Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

Discussion in 'SBAF Blogs' started by purr1n, Dec 26, 2018.

  1. Armaegis

    Armaegis Friend

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    Or... you don't give out an Emmy during the Oscars.
     
  2. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    @shotgunshane has a great list of recommended IEMs already.

    My views toward IEMs tends to be very polar. Either it's good or it's shit, with not much in between.

    I'd be happy to oblige, keeping in mind that this "blog" is just as much entertainment. It's kind of funny that I even came up with that headphone list in the first place, as all these years, I never did make such a list. I actually did start on one years ago, but David Mahler beat me to the punch with his list. So I never bothered finishing it.

    Note: I've made some edits, added more comments, and fixed typos in the Top 5 headphones post.

    Getting back to IEMs: I'd likely include a list of most disappointing shit, and end up intentionally unintentionally indirectly insulting people who liked the shit that I hated, for shits and giggles.
     
    Last edited: Aug 8, 2019
  3. mscott58

    mscott58 Friend

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    That would indeed be entertaining! Do it, do it, do it... ;)
     
  4. drgumbybrain

    drgumbybrain Science Nut

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    Thank you Marv. About focal utopia vs raal . Do you think they have the same resolution and plankton level?
     
  5. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    The plankton aspect is the hardest to determine here. When it comes to most headphones, when I refer to plankton, it's very specific to amplitude, i.e. the ability to render low level information, usually in the context of other simultaneous louder signals.

    Electrostats and fast planars introduce another aspect into plankton, that is temporal plankton because of their transient response. When I refer to plankton, it's usually in the context of "pure" plankton, the definition in the paragraph above. So there is often misunderstanding: we are talking about different things. This is why I don't consider STAX stuff to have the plankton of HD800 or even HD6xx for that matter, despite the dynamics being grayer or less clean or slower in the transients. The dynamics reach deeper into the lower signal levels. The burst response of the STAX stuff would seem to support this. The STAX drivers never quite stop and keep vibrating like a drum, this possibly masking low level information. This is just a theory and more data needs to be gathered to say for certain.

    And then when it comes to speakers, there is spatial plankton! This is why I hold the DACs that are able to layer and separate depth in a soundstage of especially high value. Note that this has nothing to do with soundstage or headstage depth, as I do not mind a close stage as much many others so long as I can perceive the depth location of the instruments, i.e. feel the sound waves propagating from a specific x, y, and maybe even z location on the stage towards my position on the couch.

    So where does the SR1a stand? It's up there with the best with terms of temporal plankton. While it's speed isn't the fastest (and this aspect does tend to vary extremely depending on source and amp), the transients are clean and tight. This is what I meant by its exceptional ability to convey texture. @Lyer25 was spot on in conveying my meaning in a prior post.

    In terms of spatial plankton, again the SR1a is very dependent upon source and amp. Not there at speaker level, but far better than any headphone including prior leader HD800 with the BTA / SBAF cut-out mods that tighten up the layering (at the expense of a less diffuse and expansive presentation). Having drivers in front of the ear without cup and ear interactions does wonders.

    So this comes to the "pure" plankton aspect, the ability to reproduce low level information while other louder signals are playing. This I cannot say for certain, but I think there is potential.

    I am easily hearing the plankton differences between DACs, but I am not sure of ultimate plankton because of the amps being used. Yes, the most plankton resolving and best microdynamic shading solid-state amp I have in the house, the x2 Aegir monoblocks are excelling here. The Dartzeel (different system with source I was not totally familiar with) excelled as well. However, I am not sure if the plankton is reaching LCD-4, Utopia, HD800 levels from a TOTL amp (this only means ECP, EC, and DNA in my book). However, we have to remember that a direct drive amp, even of modest design, can totally change things because of the supreme capability of the driver in some crucial aspects.

    In many ways, the use of a 100W-200W- speaker amp with a chain of resistors, chokes, transformers, etc. isn't ideal. We'll have to wait maybe six months, maybe a year to know or get a better idea.
     
    Last edited: Aug 10, 2019
  6. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    Quick question because I'm honestly curious. What aspect of sound reproduction would hearing a sense of "breath" immediately after drum hits fall under? Transient response? Could be plankton since it's low-level stuff that's nearly simultaneous with massive thumps, but former makes a bit more sense to me— components recovering from "excursion" (or whatever the proper term would be for an amplifier) quickly enough to reproduce lower-level information.

