A very significant amount of deaths are due to firearms in the household which are not properly stored. So significant that it greatly surpasses the amount of US service people that died in a war each year during modern times.
You cannot back that up with facts at all. There is no data linking that many deaths to improperly stored firearms.
Well its not coming from gang violence like you claimed...so where do you think those 77% homicides are coming from in the 15-24 age range, which are not gang related, and the guns were not purchased legally by the person committing the crimes?
I don't have statistics on age ranges of people buying guns from the black market, but the rate of stolen guns used in homicides is less than 5% according to the ATF.
maybe most of the people who buy guns on the black market are 15-18....I have no idea on that one, but my intuition tells me that's not right.
So the largest amount of homicides is 15-18 age range, they can't buy guns legally, they are not mostly gang related, and they are not stolen guns. Where do you personally think these guns came from?
1st off, I didn't claim a fething thing about gangs.
2nd: The age bracket is victims, not perps. In many cases the perps will be outside of the age bracket.
The following show the circumstances behind all homicides in 2013:
You'll have a hard time making any type of case 'unsecured firearms' are the cause.
Juvenile gang murders with firearms 547, gangland killings, 117. Total firearm killings 8,454. 7.8% of killings were gang related. You insinuated most of the killings in the 15-24 age range were gang related.
I agree you can't get a lot of other information out of that in regards to guns being used in crimes by family members other than the guns owner.
The points however are:
Gun deaths are significant to worry about. They greatly outnumber in one year alone the amount of people who died in Military service during a period of 14 years while our country was at war.
From other data people under the legal age to by a handgun are the victims of most murders. If there is a disproportionate amount of these murders from people much older or younger than them? Possible, not likely. Most people in this age range interact mostly with their peers, outside of their family. I would have a hard time believing that most people are murdered by someone outside of their age range. I am having a hard time imagining a lot of 35+ year olds shooting 15-24 year olds for any reason that would be of significantly high % for these 8k gun homicides. I have a much easier time imagining 15-24 year olds having reason to shoot other 15-24 year olds that is of significant % in relation to the 8k gun homicides.
There are no statistics showing where the guns come from in these homicides.
However most of them are not gang related, and most of them are happening from people in an age range that can not legally purchase a gun. I somehow doubt they are coming from illegal gun sales to 15-18 year old, however I have no actual statistical data or proof to say so. Similarily I don't think anyone has statistical proof showing where most guns in crimes against various groups comes from.
So can I without a doubt say "most murders are committed by 15-24 year olds who get their guns from their family who did not properly lock them up"
Nope, But I can't- and apparently you cannot either account for where they get these guns when they cannot legally buy them, the % amount of stolen guns used in crimes by inmates is very low (5% according to ATF), and most of them are not supplied by their "gang" since very few of the homicides are gang related.
These guns are from somewhere.
In this case the homicide by firearm was committed by an 11 year old boy that got it from his home, it was most likely not secured in any fashion.
Chicago. One of highest incidence rates of teenage shooting victims in the country. They have extremely strict gun laws in Chicago making virtually impossible for residents to legally own and carry pistols. Illinois only just recently, this year IIRC, passed their law allowing concealed carry. A large majority of the teens shot in Chicago are shot by pistols. They are not getting those pistols from family members leaving them sitting g around the house because it's still extremely difficult for residents to legally own pistols. All of the gang violence in Chicago is not perpetrated with pistols improperly secured in the home.
Chicago is not the safest of cities that is for sure, but it represents less than 1% of the countries population.
and as shown by the FBI stats someone posted, ~ 6% of gun deaths are gang related across all ages.
While they may now have gun laws which make it hard to own and carry pistols, that actually points to people in certain ages getting guns from family. If they are not buying them from gun stores, where do you think 15-24 year olds are getting guns? the FBI stats show that ~40% of murders are family/acquaintances- of that ~79% are 18 and younger for the victims age.
shows 1624 murders from people aged 1-19 as the offender during 2012, sadly 357 of those are from people 16 and under... 2370 US service people died in wars across anywhere in the world during 2001-2015
If we add in 20-24year olds as a category for muderers the number jumps to 4,177.
That's out of 10,000 homicides where the offender had a known age, the majority of these homicides were gun related, and handguns were used.
again chicago is a decent sized city which represents less than 1% of the country, with a gang problem. Most gang related homicides are from handguns, and the chance of being involved in a homicide if you are in a gang is much higher than if you are not in a gang, gang homicides resulted in only 6% of the homicides nationally. Even still looking there if you have a hard time purchasing a handgun now, most of the handguns used in murders came from sources other than handgun purchases. If a large amount of the offenders were under the age of 24, or even under the age of 19- where do you think the guns came from? ATF says nationally less than 5% of crimes involve a stolen gun. If they aren't stolen, and aren't purchased from a ffl where are the people getting the guns? Many of the guns used in crimes are purchased illegally, but that number is ~56% according to the ATF, and that is a number taken from offenders across all age ranges. Do you really think 13-19 year olds which make up decent % of the offenders are buying the guns on the black market? Even in the 1-16 range there are 346 murders in one year- thats 1/7th of the people killed in all wars over a 15 year period. Or in other terms 200% more people die to a 13-16 year old than US service people died over the same duration in all wars between 2001-2015. Where do you think those guns came from?
No. It is not. And should not be. States and local governments have it covered.
They obviously don't, since we had two children-shooting-children incidents in two days.
It is not enough to have laws that punish those who are guilty after the crime has been committed, that doesn't bring someone's dead child back to life. The point of laws is to discourage the commission of crimes in the first place.
Why stop with gunz? Make improperly storing household cleaners a crime. Make having swimming pools a crime. Make allowing kids to play in the bath a crime. Make transporting your children via an automobile a crime. All of those things cause more deaths to kids than gun accidents.
And for gaks and giggles, how the heck to you suppose making gun storahuge laws a Federal issue rather than a state/local issue fixes a damned thing? As has already been pointed out, the feds cannot enforce them unless you are also advocating for a massive increase in federal LEOs and a repealing of the 4th amendment. The laws would only ever be able to be enforced after the fact/after the kid is dead. If people are willing to ignore current laws (and they are) how would making it a Federal law be any different?
Because people can die by a means does not mean the means is inherently dangerous.
Yes people fall in swimming pools and drown.
In 2013 approximately 33,000 people died to gun related deaths. Albeit 2/3rds of those were suicides.
683 people died from unintentional swimming pool accidents between the Years of 2005-2009. I couldn't find more current data for that.
If you consider 683 people accidentally dying over a 5 year period and 11,700 people dying over a 1 year period there is a two order of magnitude greater difference.
Here's another statistical number.
2,900 people total died during 9/11 or the rescue operation afterwards. Our country signed into act various government things that greatly increased "national security" and took away many rights and privileges we once had. We also went to war in two countries over it for a war/occupation that lasted approximately 10 years.
That is 1/4th the amount of people who die to domestic gun related events, which are not suicides.
So yeah we can say anything can kill so why stop at guns, so therefore guns should not be regulated. However the number of deaths is a large issue. Its a number 400% larger than the death toll in 9/11 which our country went re-tard-ed over.
What about alcohol then, if you are worried about order of magnitude with things that cause death and where we put our efforts? According to the CDC, 83,000 + people die per year due to alcohol related causes. Tack on to that, two out of three domestic abuse cases involve alcohol, or the amount of health problems caused, homes broken, jobs lost, work hours lost, etc. Compared to alcohol, guns is a small potatoes issue.
I think alcohol should be kept away from minors as well. And if you are found to be giving alcohol to minors and they do something that results in death you should be held accountable for it.
Because alcohol kills people doesn't mean its okay to have other things that kill people not be regulated in any way.
Russia in the old year of 2007 regulated beer as alcohol because it was affecting their young population. We have laws and rules in place regarding alcohol.
Are you trying to say that because people die to alcohol no one should have to store their guns safely, because its not really causing that much death?
What about alcohol then, if you are worried about order of magnitude with things that cause death and where we put our efforts? According to the CDC, 83,000 + people die per year due to alcohol related causes. Tack on to that, two out of three domestic abuse cases involve alcohol, or the amount of health problems caused, homes broken, jobs lost, work hours lost, etc. Compared to alcohol, guns is a small potatoes issue.
(looks up from his drink)
That also doesn't include the lunatics that would shove an oily rag in the top and light it before hurling the bottle at someone. Lunatics are going to kill people no matter what. Humanity never changes. Alcohol is accessible and can be very dangerous.
(goes back to drinking)
Edit: Man I fethed that quote up. Hope that's right now.
What about trying an actual valid argument. Whataboutism is just deflection. Deaths don't need to reach some magic threshold to be worth caring about. What's more important is if they can be prevented.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: So if gun ownership has returned to the levels that existed before the ban, and no further Port Arthur style attack has happened (terror incident aside) then it could be said that the ban, forced buy back, etc. actually had no discernible effect other than feel good security theater.
It could be.
It could also be that the population has grown in the last 20 years, and as a result of the ban the people who now have guns aren't the same people who would have had guns pre-ban, due to the registration requirements.
And to be honest, I think the potential value of 'feel good security theatre' shouldn't be dismissed. A very large part of changing public perception of an issue is getting the people to want to change that perception. Regardless of how many people wind up owning guns, Australia's attitude towards guns and gun ownership changed significantly in 1996, and has more or less stayed changed.
What about trying an actual valid argument. Whataboutism is just deflection. Deaths don't need to reach some magic threshold to be worth caring about. What's more important is if they can be prevented.
As I said, I was just addressing his whataboutism point.
Make gun safes required, but tax deductible. You have to show the paperwork that you bought a safe when you purchase a firearm. No searches though. Lord forbid the inspector thinks he smells weed, and an hour later you have a trigger happy SWAT team kicking in your door and shooting your dog.
(Not that I support changing the laws on the books. The system is sound, we just need to enforce it more)
Prestor Jon wrote: No you are still managing to ignore the key difference and the only one that counts. The FAA inspections have already been consented to as a condition for obtaining a federal license. Once consent is given agents can conduct the search.
Then you make a federal gun license that requires consent to inspections to verify compliance with federal gun laws. No license, no guns. Obviously this is never going to happen because the anti-gun-control side reflexively rejects any kind of license or registration proposal because it might make it easier for Hillary (it's probably too late for Obama to do it) to confiscate those registered guns.
Gun laws aren't a matter of federal law they are a state and local matter. That's covered by the 10th amendment. Federal gun laws are limited to federal firearm licenses and interstate commerce of firearms.
Gun laws are not local/state-only. The federal government can and does pass laws regulating guns. They just, as a matter of policy, leave a lot of the details of gun laws to individual states.
Prestor Jon wrote: No you are still managing to ignore the key difference and the only one that counts. The FAA inspections have already been consented to as a condition for obtaining a federal license. Once consent is given agents can conduct the search.
Then you make a federal gun license that requires consent to inspections to verify compliance with federal gun laws. No license, no guns. Obviously this is never going to happen because the anti-gun-control side reflexively rejects any kind of license or registration proposal because it might make it easier for Hillary (it's probably too late for Obama to do it) to confiscate those registered guns.
Gun laws aren't a matter of federal law they are a state and local matter. That's covered by the 10th amendment. Federal gun laws are limited to federal firearm licenses and interstate commerce of firearms.
Gun laws are not local/state-only. The federal government can and does pass laws regulating guns. They just, as a matter of policy, leave a lot of the details of gun laws to individual states.
We already have federal firearms licenses, every gun store owner has one and having it is contingent upon letting the ATF inspect the books and premises. Every collector with an 03 FFL consents to having the ATF inspect their transaction records for guns purchased and sold via their 03 FFL.
The federal govt issues and regulates FFLs because they are licenses that enable people to engage in interstate commerce of firearms and the Constitution grants the federal govt authority to regulate interstate commerce.
The federal govt cannot create a license to own a gun any more than it can create a license to speak freely. It lacks jurisdiction to do so. The federal govt cannot usurp the state constitutions and laws that already rightly address gun ownership. Our system of federalism cannot simply be set aside just for gun laws that's not how the system works.
Prestor Jon wrote: The federal govt cannot create a license to own a gun any more than it can create a license to speak freely. It lacks jurisdiction to do so.
So let me get this straight: the federal government can outright ban entire classes of guns, make other classes of guns require a federal license to own, ban entire classes of people from owning guns, etc. But it can't require a federal license to own a gun, something that is a much weaker restriction of second amendment rights. How exactly does that make sense?
The federal govt cannot usurp the state constitutions and laws that already rightly address gun ownership.
whembly wrote: Yes, that's extremely cynical, but he had his chance in the first two years of his Presidency, with having Democratic majority in both houses too...
This line of argument is probably getting more tired than 'blame Bush'. A Democratic majority only means something if the Democrat representatives were connected to the hive mind. I’ve heard some incredible things about Obama, but I’ve never heard anyone claim he’s a synapse creature. Instead, Democrats vote their own way. That's why when they held a supermajority they managed to get a whopping one piece of major reform passed, and that was a close run thing.
Anyhow, to get gun control legislation through you don’t need Democrats both houses of congress and the presidency, you actually need gun control advocates in both houses and in the presidency. At no point in the last 8 years has that been even slightly true.
Vaktathi wrote: Yes, apologies if I didn't make it clear, I unfortunately don't have time to address your entire post (which made valid points), but wanted to quickly address this. I was acknoledging that automobiles are much more regulated than firearms, and my point really was that even with all the regulation that automobiles & motorcycles have, their accident rates are orders of magnitude larger than with firearms, showing that, at least in terms of accidents (as opposed to homicides & suicides), that extensive safety regulation mandates probably don't have the same public-safety interest.
Well, no, because once again the question isn't what activity has more accidents. By that line of thinking horse riding has even less deaths than firearms, but not because it's got just the right amount of regulation, but because it's hardly ever done.
The useful question is how many accidents there'd be if there was no regulation, compared to how many there are with the existing level of regulation. And with cars we can see the answer to that question with a simple graph;
A massive decline in deaths for every hundred million miles driven.
It isn't only down controls on drivers, in fact I'd expect that speeding fines etc are probably a very small part of the decline. But requirements put on manufacturers to build safer cars, combined with a lot of money spent on safer roads has meant thousands of saved lives.
Can something similar be done with guns? I doubt it, it's a very different beast. Maybe if gun safes were heavily subsidised, or even given away with each gun (with some of the price recovered through a tax on the sale of the firearm) then maybe you'd see an increase in use. But even that's pretty loose thinking, probably.
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Grey Templar wrote: Sure, my hypothetical kid could walk up to my gun and shoot himself or someone. He could also drink the gallon container of bleach, or get someone else to drink it. In either case, I need to teach him not to drink the bleach or play with the gun. Its not the gun/bleach that is the issue here, the issue is how I've trained my kid.
Have you got kids? Because the idea that you can just train a kid and that's that, danger averted just doesn't work. "Don't put your fingers in the door gap, you remember what happened last time" has been repeated maybe a hundred times in my house. And my kid is more safety conscious than most.
It simply is ridiculous parenting to expect that training your kid is enough to make them safe. You actually have to remove dangers from the surrounding area because they're just kids, and screwing up all the time is part of being a kid. You just want to make sure the screw ups don't end up with too serious a consequence.
Now, this doesn't mean that everyone has to get every gun out of their house, or even that every gun has to be locked up. But the basic reality is that having a gun in a place a child can potentially reach it will increase the danger to that child, no matter how well you've trained them.
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Prestor Jon wrote: Our police force is entirely reactionary not pre-emptive.
Actually, that's completely wrong. Pre-emptive policing has been a concept since police forces professionalised, and has only grown over time. The logic behind 'street presence' is all about discouraging crime. Community policing has a similar underlying logic.
And on top of that we've steadily re-worked our laws to include more and more crimes that are designed to preempt really harmful behaviour. You mentioned drink driving, but that's actually a classic example of pre-emptive policing. People can drive drunk, it's only when they hit someone else that they've caused harm. To preempt the deaths from drunk driving we make any driving while drunk illegal and set out to catch people with random breath tests and the like.
I mean, I actually agree with you that stopping by the house of every gun owner to check his gun is in a safe is hopelessly impractical and a bad idea on top of that, but I have to correct your understanding of policing. Preemptive policing is a major element.
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CptJake wrote: Why stop with gunz? Make improperly storing household cleaners a crime. Make having swimming pools a crime. Make allowing kids to play in the bath a crime. Make transporting your children via an automobile a crime. All of those things cause more deaths to kids than gun accidents.
Umm, there are loads of rules and regs about making swimming pools safe. Complete fences, self-closing gates... And the safety rules for kids in cars are far more strict and onerous than expecting a gun to be put in a safe.
I mean, I'm not even in favour of requiring people to lock guns in safes, but god damn you guys are making some screwy arguments.
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CptJake wrote: Note, for kids (up to 24 years old) unintentional firearms deaths is 39 for 2013. Drowning kills well over 1000. Poison (unintentional) kills over 3k.
It would appear laws attempting to preempt those thousands of deaths would be more important than new laws hoping to prevent less than 50 deaths.
Very fething obviously, though, you can do both.
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CptJake wrote: Give me a break, to think you can come up with federal legislation and enforcement there of to reduce less than 50 accidental child deaths a year in a population of over 300 million people is just silly. That is the bad assumption being made in this topic.
Whether there is a possible idea out there that might significantly decrease those 50 deaths is one question, but the argument that there couldn't possibly be a single thing that kills 50 people that could be affected by Federal legislation is absurd.
