to make anything of that nature) or they are less reliable. I remind you that the goal is not to stop all crime; we’re just trying to add friction to discourage the lazy and less-resourceful types, of which there are many. And perhaps we can add some unreliability to their choice of weapons.
Yes, clever people can create bump stock workarounds that function well enough for making a Youtube video. But most people are not clever, and not terribly resourceful, and they probably haven’t personally tested the rubber band trick. Even a dumb mass murderer wants more reliability than a rubber band suggests. Personally, if I flipped out and decided to kill everyone in my workplace, and I had never tested the rubber band trick, I wouldn’t even consider using it for a real crime, no matter how cool it looked on Youtube.
That’s friction.
Hardly Anyone Has Ever Been Killed by Bump Stock Guns
True. Even if you include the Vegas tragedy, the total percentage of people killed by bump stock-modified guns is tiny. But many people apparently don’t realize that laws are not designed to change the past. Laws are forward-looking devices. And after the Vegas tragedy, 100% of adults have been trained by news organizations on how to procure and use a bump stock. We even know we need multiple rifles because they jam. Compared to last week, the friction for modifying a semi-automatic to an automatic just went from “some” to non-existent. The idea of passing a law banning bump stocks is to add friction to reduce future crimes, not to change the past.
Keep in mind that North Korea might nuke us in the future even though they have no record of nuking us in the past. Policies and laws are not designed to address past risks, only future risks. And our future risk from bump stocks just went through the roof because they are now universally known and also top of mind.
And before you say you already knew how to get a bump stock, just imagine me laughing at you for saying it. I know you already knew how to do that. You are not representative of the entire population of potential killers. No one is suggesting passing laws directed at you personally.
A Guy in Japan Once Killed 30 People With a Knife
The argument here is that motivated killers will find a way to do damage with or without a gun. But does anyone think the guy in Japan killed more people with a knife than he could have with an armory of automatic weapons? And I remind you (again and again) that laws are not designed to stop the most motivated criminals, such as the Japanese stabber. Laws are designed to add friction to the less-clever and less-motivated.
A week ago, a potential killer with low skills and motivation might not figure out how to turn an AR into an automatic rifle. Today – thanks to the news – almost every adult knows how to do it. The existing friction disappeared. You would need to make bump stocks illegal to reintroduce some friction.
Slippery Slope
Gun owners sometimes say banning any weapon leads to banning all of them. In general, the slippery slope argument is nonsense no matter what topic you are discussing. Things do lead to other things, but every decision stands on its own, and should. Banning personal use of grenade launchers did not lead to confiscation of hunting knives, and probably never will. The slippery slope idea inspires fear in gun lovers – because creeping regulations feel like a risk – but in the real world, each decision stands alone. The slippery slope is an irrational fear, not a reasonable factor in policy-making.
The President Can’t Ban Gun Stocks by Executive Order
Sure he can, but it might not be legal. Does that matter?
You think it matters, but it doesn’t. When the Commander-in-Chief makes a thoughtful military decision, and the decision is clearly in the interest of temporarily plugging a security hole during a time of war (with ISIS), that’s defensible no matter what the Constitution says. And you want it that way.
The Constitution grants the Commander-in-Chief a lot of power to make quick decisions on homeland security because speed often matters in such things. As time allows, Congress can do its work. Banning bump stocks until Congress can look into it would be pure Commander-in-Chiefing. It would be public and temporary. Would the Supreme Court overturn the illegal ban? Maybe, but not right away. Remember that the Constitution gives real power to We the People. As long as We the People see our Commander-in-Chief acting responsibly, we’re going to give him a pass, especially for something temporary until Congress gets going.
I acknowledge that the President has no legal authority to ban the sale of legal items. But he could do it anyway. And We the People would largely back him on it so long as it was temporary and clearly intended to give Congress time to address the question.
That’s how Thomas Jefferson would have played it. But he might have looked for a technical way to make his executive order seem legal. I’m sure such an argument exists because lawyers.