    For context I was over on the headphone.com forum talking about a Lake People amp I have on loan and, for however much I like it, it's pricey for what you get and can't even convey that sense of air moving in recording space following those humongous drum hits at the beginning of Rage Against the Machine's Take the Power Back, which the G1217 Sunrise (+ added LPS) managed reasonably well with the same upstream-and-down.

    I remember you had a "holy shit my pants" moment listening to Under African Skies on the Atticus; RATM's song is my version of that with the HP-3s haha.
     
  7. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    That's traditional plankton.
     
  8. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

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    I’ve been meaning to reply to you for a bit but haven’t had the time. There is no recording space or rush of air. It is white noise and reverb. RATM s/t is an Andy Wallace mix. Thus it is a very dry drum kit recording with wet, reverby samples blended into the recorded hits in from a shitty 80s drum machine. The interesting part is he only uses bus compression, rather than compressing individual tracks. The “plankton” is hearing the overheads and Wallace ride the faders and his automation. That’s his biggest skill imo. The actual drum sounds you hear are kinda shitty. Listen to a bunch of his stuff and it’s all the same samples. Worse drummer? Not Dave Lombardo? More of the sample blended in. Sometimes the original recorded hit is wet too and the reverb is hilarious. His stuff sounds great on cars, TVs, and boomboxes but falls apart on speakers so much that you can then pick it apart on ANYTHING.
     
  9. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    Hah, TIL. I'm still learning the "picking apart drum mic-ing" thing so that was helpful stuff. Had to look up some of the stuff you mentioned, but it's interesting reading all the same. Thanks! Now I'm gonna have to learn to differentiate this from actual recording space, haha.

    What'd you recommend as a counterpoint for similar drumming but in actual physical space? Gear is probably too my-fi to delve too deep into recordings but it's fun all the same :p
     
  10. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

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    The recording space is mostly fake and determined on the console or daw. Even classical has tons of automation and fader riding. The depth is an illusion of delay, roll off, and volume. Mix in a room mic or two too. They have depth plugins for this now where anyone off that street can set it themselves. Some gear like some Schiit boxes has artificial depth dialed into it, putting you further back, and can never be truly in your face even if mixed and recorded that way but can do depth beyond that. Sort of. Other stuff can’t replay depth at all. Hello chifi and RME and headphones. People talk about tube gear has “great depth” yet you can run your recordings, almost all done with solid state, into a typical cleanish tube pre or modelled tube gear plugin, and bam its instantly set back or in your face depending on your knob fiddling or sound of the gear.

    That being said, you can actually increase perceived clarity of complex musical passages like a mixdown through more distortion ime. Human perception of audio is weird. The internet number chasers and objectivist can’t tell me why when I use certain “distorted” analog gear (certain “bad” consoles, pre-amps, compressors, etc), actual distortion plugins, and an actual console distortion pos DAW (Harrison Mixbus), the sound actually gets clearer and everyone on all systems thinks it is clearer and less distorted than the undistorted audio. It is not fully understood or not understood at all. Tubes, stuff with big transformers, and saturated output stages, should not do that but they do sometimes and most people, including you, the dude who distorted it, think it is clearer until you tell them what you the hell you did to it! But what you think is real is real!

    Now as for real drumsLive bootlegs of untriggered kits that sound like muddy poop maybe? Live in the studio with bleed everywhere? The Stooges fun house still sounds good and isn’t too artificial. Cream. A few Led Zeppelin tracks with mostly overheads but those drums do not sound real. Most drums in popular music will be fake or sound far from real drums. Most older recordings will be real drums but sound totally unnatural. Even the Beatles drums can be totally splatted. the real drums will be compressed to level out the hitting and eqed to hell to get them to sit in the mix so it takes a ton of critical listening to many recordings to even realize that they’re heavily eqed samples, sometimes made from the drummers own hits. It’s just that Andy Wallace, The Lord-Alge brothers, and Scott Burns were the biggest of the fake drum producers before ezdrummer and Steven slate. Now those programs and plugins are far worse than the Nirvana dribbling kick drums, typewriter drums, and whatever the hell Wallace’s snare sample is but it is very hard to find drums that sound like a good, tuned kit in recordings. This includes dynamics. I like more interesting sounding drum productions so hell yeah When the Levee Breaks is better than jazz and classical. I don’t care what the hell they did it to it. Nothing else ever sounded like that and it’s not some copy pasted samples. Or whatever the hell the Born in the USA snare was. It might be fake but I don’t care. It might just be a really cool snare. I don’t know. The point is these are recordings and not a drummer behind a tuned real kit right in front of you in your room.
     