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Breotan wrote: Okay, I just saw a headline claiming that gun sales have jumped.
There are no industry sales figures that are updated on a daily or weekly frequency. The headline is just blowing smoke.
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Frazzled wrote: How many rapes before and after?
How many home invasions before and after?
How many murders before and after?
How many attempted murders before and after?
How many batteries before and after?
How many robberies before and after?
You might not like what you find.
Less in all categories. Given I don't like home invasion, attempted murder, rape, robbery, or anything else you mention, I actually do quite like what I find.
I'm guessing you've never actually looked at Australian crime figures, and are just relying on some half remember NRA bs?
Vaktathi wrote: Yes, apologies if I didn't make it clear, I unfortunately don't have time to address your entire post (which made valid points), but wanted to quickly address this. I was acknoledging that automobiles are much more regulated than firearms, and my point really was that even with all the regulation that automobiles & motorcycles have, their accident rates are orders of magnitude larger than with firearms, showing that, at least in terms of accidents (as opposed to homicides & suicides), that extensive safety regulation mandates probably don't have the same public-safety interest.
Well, no, because once again the question isn't what activity has more accidents. By that line of thinking horse riding has even less deaths than firearms, but not because it's got just the right amount of regulation, but because it's hardly ever done.
The difference being that firearms and automobiles are owned in almost identical numbers (unlike horses), with accident rates being orders of magnitude different.
I'm not trying to debate the efficacy of automobile regulation, I'm acknowledging that it's effective. My larger point was that with firearms, accidental deaths are orders of magnitude rarer despite being owned in similar numbers to automobiles, and with deaths from firearms accidents numbering ~500-600 people a year (at least in 2010, again, not counting homicides, collateral damage, or intentional suicides) it's hard to see where safety regulation on anything near the scale of the automobile industry is warranted when any return we're looking at, even if 100% effective, are only going to save 500-600 lives.
The useful question is how many accidents there'd be if there was no regulation, compared to how many there are with the existing level of regulation.
If we're looking strictly at accidents (again, as opposed to homicides and intentional suicides), it's a few hundred a year at most, as opposed to the tens of thousands that firearm safety regulations save.
More to the point, in my own experience, most accidents don't really involve accessing an inappropriately secured weapon, but rather someone failing to properly handle and/or clear a weapon when they really should have known better. and mandated storage requirements aren't going to do anything about that.
Vaktathi wrote: The difference being that firearms and automobiles are owned in almost identical numbers (unlike horses), with accident rates being orders of magnitude different.
Similarly numbers of ownership, but the rates of use are wildly different. The average commute to and from work in the US is about 45 minutes. You think gun owners use their guns an average of 45 minutes a day?
I'm not trying to debate the efficacy of automobile regulation, I'm acknowledging that it's effective. My larger point was that with firearms, accidental deaths are orders of magnitude rarer despite being owned in similar numbers to automobiles, and with deaths from firearms accidents numbering ~500-600 people a year (at least in 2010, again, not counting homicides, collateral damage, or intentional suicides) it's hard to see where safety regulation on anything near the scale of the automobile industry is warranted when any return we're looking at, even if 100% effective, are only going to save 500-600 lives.
Yeah, and my point is that point works and is so much stronger and clearer if you just drop mentioning cars altogether. Just say 'there's about 500 accidental gun deaths a year', and everything suggested would cost a hell of a lot of money, without decreasing that death toll by much at all.
[quote=sebster 666121 8176170 72eab7a7ce61b7d7e07cfd696c3e9130.jpgI’ve heard some incredible things about Obama, but I’ve never heard anyone claim he’s a synapse creature.
It could also be that the population has grown in the last 20 years, and as a result of the ban the people who now have guns aren't the same people who would have had guns pre-ban, due to the registration requirements.
Or it could be a rock that keeps away tigers
insaniak wrote: And to be honest, I think the potential value of 'feel good security theatre' shouldn't be dismissed. A very large part of changing public perception of an issue is getting the people to want to change that perception. Regardless of how many people wind up owning guns, Australia's attitude towards guns and gun ownership changed significantly in 1996, and has more or less stayed changed.
You are eroding people's rights for no other purpose than cultural realignment, and to force a shift in the population's attitudes towards an inanimate object that has no free will and is safe unless handled by someone with malicious intent or recklessness. That does not show that security theater has a value. In fact quite the opposite.
So far in this thread we have discussed driving a horse and stagecoach through the 4th Amendment as a way to target the 2nd Amendment, and subverting the 10th Amendment to do so. Following the Australian model would sacrifice rights for absolutely no gain
Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote: Make gun safes required, but tax deductible. You have to show the paperwork that you bought a safe when you purchase a firearm. No searches though. Lord forbid the inspector thinks he smells weed, and an hour later you have a trigger happy SWAT team kicking in your door and shooting your dog.
(Not that I support changing the laws on the books. The system is sound, we just need to enforce it more)
If you want to increase gun safety then treat firearm training classes as tax deductable
Ouze wrote: [quote=sebster 666121 8176170 72eab7a7ce61b7d7e07cfd696c3e9130.jpgI’ve heard some incredible things about Obama, but I’ve never heard anyone claim he’s a synapse creature.
It only works within 6 inches, though.
Without (Congressional) synapse, he just goes into lurker mode.
Prestor Jon wrote: The federal govt cannot create a license to own a gun any more than it can create a license to speak freely. It lacks jurisdiction to do so.
So let me get this straight: the federal government can outright ban entire classes of guns, make other classes of guns require a federal license to own, ban entire classes of people from owning guns, etc. But it can't require a federal license to own a gun, something that is a much weaker restriction of second amendment rights. How exactly does that make sense?
The federal govt cannot usurp the state constitutions and laws that already rightly address gun ownership.
You have this completely backwards.
The "ban" on "assault weapons" was simply the federal govt exerting control over interstate commerce by restricting the sales of particular firearms. All the ban did was make it impossible to legally purchase a specific set of rifles, that's it. Everybody who already owned "assault weapons" got to keep them. The AWB didn't affect people who owned assault weapons, it didn't create a special license, it was a restriction on commerce.
The National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, the US v Miller SCOTUS case in 1938, the administration of Federal Firearms Licenses, all of the Federal regulation of guns is limited to interstate commerce. The reason state and local govts have regulated the possession and ownership of firearms for the last 230+ years instead of the Federal govt is because ownership and possession don't fall under federal purview.
As a bit of a tangent, do Gas/Water/Electrical companies organise inspections of whatever the technical business inside a home is?
If so, are these checks intrusive, and what's the difference between these and a police officer walking in to check a specific thing on a specific date, that you would have had to organise after .... say receiving a letter notifying you that your yearly gun storage cabinet inspection is due?
Mozzyfuzzy wrote: As a bit of a tangent, do Gas/Water/Electrical companies organise inspections of whatever the technical business inside a home is?
If so, are these checks intrusive, and what's the difference between these and a police officer walking in to check a specific thing on a specific date, that you would have had to organise after .... say receiving a letter notifying you that your yearly gun storage cabinet inspection is due?
If you own your property? Only if they're invited or have a warrant.
Most electric, gas and water companies check a meter external to the structure. I know I've lived in many houses and apartments across several states and never had them have to come into my house. And they all provide a service (gas, electricity or water) and are private companies for the most part (though in some cases are contractors on a county/municipality gov't contract). They have no enforcement authority. They don't make laws/regulations.
In the UK some of the meters are indoors and some are outdoors, usually depending on the age of the property.
These are sometimes checked for accuracy and safety according to regulations. If you fail to make your meter available for checking, you can be prosecuted (civil prosecution).
That said, it took over three years to get my meter checked from receipt of the original letter requesting it to the actual visit of the test employee.
Mozzyfuzzy wrote: As a bit of a tangent, do Gas/Water/Electrical companies organise inspections of whatever the technical business inside a home is?
If so, are these checks intrusive, and what's the difference between these and a police officer walking in to check a specific thing on a specific date, that you would have had to organise after .... say receiving a letter notifying you that your yearly gun storage cabinet inspection is due?
No one has ever come into my house to inspect anything. Thats not how things operate here. They would not make it in the door.
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Kilkrazy wrote: In the UK some of the meters are indoors and some are outdoors, usually depending on the age of the property.
These are sometimes checked for accuracy and safety according to regulations. If you fail to make your meter available for checking, you can be prosecuted (civil prosecution).
That said, it took over three years to get my meter checked from receipt of the original letter requesting it to the actual visit of the test employee.
My last home was in Pennsylvania, our water and gas meter were inside the basement of our home. So there are parts of the US where older buildings have utilities on the inside. We had bi yearly inspections, not a big deal.
Mozzyfuzzy wrote: As a bit of a tangent, do Gas/Water/Electrical companies organise inspections of whatever the technical business inside a home is?
If so, are these checks intrusive, and what's the difference between these and a police officer walking in to check a specific thing on a specific date, that you would have had to organise after .... say receiving a letter notifying you that your yearly gun storage cabinet inspection is due?
No one has ever come into my house to inspect anything. Thats not how things operate here. They would not make it in the door.
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Kilkrazy wrote: In the UK some of the meters are indoors and some are outdoors, usually depending on the age of the property.
These are sometimes checked for accuracy and safety according to regulations. If you fail to make your meter available for checking, you can be prosecuted (civil prosecution).
That said, it took over three years to get my meter checked from receipt of the original letter requesting it to the actual visit of the test employee.
Wow thats crazy.
What's even crazier is that when the inspector came eventually, he said the gas meter was technically now illegal, due to revised building regs, being positioned within a metre of the electrical gear. But he saw it would cost hundreds of pounds to rework the whole installation, so he decided not to report it.
blaktoof wrote: My last home was in Pennsylvania, our water and gas meter were inside the basement of our home. So there are parts of the US where older buildings have utilities on the inside. We had bi yearly inspections, not a big deal.
Interesting that. I doubt they could send you to jail though, just shut off your service.
d-usa wrote: This might very well be a junk statistic and I have no idea where I even heard it so I'm just gonna repeat it in the form of a question:
Did most of the recent mass shootings involve items (weapons, magazines, etc) that used to fall under the assault weapon ban?
An assault rifle is a select fire rifle, only available to the government and Mexican cartels. With certain expensive licenses involving intensive checks one could get one that was made prior to a certain date (I think 1980 but I'm just guessing). Since the 1930s and the BAR (gangs occasionally would use one including the Barrow gang) , I am unaware of any assault rifle ever used in a crime.
As to the ban on scary looking guns, I think the only instance was Aurora.
d-usa wrote: This might very well be a junk statistic and I have no idea where I even heard it so I'm just gonna repeat it in the form of a question:
Did most of the recent mass shootings involve items (weapons, magazines, etc) that used to fall under the assault weapon ban?
Hassan at Ft Hood: Pistols Recent shooting in Oregon: Pistol VA Tech shooting: Pistols SC Church shooting: Pistol Sandy Hook: AR 15 (would it have been banned? Depends, the ban stopped new weapons from being bought had zero effect on existing weapons/pre-ban weapons) Colorado movie theater: Pistol, shotgun and AR15 Most of the 'mass shootings' (defined as 4 or more folks including shooter): Pistols
One statistic I heard (and admittedly cannot verify) is that in all the recent big mass shootings (not the 4 person definition), the shooter came from a fatherless household (via divorce or single mother).
One statistic I heard (and admittedly cannot verify) is that in all the recent big mass shootings (not the 4 person definition), the shooter came from a fatherless household (via divorce or single mother).
I never caught that before. Thats a scary thought.
d-usa wrote: So no "high-capacity" magazines and restricted semi-automatic weapons purchased after the expiration of the ban?
The ban did not ban any magazines, so they would not be relevant.
As for rifles, I have no idea when they were made. Even during the ban you could legally buy and sell pre-ban manufactured weapons. I'll assume the rifles mentioned were all new and post-ban manufacture. Makes no difference in my mind as enough pistols were used that there is no indication some gak bag intent on killing a feth load of people would not have used them if a rifle was not available. Or that the gak bag would not have gotten a pre-ban rifle if the ban still existed.
Especially in the Sandy Hook killings, that crazy fether was willing to cap his mother in order to gun up. Instead of leaving the shotgun in the car he would have brought it with him. Or used pistols. At the ranges he was shooting he didn't need a rifle.
d-usa wrote: So no "high-capacity" magazines and restricted semi-automatic weapons purchased after the expiration of the ban?
The ban did not ban any magazines, so they would not be relevant.
It actually did:
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 TITLE XI--FIREARMS Subtitle A--Assault Weapons SEC. 110103. BAN OF LARGE CAPACITY AMMUNITION FEEDING DEVICES. (a) PROHIBITION- Section 922 of title 18, United States Code, as amended by section 110102(a), is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection: `(w)(1) Except as provided in paragraph (2), it shall be unlawful for a person to transfer or possess a large capacity ammunition feeding device. `(2) Paragraph (1) shall not apply to the possession or transfer of any large capacity ammunition feeding device otherwise lawfully possessed on or before the date of the enactment of this subsection.
(b) DEFINITION OF LARGE CAPACITY AMMUNITION FEEDING DEVICE- Section 921(a) of title 18, United States Code, as amended by section 110102(b), is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph: `(31) The term `large capacity ammunition feeding device'-- `(A) means a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device manufactured after the date of enactment of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition
As for rifles, I have no idea when they were made. Even during the ban you could legally buy and sell pre-ban manufactured weapons. I'll assume the rifles mentioned were all new and post-ban manufacture. Makes no difference in my mind as enough pistols were used that there is no indication some gak bag intent on killing a feth load of people would not have used them if a rifle was not available. Or that the gak bag would not have gotten a pre-ban rifle if the ban still existed.
Especially in the Sandy Hook killings, that crazy fether was willing to cap his mother in order to gun up. Instead of leaving the shotgun in the car he would have brought it with him. Or used pistols. At the ranges he was shooting he didn't need a rifle.
And plenty of kids without fathers don't grow up to shoot up schools either.
I never said it would have made a difference, but I was wondering if stuff that used to be banned was used.
d-usa wrote: So no "high-capacity" magazines and restricted semi-automatic weapons purchased after the expiration of the ban?
The ban did not ban any magazines, so they would not be relevant.
It actually did:
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994
TITLE XI--FIREARMS
Subtitle A--Assault Weapons
SEC. 110103. BAN OF LARGE CAPACITY AMMUNITION FEEDING DEVICES.
(a) PROHIBITION- Section 922 of title 18, United States Code, as amended by section 110102(a), is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection:
`(w)(1) Except as provided in paragraph (2), it shall be unlawful for a person to transfer or possess a large capacity ammunition feeding device.
`(2) Paragraph (1) shall not apply to the possession or transfer of any large capacity ammunition feeding device otherwise lawfully possessed on or before the date of the enactment of this subsection.
(b) DEFINITION OF LARGE CAPACITY AMMUNITION FEEDING DEVICE- Section 921(a) of title 18, United States Code, as amended by section 110102(b), is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph:
`(31) The term `large capacity ammunition feeding device'--
`(A) means a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device manufactured after the date of enactment of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition
I was actually about to edit/correct that. The problem is there were millions and millions of magazines already in existence and they were never hard to get (hence my not remembering correctly). AR-15 magazines did not even go up in price much though it was harder to find some for my HK.
I also didn't mention, you could buy almost ALL 'assault rifles' new, as manufacturers produced models with 'sportsman stocks', removed muzzle flash hiders and bayonet lugs, and shipped them with a 5 round magazine. Ugly damned guns, but you could buy a regular stock (not illegal until you put it on the rifle) and as mentioned, 'high capacity' (actually NORMAL capacity) magazines were still plentiful.
blaktoof wrote: My last home was in Pennsylvania, our water and gas meter were inside the basement of our home. So there are parts of the US where older buildings have utilities on the inside. We had bi yearly inspections, not a big deal.
Interesting that. I doubt they could send you to jail though, just shut off your service.
Yep they just shut off service if you don't let them inspect, they give you a huge window of time to pick however, iirc we could pick pretty much any day two weeks out to 3 months out.
Getting your gas shut off when most houses run off radiators for heat in the winter in PA is no joke however.
d-usa wrote: So no "high-capacity" magazines and restricted semi-automatic weapons purchased after the expiration of the ban?
There was that bank robbery and shootout with the criminals using assault rifles, "cop killer" rounds, body army, and such.
But they just wanted to steal cash and not kill people for religious, crazy, or terrorist reasons.
Capitalists, really.
Not a 'mass shooting', only two deaths (seems 4 is the Magic Number), both perps (one suicide, one capped by cops and bled out). And the perps were using fully automatic weapons (illegally modified).
You are eroding people's rights for no other purpose than cultural realignment,
Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.
However, compromising the individual's rights for the good of the community as a whole is pretty much exactly how it's supposed to work. Individual rights should only apply so far as they don't cause issues for the rest of the community.
You are eroding people's rights for no other purpose than cultural realignment,
Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.
However, compromising the individual's rights for the good of the community as a whole is pretty much exactly how it's supposed to work. Individual rights should only apply so far as they don't cause issues for the rest of the community.
The issue is that we don't actually have a mass shooting problem in the US, regardless of what the media and politicians claim. Per 100k, your odds of being killed in a mass shooting are lower than in other European countries with much stricter gun laws. In fact, your odds of being killed in a mass shooting are only slightly higher than the odds of being struck by lightning.
It's a non-problem, given the millions of gun owners in the US who do nothing wrong.
You are eroding people's rights for no other purpose than cultural realignment,
Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.