Update: The Vegas Killer Would Have Been MORE Deadly Without Bump Stocks
The argument here is that bump stocks make the weapon harder to aim, therefore less lethal. That probably makes sense in some instances, such as a sniper situation. It does not make sense when spraying a dense crowd from above, at long distance. In that case, speed beats accuracy every time.
In summary, I have genuine respect for both sides of the gun control debate. But the arguments I listed above should not be part of the conversation if we are trying to be rational about it.
I have no respect for the “gun control” debate. No matter what they say, the end game is registration followed by confiscation. We must never allow that to happen!
I am a firm believer in gun control.
Hit what you aim at.
Exactly Ragman. There shouldn’t be a debate because theres nothing to debate.
“Both sides pretend they are arguing on principle, but neither side is”. What psycho-babble bullshit. Every right thinking person who has a passion to protect their right to own a weapon is a potential threat to the ruling masters and they know it. It’s why they try time and again to disarm us. The principle is named Sovereign Individualism: the desire to control one’s own destiny.
I can make it simpler than that.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
That’s the principle.
If there was no such thing as the 2nd Amendment, then yes, pro and anti-gun folks are free to use whatever logical/emotional/irrational arguments they want to get more guns, or to get guns banned.
But the 2nd Amendment does exist. That’s the principle. If you ignore that, you might as well ignore the concept of “law” or “Constitution” altogether; which invalidates Adams’ entire meandering point.
So does “shall not be infringed” mean everyone can own firearms? Including the mentally ill or felons. The Framers did not exclude them, or anyone else for that matter, from the Second Amendment.
I never had a need for a bump stock and still don’t. If Felonius Von Pantsuit was prez she would have wasted no time in doing an exec order to ban semi autos. That is what they really want. They don’t have the moxi to pull it off right now especially after seeing what a fail the bans in New York and such places were. So they go after the low hanging fruit. Bump stocks. They will go after whatever they think they can get away with. People like me will not rise up over something which to us is a giggle factor toy for amateurs. Assuming that the scenario of one guy using bump stocks in the attack, which I think is assuming alot, the difference between having them and just pulling the trigger real fast is so slight as to have little change in the outcome.
That guy was around 400 yards away firing at a crowd, where speed matters (somewhat). Only because it was a crowd was he able to inflict that many casualties.
Try this: find a friend out in the countryside and set up a target at 400 yards. Try to hit it with a similar weapon (similar caliber, similar ammunition) on a calm, clear day with a calm, clear mind. Use a sandbag / prop / bipod if you want.
Many of you will hit it once or twice out of ten, maybe better if you shoot a lot. As you shoot, your arms will get tired and your concentration will waver. That’s using a stationary target with near-perfect conditions in broad daylight.
The bump stock had little or nothing to do with it. The crowd, downslope targeting, lack of counter-fire and time to aim had a LOT to do with it. The folks shouting the loudest have the least experience with firearms, and it shows.
Bumpfire stocks were developed to fill a market demand for full auto’s that were too scarce and expensive for the average person to afford. Thet wanted them and were fully willing to comply with the registration and tax laws to obtain them, but they were just too expensive and hard to find,
So why are they so scarce and very expensive?
Because Reagan banned manufacture of new ones for private ownership back in ’86.
So if the Gun grabbers want the Right side of the aisle to “compromise” and outlaw bumpfire stocks, let their side of the “compromise” be reauthorizing newly manufactured full auto’s for private ownership.
Seems fair to me.
Bit it won’t happen since a leftist demanded compromise means they get what they want and we get nothing in return. I hope the NRA and Republicans realize this and do something about it, let the leftists start giving something instead of just the right giving all and getting nothing.
Full-auto weapons are NOT ILLEGAL.
You pay the $250 for the tax-stamp, wait damn near a year while the ATF looks at porn until deciding to get around to your application and background test, and you can buy any available automatic weapon produced and registered before Reagan’s 1986 cut-off date, which means you will spend around $2500 for a MAC-10 with around a 25 yard effective point range, or upwards of $25K for a belt-fed weapon.