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2019
  11. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    @Psalmanazar Just saw your edits. Okay, the Led Zep got me, I'm a fan. Only have the 1994 CDs from my dad though, will it be worth trawling used market for originals or nah, you think? They've been my "reference" tracks since high school, basically everything I demo has run When the Levee Breaks, Achilles', or In My Time of Dying.

    Yeah, I figure drums would be a massive PITA to record because, er, physics. No comment on anything more specific, that's well beyond my ken at the moment and I'm already brain dead from gorging on journals and fiction to read more just now, haha. I'm at least with you on not caring if something sounds "real" as long as it sounds "interesting"; I respect the pursuit of pure fidelity but I need dem lo-fi beats to keep sane (this is humour... kinda).

    Thanks!
     
  12. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

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    The original Zeppelin CDs from the 80s suck. The 90s and current masters are good.
     
  13. Thad E Ginathom

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    Interesting stuff. Not that I've been there for decades, but how, then, do they mix and handle that percussion live?

    (I think that the last rock concert I attended was The Grateful Dead, London, c. 1990)

    In my own small world of live South-Indian classical music, it is the percussion that gets screwed up the most. On rare occasions of unamplified (hey, it's acoustic music, not that you would notice, due to the guy on the sound board) concerts, even the half-deaf like me can notice subtleties in the mridangam (our equivalent to tabla in the North) sound that are utterly lost in (bad) mixing and amplification.
     
  14. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    From here: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/bang-bang-bang.8208/

    @m17xr2b: if you truly want to understand, then you need to drop the I am better than thou shit. Naming the thread "bang bang bang" and casually tossing out "small penis" syndrome doesn't do you any favors. It just reinforces yet another stereotype that Americans have about Europeans: that Europeans are a bunch of uppity snobs who think they are better than everyone else. No one here on SBAF goes to European audio sites to "inquire" about 4-week vacations through posts titled "lazy lazy lazy" if you know what I mean.

    It's shit like this that makes my daughter ask me if Europeans "hate" Americans. I tell her that Europeans probably hate Trump; but as people, they are just like everyone else in the world with the same fears, hopes, and dreams as other human beings. This has always been my experience. I work for a global company with sites in the US, Canada, Mexico, India, France, Belgium, UK, China, etc. I communicate with people around the world on a daily basis at odd hours. These are the "credentials" I rely on when I tell my daughter of how people really are like. I tell her that Internet impressions of Americans are just mostly social media or legacy media bullshit.

    I will speak from an immigrant's point-of-view. I wasn't born here. English was my second language and I learned to be fluent in it by the 3rd grade. I still struggled on standardized English tests and did not feel that I got a good grasp of the language until I was in college. I made a conscious (or perhaps unconscious) choice to be as American as I could. The definition of American being independently minded. My kids don't even think of me as Asian or Chinese. Friends in the Midwest when I lived there thought I was super American because I wasn't afraid of my heritage, yet fully embraced local customs (which tend to be slightly different depending upon which part of the USA one lived). I stick an American flag out on my lawn when it's July 4. I stand and put my hand over my heart during the pledge of allegiance. Sometimes I forgot to take my cap off if I am wearing one. I mow my lawn and pull the weeds in my yard. I drive a gas (petrol) guzzling V8 powered muscle car that uses old OHV technology. And I believe it's my God-given right to own a firearm, and that all citizens should at least know how to operate one. Note that I do not store firearms inside my house. That is a personal choice.

    Independence, which means people are allowed to be stupid and it's not the government's role to save people from themselves.

    You see, personal choice. The USA does not require jack shit for anybody. Any immigrant can get by without fully learning English. No one really cares. Sure there were crackers in the supermarket who would admonish my parents for not speaking English, but those people are idiots and I pity them for their ignorance. Personally, I wish that all immigrants would learn English, if for anything to facilitate communication across diverse groups and promote national unity, but that's more of a German approach. While our schools espouse an Anglo-centric history, there's plenty of accommodation for Spanish or even Vietnamese speaking students as they transition to English. America is more of a salad bowl rather than a melting pot. And this is because of choice, independent choice. Assimilation is not something that is forced upon immigrants by the government.