However, compromising the individual's rights for the good of the community as a whole is pretty much exactly how it's supposed to work. Individual rights should only apply so far as they don't cause issues for the rest of the community.
That's a very European attitude. The US is pretty firmly founded on the idea that the exact opposite is true, that government exists precisely to protect individual rights from being taken away by the community.
The examples are a few pages back, whembley was talking about it from his side's point of view. Now, if we're just rehashing concepts we've already covered...
NuggzTheNinja wrote: The issue is that we don't actually have a mass shooting problem in the US, regardless of what the media and politicians claim. Per 100k, your odds of being killed in a mass shooting are lower than in other European countries with much stricter gun laws. In fact, your odds of being killed in a mass shooting are only slightly higher than the odds of being struck by lightning.
It's a non-problem, given the millions of gun owners in the US who do nothing wrong.
'Well, sure, your child was shot in the head. But it's ok, the odds of mass shootings happening here are about the same as being struck by lightning!'
I'm sure that's a massive comfort to victims' families.
NuggzTheNinja wrote: The issue is that we don't actually have a mass shooting problem in the US, regardless of what the media and politicians claim. Per 100k, your odds of being killed in a mass shooting are lower than in other European countries with much stricter gun laws. In fact, your odds of being killed in a mass shooting are only slightly higher than the odds of being struck by lightning.
It's a non-problem, given the millions of gun owners in the US who do nothing wrong.
'Well, sure, your child was shot in the head. But it's ok, the odds of mass shootings happening here are about the same as being struck by lightning!'
I'm sure that's a massive comfort to victims' families.
I"m sure it isn't. But that doesn't mean we should enact legislation for the feelz.
'Well, sure, your child was shot in the head. But it's ok, the odds of mass shootings happening here are about the same as being struck by lightning!'
I'm sure that's a massive comfort to victims' families.
Well if the local dingos could carry off children like your Australian version, we wouldn't need to. So far we've only developed chupacabra, and when we found out it liked chickens and not children, that plan just fizzled out.
motyak wrote: The examples are a few pages back, whembley was talking about it from his side's point of view. Now, if we're just rehashing concepts we've already covered...
Unfortunately whembley's examples are presented in a very misleading way; perhaps you've got other better ones?
It's possible that we are talking about different posts. I was referring to the following post that's actually from a different thread and perhaps it's the example motyak meant.
Looking at that example you can see the number of incidents is mostly one or two for all the other countries in the chosen time frame. That can make a comparison of the rates quite problematic, since similar data for any other five year interval will change the ranking dramatically. It gets better if you combine the data for all the displayed european countries or accumulate the data for much longer periods.
Ouze wrote: It only works within 6 inches, though.
It never occurred to me how sexual synapse was until now.
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Frazzled wrote: Interesting that. I doubt they could send you to jail though, just shut off your service.
There's loads of things that you could potentially be sent for jail for, if you decide to be an obstructive ass for long enough. Hell, you can get sent to jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses, if you really set yourself to be difficult enough, long enough.
That actually ends up being another pretty good reason that mandatory safes and inspections won't work. It would almost certainly be seen as a direct threat by loads of people, and they'd probably attempt all kinds of passive and active means to resist. To which government would have to respond, and so on. At the very least you'd end up with a whole lot of people dragged before courts, and maybe even some serving time for contempt. A whole lot of court resources, and a lot of otherwise productive, law abiding citizens with records, over a law that really doesn't do very much.
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Frazzled wrote: An assault rifle is a select fire rifle, only available to the government and Mexican cartels. With certain expensive licenses involving intensive checks one could get one that was made prior to a certain date (I think 1980 but I'm just guessing). Since the 1930s and the BAR (gangs occasionally would use one including the Barrow gang) , I am unaware of any assault rifle ever used in a crime.
As to the ban on scary looking guns, I think the only instance was Aurora.
I think they were used by quite a lot of the depression era gangs. And I believe most of the BARs weren't purchased (even through secondary sources), but stolen from Federal armouries, or smuggled out of them. Clyde Barrow made a habit of regularly raiding armouries, which even though I know it's true just sounds so ridiculous. What sort of a government can't keep it's own guns secure from one minimally successful bankrobber?
Anyhow, it leads me to wonder why they fell out of use, if it wasn't because of their restriction on the civilian market? Better armed police maybe (the FBI and lots of local police units ordered Brownings and Thompsons of their own)? My thinking is that a Browning is great as it allows you to dominate an area no matter what police arrive. Especially if you combine that with the old trick of just needing to reach state lines to be safe. But if police are going to arrive with big guns of their own, and are now capable of continuing pursuit over state lines, the best method for a heist is to get in and out long before there's any police on the scene.
The Bank of America shootout shows how badly getting all geared up works for the bank robbers, these days.
Dunno. It's an interesting question.
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CptJake wrote: One statistic I heard (and admittedly cannot verify) is that in all the recent big mass shootings (not the 4 person definition), the shooter came from a fatherless household (via divorce or single mother).
Well I guess it isn't as stupid as blaming it on video games.
Anyhow, all of the rest of us in the developed world have single parent households as well.
In 2015, there have been 32 mass shootings (defined as 4 or more people killed) in the US, there's been 298 total, but in those cases 3 or fewer people were killed. There's been 1 in all of Europe this year.
Note that the wiki article for Europe will require going to its attached pages for other mass-shooting events that include school, workplace or domestic locations. The first list includes only partly-public area shootings.
NuggzTheNinja wrote: The issue is that we don't actually have a mass shooting problem in the US, regardless of what the media and politicians claim. Per 100k, your odds of being killed in a mass shooting are lower than in other European countries with much stricter gun laws.
Yeah, I've seen this argument bandied about. It's a pretty stupid argument, to be honest. It either ignores national differences and looks at all countries, whether developed or not, or it includes countries like Mexico as a developed country, or it considers not being the absolute worst developed in any given year as being just fine. For instance, there's one argument floating around that Norway was worse than the USA over a four year period, just because of the Anders Breivik massacre.
So basically people can avoid the reality by either pretending it makes sense to compare the US to Mexico, or by reassuring themselves that because there's 40 or 50 developed countries in the world, in any given point one of them will probably have suffered a horrible tragedy to bump the US off the top of the table for a little while.
[It's a non-problem, given the millions of gun owners in the US who do nothing wrong.
Mass shootings are a minor problem. Shootings, which claim about 10,000 lives a year, are quite a major problem.
Keep in mind that shootingtracker.com data is...somewhat suspect, and has included things like 11 year old's with pellet guns (resulting in no injuries of note) as a "mass shooting", and the operator of the site has a rather, colorful, background in (their words) "propaganda".
NuggzTheNinja wrote: [It's a non-problem, given the millions of gun owners in the US who do nothing wrong.
Mass shootings are a minor problem. Shootings, which claim about 10,000 lives a year, are quite a major problem.
10,000 lives is only a couple of thousandths of 1% of the population of the US. How can something that is victimizing a tiny fraction of the population be classified as a major problem?
Prestor Jon wrote: 10,000 lives is only a couple of thousandths of 1% of the population of the US. How can something that is victimizing a tiny fraction of the population be classified as a major problem?
Because it's 10,000 people. Holy gak did I really have to type that?
If there was a kind of cancer that killed 10,000 people a year, would you claim that researching methods of prevention and treatment wasn't needed because it isn't a major problem?
Prestor Jon wrote: 10,000 lives is only a couple of thousandths of 1% of the population of the US. How can something that is victimizing a tiny fraction of the population be classified as a major problem?
Because 10000 people is a fairly large number of people, regardless of how large a percentage it is of the total?
NuggzTheNinja wrote: [It's a non-problem, given the millions of gun owners in the US who do nothing wrong.
Mass shootings are a minor problem. Shootings, which claim about 10,000 lives a year, are quite a major problem.
10,000 lives is only a couple of thousandths of 1% of the population of the US. How can something that is victimizing a tiny fraction of the population be classified as a major problem?
Hrm, I would say it's an issue, but more fundamentally than a gun issue, it's a socio-economic and cultural issue where violence is just more prevalent within the US than in most similarly developed nations.
Prestor Jon wrote: 10,000 lives is only a couple of thousandths of 1% of the population of the US. How can something that is victimizing a tiny fraction of the population be classified as a major problem?
Because it's 10,000 people. Holy gak did I really have to type that?
If there was a kind of cancer that killed 10,000 people a year, would you claim that researching methods of prevention and treatment wasn't needed because it isn't a major problem?
I still argue the principle of dealing with the bigger problem of 83,000 people a year dying from alcohol related causes. Yes, there is no denying 10,000 people a year is bad. 83, 000, though, should be addressed with all the vigor the gun control lobby and liberal news media uses. The thing is, though, a large amount of the population likes drinking and labor under the assumption that drinking won't affect them, even though as many people per year are killed by drunk drivers as are murdered in gun related violence.
In my mind, it all comes down to a mistaken perception of power.
Vaktathi wrote: Hrm, I would say it's an issue, but more fundamentally than a gun issue, it's a socio-economic and cultural issue where violence is just more prevalent within the US than in most similarly developed nations.
Actually, in terms of crimes per capita or violent crimes per capita, the US is actually pretty middle of the road. It's just murder where it stands way outside the rest of the developed world.
I mean, I certainly agree that culture is an issue (though seperating gun culture from gun saturation is a bit of a chicken and the egg). But it's way too simplistic to just assume the US is just a more violent, more criminal place in general, because it isn't.
Vaktathi wrote: Keep in mind that shootingtracker.com data is...somewhat suspect, and has included things like 11 year old's with pellet guns (resulting in no injuries of note) as a "mass shooting", and the operator of the site has a rather, colorful, background in (their words) "propaganda".
Which I discounted from my tally, since I only included (as I mentioned) events with 4 or more killed.
Relapse wrote: I still argue the principle of dealing with the bigger problem of 83,000 people a year dying from alcohol related causes. Yes, there is no denying 10,000 people a year is bad. 83, 000, though, should be addressed with all the vigor the gun control lobby and liberal news media uses. The thing is, though, a large amount of the population likes drinking and labor under the assumption that drinking won't affect them, even though as many people per year are killed by drunk drivers as are murdered in gun related violence.
Yes, we've had this conversation a bunch of times before. And I'll be honest, I'm kind of disappointed you're still repeating the exact same thoughts you had when you first raised this issue.
For starters, most people don't drink in the mistaken assumption that it won't negatively affect them. Tell a person that that drinking, epecially binge drinking, negatively impacts their long term health, and they'll likely say 'duh, you patronising dumbass'. Instead, it becomes an issue of each person balancing that long term health consequence against the fun they're going to have in having some drinks.
And that's how any of these issues need to be judged. Does the amount of fun people get out of the product justify the harm? And if it isn't justified, is that negative net result sufficient to justify government response? So for heroin, for instance, we've made a call that the harm vastly outweighs the benefit, and by enough that we believe the drug needs to be banned entirely. For drinking we think its a much closer thing, so we've put in place some laws and restrictions, but people are still able to drink. Guns are similar to drugs, with some laws and restrictions, but for the most part if you want a gun you can get it.
That's the basis on which everything is assessed. Not by ranking it against some other death toll, or anything else like that, but by comparing the amount of benefit in each product to its harm.
Vaktathi wrote: Keep in mind that shootingtracker.com data is...somewhat suspect, and has included things like 11 year old's with pellet guns (resulting in no injuries of note) as a "mass shooting", and the operator of the site has a rather, colorful, background in (their words) "propaganda".
Which I discounted from my tally, since I only included (as I mentioned) events with 4 or more killed.
Right, I just wanted to caution about its use as a source is all.
Prestor Jon wrote: 10,000 lives is only a couple of thousandths of 1% of the population of the US. How can something that is victimizing a tiny fraction of the population be classified as a major problem?
Because it's 10,000 people. Holy gak did I really have to type that?
If there was a kind of cancer that killed 10,000 people a year, would you claim that researching methods of prevention and treatment wasn't needed because it isn't a major problem?
They'd likely just find some way to consider it a moral shortcoming of those who died and write the situation off as being better off without without them regardless of whatever effort it took to cure and whatever value the people in question provided.
sebster wrote: And that's how any of these issues need to be judged. Does the amount of fun people get out of the product justify the harm? And if it isn't justified, is that negative net result sufficient to justify government response? So for heroin, for instance, we've made a call that the harm vastly outweighs the benefit, and by enough that we believe the drug needs to be banned entirely. For drinking we think its a much closer thing, so we've put in place some laws and restrictions, but people are still able to drink. Guns are similar to drugs, with some laws and restrictions, but for the most part if you want a gun you can get it.
That's the basis on which everything is assessed. Not by ranking it against some other death toll, or anything else like that, but by comparing the amount of benefit in each product to its harm.
I wish this was true. But given the history of anti-marijuana legislation, and the lack of scientific rigor in declaring it as bad as heroin, I don't.
Moreover, it's a bit tangential here, anyway. Any significant change starts off as a constitutional problem for the US. It's not an easy process.. And that's before you consider the extra (political, emotional) hurdle of trying to amend our Bill of Rights.
Any lesser change isn't likely to have changed this outcome. I live in California, with the most stringent gun control laws in the country. We have the safe gun storage laws already. If a parent isn't storing their shotgun safely with an 11, year old in the house, adding a minor criminal sanction isn't really likely to compel smarter behavior; it just adds a little to what you can charge the parents with.
Relapse wrote: I still argue the principle of dealing with the bigger problem of 83,000 people a year dying from alcohol related causes.
Why does it have to be one or the other?
I agree, we could talk about both, but I have never seen anyone on these threads ever muster any concern over the far larger number of victims of alcohol as gun violence. Even if we factor in suicides and accidents, alcohol still kills three times as many people, yet nary a thing is said about it to the degree gun deaths are spoken of.
Relapse wrote: I still argue the principle of dealing with the bigger problem of 83,000 people a year dying from alcohol related causes. Yes, there is no denying 10,000 people a year is bad. 83, 000, though, should be addressed with all the vigor the gun control lobby and liberal news media uses. The thing is, though, a large amount of the population likes drinking and labor under the assumption that drinking won't affect them, even though as many people per year are killed by drunk drivers as are murdered in gun related violence.
Yes, we've had this conversation a bunch of times before. And I'll be honest, I'm kind of disappointed you're still repeating the exact same thoughts you had when you first raised this issue.
For starters, most people don't drink in the mistaken assumption that it won't negatively affect them. Tell a person that that drinking, epecially binge drinking, negatively impacts their long term health, and they'll likely say 'duh, you patronising dumbass'. Instead, it becomes an issue of each person balancing that long term health consequence against the fun they're going to have in having some drinks.
And that's how any of these issues need to be judged. Does the amount of fun people get out of the product justify the harm? And if it isn't justified, is that negative net result sufficient to justify government response? So for heroin, for instance, we've made a call that the harm vastly outweighs the benefit, and by enough that we believe the drug needs to be banned entirely. For drinking we think its a much closer thing, so we've put in place some laws and restrictions, but people are still able to drink. Guns are similar to drugs, with some laws and restrictions, but for the most part if you want a gun you can get it.
That's the basis on which everything is assessed. Not by ranking it against some other death toll, or anything else like that, but by comparing the amount of benefit in each product to its harm.
You citing the number 10,000 as something you didn't even believe you had to type about in relation to explaining how awful the toll is. Then you say we should weigh the benefit to the harm in apparently trying to minimize 83,000 people a year dying.
So you are saying two out three domestic abuse cases are a benefit of alcohol, since it's involved in that many, or all of the lost jobs and broken marriages, and health problems are benefits? Prohibition won't solve it though, since we'd just have a repeat of what went on in the 20's.
Relapse wrote: ... yet nary a thing is said about it to the degree gun deaths are spoken of.
Probably because alcohol-related deaths tend to involve fewer people wandering into schools and slaughtering children with it.
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Relapse wrote: So you are saying two out three domestic abuse cases are a benefit of alcohol, since it's involved in that many, or all of the lost jobs and broken marriages, and health problems are benefits?
Relapse wrote: ... yet nary a thing is said about it to the degree gun deaths are spoken of.
Probably because alcohol-related deaths tend to involve fewer people wandering into schools and slaughtering children with it.
True, alcoholism just harms exponentially more children within the confines of the home. Since all the children who suffer emotional/mental/physical abuse at the hands of alcoholics don't end up lying dead in a classroom its OK for society to ignore the problem.
Relapse wrote: I still argue the principle of dealing with the bigger problem of 83,000 people a year dying from alcohol related causes.
Why does it have to be one or the other?
Of course we can and should try to solve more than one problem at a time. That being said, if if the rationale for action is "saving lives", then why aren't we having a huge national push to reduce heart disease instead? That's way easier to work on, doesn't involve complex political realities, and kills way, way more people.
It's about trying to save lives, isn't it? What's wrong with calling into question our priorities? If my house is on fire, I might point out that we don't need to be dusting the bookcases.
This is a legitimate question. I'm not trying to be snarky or intentionally obtuse; but if the reason we need to do something about people dying from gun violence is to protect life... isn't it a bit misplaced, in that gun violence in general and spree killings in specific are statistically very rare and incredibly rare, respectively?
Relapse wrote: I still argue the principle of dealing with the bigger problem of 83,000 people a year dying from alcohol related causes.
Why does it have to be one or the other?
Of course we can and should try to solve more than one problem at a time. That being said, if if the rationale for action is "saving lives", then why aren't we having a huge national push to reduce heart disease instead? That's way easier to work on, doesn't involve complex political realities, and kills way, way more people.