Unless you’re a military or police purchaser, where you don’t have to work with all the infringements of the common pleb.
Ones manufactured after May 19, 1986 are. Only way you can legally possess one of those if if You’re a government agency or agent or a specially licensed dealer or manufacturer selling or making them to be sold to one.
BTW the tax is $200, same as for other NFA items like silencers and short barreled shotguns and rifles. So plunk down your 200 bucks, wait for your license (tax stamp) approval and you can then legally buy and own a $1000 machine gun for $30,000.
okay, I’m an FFL/SOT in east TN. both the folks above are wrong on many accounts. the only “license” is for people like me who want to sell or manufacture firearms under title 1 or 2 of the 27 CFR. the “license” you speak of is an SOT or special occupational tax. that is paid with what every title 2 weapon you are purchasing. this is tied to the serial number of the weapon not to the person. your info is to show ownership and where it is stored not a license to purchase.
there over one million transferable machine guns in this country. the prices you guys quotes are way off. a MAC10 in ok condition goes for over $5k. m16s are in the $25-$35k. all American belt feds are in the six figure range(want a m249 saw try $500K was the last one I saw go up for action 2 years ago).only commie belt feds are for $20k-$45k.
as for the ATF, it is a thankless job, I deal with the field agents in my area at least once a month. they always answer my questions to help me follow the law. the NFA branch has only 44 employees processing over a million NFA transfers a year with no budget increase for the last 8 years with a tripling in the number of requests in that same time period. and if you think that’s bad there is only one gal at the NFA branch that is responsible for answering all of the NFA questions we dealers and manufacturers have, there over 14k of us with SOT dealer/manufacturer Licenses.
not saying the ATF is a great or anything. I judge people on their actions and all guys and gals that I interact with are hard working and professional. hell I have sold rifles to both of the field agents and they help promote our annual charity(full auto by the way) shoot we for do our local vet charities.
one last thing police department can’t just run out and buy full autos either. there are many hoops for them to jump through. many department don’t like full auto either(neither do city managers or mayors). only in recent times has the AR15 become acceptable for most department to approve for use. I know what the news says, but I have been in this game for 15 years and it not always what the news says it is. remember they are always pushing a narrative. hope this helps clear some things up
My bad my numbers are off a bit, I was trying to post from the shitter by memory with 20-year-old information stored in my dome.
Glad you have a good view and working relationship with the inheritors of the fine legacy of Ruby Ridge, Waco, agents getting killed and robbed while fucking in the back seat during a stakeout and numerous other faux pas.
And thank you for your service, keeping this bifurcated system in operation.
If I recall correctly there are Title II firearms as well. If you have for example, an AR-15 made by May 19th, 1986 it can be converted to selective fire or “full auto” if you live in one of the 37 states allowing ownership, pass the check, pay $200 etc.
All things being equal, your 1986 weapon is worth a whole lot more than the identical gun made in ’87 because they are the only source for legal new selective fire weapons.
There are some sort of BS workarounds I have seen. People form corporations that buy and hold new machineguns and some things which are called “dealer models” for sale. The gun ranges in places like Vegas and elsewhere which rent machine-guns to use on their range may be using these dealer models or corporately owned guns. Even states where private possession is not allowed.
I can tell you with great certainty that anyone living in a state where these are legal who bought a safe full of these thirty plus years ago is now a millionaire any time they decide to have an auction.
Converting a post ’86 AR is illegal unless it is done with a part such as a DIAS which is a machine gun in the sense of the law, IOW that DIAS trigger group IS the machine gun and can be put in any AR you like but it has to have been manufactured before ’86 and have had the registration and tax payed as well as a legal transfer to the present owner.