    This is what I am getting at: America is much less statist than European countries. The USA government allows a lot more individual freedoms. Here are some silly examples: dumbass drivers, usually Asians, driving 58mph in the fast lane; Mexicans (undocumented, documented, citizens, who cares?) only flying Mexican flags on their 4x4s on Oceano Dunes; building your dream home on a cliff in an earthquake zone; getting a drivers license without being able to show competency on a highway or with parallel parking (California); owning only cars and trucks that get no better than 12 miles to the gallon, posting on social media a photochop of you holding Trump's decapitated head; and purchasing a handgun with only passing knowledge of how to operate one (the gun dealer will usually teach you how right then and there). This is why I curse the EU for those annoying website cookie warnings. I digress.

    The role of government should be limited.

    This entire country was built on the premise of the limitation of government powers. The US Constitution is basically a statement of what the Federal government can NOT do, limitations, and so forth, and yet guaranteeing individual property rights (heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian values, i.e. don't f**k your neighbor's wife, don't steal you neighbors shit, all men created are equal in the eyes of God, i.e. equal application of the law, no royalty shit, etc.) The Supreme Court has already decided that people can own guns, but that the States get to decide on restrictions, short of Congress passing Federal laws. The question of the extent of Federal power over the States, i.e. States' Rights, is still is being figured out. The USA is still a young country. (Note that after the American Civil War, the Federal government ended up with a shitload more rights over the States through the passing of several amendments.) This somewhat decentralized and overlapping government arrangement is quite unique and very different from that of European or Asian countries where there is stronger central control and planning. The problem with existing gun laws that is they can easily be circumvented because they are mostly implemented at the State level, and any individual can freely traverse between states. In light of recent events, I would expect to see legislation passed on the Federal level to at least require background checks, regardless of state laws. Attitudes are changing.

    Firearms are integral to the history and the culture of the USA.

    Someone mentioned Westerns. It wasn't that long ago when the West was finally "won". It was only two or three generations ago (from my generation) where people still remember their territories (Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana, etc.) achieving statehood. Most of these states are still very rural. My wife was born in Wyoming. When you live out in the boonies, you have a gun. Kids shoot critters that mess up the crops. Adults kill bigger animals, sometimes to eat them, sometimes to mount their heads as trophies, sometimes both. This goes back to the independence thing. The government ain't gonna send an animal control truck to your little house on the prairie when a rabid deer jumps through the bedroom window. And yes, shit like that does happen. It happened at my father in-law's place. Keep in mind that the USA is still 97% rural, although population-wise, 80% now live in urban areas. That 80% is probably lower since small cities that form a hub for surrounding rural areas feel a lot more rural than urban. Heck, many of my generation (like my wife) come from rural areas. It's not uncommon for a grandfather or father to pass down firearms to their children (with the boys fighting over them or feeling sore when left out.)

    Now ever heard of the phrase Don't Tread on Me? I think it came from some flag during the early days of the American Revolution. That mindset is very much in the consciousness of Americans. That is other people don't tread on me (my estate, my family, my shit, what I want to do, etc.) and certainly, the government don't tread on me. This country was built on shit-kickers with guns, which at least partially explains why the USA military is so effective (all-volunteer force).

    Firearms are the great equalizer against government tyranny.

    I know this seems rather far fetched. The thing about tyranny or government overreach is that it rarely happens overnight. It happens bit-by-bit over time with the slow erosion of personal rights until the shit hits the fan. When the shit hits the fan and people don't have the means to fight back, then it's too late: the people are screwed. While I do not advocate threats against elected government officials, I have to admit that Ted Nugent's vague threat against the POTUS a few years ago was somewhat heart-warming. It's a strong message to those in government that this system is a compact, a trust, a contract, between the people being governed and the people governing the people. And if that this trust is broken, then the people have the option to take up arms against their government. This may be difficult for people to Europe to understand or appreciate, but this was the premise of how the USA was founded. Sure revolutions happened in Europe, but I take solace in the fact that revolutions are easier in America because we can do it with guns instead of pitchforks. It's good that politicians know their place, that they can bleed too.

    Americans take comfort that they can wield the power to instantly end lives.

    So does everyone else. It's just that historically, America has been much more isolated from the effects of wars. The exception would be the Civil War, where General Sherman laid waste to much of the South as a punitive measure. Southerners still curse Sherman's name to this day. Europe, on the other hand, had pretty much been in a constant state of war for centuries, capped off by WW I, and then WW II, not to mention the extremely bloody revolutions here and there. As a consequence, Europeans are more abhorrent to the use of violence. They are sick of it. I'd argue that movies like Dirty Harry or Rambo are not the cause of firearm appreciation in the USA, but rather an indication of the culture.