It's about trying to save lives, isn't it? What's wrong with calling into question our priorities? If my house is on fire, I might point out that we don't need to be dusting the bookcases.
There is justifiably already a bigger push to eliminate heart disease, though.
In this case, gun violence is the bookshelf. We already understand prohibition doesn't work by trying to throw the breaks on a Nation's
culture, heritage, or any other intergral aspect of that society. All that ends up happening is that otherwise law abiding people are suddenly criminals and accomplices to the murders that happen so they can have their desires met, be it alcohol in the prohibition era, drugs from Mexico and SA nowadays, or possibly guns in some future time.
Prestor Jon wrote: 10,000 lives is only a couple of thousandths of 1% of the population of the US. How can something that is victimizing a tiny fraction of the population be classified as a major problem?
Because 10000 people is a fairly large number of people, regardless of how large a percentage it is of the total?
No it isn't. 10,000 people is a miniscule amount of people. It's somewhere between 0.002 and 0.003 of 1% of the population of the country. There are tens of millions of gun owners and hundreds of millions of guns in the country and only a few thousandths of one percent of the country are killed by guns annually. Five times as many people will dies of cancer this year in the state of California alone then will be murdered by guns in the entire country.
10,000 is a lot more than zero sure and every murder is a tragedy for the family and friends of the victim but 10,000 people on a national scale isn't anywhere close to being a major problem.
We're not going to enact drastic fundamental changes to the US Constitution, multiple state constitutions, overturn SCOTUS decisions and change the culture across large swathes of the country because 99.997% of the people aren't getting murdered with guns.
Janthkin wrote: I wish this was true. But given the history of anti-marijuana legislation, and the lack of scientific rigor in declaring it as bad as heroin, I don't.
Good point. To clarify, I'm not saying these assessments are done perfectly, in some kind of Vulcan logic with all facts perfectly understood. I'm just saying that people take individual products, and make a personal assessment about how much they think people gain from the product against how much they think people lose, and go from there.
So it doesn't mean we always, or even often, produce the correct level of laws for any given product. But it is still the basic framework for how we try and determine what the amount should be.
Moreover, it's a bit tangential here, anyway. Any significant change starts off as a constitutional problem for the US. It's not an easy process.. And that's before you consider the extra (political, emotional) hurdle of trying to amend our Bill of Rights.
Sort of. That particular clause is pretty vague. I mean, lots of people are certain that it says one thing or another, but you'll note all those people believe it clearly says exactly what their own opinion on guns just happens to be. There's not many people out there saying 'oh I wish we could ban guns, but the 2nd says what it says'. Nor are there many people saying 'I believe gun ownership should be a personal right, but I think the second was only really talking about militias'.
My point, basically, is that if people start to decide that guns need to be more heavily controlled, then that belief will flow through politics and in to how the constitution is read. This has already happened, but in reverse, as a change in beliefs about guns at the grassroots level flowed through to the SC and produced the eventual rulings in favour of protection of private ownership.
Whether or not we'll see a change in people's beliefs in any of our lifetimes is a whole other conversation. Whether we should is another question entirely
If a parent isn't storing their shotgun safely with an 11, year old in the house, adding a minor criminal sanction isn't really likely to compel smarter behavior; it just adds a little to what you can charge the parents with.
Yeah, this is a good point. Any parent with the foresight to want to prevent punishment for an unstored gun alreaady has the foresight to avoid losing their child to an unstored gun.
Relapse wrote: I agree, we could talk about both, but I have never seen anyone on these threads ever muster any concern over the far larger number of victims of alcohol as gun violence. Even if we factor in suicides and accidents, alcohol still kills three times as many people, yet nary a thing is said about it to the degree gun deaths are spoken of.
Yay! I was waiting for you to trot this one out again!
People talk about guns because many people see it as a big issue. People don't talk about alcohol, or swimming pool covers, or cars, or medicine bottles, or any of the other red herrings people like to bring up because they don't see them as big issues; and they are all areas where, regardless of how you feel about them, work is being done to make these already statistically (for amount and duration of contact) things safer.
As I always say, if you feel strongly about any of these things, go start a thread... one which is not a thinly veiled "waaaaa! People are mean about guns but look at all these things which are super deadly that no one cares about because they hate guns and America!" and I'm sure you will get a good discussion (this time...).
True, alcoholism just harms exponentially more children within the confines of the home. Since all the children who suffer emotional/mental/physical abuse at the hands of alcoholics don't end up lying dead in a classroom its OK for society to ignore the problem.
Except that society isn't ignoring the problem.
Can't speak for the US, obviously, but there has been a lot of work done in the last couple of decades here to attempt to change peoples' attitudes towards alcohol. Just banning it wouldn't be likely to work, and would be a hugely unpopular move... but educating people about the dangers of it, and changing people's perception towards 'appropriate' usage of it can and does have an impact.
Prestor Jon wrote: No it isn't. 10,000 people is a miniscule amount of people..
If you honestly think that, then we're unlikely to reach any sort of agreement here.
Because I can't even comprehend the mindset that can view ten thousand deaths as insignificant. The fact that there are a lot more than 10000 people still alive doesn't in any way make that number any smaller.
Relapse wrote: You citing the number 10,000 as something you didn't even believe you had to type about in relation to explaining how awful the toll is.
Yeah, and if anyone said they didn't think 80,000 deaths to alcohol was a problem so why should anything be done about it, I'd type the exact same thing.
So you are saying two out three domestic abuse cases are a benefit of alcohol, since it's involved in that many, or all of the lost jobs and broken marriages, and health problems are benefits?
No, of course not. Don't make up stupid accusations. Obviously those are costs.
The benefits are the millions of people who go home and have a quiet drink, and enjoy that drink. The benefits are the millions who find alcohol helps them enjoy a night out. The benefits are the millions who enjoy being in a slightly looser frame of mind (or a much looser frame of mind, in some cases).
Now you, as we've estabished before, give those benefits. Which is fine, that's your opinion. Lots of other people hold different opinions. And so everyone weighs up those considerations, and decides what course of action they think is best for a given product. And then democracy works, more or less over the long term, to establish a set of policies that more or less is an aggregate of those individual points of view.
The point, to repeat it once again, is that each product is measured in terms of its own benefits and costs. So something with a lot of benefits and a lot of costs is measured by itself. Something else with smaller benefits and smaller costs is measured by itself.
What you shouldn't do, what you try to do all the time in these threads, is to try and isolate purely the costs of each product, and then rank products in terms of only those costs. All you end up with is a list of products more or less in order of how commonly they're used in society, with absolutely no understanding of whether the product represents an overall benefit or harm to society.
Relapse wrote: I agree, we could talk about both, but I have never seen anyone on these threads ever muster any concern over the far larger number of victims of alcohol as gun violence. Even if we factor in suicides and accidents, alcohol still kills three times as many people, yet nary a thing is said about it to the degree gun deaths are spoken of.
Yay! I was waiting for you to trot this one out again!
People talk about guns because many people see it as a big issue. People don't talk about alcohol, or swimming pool covers, or cars, or medicine bottles, or any of the other red herrings people like to bring up because they don't see them as big issues; and they are all areas where, regardless of how you feel about them, work is being done to make these already statistically (for amount and duration of contact) things safer.
As I always say, if you feel strongly about any of these things, go start a thread... one which is not a thinly veiled "waaaaa! People are mean about guns but look at all these things which are super deadly that no one cares about because they hate guns and America!" and I'm sure you will get a good discussion (this time...).
How ever you want to color it, far more people die from alcohol than guns, and to put Sebster's point in, far more people die of heart disease than both of the first two. Guns are the things that get people all piss in their pants scared, though. Just seems funny to me, especially in light of people throwing around that 10, 000 killed yearly number and minimizing the far larger number of other kinds of deaths that are largely preventable.
Ouze wrote: This is a legitimate question. I'm not trying to be snarky or intentionally obtuse; but if the reason we need to do something about people dying from gun violence is to protect life... isn't it a bit misplaced, in that gun violence in general and spree killings in specific are statistically very rare and incredibly rare, respectively?
Gun violence is not uncommon. Again, 10,000 is a big number. Spree killing is relatively rare, and so are gun accidents.
Really, it comes down to what makes it on the TV. The world would be a different place if the news just reported on statistical studies - but it runs on stories of direct personal horror, and the more unusual the more it will be covered. So guns get an unusual focus, but then terrorism is an even bigger story, and even in it's worst year that was dwarfed by gun murder. And because people think what's on the news must be what's most important, people end up with a really weird view of the world.
Relapse wrote: Guns are the things that get people all piss in their pants scared, though.
Indeed. It's almost as if 'deaths from gun-related violence' and 'deaths as a result of alcohol' are two completely separate issues...
You seem to be assuming that people complaining about gun-related violence, in a thread discussing gun-related violence, are somehow blind to any other danger to people's health. The more likely possibility is that in a thread related to gun-related violence, people are discussing gun-related violence.
Relapse wrote: You citing the number 10,000 as something you didn't even believe you had to type about in relation to explaining how awful the toll is.
Yeah, and if anyone said they didn't think 80,000 deaths to alcohol was a problem so why should anything be done about it, I'd type the exact same thing.
So you are saying two out three domestic abuse cases are a benefit of alcohol, since it's involved in that many, or all of the lost jobs and broken marriages, and health problems are benefits?
No, of course not. Don't make up stupid accusations. Obviously those are costs.
The benefits are the millions of people who go home and have a quiet drink, and enjoy that drink. The benefits are the millions who find alcohol helps them enjoy a night out. The benefits are the millions who enjoy being in a slightly looser frame of mind (or a much looser frame of mind, in some cases).
Now you, as we've estabished before, give those benefits. Which is fine, that's your opinion. Lots of other people hold different opinions. And so everyone weighs up those considerations, and decides what course of action they think is best for a given product. And then democracy works, more or less over the long term, to establish a set of policies that more or less is an aggregate of those individual points of view.
The point, to repeat it once again, is that each product is measured in terms of its own benefits and costs. So something with a lot of benefits and a lot of costs is measured by itself. Something else with smaller benefits and smaller costs is measured by itself.
What you shouldn't do, what you try to do all the time in these threads, is to try and isolate purely the costs of each product, and then rank products in terms of only those costs. All you end up with is a list of products more or less in order of how commonly they're used in society, with absolutely no understanding of whether the product represents an overall benefit or harm to society.
Now we get closer to the heart of the matter. People find relaxation and pleasure in shooting guns, yet find themselves under attack in the media and here on Dakka because they like guns.
To let you know, I don't own guns and never felt the need to have one in the house with my kids. Happily in this country, that is my own decision and not something forced on me.
Relapse wrote: Guns are the things that get people all piss in their pants scared, though.
Indeed. It's almost as if 'deaths from gun-related violence' and 'deaths as a result of alcohol' are two completely separate issues...
You seem to be assuming that people complaining about gun-related violence, in a thread discussing gun-related violence, are somehow blind to any other danger to people's health. The more likely possibility is that in a thread related to gun-related violence, people are discussing gun-related violence.
Dead is dead. It's just one kills far more than the other.
Prestor Jon wrote: No it isn't. 10,000 people is a miniscule amount of people. It's somewhere between 0.002 and 0.003 of 1% of the population of the country.
Were you posting arguments like that when 3,000 people died in the Twin Towers?
If you could drag your murder rate down to something closer the rest of the developed world, so the total deaths would be about 6,000 or 7,000 less than they are now, would you say 'nah, not worth it, 10,000 is a tiny number'.
10,000 is a lot more than zero sure and every murder is a tragedy for the family and friends of the victim but 10,000 people on a national scale isn't anywhere close to being a major problem.
And here you're falling for the same basic logic fail as Relapse. Look at the number, decide it is small by some vague standard, and then just declare that nothing must be done. You just completely missed the step where you figure out what might be done, and what that would achieve and cost.
Now, it is possible to decide that the possible solutions might cost too much and acheive too little, that's where I'm at personally. But whatever your conclusions, at least you'd have the beginnings of an argument that made sense.
We're not going to enact drastic fundamental changes to the US Constitution, multiple state constitutions, overturn SCOTUS decisions and change the culture across large swathes of the country because 99.997% of the people aren't getting murdered with guns.
I don't think you've got any idea how political change works.
Just think about it this way - 50 years ago not even the NRA thought the 2nd Amendment applied to private ownership. But political opinions change, and as they do
insaniak wrote: You seem to be assuming that people complaining about gun-related violence, in a thread discussing gun-related violence, are somehow blind to any other danger to people's health. The more likely possibility is that in a thread related to gun-related violence, people are discussing gun-related violence.
OK, that's a fair answer to my earlier question (though not directed at me).
Honestly, one thing that needs to be dealt with before you can start talking about policy changes is who those 10,000 people are. Yeah, human life is human life, but I think we can all see a pretty clear difference between a gang member shooting another gang member over a drug deal gone bad and someone shooting an innocent victim. Does anyone have any statistics on what percentage of shooting victims were also associated with violent crime and what percentage were law-abiding citizens?
Relapse wrote: How ever you want to color it, far more people die from alcohol than guns, and to put Sebster's point in, far more people die of heart disease than both of the first two. Guns are the things that get people all piss in their pants scared, though. Just seems funny to me, especially in light of people throwing around that 10, 000 killed yearly number and minimizing the far larger number of other kinds of deaths that are largely preventable.
It seems funny to you because you continue to completely fail to understand how people think. And I'm now pretty certain you're doing that on purpose, because it ends with you getting a conclusion you like.
Anyhow, most people drink. They enjoy it. Whether it's a glass of wine with dinner or a shooters until dawn, drinking is across society. When people hear about the dangers of drinking, they weight those warnings against the pleasure they get out of drinking. Maybe they modify their drinking on those warnings, maybe they support more stringent laws against drinking, or maybe they don't.
A little over a third of households in the US own a gun. And of those households, only a minority regularly shoot. The number of people who fire daily or weekly is utterly dwarfed by the number of people who drink daily or weekly.
That's the basic arithmetic of alcohol vs guns. A thing that is used daily or weekly by most people, against a thing that is used far more sparingly by a minority. Do you still honestly struggle to understand why people treat the negative consequences of each quite differently.
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Relapse wrote: Now we get closer to the heart of the matter. People find relaxation and pleasure in shooting guns, yet find themselves under attack in the media and here on Dakka because they like guns.
The only thing that's been close to an attack has been people who put up some extremely dubious arguments getting called on those arguments. That isn't an attack on gun owners, it's an attack on bad arguments. Some anti-gun people put up some fairly average arguments in this thread and other gun threads, and they've been just as 'attacked'.
To let you know, I don't own guns and never felt the need to have one in the house with my kids. Happily in this country, that is my own decision and not something forced on me.
And to let you know, I've had a great time shooting guns in the past, and if I ever get in a place where I've got the time and the money, I'd love to take up shooting as a hobby. And I don't think the
But none of that means people on any side of the debate get to make bad arguments.
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Peregrine wrote: Honestly, one thing that needs to be dealt with before you can start talking about policy changes is who those 10,000 people are. Yeah, human life is human life, but I think we can all see a pretty clear difference between a gang member shooting another gang member over a drug deal gone bad and someone shooting an innocent victim. Does anyone have any statistics on what percentage of shooting victims were also associated with violent crime and what percentage were law-abiding citizens?
Heh, we did seem to get a long way in to this thread without me posting this.
It's a big old list of every murder in the US, by the relationship between the attacker and victim for 2012. There were 871 gangland killings (juvenile and adult). Which can be compred to the 1,339 times that people killed member of their direct family (wife, husband, son, daughter, mother, father, brother or sister). Or the 662 times people killed their boyfriends or girlfriends.
It doesn't give a breakdown on how often guns were used in each of the above relationships, but it is interesting to show how common guns are in each murder motive.
That's good data, but for the sake of clarity I'd like to point out that it includes ALL murders in the US, not just murders committed with guns. The different tables for 2012 disagree slightly on the total number of murders, but about 8,900 of the 12,900 murders were committed with guns. And I suspect the distribution of murder weapons isn't even across all relationships. For example, the murders with poison and arson almost certainly were not cases involving random strangers. How much that matters, I don't know.
There were 871 gangland killings (juvenile and adult).
Well, somewhat more than that if you consider criminal activity in general, not just "killed a rival gang member for no other reason". For example, I bet that a lot of the ~360 murders associated with felony drug charges probably involved a victim that was also involved in crime. And who knows how the "other argument" category breaks down.
But still, it seems like a definite minority of murders involve "no sympathy for you" cases of violent criminals meeting violent ends.
Peregrine wrote: That's good data, but for the sake of clarity I'd like to point out that it includes ALL murders in the US, not just murders committed with guns.
Sure, that's why you can use the two tables in combination to get a pretty good idea of how many murders were committed with guns. It'd be nice if there was breakdown by category, but that's the breaks.
And I suspect the distribution of murder weapons isn't even across all relationships. For example, the murders with poison and arson almost certainly were not cases involving random strangers. How much that matters, I don't know.
While I agree with your point, I'm not sure either of your examples work. If you're setting fire to a building or throwing poison in some food, I'd say there's a much greater chance of killing a stranger. Attacking someone with a bat, not so much.
But that's just me being pedantic, you point is sound, and it's likely that plenty of weapons and crimes won't spread evenly across the relationships.
I guess the thing is that guns are so overwhelmingly used in murder, I think it's likely that it would be the most common weapon in almost all categories.
