DS9: Business as Usual

[thisithis]

Hell arms selling seem to not work for Hagath. Maybe it ended for him like this. XD

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQh2IP81Pxo[/youtube]

[Yukaphile]

That's my new headcanon.

[Durandal_1707]

What obviously happened is that after events like this one started escalating, Earth had to reconsider whether the right to arm bears was really such a good idea.

[Yukaphile]

"Invasion of the Polar Bears." Sounds like a really bad B-movie.

[TrueMetis]

I never had any problem with anything Quark and his new business associates do in this episode. At least, up until the Regent, I believe he was called, came in and ordered the bio weapons. WMDs as a deterrent is one thing. Trading in them to someone who has spoken his intention to use them on a civilian population crosses the line, big time. At that point, they should all he arrested for doing business with this maniac.

Trading guns, I had no problem with as a teenager when this episode came out, and still do not to this day. There is no gun law that will ever keep guns out of the hands of criminals. If they can't get a gun legally, they will do so by illegal means. Only thing that will ever stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. And gun laws only make it harder for the law abiding citizens to get guns to defend themselves and their families with.

One other thing about the episode. As a teen, the nightmare scene kinda freaked me out.

Even if we accept this premise, at the very least it means the very act of them having the gun is illegal and they can be arrested for that, as opposed to having to wait until they do/try to do something illegal with their legal gun.

And guess what? In order to do that you don't even have to restrict people from legally owning guns. Canada has plenty of guns, but a fraction of the gun crimes the US has. 2016 had 130 homicides with a handgun, accounting for population the US had 5x more.

As for your good guy with a gun horseshit let's look at some other numbers, 240 Canadians are on average shot accidentally each year. Suicide has accounted for 9,919 gun deaths from 2000-2016, though thankfully the number per year has been dropping. And in that time period of 13,168 gun deaths, 1% has been due to legal intervention. That's 130. So assuming everyone of those deaths saved another's life. Just eliminating the accidental deaths would save twice as many people. A 5% reduction of suicide by gun rate would save 4x as many.

You're good guy with a gun saves almost no one at the expense of thousands.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ ... -1.4803378

What obviously happened is that after events like this one started escalating, Earth had to reconsider whether the right to arm bears was really such a good idea.

Bunch of pussy's. Churchill, Manitoba has dealt with massive numbers of polar bears for years, and needs neither a state of emergency nor guns to handle it.

[Yukaphile]

Yeah, the "good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun" argument is just what you'd expect from a nation of wannabe cowboys like we are.

[Admiral X]

Regarding the general topic of gun ownership in the Federation: isn't that kind of a moot point, given that Wesley has access to non-zero quantities of anti-matter for his school project in Peak Performance? I mean, if the Federation is going to trust a teenager with stuff that you need to actively prevent from exploding, then I'm not sure how much more dangerous a phaser could be.

It's the principle of the matter.

The antimatter, you mean. But seriously, with the way it's depicted on the show, this would be like letting a kid run around with some nitroglycerine just because he says he's doing a science fair project on it.

That's BS that the NRA has peddled for so long people actually believe it.

I like how the NRA is still treat like the devil by people in spite of the fact it's basically turned into a bunch of compromising Fudds.

Other countries have actual strict gun laws, and control ammunition, and lo, they have almost no gun violence.

They do, however, still have plenty of other violence. But if you're going to focus exclusively on guns, especially in places where the private ownership of weapons by commoners has never been a tradition, then, yeah, you're not going to see a lot of gun violence.

Gun control laws absolutely 100% absolutely work. Just not in the US where we don't have any sensible ones.

We have plenty of sensible laws which keep failing because they are never able to enforce them, often because the authorities fail to report people for the background check system. We also have plenty of insensible laws made by people who don't understand or want to understand what they're even talking about, and have fooled themselves into thinking sacrificing liberty in the name of security actually works.

Meanwhile, the "only a goodguy with a gun can stop a badguy" narrative is shown time and time again to be completely false.

Actually, no, not really. There are quite a few crimes stopped by simply brandishing a concealed weapon, and all of the mass shootings that have been stopped early have been because of an armed citizen or an armed resource officer who was already on the scene or very close by. Like say that one Texas church shooting a while back that no one cares about because it was all white people. Here's a good article about this topic

Often with said civilian being shot when the actual law enforcement shows up and... mistakes them for the badguy.

Example(s)? Because I sure can't think of any where that's happened.

Even if we accept this premise, at the very least it means the very act of them having the gun is illegal and they can be arrested for that, as opposed to having to wait until they do/try to do something illegal with their legal gun.

Except, you know, they'd keep them hidden until they actually went out to commit crimes with them. there's a reason way more crimes are committed with pistols than the scary black rifles.

And guess what? In order to do that you don't even have to restrict people from legally owning guns. Canada has plenty of guns, but a fraction of the gun crimes the US has. 2016 had 130 homicides with a handgun, accounting for population the US had 5x more.

Canada has even more confusing and pointless laws than the US has, and unlike the US, no protection from the authorities just deciding that they're going to go ahead and seize weapons if they decide they feel like it. Which they actually have done in the past, using that handy registration system you have up there.

[Admiral X]

Yeah, the "good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun" argument is just what you'd expect from a nation of wannabe cowboys like we are.

I'm only being partly serious when I take a page from Spock and say, "I find that comment ... insulting..."

Well, I suppose in a way I'm both Cowboy and Indian, so

[Yukaphile]

"Cowboy" in the sense of action movie hero like, say, Rambo or Schwarzenegger or McClane.

[TrueMetis]

Often with said civilian being shot when the actual law enforcement shows up and... mistakes them for the badguy.

Example(s)? Because I sure can't think of any where that's happened.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/us/p ... icago.html

Open in a private window for access.

Even if we accept this premise, at the very least it means the very act of them having the gun is illegal and they can be arrested for that, as opposed to having to wait until they do/try to do something illegal with their legal gun.

Except, you know, they'd keep them hidden until they actually went out to commit crimes with them. there's a reason way more crimes are committed with pistols than the scary black rifles.

Yes, criminals try to hide the fact they are going to commit crimes. Like what are you even arguing here? "When they get an illegal gun they must hide it" as opposed to the legal gun they don't have to hide and therefore have less chance of getting caught.

And guess what? In order to do that you don't even have to restrict people from legally owning guns. Canada has plenty of guns, but a fraction of the gun crimes the US has. 2016 had 130 homicides with a handgun, accounting for population the US had 5x more.

Canada has even more confusing and pointless laws than the US has, and unlike the US, no protection from the authorities just deciding that they're going to go ahead and seize weapons if they decide they feel like it. Which they actually have done in the past, using that handy registration system you have up there.

If you honestly think the laws regarding guns in Canada are confusing then I don't know what to tell you, except you must have had a hell of a time getting a driver's license. It's harder to get a driver's license than a PAL or RPAL license.

Moreover, if you think police can seize guns "if they decide they feel like it" then I bet you think it's illegal to call someone by something other than their preferred pronouns too.

Finally that handy registration system was unfortunately gutted by the cons in 2012 and now only applies to restricted weapons.