I was about to say this. At LEAST wait for a 6 belt balancer to think the man can't be saved.

Nobody knows it but the Turks...

And the scariest part about history I learned in school is that the Vikings always took over the world because they don't need a Cassus Belli.

Yeah, I've noticed there's this weird cross-section of people who ask "do you believe everything you heard on the internet?" about some pretty established facts, and blindly believing Fox News.

The person I was responding to was talking about 100% total gun bans. Just want to make sure you realize this. Nothing you said disagrees with my take on gun control. If you intended to agree, that's cool (but rare online ;) )

Looking at this wiki page, NZ seems to have the same kind of gun laws my home state has, with a fairly similar ownership rate (and it looks like NZ averages 5 guns per owner?). As a general rule, I wouldn't use the term "strict gun controls" if a country's laws match any US state. We get a little crazy here with our Second Amendment.

There’s a lot of room between that kind of control and “everyone has an AR15 and a concealed firearm without a licence”.

100%, except I'm not sure why everyone is so obsessed with AR-15s. People keep trying to ban them in the US while deadlier weapons get a pass. And concealed carry is sorta funny. In my state, all carry is concealed carry because open carry scares non-gun-owners. You can basically have your gun license challenged in my state if you open carry because it can be used to argue you're not in the right mind to own a gun if you carry openly knowing it'll scare people.

I do understand this is reasonably doable, but it also seems like a niche skill for someone really into their hobby

Sure, but we're discussing a world where ammo is made artificially scarce. At the height of "wtf is going on with weed", 1/3 of all pot-smokers I knew were growers, and some were hardcore at it. It's far easier to make ammo than grow decent weed. And unlike weed, we're talking serious logistics problems trying to ban DIY ammo.

I agree it's not common now.

Police don’t need to be a hammer. They don’t need to focus on hammering skills above all else. While they sometimes do need to be, they need the judgement to correctly find those times, they need to understand better options when it’s not those times, and they do need to understand when compassion/caring is the answer

The most effective police forces in the world are in countries where they generally go unarmed... but I daresay that movements like "defund the police" are looking for that same thing - a force of social workers with at least some logical separation from the guys-with-guns.

But that's not just about skills and the right employees, it's about the right list of responsibilities. And frankly, I think they've got enough on their plate they can't do to add animal control in areas where they currently don't do that anyway. If you look at other emergency services, they do one thing INCREDIBLY well. Then you have police that do a dozen things terribly. And often times when they are called to do one of the peaceful things, they escalate the situation due to their training in others of the things. I am not so jaded to think that the world doesn't need SWAT teams occasionally. But I don't think the training that leads to SWAT teams and the training to deescalate a loud drunk are remotely the same.

Maybe we focus too much on the concerns of relatively few gun owners and too little on the victims. Bringing a weapon into a city creates more risk for more innocent victims, and that’s not ok

I tend to agree with this. I really wonder what kind of regulations could be put into place and enforced without abuse by police (who ignore guns on their friends' hips but use it as an opportunity to take out minorities accused of being in gangs)

This has to be part of it.

"Nobody in the entire country having any gun for any reason" is a necessary part of any form of gun control? I don't think I agree with that as it seems a bit hyperbolic. Or am I misunderstanding your context?

But a lot of those accessories make mass shootings easier. While one innocent victim getting shot is a tragedy, it’s not as bad as 4 or 20, or any larger number

Heat compensators make mass-shootings easiers? Recoil compensators? What they do is make collateral (or self-) damage harder. I DON'T understand the bills that come after heat compensators one bit, but I also struggle to see how recoil compensators are problem-contributors. If someone were shooting up my building, as terrible as that would be, I'd prefer they had a recoil compensator. They would be less likely to hit more people, while not actually being more likely to hit their target.

It has to. In my state guns are also harder to get and that’s reflected in much lower gun ownership

When I'm in a "police abuse of power" group and see people looking to drastically increase police power (and/or federal police power, since I live in a fairly left-leaning state as it is) I get scared regardless of the topic. You also point to alcohol - but I think that analogy fails because there's somewhat limited federal regulation on sale of alcohol as long as you're not selling to minors. My (again, "liberal") state lets towns assign liquor licenses basically as they see fit, and you can buy alcohol on almost every street corner.