Well, somewhat more than that if you consider criminal activity in general, not just "killed a rival gang member for no other reason". For example, I bet that a lot of the ~360 murders associated with felony drug charges probably involved a victim that was also involved in crime. And who knows how the "other argument" category breaks down.
Yeah, and there's a pretty good chance a lot of the unknown & relationship unknown killings were probably gang and crime related.
But still, it seems like a definite minority of murders involve "no sympathy for you" cases of violent criminals meeting violent ends.
I think that's the overall conclusion that has to be drawn, yeah.
sebster wrote: While I agree with your point, I'm not sure either of your examples work. If you're setting fire to a building or throwing poison in some food, I'd say there's a much greater chance of killing a stranger. Attacking someone with a bat, not so much.
What comes to mind there is something like burning down your own house with your family inside because you want out of your bad marriage. With something that requires so much preparation you have to either know the person and really want them dead (preferably in a way that lets you collect an insurance check for the "accidental" fire), or be the rare sociopath murderer who kills people just for fun. If, on the other hand, you have something like a case of road rage any murder that happens is probably going to happen immediately with whatever weapons are available. There probably aren't many cases of holding a grudge against the person who cut you off in traffic and burning their house down.
But, as we agree, the numbers are still probably small enough that they don't skew the data enough to significantly impact the overall point. It's just worth noting IMO that there's some ambiguity in the exact numbers when you narrow the focus down to gun control instead of murder prevention in general.
Relapse wrote: I still argue the principle of dealing with the bigger problem of 83,000 people a year dying from alcohol related causes. Yes, there is no denying 10,000 people a year is bad. 83, 000, though, should be addressed with all the vigor the gun control lobby and liberal news media uses. The thing is, though, a large amount of the population likes drinking and labor under the assumption that drinking won't affect them, even though as many people per year are killed by drunk drivers as are murdered in gun related violence. In my mind, it all comes down to a mistaken perception of power.
I think this is a great example of: lies < damned lies < statistics. You are also more likely, I believe, to die putting your socks on, than to be killed by a shark, but that doesn't mean socks are more dangerous than sharks, it just means that hundreds of millions of people put on socks every day, while sharks have the unique advantage of not being where people are ~100% of the time.
You are comparing vastly different things, that are extremely complicated, and you're oversimplifying it to get the result you want. To give you just one example of how the dangers are different: no one recommends wearing safety goggles whilst drinking. If you wanted to honestly compare the 1:1 danger presented by drink driving and guns, you would be better off looking at them when they are being used in a similar context. How dangerous is an out of control driver compared to an out of control shooter? One of the worst DUI incidents I can think of recently, was when Rashad Charjuan Owens drove a stolen car through a crowd of festival goes, killing 4, and injuring more than 20. It was a horrific incident, but it doesn't compare to an incident like Sandy Hook, where 28 people died. To get those kind of numbers from a DUI incident, you have to go all the way back to May 1988, Carrollton, Kentucky. The worst such incident in US history, when Larry Wayne Mahoney, collided with a school bus killing 27 (It's worth noting that fire safety problems aboard the bus played a very significant roll in those deaths). Still not as deadly as the Vagina Tech Massacre: 33.
So I would argue that guns when misused are at least as deadly, if not significantly more deadly than the misuse of vehicles and alcohol combined. However, vehicles and alcohol are used far more frequently, which is why they kill more people. So I will agree with you, it's a more frequent problem, but that doesn't mean it is a more serious problem, or that guns are less deadly, anymore than that means sharks are less deadly than socks.
If anything I think it highlights exactly why we wouldn't want to live in a world where gun incidents are as frequent as DUIs. > >
Relapse wrote: I agree, we could talk about both, but I have never seen anyone on these threads ever muster any concern over the far larger number of victims of alcohol as gun violence. Even if we factor in suicides and accidents, alcohol still kills three times as many people, yet nary a thing is said about it to the degree gun deaths are spoken of.
Yay! I was waiting for you to trot this one out again!
People talk about guns because many people see it as a big issue. People don't talk about alcohol, or swimming pool covers, or cars, or medicine bottles, or any of the other red herrings people like to bring up because they don't see them as big issues; and they are all areas where, regardless of how you feel about them, work is being done to make these already statistically (for amount and duration of contact) things safer.
And NO work is being done to make gun ownership safer?
The fact is, there are a ton of gun safety programs,geared towards adults and youths. In many states getting a basic hunting license requires a gun safety course (or at least passing a gun safety test). As much as folks vilify the NRA, they offer several gun safety programs. So do many other groups. And accidental gun deaths have ben decreasing even as gun ownership increases.
insaniak wrote: Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.
Whereas the US has this as a right
insaniak wrote: However, compromising the individual's rights for the good of the community as a whole is pretty much exactly how it's supposed to work. Individual rights should only apply so far as they don't cause issues for the rest of the community.
To quote Rachel Maddow on the topic of rights;
We have other rights that it could be argued "cause issues for the rest of the community", to borrow your low standard to justify interference. The right not to self incriminate by someone suspected of a crime can cause issues in that someone who committed a crime may escape punishment. Protesters exercising their right to peaceably assemble and inconveniencing others with traffic delays, etc. could also be said to "cause issues". Free speech, the ability to practice your religion, etc. all would suffer under this "don't cause issues for the rest of the community test".
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insaniak wrote: 'Well, sure, your child was shot in the head. But it's ok, the odds of mass shootings happening here are about the same as being struck by lightning!'
I'm sure that's a massive comfort to victims' families.
You mean the things that were often decided upon by a committee vote aren't meant to be voted on?
I guess we should take away every right that was implemented by a vote then since rights aren't meant to be voted on, which I'm almost 100% sure includes your gun rights (and also includes her right to gay marriage).
insaniak wrote: Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.
Whereas the US has this as a right
Trust me, the rest of the world is well aware of that fact. My comment was in response to a specific statement about my rights.
To quote Rachel Maddow on the topic of rights;
That's patently absurd. You have those rights because a bunch of people voted and agreed that you should have them. They're not hardcoded into the bedrock of the universe, and they change as society adapts and grows.
insaniak wrote: Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.
Whereas the US has this as a right
Actually the law allowing something is what a right is. The fact that guns are a protected right in the US, doesn't make them any more of a right than they were in Aus, it just makes them legally more difficult to legislate for.
insaniak wrote: Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.
Whereas the US has this as a right
Actually the law allowing something is what a right is. The fact that guns are a protected right in the US, doesn't make them any more of a right than they were in Aus, it just makes them legally more difficult to legislate for.
You seem to assume rights are granted by the gov't. That would also indicate they can take them away as they see fit.
Our whole constitution was kind of based on the opposite. The people grant the gov't certain powers. I won't argue that a gov't can abuse power and take away rights. It unfortunately happens.
CptJake wrote: You seem to assume rights are granted by the gov't. That would also indicate they can take them away as they see fit.
Our whole constitution was kind of based on the opposite. The people grant the gov't certain powers.
That's just semantic nonsense. A government of the people, represents the people. They are not separate entities. What you're trying to do there, is the argument equivalent of denying that eggs come from chickens, on the basis that chickens come from eggs. Cracking stuff!
Prestor Jon wrote: 10,000 lives is only a couple of thousandths of 1% of the population of the US. How can something that is victimizing a tiny fraction of the population be classified as a major problem?
Because 10000 people is a fairly large number of people, regardless of how large a percentage it is of the total?
No it isn't. 10,000 people is a miniscule amount of people. It's somewhere between 0.002 and 0.003 of 1% of the population of the country. There are tens of millions of gun owners and hundreds of millions of guns in the country and only a few thousandths of one percent of the country are killed by guns annually. Five times as many people will dies of cancer this year in the state of California alone then will be murdered by guns in the entire country.
10,000 is a lot more than zero sure and every murder is a tragedy for the family and friends of the victim but 10,000 people on a national scale isn't anywhere close to being a major problem.
We're not going to enact drastic fundamental changes to the US Constitution, multiple state constitutions, overturn SCOTUS decisions and change the culture across large swathes of the country because 99.997% of the people aren't getting murdered with guns.
A much smaller population got murdered with planned and we got the Patriot Act and 14 years of war because of it. Somebody forgot to tell Bush it wasn't that many people and to just relax.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: You are eroding people's rights for no other purpose than cultural realignment,
Not exactly. Here in Oz, we never had a 'right' to own guns in the first place, just laws that allowed it.
It was more than just about the right to bear arms. We had also discussed the 4th Amendment and how proposals in this thread would erode it.
insaniak wrote: That's patently absurd. You have those rights because a bunch of people voted and agreed that you should have them. They're not hardcoded into the bedrock of the universe, and they change as society adapts and grows.
I take it you are familiar with the notion of inalienable rights?
Matt.Kingsley wrote: You mean the things that were often decided upon by a committee vote aren't meant to be voted on?
I guess we should take away every right that was implemented by a vote then since rights aren't meant to be voted on, which I'm almost 100% sure includes your gun rights (and also includes her right to gay marriage).
One person has been killed and three others wounded after a shooting at a university in northern Arizona.
Northern Arizona University announced on its Twitter page that a gunman had opened fire on its Flagstaff campus on Friday.
The shooting took place in a car park near Mountain View Hall, a building which houses the university's fraternities and sororities.
The suspect has been arrested, public relations director Cindy Brown said.
She said the first police calls of gunfire were reported at 1.20am. Details of what caused the shooting or the conditions of the injured people have not been released.
The college campus, which has around 25,000 students, was not placed on lockdown.
And what did the Founding Fathers say about the right to bear arms?
If you're talking about the 2nd amendment. I'm pretty sure it starts of with the premise: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State". And follows with the conclusion that bearing arms should not be infringed. While the conclusion is still law, I would argue the premise is no longer true. What developed free state in 2015 is kept secure by an armed militia? The US seems to have plenty of armed militias these days, but they're mainly just waring with each other over "turf".
Logic 101: if the premise is no longer true, then the conclusion is no longer supported.
And that is still the right to keep arms for the purpose of national security. How that got transposed into the right to shoot burglars, is unclear to me. Switzerland also had people keep guns for national security, but the idea that you would use your gun outside of wartime was deeply frowned upon. The American attitude that guns should be kept to shoot burglars and such, does not come from the 2nd amendment. It seems to be a cultural idea in America, that shooting people for personal transgressions is acceptable.
That might explain a little, where this kid got the idea that shooting his neighbor for not letting him see her puppy, was the right thing to do.
CptJake wrote: You seem to assume rights are granted by the gov't. That would also indicate they can take them away as they see fit.
Our whole constitution was kind of based on the opposite. The people grant the gov't certain powers.
That's just semantic nonsense. A government of the people, represents the people. They are not separate entities. What you're trying to do there, is the argument equivalent of denying that eggs come from chickens, on the basis that chickens come from eggs. Cracking stuff!
You're being obtuse.
Our federal gov't was set up to be limited. It was not set up to give a majority tyranny over the individual. The Individuals' rights are not something the majority should be able to use the federal gov't to infringe upon. You can argue semantics all you want, but there IS a difference in intent and in function. We didn't create a gov't to grant us rights. Those rights were (and are) assumed. So, unlike Australia, where for example the 'right to bear arms' was never assumed, gov't with or without a majority backing it, can't take the right away. Same with free speech. In Germany for example that right has been trampled all to hell when you can't even get historically correct decals for a model WW2 fighter plane...
CptJake wrote: gov't with or without a majority backing it, can't take the right away.
This is still just a legal quibble, but it is batted about like some god given truth, which boarders on dogma. There is a legal process for making changes to the law. There is public and political support for changes to the law, there is also very good philosophical arguments for why unchangeable laws are bad. The idea that it can't be changed and now stands for all time is just nonsense.
CptJake wrote: You seem to assume rights are granted by the gov't. That would also indicate they can take them away as they see fit.
Our whole constitution was kind of based on the opposite. The people grant the gov't certain powers.
That's just semantic nonsense. A government of the people, represents the people. They are not separate entities. What you're trying to do there, is the argument equivalent of denying that eggs come from chickens, on the basis that chickens come from eggs. Cracking stuff!
You're being obtuse.
Our federal gov't was set up to be limited. It was not set up to give a majority tyranny over the individual. The Individuals' rights are not something the majority should be able to use the federal gov't to infringe upon. You can argue semantics all you want, but there IS a difference in intent and in function. We didn't create a gov't to grant us rights. Those rights were (and are) assumed. So, unlike Australia, where for example the 'right to bear arms' was never assumed, gov't with or without a majority backing it, can't take the right away. Same with free speech. In Germany for example that right has been trampled all to hell when you can't even get historically correct decals for a model WW2 fighter plane...
That's all very well but at the end of the day, it is the decency and moral feelings of the majority that determine what happens to minority rights.
Viz: slavery, women's suffrage, gay marriage, etc.
If ever the time comes that enough people in the USA want serious gun control, it will happen.
CptJake wrote: So, unlike Australia, where for example the 'right to bear arms' was never assumed, gov't with or without a majority backing it, can't take the right away.
If the overwhelming majority votes 'yes' to establishing a dictatorship, what is the correctly democratical thing to do as the government in that situation?
CptJake wrote: gov't with or without a majority backing it, can't take the right away.
This is still just a legal quibble, but it is batted about like some god given truth, which boarders on dogma. There is a legal process for making changes to the law. There is public and political support for changes to the law, there is also very good philosophical arguments for why unchangeable laws are bad. The idea that it can't be changed and now stands for all time is just nonsense.
So lets go with this. Yes, our constitution has a mechanism in place to change it. So why is that not the offered solution? It is hard, but if folks truly believe the 2nd amendment (and I assume the 4th) are out of date and out of touch, then addressing it by repealing/changing those amendments would be the right way to go about it.
But they don't.
Instead they want folks to just give up their rights. They want POTUS to use executive actions to go around congress. They want congress to pass laws that are not going to hold up to constitutional review. They erode the right slowly with pleas for 'common sense' solutions to problems that frankly don't need more solutions.
No one in this topic has yet to propose ANY new law that would prevent incidents like the one in the OP or the recent shooting in Oregon. Some have advocated for mass bannings and even suggested confiscations would be good. Some have advocated for a Federal license to own a gun, and that the license holder must submit to searches of his property in order to maintain that license. And even if you could enact all of these, you would likely find (as has much of Europe) that gun crime may go down, but violent crime where other than guns are used, does not (or at least does not go down any more than current trends suggest it would with no drastic gun control measures.)
So, maybe it is dogmatic to believe Americans don't derive their rights from government. I guess that makes the founders dogmatic too. I do know that if you expect me to quietly give up my basic rights, especially when you cannot point to any real benefit to me or my family, you are going to be disappointed. And even when you can imply some marginal to some magnificent benefit (which to date no one has done) don't be surprised if I choose to forgo that benefit and retain my rights.
CptJake wrote: So, unlike Australia, where for example the 'right to bear arms' was never assumed, gov't with or without a majority backing it, can't take the right away.
If the overwhelming majority votes 'yes' to establishing a dictatorship, what is the correctly democratical thing to do as the government in that situation?
Honestly? There would be no 'democratical thing' to do.
And what did the Founding Fathers say about the right to bear arms?
If you're talking about the 2nd amendment. I'm pretty sure it starts of with the premise: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State". And follows with the conclusion that bearing arms should not be infringed. While the conclusion is still law, I would argue the premise is no longer true. What developed free state in 2015 is kept secure by an armed militia? The US seems to have plenty of armed militias these days, but they're mainly just waring with each other over "turf".
Logic 101: if the premise is no longer true, then the conclusion is no longer supported.
And that is still the right to keep arms for the purpose of national security. How that got transposed into the right to shoot burglars, is unclear to me. Switzerland also had people keep guns for national security, but the idea that you would use your gun outside of wartime was deeply frowned upon. The American attitude that guns should be kept to shoot burglars and such, does not come from the 2nd amendment. It seems to be a cultural idea in America, that shooting people for personal transgressions is acceptable.
That might explain a little, where this kid got the idea that shooting his neighbor for not letting him see her puppy, was the right thing to do.
Well, no. The part you highlighted is the dependent clause of the 2nd. It's entirely dependent on "the right to bear arms shall not be infringed."
Your "reading" of it also doesn't include what militia meant contextually (the people) or the actual purpose of the 2nd (to guarantee a citizenry that can protect itself from a potentially tyrannical government.)
And what did the Founding Fathers say about the right to bear arms?
You mean, when they wrote a document that was predicated on being able to change it, and then said that you should change it when it was no longer in line with current cultural mores?
You mean the thing they put that was actually a change to the original document?
Obviously they meant that once they put that in there it should never change ever, that is the conclusion that I assume you're pushing for.
CptJake wrote: gov't with or without a majority backing it, can't take the right away.
This is still just a legal quibble, but it is batted about like some god given truth, which boarders on dogma. There is a legal process for making changes to the law. There is public and political support for changes to the law, there is also very good philosophical arguments for why unchangeable laws are bad. The idea that it can't be changed and now stands for all time is just nonsense.
So lets go with this. Yes, our constitution has a mechanism in place to change it. So why is that not the offered solution? It is hard, but if folks truly believe the 2nd amendment (and I assume the 4th) are out of date and out of touch, then addressing it by repealing/changing those amendments would be the right way to go about it.
But they don't.
...
....
I have suggested it, only to be shot down by Frazzled on the grounds that the constitution is holy writ.
Of course, the individual states can enact restrictions on guns. It's possible that the more let's say 'cosmopolitan' states might enact stronger restrictions than Montana, etc. This is already the case in New York, for example.