    To the question of why the heck would anyone want to have the power to instantly end another life? It's because it makes us feel all warm and gooey inside. Don't get me wrong. We would much prefer to NOT to resort to violence. Note that the American Eagle holds the olive branches on the right talon and the arrows on the left! Peace through strength. It's worked from the time of the Romans to the great Ronnie Raygun (who I am convinced was a pot smoker.)

    Americans are like the savage or younger-race humans in sci-fi shows, looked down upon with disapproval by the more advanced and peace-loving Vulcans / Europeans (who had to resort to logic to stop killing each other after killing each other for centuries). I'll admit this. We Americans are a younger-race of savages. What you can do? At least be respectful like how Captain Picard was to the Klingons who beat each other up with their bat'leths every other episode.

    I will posit one argument: Americans are much better equipped, show a better maturity, to own personal firearms than people of any other country (with the exception of Switzerland). With how many people and how many guns there are in the USA, it's a wonder more people don't die from guns in bars or steakhouses. The thing is, people don't kill each other because they subscribe to different variants of the same religion or different politics. A lot of people own guns who you'd think don't own guns. They own them in a matter-of-fact way without posting or talking about them on the Internets. Law-abiding citizens have demonstrated that they can responsibly own them.

    The risks are overstated.

    The risks of being a victim of a mass murder incident involving firearms are vastly overstated. Sometimes I wonder if the media across the Atlantic overplays American gun mass-murder events to distract the audience in Europe from some very serious looming economic issues there. Yes, incidents have been on the rise, and we do have a higher chance of getting shot by a crazy dude than being struck by lightning. However, we have a much much higher chance of getting killed in an automobile accident in our lifetimes. While people are always horrified by gun incidents, people do eventually come to their senses and realize the risks are rather acceptable, or perhaps can't even be mitigated. NRA, lobbying, all the money in the world can't stop it if the people truly wanted change. As I mentioned, things are changing - slowly.

    It's difficult to mitigate the risks of mass-murders (or regular ol' homicide) involving firearms.

    Too many weapons on the streets already. Laws can only do so much. We can't predict when a seemingly otherwise normal person will go nuts. Do the strict gun laws in Mexico prevent the bad guys from getting guns? Nope. Did the draconian gun laws in California prevent the incidents in or near California? Nope. The main problem with firearms is in the inner-city where people are randomly killing each other. Of course, no one talks about this. No one gives a shit if poor black or brown people kill each other in Chicago or Baltimore.

    So here is a summary of the points:
    1. Independence/self-reliance/choice (wild animals are a lot more deadly than city folks understand)
    2. Limited government (per the design of the Founders)
    3. History and culture (John Wayne)
    4. Government is a contract (that can be terminated by the people)
    5. Don't tread on me (or I will blow you away, although I'd rather we talk about it first)
    6. Media over-exaggeration and sensationalism (what's new?)
    Does any of this make sense? Probably not? It's cultural, it's feeling, it's psychological, it's a mindset, it's American, and even Americans have very different stances on it.
     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2019
  15. Tachikoma

    Tachikoma Almost "Made"

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    FWIW, the Australian government simply bought back all of the assault rifles. That’s one way to reduce the number of guns without inciting violence, at least.
     
  16. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Great plan, way to go Australia!

    But don't tread on me.

    Such is the American mindset.

    Again, I don't have guns in the house. But such a plan (let's be real, it's confiscation because that's what mandatory buyback really is) would disturb me and 40-80% of Americans (depending upon state of residence and political affiliation). I'm already afraid of Calfornia taking away my god-given right to own cars that get shitty gas mileage.
     
  17. elmoe

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    The main issue I think is that whenever someone brings up doing better background checks, the pro gun crowd is all up in arms as if everybody wants to take away their guns. Fact is that most "anti-gun" people aren't actually anti gun, they're just tired of neo Nazis and mental headcases having easy access to legal gun ownership. Until the pro-gunners stop their bullshit outrage and accept that people on both sides of the political fence are capable of common sense, mass shootings will keep happening.