For efficacy, you bring up "when someone can visit a Walmart over the border". This doesn't seem workable to me. It's not that there's a Walmart in the next state, it's that you can buy a gun in the next state without training, a background check, or any other validation. I'd actually use this as an example of the "throw paint at the wall and hope" form of legislating my side does on gun control that we will not do on any other topic. We KNOW what will work. We can't get what will work to pass, so we spend months talking about other things that both won't pass and won't be effective. What will work is to stop the wrong people from buying guns by making them show they're not the wrong person before they do.

True, but there’s a vast quantity of illegal guns already out there, and you can’t control illegal sales. You can make those more expensive to use, and maybe some won’t

How much more expensive? Are we talking $20/bullet? That won't stop violent crimes or most mass-shootings. Are you talking $200/bullet? That's going to prevent legal gun owners from actually knowing how to use their gun. Remember, far more people die from gun accidents and suicides than homicides. Raising the price of the bullet is unlikely to decrease homicides, will not affect suicides, and is likely to increase gun accidents drastically.

A homicide takes just one bullet. Practice and training takes thousands. The increase of price will disproportionally affect the desire to be a responsible gun owner over the reduction of gun violence altogether. If anything, increase the price of guns while offering waivers for a first gun of someone who has been background-checked and lives in certain "right to farm"-style communities.

Side 2 of this. A lot of people make their own ammo. Not exactly hard. It's currently more expensive than buying ammo, but home-made bullets are not unlikely if that changes. They ARE more likely to do spectacularly bad things in general. And then you could try to regulate the powder (only ammo-specific ingredient), but any criminal and many DIYers could make their own powder with readily available ingredients.

I understand the urge and there are certainly good reasons, yet I don’t think the statistics really bear that out. For all the news about police shootings, the vast majority never do

I'll leave police accountability questions to everyone else in this group that I am sure will come running to my aid. That said, how do you suggest small towns without a police force budget for police? Let's say you live in a town that has had zero gun violence in the last decade and has not found the need for a police force (I did for several years!). Now you seem to be suggesting they budget out salaries for enough officers to replace all the people who use firearms to protect their farms from wildlife. What would be a reasonable response time for those police if an animal starts wreaking havok and killing pets/livestock? When I lived in that town, the Fire (only local service) response time was still 15 minutes.

Not a "gun rights" point, but I'll make it. Police are a hammer. They do a few things VERY well. But no matter their training, they will always be inferior at everything else. In the US (and many other countries), we use police for those other things anyway. With all due respect, in no reality is an armed man with a gun the right first person to de-escalate a verbal domestic dispute. Paramedics deal with situations that start and/or become more volitile than police on a regular basis, and most refuse to carry a firearm even if they are allowed.

How about zero guns in populated areas?

I've argued for that before, differentiation of regions. It went over like a fart in church with literally everyone. The gun control crowd seem to think "rednecks will figure it out or should move to the city", and the gun rights crowd thinks "cities are more dangerous than the country". I've seen knife restrictions in big cities, so firearm restrictions seem more reasonable. Many countries require guns to be locked in cases instead of worn on the person. In cities, that seems pretty reasonable.

How about getting serious about consequences for harm caused by unsecured weapons?

I've always fought for that. But this isn't "no guns at all", which is what I was asking about. Most of your suggestions are not "no guns at all" and seem worthy of discussion.

How about limited gun types to what is useful for expected scenarios?

For me, this is a nonstarter. If someone is at their house and dealing with a coyote attacking family or pets, a semiautomatic rifle is the best tool. If they are using their firearm preventatively, that would be a shotgun. If they need a firearm while travelling and not hunting or anything, semi-automatic pistol. I just named basically every kind of gun somebody wants to ban. Well, that and guns that look especially scary, which I think is stupid. We already limit the guns types to what is useful, and I'll be the first to fight for keeping machineguns out of civilian hands.