Once enough states had passed such laws, it would create the scenario that an amendment could be added to the constitution.
I think the other issues I have mentioned previously, such as gay marriage, are proof that public opinion can gradually swing and once it passes a certain level, the law gets changed somehow.
IDK how public opinion has changed regarding guns.
Prestor Jon wrote: No it isn't. 10,000 people is a miniscule amount of people. It's somewhere between 0.002 and 0.003 of 1% of the population of the country.
Were you posting arguments like that when 3,000 people died in the Twin Towers?
If you could drag your murder rate down to something closer the rest of the developed world, so the total deaths would be about 6,000 or 7,000 less than they are now, would you say 'nah, not worth it, 10,000 is a tiny number'.
10,000 is a lot more than zero sure and every murder is a tragedy for the family and friends of the victim but 10,000 people on a national scale isn't anywhere close to being a major problem.
And here you're falling for the same basic logic fail as Relapse. Look at the number, decide it is small by some vague standard, and then just declare that nothing must be done. You just completely missed the step where you figure out what might be done, and what that would achieve and cost.
Now, it is possible to decide that the possible solutions might cost too much and acheive too little, that's where I'm at personally. But whatever your conclusions, at least you'd have the beginnings of an argument that made sense.
We're not going to enact drastic fundamental changes to the US Constitution, multiple state constitutions, overturn SCOTUS decisions and change the culture across large swathes of the country because 99.997% of the people aren't getting murdered with guns.
I don't think you've got any idea how political change works.
Just think about it this way - 50 years ago not even the NRA thought the 2nd Amendment applied to private ownership. But political opinions change, and as they do
I wasn't posting much of anything back in September of 2001, my internet access was very limited in Abu Dhabi where I was at the time. 3,000 people is an insignigicant number of people nationally. That is as true today as it was on 9/11. I wasn't one of the people demanding that we invade Iraq if that's what you're trying to ask and I was then and still am vehemently opposed to the Patriot Act in all of its iterations. Taking rights away from citizens doesn't make us safer, that is true with both guns and terrorism.
If reducing the rate of gun deaths to a number somewhat closer to the rest of the developed world comes at the cost of removing rights and violating the constitution then no it's not worth it. Freedom isn't free.
There tens of millions of gun owners in the US in possession of hundreds of millions of guns and a mathmatically insignifcant percentage of them use their firearms for ciminal purposes. There is no reason to restrict the 2A rights being exercised in a safe and legal by over a third of the country just because a tiny fraction of our population chooses to commit murders or exhibits negligence to a lethal degree.
There is a token security presence at my children's school that is unlikely to stop a determined homicidal attacker and if my kids were to be murdered in a school shooting I wouldn't start going around my neighborhood, banging on my neighbors' doors demanding that they give up their guns. The two are wholly unrelated. My grief is certainly not justification for restricting the rights of citizens who have done nothing wrong. Forcing law abiding citizens to jump through more bureaucratic hoops in order to own guns doesn't make them more law abiding or less likely to commit gun crimes than they already were. The vast majority of people who legally purchase guns are still going to use them safely and legally so there is no reason to infringe upon their rights excessively in a misguided attempt to assuage other people's feelings of fear, anger and sadness.
The individual is the smallest and most important minority and that is why our constitutions specifically protects individual rights from government infringement.
The statements of an NRA president 50 years ago regarding the meaning of the 2nd amendment hold no more significance than any other individual's personal opinion.
SCOTUS has repeatedly and consistently identified the 2nd Amendment as protecting the right of an individual US citizen to own firearms. That's an undediable fact.
Dredd Scott v Sandford in 1857, US v Cruikshank in 1875, Presser v Illinois in 1886, US v Miller in 1939, Duncan v Louisiana 1968, Lewis v US in 1980, US v Verdugo-Urquidez in 1990, DC v Heller in 2008 and McDonald v Chicago in 2010. In all of those cases SCOTUS issued decisions or made statements that the 2nd Amendment confers a right to own firearms to individual US citizens.
The individual right to own firearms is further supported on the state level. 45 of the 50 states have the right of individual state residents to keep and bear arms in their state constitutions and most have clarified and expanded that right over the years. US citizens have had a constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms for the entirety of our nation's history. There is no evidence that suggests that an individual right to own firearms is new concept unique to modern times.
CptJake wrote: You seem to assume rights are granted by the gov't. That would also indicate they can take them away as they see fit.
Our whole constitution was kind of based on the opposite. The people grant the gov't certain powers.
That's just semantic nonsense. A government of the people, represents the people. They are not separate entities. What you're trying to do there, is the argument equivalent of denying that eggs come from chickens, on the basis that chickens come from eggs. Cracking stuff!
Right there is the basis of why we have these discussions.
The US populace historically view their government with more skepticism than other Western nations.
CptJake wrote: gov't with or without a majority backing it, can't take the right away.
This is still just a legal quibble, but it is batted about like some god given truth, which boarders on dogma. There is a legal process for making changes to the law. There is public and political support for changes to the law, there is also very good philosophical arguments for why unchangeable laws are bad. The idea that it can't be changed and now stands for all time is just nonsense.
So lets go with this. Yes, our constitution has a mechanism in place to change it. So why is that not the offered solution? It is hard, but if folks truly believe the 2nd amendment (and I assume the 4th) are out of date and out of touch, then addressing it by repealing/changing those amendments would be the right way to go about it.
But they don't.
...
....
I have suggested it, only to be shot down by Frazzled on the grounds that the constitution is holy writ.
Of course, the individual states can enact restrictions on guns. It's possible that the more let's say 'cosmopolitan' states might enact stronger restrictions than Montana, etc. This is already the case in New York, for example.
Once enough states had passed such laws, it would create the scenario that an amendment could be added to the constitution.
I think the other issues I have mentioned previously, such as gay marriage, are proof that public opinion can gradually swing and once it passes a certain level, the law gets changed somehow.
IDK how public opinion has changed regarding guns.
New York is one of 5 states that doesn't have the right to keep and bear arms in their state constitution so they have more leeway to enact stricter gun control laws than any of the 45 states that do have the right of individual state residents to own firearms included in their state constitution. It would be very difficult and extremely hypocritical for state politicians to claim that it is neccessary to repeal the 2nd amendment from the US constitution while the same clause is still intact in their own state constitution. So far in over 2 centuries of US history no state has removed the right to keep and bear arms from their state constitution and I know of no evidence that suggests such a thing might happen anytime soon. With 90% of the states having the right to keep and bear arms in their respective constitutions I don't think it's practical to expect a majority of states to decide that we need to repeal the same clause from the US constitution.
Gay marriage is not an example you want to use. There still is no federal law that makes gay marriage legal in all 50 states. DOMA is still officially on the books and I see no evidence that Congress is going to pass a law anytime soon that legalizes gay marriage. Gay marriage is legal throughout the country because SCOTUS ruled that it is unconstitutional to ban gay marriage. A court ruling in no way can be construed as a manifestation of the will of the people.
CptJake wrote: You seem to assume rights are granted by the gov't. That would also indicate they can take them away as they see fit.
Our whole constitution was kind of based on the opposite. The people grant the gov't certain powers.
That's just semantic nonsense. A government of the people, represents the people. They are not separate entities. What you're trying to do there, is the argument equivalent of denying that eggs come from chickens, on the basis that chickens come from eggs. Cracking stuff!
Right there is the basis of why we have these discussions.
The US populace historically view their government with more skepticism than other Western nations.
Ya'll just don't understand man.
Yeah, the constitution is essesntially a list of negative rights; it's a document that clarifies what the federal government can't do. This was done to protect individual liberty from government tyranny, which was also the basis for our war for independence.
Negative rights are very different from positive rights. Positive rights are the rights of the people that have to be provided for by the government. For example, the right to an education requires the government to establish and fund public schools so that citizens can send their children to public schools to get the education to which they are entitled.
That is the source of political conflict within the US. Limited govt conservatives on the right who ascribe the most important to negative rights and believe that people are best off with the govt staying out of their way and not infringing on an individual's freedom and on the other side the more socialist, liberal doctrine that the government should proivde for the people and that people will be best off with the government assisting as much as possible with their quality of life. Historically the US has placed a higher value on negative rights than in European countries.
cincydooley wrote: Well, no. The part you highlighted is the dependent clause of the 2nd. It's entirely dependent on "the right to bear arms shall not be infringed."
It's a dependent clause because it contains the word "being", but it could stand on its own as: "A well regulated Militia, is necessary to the security of a free state." and is offered here as justification for why the right should not be infringed. I can phrase it as a syllogism:
Premise: A well regulated Militia, is necessary to the security of a free state.
Premise: People forming the militia would require arms:
Conclusion: the right of the people forming the militia, to keep and bear arms, should not be infringed (for the security of a free state.)
Structurally speaking, I'm pretty sure it is a premise.
Your "reading" of it also doesn't include what militia meant contextually (the people)
Perhaps my quip about gang violence was unwarranted. What I was really trying to illustrate is how armed militias are quite an unfashionable and antiquated idea these days.
or the actual purpose of the 2nd (to guarantee a citizenry that can protect itself from a potentially tyrannical government.)
No, that is exactly how I read it, and what I understood it to mean. No disagreement from me on that point.
That is the source of political conflict within the US. Limited govt conservatives on the right who ascribe the most important to negative rights and believe that people are best off with the govt staying out of their way and not infringing on an individual's freedom
Except in matters of personal religion, women's health and reproductive rights, choice of sexual partners, access to legal rights and liberties provided by a marriage contract, integration, environmental protections to protect public health, maintenance of national parks and forests, equal protection under the law, equal representation and a host of other topics that regularly come up in the news.
It should also be noted that the US Constitution provides the bare minimum of rights. State Constitutions cannot provide fewer or less than those enumerated therein.
That is the source of political conflict within the US. Limited govt conservatives on the right who ascribe the most important to negative rights and believe that people are best off with the govt staying out of their way and not infringing on an individual's freedom
Except in matters of personal religion, women's health and reproductive rights, choice of sexual partners, access to legal rights and liberties provided by a marriage contract, integration, environmental protections to protect public health, maintenance of national parks and forests, equal protection under the law, equal representation and a host of other topics that regularly come up in the news.
It should also be noted that the US Constitution provides the bare minimum of rights. State Constitutions cannot provide fewer or less than those enumerated therein.
Don't confuse conservatives with Republicans, that Venn diagram doesn't overlap entirely. Most of the conservatives I know don't fit your description, of course most of the conservatives I know aren't Republicans either.
Not all conservatives are Republicans, but all Republicans are conservatives.
Some conservatives are Objectivists, but since 98% of those are still high school sophomores, I don't pay them much mind. They're not old enough to vote yet.
The rest seem to be neo-Libertarians which is actually scary, though whether it's because people actually think that would work or because some of them make mainstream Republicans look temperate in comparison is a coin-flip.
There's a few Conservative fiscal policies I could theoretically stand behind but, unfortunately, so many of them are bundled with overt elements that seem to want to make being poor a capital offense, I can't back most of them.
Ouze wrote: This is a legitimate question. I'm not trying to be snarky or intentionally obtuse; but if the reason we need to do something about people dying from gun violence is to protect life... isn't it a bit misplaced, in that gun violence in general and spree killings in specific are statistically very rare and incredibly rare, respectively?
Gun violence is not uncommon. Again, 10,000 is a big number. Spree killing is relatively rare, and so are gun accidents.
No, no its not. 10,000 people is a tiny number in a country with 350 million people and more than 1 gun for each of them.
If guns were really the boogyman people, like you, are making them out to be we'd have a much larger number of deaths. That combined with gun violence, and violence in general, trending downwards in what can only be described as a free fall makes this a non-issue.
So yes, gun violence is uncommon in the US. Maybe not relative to some other places, but that is not unexpected or cause for concern. And 10,000 is not even close to a big number, its an absurdly tiny number.
Wikipedia wrote:
Gun violence in the United States results in thousands of deaths and thousands more injuries annually.[1] According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2013, firearms (excluding BB and pellet guns) were used in 84,258 nonfatal injuries (26.65 per 100,000 U.S. citizens) [2] and 11,208 deaths by homicide (3.5 per 100,000),[3] 21,175 by suicide with a firearm,[4] 505 deaths due to accidental discharge of a firearm,[4] and 281 deaths due to firearms-use with "undetermined intent"[5] for a total of 33,169 deaths related to firearms (excluding firearm deaths due to legal intervention). 1.3% of all deaths in the country were related to firearms.[1][6]
In 2010, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 67% of all homicides in the U.S. were conducted using a firearm.[7] According to the FBI, in 2012, there were 8,855 total firearm-related homicides in the US, with 6,371 of those attributed to handguns.[8] 61% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. are suicides.[9] In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicides, and 11,078 firearm-related homicides in the U.S.[10] In 2010, 358 murders were reported involving a rifle while 6,009 were reported involving a handgun; another 1,939 were reported with an unspecified type of firearm.[11]
In 2010, gun violence cost U.S. taxpayers approximately $516 million in direct hospital costs.[12]
Of course you may well consider 33,000 deaths a year to be trivial.
Wikipedia wrote:
Gun violence in the United States results in thousands of deaths and thousands more injuries annually.[1] According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2013, firearms (excluding BB and pellet guns) were used in 84,258 nonfatal injuries (26.65 per 100,000 U.S. citizens) [2] and 11,208 deaths by homicide (3.5 per 100,000),[3] 21,175 by suicide with a firearm,[4] 505 deaths due to accidental discharge of a firearm,[4] and 281 deaths due to firearms-use with "undetermined intent"[5] for a total of 33,169 deaths related to firearms (excluding firearm deaths due to legal intervention). 1.3% of all deaths in the country were related to firearms.[1][6]
In 2010, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 67% of all homicides in the U.S. were conducted using a firearm.[7] According to the FBI, in 2012, there were 8,855 total firearm-related homicides in the US, with 6,371 of those attributed to handguns.[8] 61% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. are suicides.[9] In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicides, and 11,078 firearm-related homicides in the U.S.[10] In 2010, 358 murders were reported involving a rifle while 6,009 were reported involving a handgun; another 1,939 were reported with an unspecified type of firearm.[11]
In 2010, gun violence cost U.S. taxpayers approximately $516 million in direct hospital costs.[12]
Of course you may well consider 33,000 deaths a year to be trivial.
It is trivial. It's still a tiny fraction of 1% of our population. When over 99% of the population remains unaffected by gun violence it's not anywhere close to being a major problem.
2/3rds of those 33,000 deaths are suicides and if people choose to end their own life that's a choice they made. You can't equate suicide with violent crime and murder.
Wikipedia wrote:
Gun violence in the United States results in thousands of deaths and thousands more injuries annually.[1] According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2013, firearms (excluding BB and pellet guns) were used in 84,258 nonfatal injuries (26.65 per 100,000 U.S. citizens) [2] and 11,208 deaths by homicide (3.5 per 100,000),[3] 21,175 by suicide with a firearm,[4] 505 deaths due to accidental discharge of a firearm,[4] and 281 deaths due to firearms-use with "undetermined intent"[5] for a total of 33,169 deaths related to firearms (excluding firearm deaths due to legal intervention). 1.3% of all deaths in the country were related to firearms.[1][6]
In 2010, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 67% of all homicides in the U.S. were conducted using a firearm.[7] According to the FBI, in 2012, there were 8,855 total firearm-related homicides in the US, with 6,371 of those attributed to handguns.[8] 61% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. are suicides.[9] In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicides, and 11,078 firearm-related homicides in the U.S.[10] In 2010, 358 murders were reported involving a rifle while 6,009 were reported involving a handgun; another 1,939 were reported with an unspecified type of firearm.[11]
In 2010, gun violence cost U.S. taxpayers approximately $516 million in direct hospital costs.[12]
Of course you may well consider 33,000 deaths a year to be trivial.
It is trivial. It's still a tiny fraction of 1% of our population. When over 99% of the population remains unaffected by gun violence it's not anywhere close to being a major problem.
2/3rds of those 33,000 deaths are suicides and if people choose to end their own life that's a choice they made. You can't equate suicide with violent crime and murder.
Can I tell my boss to stop worrying about those pesky veteran suicides then?
Kilkrazy wrote: You think it's trivial. Other people don't. You can equate gun suicide with crime because people die unnecessarily.
No. Suicides are people CHOOSING to kill themselves. Lumping them in with the violent crime is disingenuous at best.
I do love how people that choose to commit suicide this way are viewed so differently than those choosing to commit suicide over in that other thread where it's all "good for California."
Kilkrazy wrote: You think it's trivial. Other people don't. You can equate gun suicide with crime because people die unnecessarily.
No. Suicides are people CHOOSING to kill themselves. Lumping them in with the violent crime is disingenuous at best.
I do love how people that choose to commit suicide this way are viewed so differently than those choosing to commit suicide over in that other thread where it's all "good for California."
Depends on mental illness, which is something that the law in California is specifically addressing.
But I guess "I'm depressed, nobody loves me, I'm a failure, war is hell, feth life" is the same as "I'm going to die in 3 months and would like not to be in pain".
Kilkrazy wrote: Please explain to the relatives of suicides why people dying from one preventable cause is different to them dying from another preventable cause.
Proclivities to suicide can be treated.
How do you "treat" someone who wants to murder you? Banning all guns won't change that...
As to this OP, the answer is that those weapons needed to be safely secured.
whembly wrote: How do you "treat" someone who wants to murder you? Banning all guns won't change that...