    And us Europeans aren't looking down our noses at Americans, regardless of what you all may think. We're just dumb founded that you don't put tighter restrictions to prevent mass shootings from happening at the kind of alarming pace they're happening at. It's not a lack of understanding of American culture, people are people like purr1n pointed out, but in Europe while guns are allowed (yes, mind blowing I know, in France I can own rifles and handguns if I want to), who we give them out to is a much more careful decision and because of it we have little to no mass shootings / deaths by firearm, that's a fact.

    Point is, nobody wants to take your guns or change your way of life unless you're a danger to society. You accept that ex convicts can't buy guns, why not apply the same logic to the batshit crazy people that haven't yet committed a crime?
     
  18. ultrabike

    ultrabike Measurbator - Admin

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    I don't think the problem is gun ownership, or American savages vs European enlightment.

    The problem is the state of mind of certain individuals, and the social/political/economic climate.

    Consider post WWI Germany. I'm sure we can dig some stuff in French history as well.
     
  19. elmoe

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    I'm sure we can, but believe it or not minds have evolved since the beginning of the 20th century thanks to much easier access to education for all over the past century, and comparing the early 1900s or earlier to today is just irrelevant. At the end of the day, if you look at deaths by firearms in Europe, it's pretty much moot, and we don't have that constant fear of someone breaking into our houses to rape our dogs and steal all our moneyz.

    I lived in Europe most of my life, we got plenty of crazy. That's not an American entitlement. We just don't allow them easy access to firearms and so we very very rarely have things like mass shootings. We have gangs, and they shoot each other frequently. Still the majority of people don't see the need to own a gun. We have governments that stick their noses into our freedoms far more than Americans, but the idea that you can defend yourself against the government with a closet full of guns is too laughable to even consider in Europe, regardless how seriously you take it in the US. People here go on and on about Chicago and Baltimore to explain why in buttfuck Kentucky they have a closet full of AK47s and that's just a weak argument by any standard.
     
  20. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Attitudes are changing given the trends with active shooting events over the past 20 years. Note that all almost all of the highly populated states (with the exception of TX) already have background check requirements with maybe long guns as the exception. There is now the impetus for both sides of the political aisle in Congress to ensure that nutjobs don't have access to weapons. As for the NRA, they are imploding from corruption and losing support.

    Stuff takes TIME to sort out. At least the states are moving faster than Brexit.

    No person in the USA wants crazy people to own guns.

    That's a straw-man argument. The concern that gun owners have are several: 1) laws that don't make sense, e.g. artificial categorization of gun types, excessively small magazine capacity limits; 2) laws that make it inconvenient for law-abiding citizens to obtain firearms; 3) laws that could serve as a springboard to eventual confiscation of firearms; 4) the more restrictive laws wouldn't have done much if anything.

    Also, would it be appropriate for the government to maintain a database of people with mental problems?
    This opens up another whole can of worms. Will medical practitioners be required to report crazies to a government do-not-allow guns database? Will this discourage gun-owners from seeking treatment? How will this data be kept private? Can this data be leveraged for other nefarious purposes by the government?

    Let's look at a few well-known incidents to see if background check laws could have prevented them:
    1. Sandy Hook - The dude took his mom's assault rifle. They live in CT where his mom would have been subject to a background check. Nothing we can do about that.
    2. Las Vegas - The dude bought his guns legally. If NV did background checks, the state would have found nothing out of the ordinary. Dude just snapped. No motive is known to this day. OK, bump stocks (a tweak, a mod) should be have been illegal. But legislating mods/tweaks in advance is impossible.
    3. Parkland - Oops, fixed now. FL didn't have waiting periods or background checks. They do now. FBI was warned that he was crazy beforehand. Someone in government dropped the ball.
    4. Pulse Nightclub. ISIL sympathizer / terrorist.
    5. Aurora. CO - Joker bought guns legally in CO which has background checks. Evidently, he was crazy, people thought he was "off", but his background check was clean.
    6. Virginia Tech - VA has background checks. Because Cho voluntarily committed himself to a nut house (instead of involuntarily), the background checks per law allowed him to have guns.
    7. Gilroy Garlic Festival (close to home for me) - Hated Mexicans / terrorist. Illegally brought in guns from Nevada without registering in CA. He broke the law.
    8. Thousand Oaks (very close to home for me, a few miles) - obtained guns legally in CA. Dude suddenly snapped. Motive unknown. Suspected PTSD, we will never know.


    The basis of anti-gun arguments are mostly based on emotion and not on logic, data, or workable solutions because of one reason: The US Constitution and interpretation of such by the Supreme Court allows people to own guns.
     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2019

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