You can find further information here:
https://www.atf.gov/file/58221/download
https://www.atf.gov/firearms/qa/may-unlicensed-person-make-machinegun
https://www.atf.gov/firearms/qa/may-machineguns-be-transferred-one-registered-possessor-another
Yeah, sure, there are a tiny artificially-limited number of them available for the tiny minority of people with the money to spend 20K on a rifle similar to a semiauto one you can get for 600 and if you can scratch together an amount of cash equivalent to buying a car and get through the long, thorough background check, then sure, it’s not illegal, but for the lumpen proletariat, it’s essentially illegal.
We lost / sold / gave tons of automatic weapons in the Middle East to every stripe of rebel or jihadi there is; all they had to do is tell John McCain they were “freedom fighters” and the sky was the limit.
I find it incomprehensible that NONE of those could be bought, smuggled and stored here in the US by anyone who wanted to buy them. Probably at low cost, since it cost them little or nothing to acquire; F&F was the tiniest sliver of the potential. Do you think whoever would buy such a weapon would turn around and register it afterwards?
Some folks really have no imagination.
“There is only one Chicago. And because Chicagoans can easily buy guns from nearby places, the gun ban is probably useless in that case”.
They can ban guns all they want, but the criminals in Chicago or anywhere else for that matter will still get them…illegally of course. Criminals can’t buy guns legally in Chicago nor any other Illinois city and they certainly can’t buy them from out of state…that’s illegal too. The only people that have a problem getting guns in Chicago are the law abiding folks that may need to defend themselves from all the thugs with guns.
What burns my ass is that with the literal mountains of AK’s we took in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US government was buying new AK’s from foreign countries to give to “allies” in Iraq and Afghanistan and other assorted shitholes.
I had a friend who passed away recently who was a civilian police contractor in Iraq. They inquired about getting some AK’s and a US Army captain showed up with a pickup truck full of them. Being all former cops they wanted to know about filling out requisition forms, records etc. They were told the Army didn’t care, didn’t want to know, here they are, see ya’.
I’ve never been into guns all that much myself – albeit more from lack of opportunity than lack of desire. But ever since I’ve been old enough for political awareness I have loathed “gun control”. L. Neil Smith says it best:
The one and only reason politicians, bureaucrats, and policemen want to take your weapons away from you is so that they can do things to you that they couldn’t do if you still had your weapons.
To bump or not to bump , it’s all semantics . Free people in control of their own destiny make America a bit dangerous to live at some indiscriminate points of time like swimming in the ocean , most swimmers are not attacked by sharks but it can and does happen !
The fact that many people on the political right recognize the second amendment as the ultimate veto power to a tyrannical out of control centralized government power scares the shit out of the liberal limosene left . As long as we are staying in line and jumping thru hoops on command there will be some cheese handed out by the self appointed head rats guarding it . The powers that be keep people complacent enough and a controlling force paid well enough to maintain control with the just doing my job excuse .
As the grip tightens on average people those close to becoming mentally unhinged will be the first to lash out then the grip tightens more and more leading to confiscation the liberal lefts ultimate dream . Then only the left and their minons will be armed and every pissy ass excuse for your own good will be paraded as the order of the day . Our children will come home from school and inform us how we should be eating sleeping what entertainment we should view and how we should vote and of course if we really loved them and cared for their safety we would never have a gun in the house .
Why do you think gun ownership is becoming a part of your health insurance issues for medical treatment . I know this is a battle that will be hard fought but the camels nose is more than in the tent , it’s time to bruise that fucker with a boot to the snoot !
In the last couple of Scott Adams videos it’s pretty obvious he’s on drugs. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s having an effect on his cognitive abilities.
This was one of his absolute worst pieces ever.
We all know that Scott is on drugs. He has said that he is on drugs. Scott is a stoner of the highest level. So don’t take what he says very seriously. He is just getting stoned and sitting at the computer. I expect a piece on perpetual motion out of him real soon. That’s what we came up with back in the sixties and I am pretty sure it would have worked if I could remember…what was I talking about?