If we could properly identify trouble cases, then maybe with heavy medication.
There really needs to be more effort done toward understanding the brain. I mean, we don't even dissect and analyse the brains of people who do these things. That'd be a pretty good start.
Depends on mental illness, which is something that the law in California is specifically addressing.
But I guess "I'm depressed, nobody loves me, I'm a failure, war is hell, feth life" is the same as "I'm going to die in 3 months and would like not to be in pain".
.
Should one be allowed to and not the other?
Obviously we should try and treat the mental illness if we can, but the ultimate choice should still lie with the individual.
Then again, I'm still a proponent of the Satirist Christopher Buckley's notion in Boomsday that we should offer Baby Boomers incentive to "voluntarily transition" themselves at 70.
Kilkrazy wrote: You think it's trivial. Other people don't. You can equate gun suicide with crime because people die unnecessarily.
Who has ownership over your life other than you, yourself? If your life is your own and you choose to end it why should the govt act to take that choice away from you? How exactly is the govt supposed to physically stop people from choosing to commit suicide? Do we all get a govt minder that follows us around constant ready to intercede at a moments notice and save us from ourselves? It's unfortunate for the loved ones of people who commit suicide but it's nobody else's fault other than the suicidal person himself/herself. That was a choice freely made. Stopping people from exercising their freedom of choice isn't a matter of gun control, it's literally people control and the govt doesn't have the ability or the right to do that.
whembly wrote: How do you "treat" someone who wants to murder you? Banning all guns won't change that...
If we could properly identify trouble cases, then maybe with heavy medication.
There really needs to be more effort done toward understanding the brain. I mean, we don't even dissect and analyse the brains of people who do these things. That'd be a pretty good start.
We can't Minority Report our way to disarmament.
Evil is not something that can be medicated or what have you...
:shrug:
But, in the context of this post, yes... much, MUCH more need to be done to identify phsycolgically issues in order to treat and segregate them from the public.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: I take it you are familiar with the notion of inalienable rights?
Indeed. They're a conceit
Where do you think those 'inalienable rights' came from?
A bunch of people got together and said 'Hey, everyone should have these rights! All in favour?'
As I said, they're not written into the foundation of existence. They're a bunch of things that people agreed that other people should have. And so, regardless of what they are called, are subject to change when enough people decide that it is warranted.
Wikipedia wrote:
Gun violence in the United States results in thousands of deaths and thousands more injuries annually.[1] According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2013, firearms (excluding BB and pellet guns) were used in 84,258 nonfatal injuries (26.65 per 100,000 U.S. citizens) [2] and 11,208 deaths by homicide (3.5 per 100,000),[3] 21,175 by suicide with a firearm,[4] 505 deaths due to accidental discharge of a firearm,[4] and 281 deaths due to firearms-use with "undetermined intent"[5] for a total of 33,169 deaths related to firearms (excluding firearm deaths due to legal intervention). 1.3% of all deaths in the country were related to firearms.[1][6]
In 2010, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 67% of all homicides in the U.S. were conducted using a firearm.[7] According to the FBI, in 2012, there were 8,855 total firearm-related homicides in the US, with 6,371 of those attributed to handguns.[8] 61% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. are suicides.[9] In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicides, and 11,078 firearm-related homicides in the U.S.[10] In 2010, 358 murders were reported involving a rifle while 6,009 were reported involving a handgun; another 1,939 were reported with an unspecified type of firearm.[11]
In 2010, gun violence cost U.S. taxpayers approximately $516 million in direct hospital costs.[12]
Of course you may well consider 33,000 deaths a year to be trivial.
It is trivial. It's still a tiny fraction of 1% of our population. When over 99% of the population remains unaffected by gun violence it's not anywhere close to being a major problem.
2/3rds of those 33,000 deaths are suicides and if people choose to end their own life that's a choice they made. You can't equate suicide with violent crime and murder.
Can I tell my boss to stop worrying about those pesky veteran suicides then?
If worrying about them is part of the job description than your boss should probably worry about them. Veterans should have access to quality medical care including mental health care. Ultimately if somebody wants to end their life then that's their choice. Why do I have the right to control somebody else's life?
If veterans are committing suicide due to the lack of quality mental health care and the federal govt promised to provide quality mental health care to veterans as part of their service contract then the govt is obligated to provide quality medical care. If the number of veteran suicides is indicative of their mental health care provided by the govt not meeting the standards of quality to which the veterans are entitled then that's a problem because the govt isn't fulfilling it's contractual obligations. But again, if a US citizen, veteran or not, chooses to end their own life, why does the govt or any other private citizen have the right to usurp that control over their life and tell them they can't? Whose life is it?
It's legal to terminate a pregnancy if you don't want it, why shouldn't it be legal to terminate your own life if you don't want it anymore either? It's YOUR life, if YOU want to end it I certainly don't have the right to tell you that you can't.
Depends on mental illness, which is something that the law in California is specifically addressing.
But I guess "I'm depressed, nobody loves me, I'm a failure, war is hell, feth life" is the same as "I'm going to die in 3 months and would like not to be in pain".
.
Should one be allowed to and not the other?
Obviously we should try and treat the mental illness if we can, but the ultimate choice should still lie with the individual.
Then again, I'm still a proponent of the Satirist Christopher Buckley's notion in Boomsday that we should offer Baby Boomers incentive to "voluntarily transition" themselves at 70.
That's a legitimate question. With "right-to-die" laws an important point is that you cannot have mental illness.
But for non-fatal diseases it is currently generally accepted that wanting to kill yourself means that you have a mental illness. So with fatal diseases you can kill yourself if you are not mentally ill, but at any other time wanting to kill yourself makes you mentally ill.
Does this make sense in the long run? Does wanting to kill yourself make you mentally ill unless we agree that the reason you want to kill yourself is a good one? Are there other legitimate reasons for wanting to kill yourself?
I honestly don't know the answer, but it would be a good discussion to have. Probably getting off-topic for this thread but we could move it to the California thread if you are interested in bouncing thoughts of each other's heads.
Kilkrazy wrote: You think it's trivial. Other people don't. You can equate gun suicide with crime because people die unnecessarily.
No. Suicides are people CHOOSING to kill themselves. Lumping them in with the violent crime is disingenuous at best.
I do love how people that choose to commit suicide this way are viewed so differently than those choosing to commit suicide over in that other thread where it's all "good for California."
Agreed. But then you don't get to throw around the 33, 000 number like they were murdered, so you push your view, donchasee.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kilkrazy wrote: You think it's trivial. Other people don't. You can equate gun suicide with crime because people die unnecessarily.
And this is why I bring up alcohol in these threads. Because people talk about unnecessary death and vilify those who enjoy guns, as though their own habits are harmless, when in fact, more people die from alcohol than guns.
Relapse wrote: Because people talk about unnecessary death and vilify those who enjoy guns, as though their own habits are harmless, when in fact, more people die from alcohol than guns.
There's actually not much of that going on in this thread.
Relapse wrote: Because people talk about unnecessary death and vilify those who enjoy guns, as though their own habits are harmless, when in fact, more people die from alcohol than guns.
There's actually not much of that going on in this thread.
It's happened in enough other threads and in the news in general, unless you miss the talk about the NRA.
Kilkrazy wrote: You think it's trivial. Other people don't. You can equate gun suicide with crime because people die unnecessarily.
No. Suicides are people CHOOSING to kill themselves. Lumping them in with the violent crime is disingenuous at best.
I do love how people that choose to commit suicide this way are viewed so differently than those choosing to commit suicide over in that other thread where it's all "good for California."
Depends on mental illness, which is something that the law in California is specifically addressing.
But I guess "I'm depressed, nobody loves me, I'm a failure, war is hell, feth life" is the same as "I'm going to die in 3 months and would like not to be in pain".
Is your argument above that it's okay for people to choose to kill themselves to avoid enduring physical pain but it's not okay for people who are enduring mental or emotional pain that they don't want to tolerate to commit suicide? Pain is pain. The state shouldn't force anyone to endure pain against their will, that's horrible.
Regardless of the type of pain being endured or any other reasoning behind a suicide, a person is still entitled to exert whatever amount of control over their life and death that he/she is capable of exerting. The state doesn't need to interfere with the personal choice of deteining when your life ends.
Kilkrazy wrote: You think it's trivial. Other people don't. You can equate gun suicide with crime because people die unnecessarily.
No. Suicides are people CHOOSING to kill themselves. Lumping them in with the violent crime is disingenuous at best.
I do love how people that choose to commit suicide this way are viewed so differently than those choosing to commit suicide over in that other thread where it's all "good for California."
Depends on mental illness, which is something that the law in California is specifically addressing.
But I guess "I'm depressed, nobody loves me, I'm a failure, war is hell, feth life" is the same as "I'm going to die in 3 months and would like not to be in pain".
Is your argument above that it's okay for people to choose to kill themselves to avoid enduring physical pain but it's not okay for people who are enduring mental or emotional pain that they don't want to tolerate to commit suicide? Pain is pain. The state shouldn't force anyone to endure pain against their will, that's horrible.
Regardless of the type of pain being endured or any other reasoning behind a suicide, a person is still entitled to exert whatever amount of control over their life and death that he/she is capable of exerting. The state doesn't need to interfere with the personal choice of deteining when your life ends.
I'm gonna copy and paste this into the California thread because I think it's getting OT in here now.
Wikipedia wrote:
Gun violence in the United States results in thousands of deaths and thousands more injuries annually.[1] According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2013, firearms (excluding BB and pellet guns) were used in 84,258 nonfatal injuries (26.65 per 100,000 U.S. citizens) [2] and 11,208 deaths by homicide (3.5 per 100,000),[3] 21,175 by suicide with a firearm,[4] 505 deaths due to accidental discharge of a firearm,[4] and 281 deaths due to firearms-use with "undetermined intent"[5] for a total of 33,169 deaths related to firearms (excluding firearm deaths due to legal intervention). 1.3% of all deaths in the country were related to firearms.[1][6]
In 2010, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 67% of all homicides in the U.S. were conducted using a firearm.[7] According to the FBI, in 2012, there were 8,855 total firearm-related homicides in the US, with 6,371 of those attributed to handguns.[8] 61% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. are suicides.[9] In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicides, and 11,078 firearm-related homicides in the U.S.[10] In 2010, 358 murders were reported involving a rifle while 6,009 were reported involving a handgun; another 1,939 were reported with an unspecified type of firearm.[11]
In 2010, gun violence cost U.S. taxpayers approximately $516 million in direct hospital costs.[12]
Of course you may well consider 33,000 deaths a year to be trivial.
Is that 33,000 from a population of 300,000,000? If so 0.011% of the population. Statistically that is about as close to trivial as you can get.
Kilkrazy wrote: You think it's trivial. Other people don't. You can equate gun suicide with crime because people die unnecessarily.
That is an absolute non sequitur.
Kilkrazy wrote: Please explain to the relatives of suicides why people dying from one preventable cause is different to them dying from another preventable cause.
Why can't you compare apples to oranges. They're both fruit... Prevention of suicides is heavily weighted towards mental health, education, support, etc. The prevention of crime deals with more punitive measures.
For course if you want people to prevent suffering at the hands of criminals, especially those with a weapon, having a firearm is a great form of prevention
Where do you think those 'inalienable rights' came from?
A bunch of people got together and said 'Hey, everyone should have these rights! All in favour?'
As I said, they're not written into the foundation of existence. They're a bunch of things that people agreed that other people should have. And so, regardless of what they are called, are subject to change when enough people decide that it is warranted.
I apologize for continuing the discussion of what constitutes a right. Typically in these threads it starts an unnecessary discussion that frequently deviates from the topic for little discernable gain.
In any event there is no appetite for gun control, or further restrictions on the right to bear arms. The public do not support it
Relapse wrote: Because people talk about unnecessary death and vilify those who enjoy guns, as though their own habits are harmless, when in fact, more people die from alcohol than guns.
There's actually not much of that going on in this thread.
It's happened in enough other threads and in the news in general, unless you miss the talk about the NRA.
So shouldn't you be talking about that in the threads, not this one?
Wikipedia wrote:
Gun violence in the United States results in thousands of deaths and thousands more injuries annually.[1] According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2013, firearms (excluding BB and pellet guns) were used in 84,258 nonfatal injuries (26.65 per 100,000 U.S. citizens) [2] and 11,208 deaths by homicide (3.5 per 100,000),[3] 21,175 by suicide with a firearm,[4] 505 deaths due to accidental discharge of a firearm,[4] and 281 deaths due to firearms-use with "undetermined intent"[5] for a total of 33,169 deaths related to firearms (excluding firearm deaths due to legal intervention). 1.3% of all deaths in the country were related to firearms.[1][6]
In 2010, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 67% of all homicides in the U.S. were conducted using a firearm.[7] According to the FBI, in 2012, there were 8,855 total firearm-related homicides in the US, with 6,371 of those attributed to handguns.[8] 61% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. are suicides.[9] In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicides, and 11,078 firearm-related homicides in the U.S.[10] In 2010, 358 murders were reported involving a rifle while 6,009 were reported involving a handgun; another 1,939 were reported with an unspecified type of firearm.[11]
In 2010, gun violence cost U.S. taxpayers approximately $516 million in direct hospital costs.[12]
Of course you may well consider 33,000 deaths a year to be trivial.
Is that 33,000 from a population of 300,000,000? If so 0.011% of the population. Statistically that is about as close to trivial as you can get.
Kilkrazy wrote: You think it's trivial. Other people don't. You can equate gun suicide with crime because people die unnecessarily.
That is an absolute non sequitur.
Kilkrazy wrote: Please explain to the relatives of suicides why people dying from one preventable cause is different to them dying from another preventable cause.
Why can't you compare apples to oranges. They're both fruit... Prevention of suicides is heavily weighted towards mental health, education, support, etc. The prevention of crime deals with more punitive measures.
For course if you want people to prevent suffering at the hands of criminals, especially those with a weapon, having a firearm is a great form of prevention
Where do you think those 'inalienable rights' came from?
A bunch of people got together and said 'Hey, everyone should have these rights! All in favour?'
As I said, they're not written into the foundation of existence. They're a bunch of things that people agreed that other people should have. And so, regardless of what they are called, are subject to change when enough people decide that it is warranted.
I apologize for continuing the discussion of what constitutes a right. Typically in these threads it starts an unnecessary discussion that frequently deviates from the topic for little discernable gain.
In any event there is no appetite for gun control, or further restrictions on the right to bear arms. The public do not support it
if 33,000 deaths is trivial why did America go to war over 2.7k deaths during 9/11?
Why should we give any respect to soldiers who fought in said war as if they had a hard time or anything "significant" happened when only 2.3k of them died over 15 years, or 153 died a year in that terms. That's pretty trivial. Obviously it's a waste of time to support the troops who fought in wars, or do anything to try and protect them- we should definitely not waste money on any protective gear for them. As they are below trivial if 33k people are trivial. Same for cops, more kids 14 and under die a year to gun homicides than cops die in the line of duty, why are we wasting tax money on kevlar vests for those guys or bothering with legislation on the state/county/city level to make sure they are funded to do their job and be protected, its not that big a deal if only 82 of them die a year?
I don't think most people in this thread have asked to ban guns, yet people who are heavily pro gun seem to keep turning the discussion to "why jer bannin' mah gunz" Most people just thought there should be more regulation, and someone people discussed adding negligence and more severe charges if your firearm is not properly stored and is used in a crime due to its easy access to someone who is not the lawful owner.
Having a firearm has never been proven to be a form of crime prevention, or a deterrent to crime. In fact every statistic shows that by having a firearm and being involved in a crime either as offender or victim you are statistical y more likely to end up being involved in a homicide as the victim. Having a gun causes a criminal with a gun to have to escalate the situation because you are now also threatening their life directly. A significant number of homicides are caused by people the victim knows, as published in a peer reviewed paper "Risks and Benefits of a Gun in the Home"
American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine November/December 2011 5: 502-511, first published on February 2, 2011.
Of course we should care about preventing the deaths of our soldiers in the line of fire, and of course we should care that we domestically lose 500% more people a year to gun homicides(not even including unintentional discharge, and suicide) than we lost people in 9/11. Displacing the argument that we should do anything to regulate guns because the amount of people died because it is smaller than some other number does not mean it should be ignored. 11,000 people is considered a small sized town, so every year a small sized town worth of people somewhere in the country completely has every single man woman and child in it die from gun homicides, and of course our government can and should regulate guns more heavily- from the federal level so it binds all the states together and creates a federal registry of firearms to prevent interstate sales, regulations on gun storage and locks, etc. There is no "unalienable" right to keep any firearm you want, however you want. The federal government has always had the right to regulate which arms you are allowed to own and how they are kept, and has over the years starting back in the 1800s.
Kilkrazy wrote: Please explain to the relatives of suicides why people dying from one preventable cause is different to them dying from another preventable cause.
Take your own advice. Lumping gun suicides in with gun murders is just terrible logic.
If someone is distressed enough to take their own life they'll find a way. If they don't have a gun they'll jump off a bridge, slit their wrists, run into traffic, pop a couple hundred pills, etc... And I really doubt their relatives will really care about the method in which they took their own life.
Kilkrazy wrote: Please explain to the relatives of suicides why people dying from one preventable cause is different to them dying from another preventable cause.
Take your own advice. Lumping gun suicides in with gun murders is just terrible logic.