I'm also all about banning things like bump stocks, of course. But being honest, many safety accessories people suggest banning aren't contributors to gun violence.

How about fewer places to get them?

Are you suggesting the Federal government step in? In my state, they're fairly difficult to get. Should the Fed try to mimic our laws and policies? That doesn't really seem to be the problem to me, though. If people want firearms and they're legal to purchase, they'll get them whether there's 1 store in their county or Walmart sells them.

How about more expensive ammo?

That seems worth discussing. I have some concerns; unless there's a firing range exception, it means gun owners will have less experience and comfort with their firearm. A person with a gun and no regular practice/training is like a dull knife. It sounds less dangerous for all of 5 seconds before it leads to some accidental tragedy. I'm actually a believer in requiring con-ed including target-shooting for someone who wants to own a gun. A gun that shoots its target can be horrible. A gun that misses its target IS horrible.

How about just an order of magnitude less?

An order of magnitude less what? Less ammo? How does that reduce gun violence? A magnitude fewer guns? How do you intend to execute on that? I do think there's way too many guns in the US. And I think a lot of people own guns that shouldn't, regardless of the gun. I'm a strong believer in background check and psych check to own a gun.

And yes, for the love of god, require the cops in your area to have training, skills, mental health.

We don't have many of those (cops in our area). And unlike the conservatives out there, I kinda like to keep it that way. My not liking cops is why I do like access to firearms. They're simply not qualified or trustworthy in many real-world cases where a firearm solves a problem without ever being pointed at a human being.

Do you have "naturally dangerous" areas in your country? I'm a gun-control-but-not-ban Progressive, and my reasoning is that most of the towns I've lived have had wildlife issues that are only reasonable resolved by firearms. Our coyote breeds attack large pets, small children, and (rarely) adults. We are a free-range-chicken state (chickens must be allowed to run free). My last road, coyotes ran rampant hospitalizing my next door neighbors 100lb+ lab (he was huge). It's not safe to be out alone or in your woods at certain times of year. Not to mention the occasional black bear who usually runs away but sometimes charges... A coyote charged my wife once and her german shepherd fortunately scared it off without bloodshed.

In the last town I lived, we didn't have police, only mutual aid contracts. The mutual-aid department didn't have animal control. Their standard answer to a dangerous predator running amok was "shoot it".

Now... I firmly believe our police is way over-financed, and think the last thing we need is MORE police officers. ACAB and all that jazz. Being honest, I have little respect for police in general, if marginally more than some on my side. So assuming you have areas likes that, how do you resolve it? The last answer I was given was "everyone should move to cities". Needless to say, I was not amused.

I'd love to be convinced that zero-guns-allowed-for-nonhunters at the national level is physically possible in the US, but I just can't.

The article I had found on the topic suggested linux users provided higher quality bug reports, in addition to more bug reports.

The real issue is that some game companies don't want bug reports because they don't want to fix bugs.

Actually, I think they don't want linux gamers, with their higher technical savvy. Some game dev companies love how 90% of their bug reports come from 10% of their users (and even brag about it). Other companies would rather just not get those 90% of bug reports.

Oh god yeah, all the freaking time. I feel my brain turn to Jello when someone goes all-in on the "massacre was fake" bullshit, often insisting that no pictures exist, pretending it's just the Tank Guy pic. Someone references the notorious bike pic, they pretend you're talking about a similar bike pic that's a LITTLE less clear about tank treads crushing human bodies. You link them the actual bike pic, they either pretend they don't see the slaughter (best I heard was "they're not dead or run over, they're just taking a nap") or they start saying "well those were the violent people and China saved the peaceful protestors from them"

It makes me want to vomit

For me, the primary appeal of a Bethesda RPG is that “take off in a direction, you’ll find a story” feel

I don't entirely disagree.