So why doesn’t the president outlaw the CIA and dual citizens in government? Or maybe Mossad and FBI covert ops in the USA? Lots of ways to outlaw public killings of US citizens with guns and/or bumpfire stocks.
Mostly because the President doesn’t have that power.
And the suggestion is rather ridiculous in it’s nature.
“Both sides are arguing from their personal risk profiles, and those are simply different.”
I do not understand how tyranny presents a different “risk profile” to each side.
Would anyone here agree that tyranny benefits the left? Perhaps they believe it does, and maybe for a brief moment it would, ultimately I have not seen tyranny fail to eat its own.
I wonder if the left is cognizant of this.
There is a reason they call their fall guys or cannon fodder “useful idiots.”
I disagree with some of his comments. If we can’t compare existing examples of things in life, what can we compare? Reality vs imaginary hypotheticals is silly. Chicago, NYC, LA, DC, and other libtard cities are good examples to work with because they’re violent and they’re all ostensibly “gun-free” places where you can get killed by lots of criminals with lots of illegal guns. The same gun crime does not appear to exist in the same amounts in places where people have a fighting chance to defend themselves.
Also, the slippery slope argument IS valid because we have seen it in other places. For instance, England banned guns. Then, they started talking about banning large knives a few years later. Oh, but while I shouldn’t compare us to England, I would say Adams is right about Friction- England disarmed and now they’ve got Exploding Muhamads all over the place, acid attacks, knife attacks,and truck attacks. So at least he got that part right. Friction has led the way to new forms of murder that might have been stopped by an armed citizenry.
I think Adam’s piece belongs on the list of worst gun control arguments ever. The violence in Chicago is happening in many large cities and IS representative of a national problem. Gun control is the government’s judgment that an individual’s right to defend himself (and others) is far less important than government’s power to defend citizens (when and if the government chooses to do so). Does the government have the right to subrogate the individual’s right to feed himself or procure medical care to the government’s prerogative to provide food and medical care to some people? When banned bump stocks doesn’t prevent the next massacre, the stage will be set for the politicians to justify the next level because “obviously, they didn’t do enough”. This is the big deal and Adams trivializes it with his oversimplifications. Sometimes Adam’s smugness is unbearable.
Black people killing each other by the thousands hasn’t bothered the politicians one bit. Clearly God-fearing Christians with guns is the thing they fear most.
Excellent comments! I forgot to mention that the likes of Harvey Fat Fuck Weinstein get all of the full auto weapons they want for their shitty movies. They are supposed to fire blanks but they occasionally fuck up and kill someone with real ammo. Anyone remember Brandon Lee?
This is a list of the most heavily armed States in America (NFA weapons such as registered machine guns).
Wonder why Washington D.C. is in second place for the number of legal privately owned Machine Guns and such? Who has them and why in a district where even regular sporting guns are almost impossible for the average guy to (legally) obtain?
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/most-heavily-armed-states-in-america/52/
John Eric Hexum? Blank fractured his skull driving a piece of it into his brain.
Newsflash: the most “motivated” criminals – which the author admitted could not be stopped – are the ones who have already decided to murder people, gun or no gun.
In the case of someone who is already willing to COMMIT MURDER and face any related consequences for that decision, does the author really think that the lack of availability of a bump-stock, or this or that minor variation of weapon will cause “friction” or dissuade them in any way? Or even meaningfully alter their capability when they can just plan around it? As if the Las Vegas shooter would have just said, “well, no bump-stocks, never mind I guess.”
I agree with PZ. The rate of fire meant nothing to this endeavor. A bump stock, which was not used, would not have changed the outcome even slightly. He could have easily accomplished the same thing with a bolt action rifle. It would have taken longer to get the same number of bullets down range but it would have made each one more accurate. The people on the field didn’t run for cover. They crouched in place – easy targets. One bullet at a time works just fine unless you are laying down covering fire and then spray and pray is the name of the game. Nobody was ever going to shoot back so there was no reason to rush.