The insanely frequent, lengthy cutscenes cut into the continuous flow

You mean the ship going into warp or landing loading screen? There aren't really a ton of cutscenes. If I had to give a tedious downside, it would be the "power minigame" but at least it ends with a violent encounter with a strongish enemy 9 times out of 10

The choice to use procedural generation was odd and really took away from the more intentional feel of prior Bethesda games

See, THIS might be where my age plays me. My first Bethesda game was called "Arena", and it was all procedural. My second Bethesda game was "Daggerfall" and it was ABSURDLY huge procedural. I've never seen some procedural elements as a downside to extend the plot (and in fact, Skyrim's radiant quest system is procedure), as long as there was sufficient hand-made content.

Now here's the thing. By all reports (both self-reports that can be questioned, but also people who dug into game files), Starfield has more handmade content than Skyrim. It's just that the thousand planets above and beyond that were procedural. I LIKE that balance. A lot. It solves the "Morrowind problem" (Morrowind was slammed at first because the world was SO much smaller than Daggerfall's) for me while still giving you 60-80 hours of handcrafted stories, characters, maps, etc. But I can see how other people who dive into into the procedural content might step back and say "boy this game is so reptitious". Sometimes our gameplay loops define our enjoyment. I know I hated Persona 2 for years for the dumbest reason ever - I got addicted to the casino minigame and lost track of the story, then found the casino game too tedious and I had no desire to play the game anymore.

Yall are getting downvoted, but I think it’s great that you have a game you like.

100%. I get baffled that Starfield gets so much hate, but then some of my favorite games aren't very popular (Book of Hours anyone? lol)

I can even see the perspective of this being a better Outer Worlds

Yeah. Outer world was in reality the polar opposite of Starfield. A game that was excessively theme-driven but had lackluster "everything else" to go with it. A little (less than Outer Worlds used) bit of tongue-in-cheek "Spacer's Choice" could have worked like Vault Boy does in Fallout, and I wish Starfield had done something like that. But on story and gameplay alone, Starfield destroys Outer Worlds.

I think people like myself are just upset that we didn’t get scifi skyrim

This is the funny part. If I had to describe why I love Starfield to someone who had been living under a rock and hadn't ever heard of it, I'd say "because it's like Skyrim in space". In so many ways, if I'm being honest.

The thing is, the biggest critique people have against Starfield isn't all the crazy bugs (we remember those from Skyrim) or the really tropey shit, some skyrimmy feature it's missing, or anything in between. It's that they don't find Starfield "fun" in this hard-to-place sort of way. Perhaps that's you? If so, maybe you can see how someone would feel about Starfield if, for some reason, it clicked as fun from the start.

Now, I have some complaints about Starfield. But most of them have to do with things that Skyrim didn't even try (the shipbuilder, which I hear has improved of late) or the lategame (which means I got my fun out of it).

Also, I've learned not to take downvotes too badly most of the time. Everyone has opinions, and just because I reserve downvote for the rare "this person is an absolute idiot" doesn't mean other people do :)

Strange. I have more playtime in starfield than Skyrim. And the thing that draws me in is the story.

It's like it got most things right that Outer Worlds got wrong.

Honestly, I think just making the forward-burst functionality work for controller users instead of as a "keyboard hack" is enough.

If I had to guess, each graphics cycle is a little less dominant than the last. The iterations on graphics are becoming lesser and lesser. A game from 10 years ago is far improved from a game 20 years ago, but not that much worse than a game from last month.

There are moments of awe (imo, especially in VR when a game "nails it"), but we're pretty desensitized to high-graphics video games of late.

I didn't miss that part at all. The top-text just tells a different story from the bottom-text.

Ultimately, nobody should be homeless. But if they are, they shouldn't have to have tons of skill running businesses or networking to get off the streets.

Fair enough. He showed that someone with his skills and experience can get out of homelessness, I suppose. I wasn't looking at the $1M goal nearly as much as the "absolute failure" stuff.

Yeah. Instead of giving a bad-faith summary, the article could've dug into how he couldn't even hit middle-class without leaning on networking. Because saying he failed and had to quit because of his health, then admitting it was his DAD's cancer and that he managed to earn his way fully to middle class, just didn't work well.