If someone is distressed enough to take their own life they'll find a way. If they don't have a gun they'll jump off a bridge, slit their wrists, run into traffic, pop a couple hundred pills, etc... And I really doubt their relatives will really care about the method in which they took their own life.
Actually, suicide is one of those pesky things where a simple deterrent does often make a difference. Putting up barriers or safety nets on bridges takes an "easy" suicide and has a positive effect on reducing suicide rates. Often a simple "I guess I can't do that" can be the difference between suicide and survival, especially if it is a very spontaneous decision.
Of course the whole "if they really want to do it, they will find a way to do it" is the same overused and pointless trope for suicide as it is for homicide. You can also protect yourself without a gun and protect your home without a gun and you can also overthrow a tyrannical government without a gun. all as long as you really want to. But we all know that having a gun makes all those things easier, which is why many of us carry a gun.
I'm not saying that we should get rid of all guns because it will prevent all suicides. I'm not even arguing for any sort of changes to gun laws at all in this thread. But a stupid argument is a stupid argument and it shouldn't be allowed to be repeated every single time in every single thread. Pretending that a gun doesn't make these things easier is either lazy thinking or intellectual dishonesty.
But is a gun easier than jumping off a bridge or walking out into traffic? 2 things that are pretty hard to make suicide proof. Not even close to every bridge has nets and not really much of anything prevents you from walking onto a freeway.
Kilkrazy wrote: Please explain to the relatives of suicides why people dying from one preventable cause is different to them dying from another preventable cause.
Take your own advice. Lumping gun suicides in with gun murders is just terrible logic.
If someone is distressed enough to take their own life they'll find a way. If they don't have a gun they'll jump off a bridge, slit their wrists, run into traffic, pop a couple hundred pills, etc... And I really doubt their relatives will really care about the method in which they took their own life.
Actually, suicide is one of those pesky things where a simple deterrent does often make a difference. Putting up barriers or safety nets on bridges takes an "easy" suicide and has a positive effect on reducing suicide rates. Often a simple "I guess I can't do that" can be the difference between suicide and survival, especially if it is a very spontaneous decision.
Of course the whole "if they really want to do it, they will find a way to do it" is the same overused and pointless trope for suicide as it is for homicide. You can also protect yourself without a gun and protect your home without a gun and you can also overthrow a tyrannical government without a gun. all as long as you really want to. But we all know that having a gun makes all those things easier, which is why many of us carry a gun.
I'm not saying that we should get rid of all guns because it will prevent all suicides. I'm not even arguing for any sort of changes to gun laws at all in this thread. But a stupid argument is a stupid argument and it shouldn't be allowed to be repeated every single time in every single thread. Pretending that a gun doesn't make these things easier is either lazy thinking or intellectual dishonesty.
So if a person decides to commit suicide the state should thwart the attempt because the state has a greater right to a person's life than the person him/herself? So people don't have the right to choose their own death? The state doesn't own your life and the state doesn't have the right to stop you from choosing your own time of death.
I will throw this in here, though, because I like where I think d is heading. Think about a , ""heat of passion" killing. If the person has time to think about what they're doing, they usually wouldn't have killed someone. Could the same not be true for someone who says, "Aw, feth it.", and put a gun to their head, who, being forced to take another minute to think, would instead say, "Aw feth, that's crazy"?
Relapse wrote: I will throw this in here, though, because I like where I think d is heading. Think about a , ""heat of passion" killing. If the person has time to think about what they're doing, they usually wouldn't have killed someone. Could the same not be true for someone who says, "Aw, feth it.", and put a gun to their head, who, being forced to take another minute to think, would instead say, "Aw feth, that's crazy"?
How does the state force a suicidal person to pause to reconsider his/ her actions and why does the state have the right to interfere?
I do think the suicide talk would be better served in the suicide thread.
(not trying to mod here, but it probably is a bit off-topic. I do think it's good to talk about so I don't mind keeping the discussion going, just trying to keep both the discussion and this thread going. )
if 33,000 deaths is trivial why did America go to war over 2.7k deaths during 9/11?
Why should we give any respect to soldiers who fought in said war as if they had a hard time or anything "significant" happened when only 2.3k of them died over 15 years, or 153 died a year in that terms. That's pretty trivial. Obviously it's a waste of time to support the troops who fought in wars, or do anything to try and protect them- we should definitely not waste money on any protective gear for them. As they are below trivial if 33k people are trivial. Same for cops, more kids 14 and under die a year to gun homicides than cops die in the line of duty, why are we wasting tax money on kevlar vests for those guys or bothering with legislation on the state/county/city level to make sure they are funded to do their job and be protected, its not that big a deal if only 82 of them die a year?
I don't think most people in this thread have asked to ban guns, yet people who are heavily pro gun seem to keep turning the discussion to "why jer bannin' mah gunz" Most people just thought there should be more regulation, and someone people discussed adding negligence and more severe charges if your firearm is not properly stored and is used in a crime due to its easy access to someone who is not the lawful owner.
Having a firearm has never been proven to be a form of crime prevention, or a deterrent to crime. In fact every statistic shows that by having a firearm and being involved in a crime either as offender or victim you are statistical y more likely to end up being involved in a homicide as the victim. Having a gun causes a criminal with a gun to have to escalate the situation because you are now also threatening their life directly. A significant number of homicides are caused by people the victim knows, as published in a peer reviewed paper "Risks and Benefits of a Gun in the Home"
American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine November/December 2011 5: 502-511, first published on February 2, 2011.
Of course we should care about preventing the deaths of our soldiers in the line of fire, and of course we should care that we domestically lose 500% more people a year to gun homicides(not even including unintentional discharge, and suicide) than we lost people in 9/11. Displacing the argument that we should do anything to regulate guns because the amount of people died because it is smaller than some other number does not mean it should be ignored. 11,000 people is considered a small sized town, so every year a small sized town worth of people somewhere in the country completely has every single man woman and child in it die from gun homicides, and of course our government can and should regulate guns more heavily- from the federal level so it binds all the states together and creates a federal registry of firearms to prevent interstate sales, regulations on gun storage and locks, etc. There is no "unalienable" right to keep any firearm you want, however you want. The federal government has always had the right to regulate which arms you are allowed to own and how they are kept, and has over the years starting back in the 1800s.
If you want to know why we went to war after 9/11 you would have to ask Congress they were the ones that declared it. I think it had something to do with an organization of foreign nationals launching an organized attack on US soil against US citizens. If you're claiming that we had to declare war because the death toll had reached some sort of magic number that is a claim easily dismissed. History has shown that the US govt will go to war under much less bloody circumstances, see the Maine, the Lusitania and the Gulf of Tonkin.
33,000 deaths annually in the US isn't a major problem regardless of the cause. In order to classify the number of gun deaths as a major problem we have to define what a major problem is and that requires context. You can't define gun deaths as a major national problem and also claim that the number of gun deaths can't be placed within the context of the US population as a whole. 33,000 deaths in a vacuum cannot be a major problem, it has to have context and in the national context it doesn't measure up as a major problem.
I'm not sure why you seem to think that gun crimes aren't taken seriously in the US because we value our right to keep and bear arms. Gun crimes have been criminalized on the federal and state level with harsh penalties and they are prosecuted agressively. Draconian unconstitutional infringement on gun rights that have no bearing on stopping mass shootings won't mean we as a country suddenly care more its a punitive measure whose purpose is to assuage emotional reactions to tragedies.
The 2nd amendment isn't about crime prevention. Rights don't have to be justified to be exercised. Whether or not my firearms stop crimes has no bearing on my right to have them. None of our rights in the bill of rights require justifications.
The courts, both state and SCOTUS have repeatedly affirmed that the 2nd amendment protects the right of individual citizens to keep and bear arms. That is a verifiable fact. The measures you want to enact to infringe on the 2A wouldn't stop gun violence and they would openly conflict with constitutional protections of the 2A. A national gun registry doesn't stop people with clean records from purchasing guns and then committing crimes with them. It also doesn't stop people from murdering relatives and stealing their guns to use to commit murder. What interstate gun sales would you prevent? Pretty much all guns sold weren't manufactured in the state they are purchased so stopping interstate sales means banning the purchase of firearms, which is unconstitutional. How a federal registry would even affect interstate sales let alone prevent them is beyond me, perhaps you could explain why you think that would happen. The federal govt doesn't have jurisdiction to pass laws dictating gun storage requirements. There are no federal gun storage laws currently for that very reason. The federal govt has regulated the purchase of guns because such purchases are interstate commerce and therefore are subject to federal regulation. That is also an established verifiable fact that no one has argued against.
Psienesis wrote: The sale of guns is not a Constitutionally-protected right, only the keeping and bearing of them.
Just tossing that out there.
I can easily argue that preventing people from selling and thus acquiring weapons is a violation of the 2nd amendment. You are infringing on their right to own guns by making it more difficult/impossible to purchase them.
Grey Templar wrote: I can easily argue that preventing people from selling and thus acquiring weapons is a violation of the 2nd amendment. You are infringing on their right to own guns by making it more difficult/impossible to purchase them.
Exactly. The courts in the US are generally not amused by attempts to make exercising constitutional rights so difficult that most people can't do it while hiding behind the technicality of "we didn't actually say you can't".
I can easily argue that preventing people from selling and thus acquiring weapons is a violation of the 2nd amendment. You are infringing on their right to own guns by making it more difficult/impossible to purchase them.
Huh. So how far away can the nearest gun store be, before your constitutional rights are being infringed upon? Do people living in remote areas have a potential lawsuit open?
I can easily argue that preventing people from selling and thus acquiring weapons is a violation of the 2nd amendment. You are infringing on their right to own guns by making it more difficult/impossible to purchase them.
Huh. So how far away can the nearest gun store be, before your constitutional rights are being infringed upon? Do people living in remote areas have a potential lawsuit open?
There is a "they shut down all but one gun-store in my state" joke there. Together with a "people should have to watch videos of kids getting shot in the head to make them understand the danger before they can buy guns", "everybody should have to fill out a form and then come back the next day to actually pick up the gun", "they should have to talk to a counselor before being able to buy the gun", and a "there should be protesters calling them murderers and gun-nuts in front of every store" joke.
I can easily argue that preventing people from selling and thus acquiring weapons is a violation of the 2nd amendment. You are infringing on their right to own guns by making it more difficult/impossible to purchase them.
Huh. So how far away can the nearest gun store be, before your constitutional rights are being infringed upon? Do people living in remote areas have a potential lawsuit open?
Thanks to the internet, a physical store is unnecessary.
Kilkrazy wrote: You think it's trivial. Other people don't. You can equate gun suicide with crime because people die unnecessarily.
Who has ownership over your life other than you, yourself? If your life is your own and you choose to end it why should the govt act to take that choice away from you? How exactly is the govt supposed to physically stop people from choosing to commit suicide? Do we all get a govt minder that follows us around constant ready to intercede at a moments notice and save us from ourselves? It's unfortunate for the loved ones of people who commit suicide but it's nobody else's fault other than the suicidal person himself/herself. That was a choice freely made. Stopping people from exercising their freedom of choice isn't a matter of gun control, it's literally people control and the govt doesn't have the ability or the right to do that.
God, of course, if you are a Christian.
But leaving that to one side, suicide is rarely a free choice, because it is done under conditions of mental stress that amount to temporary insanity.
Kilkrazy wrote: You think it's trivial. Other people don't. You can equate gun suicide with crime because people die unnecessarily.
Who has ownership over your life other than you, yourself? If your life is your own and you choose to end it why should the govt act to take that choice away from you? How exactly is the govt supposed to physically stop people from choosing to commit suicide? Do we all get a govt minder that follows us around constant ready to intercede at a moments notice and save us from ourselves? It's unfortunate for the loved ones of people who commit suicide but it's nobody else's fault other than the suicidal person himself/herself. That was a choice freely made. Stopping people from exercising their freedom of choice isn't a matter of gun control, it's literally people control and the govt doesn't have the ability or the right to do that.
God, of course, if you are a Christian.
But leaving that to one side, suicide is rarely a free choice, because it is done under conditions of mental stress that amount to temporary insanity.
insaniak wrote: Huh. So how far away can the nearest gun store be, before your constitutional rights are being infringed upon? Do people living in remote areas have a potential lawsuit open?
Do you really not see a difference between the free market not supporting a gun store in a given area and the government saying "NO GUNS FOR YOU"?
insaniak wrote: Huh. So how far away can the nearest gun store be, before your constitutional rights are being infringed upon? Do people living in remote areas have a potential lawsuit open?
Do you really not see a difference between the free market not supporting a gun store in a given area and the government saying "NO GUNS FOR YOU"?
I can easily argue that preventing people from selling and thus acquiring weapons is a violation of the 2nd amendment. You are infringing on their right to own guns by making it more difficult/impossible to purchase them.
Huh. So how far away can the nearest gun store be, before your constitutional rights are being infringed upon? Do people living in remote areas have a potential lawsuit open?
SCOTUS has repeatedly ruled that creating a bureaucratic process that must be completed in order to exercise a constitutional right and making that process so deliberately onerous that it effectively prohibits the exercise of that right, is illegal. See DC v Heller and McDonald v Chicago.
feths sake. Government regulates every part of everyones life from the day they are born till the day they die. Somehow guns are exempt from this and keep us safe....I think i'll leave it there.guns are magic...like ponies.
the whole tyrrany angle is bs, it's something to hang your hat on. The government controls your life whether you have a gun or not. Don't want to pay land tax ...I'm sure you can object but being in a militia or not does not excuse you from paying it.
Bullockist wrote: feths sake. Government regulates every part of everyones life from the day they are born till the day they die. Somehow guns are exempt from this and keep us safe....I think i'll leave it there.
Yep, leave it there, maybe comeback to visit it once you realize how much guns and gun sales ARE regulated already. Or maybe come back when you come up with some new regulation you feel would prevent all these bad things. Then we can discuss the costs of your new regulation,both in $$$ and in lost rights/freedoms.
Bullockist wrote: I'll leave it there when you realise that guns don't stop laws being passed in a democratic framework.
the tyrrany things is bs.
the regulation does stop these things in my country.
Pretty sure our congress critters pass plenty of laws and have for the last couple hundred years.
And even more at state and county levels.
So come back and re-visit when you understand our constitution is different form yours and that OUR system is going to treat it differently because it has to. And maybe address how according to studies presented in this topic your country's legislation and intrusive confiscations don;t seem to have done anything towards what was already a down trend in gun violence, and has not addressed the wider issue of violent crime.
weirdly a lack of access to weapons for the most part reduces it.
Oh Australia...you so crazy
after 2000 the numbers have kept reducing. Maybe it isn't less guns being available, maybe it's more Lebanese being involved in our underworld so more knives
and the buyback only got 643000 guns out of the system. This harmed us as our government dissolved all our rights ...dammit i wish we had guns to stop that democratic vote.
Bullockist wrote: OK then cincy...what then is the problem with regulating them then?
if it is a minority that uses them what is the problem with regulating them?
Guns don't stop a democratic vote so the whole tyrrany angle is bs.
I'm confused what's being discussed here.
They ARE regulated... the lower recievers of a semi-auto AR plateform are serialized and denoted with the ATF if I'm not mistaken...
Bullockist wrote: OK then cincy...what then is the problem with regulating them then?
if it is a minority that uses them what is the problem with regulating them?
Guns don't stop a democratic vote so the whole tyrrany angle is bs.
What regulation are you proposing? And why? More regulations on semi-auto rifled have been statistically proven to do absolutely nothing. That's a large part why the "assault rifles" ban was allowed to expire.
Statistically, they simply aren't used in gun crime in the US. Banning them won't do anything.
Bullockist wrote: OK then cincy...what then is the problem with regulating them then?
if it is a minority that uses them what is the problem with regulating them?
I think you misunderstood. Owning and using semi-automatic rifles is common. Using them in crimes is incredibly rare. Arguing for more restrictions on them barely makes more sense than arguing for a ban on gaming miniatures because someone was once beaten to death with a metal dreadnought for being TFG.
the regulation does stop these things in my country.
we had new regulation and it reduced the numbers of semi automatic rifles so much that they are rarely seen in crime nowdays
You realize that semi-automatic rifles are rarely seen in crime nowadays in the USA, right?
Because the purpose of the state is to protect the freedom's of its citizens, anytime you want to regulate something you must justify why. In some cases, that's easy. There's no good reason not to always wear a seatbelt, and seatbelts drastically reduce injuries and deaths in accidents, so there's pretty good reasons to require seatbelts an no real reasons not to. Easy justification. But given that an overwhelming amount of evidence pretty much points to gun control either being a) targeted at firearms that are not used in crime and thus has no effect on overall crime rates, or b) simply causes criminals to use different methods in crimes and has no effect on the overall crime rate, even without the tyranny angle it's hard to justify banning semi-automatic firearms. It's a pointless feel-good measure that doesn't accomplish anything.
Note that many of these are either recent or ongoing. Many are fought by armed citizens against a militarily powerful government. Point in fact, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were both instances in which poorly trained militia forces armed with little more than homemade explosives and rifles fought a coalition of the world's most powerful militaries for well over a decade in two areas each roughly the size of Texas. Not that there's any need to do so in the foreseeable future, but you're incredibly naive if you don't think that 80+ million armed citizens scattered across the entire USA would be a massive threat to a tyrannical government, even if said government had the full backing of the USA's military forces. Again, not that anyone's planning a revolution anytime soon, but history has a multitude of cases in which a violent dictator rapidly rose to power and turned a peaceful democracy into violent dictatorship.
What's the quote? "Fools learn from experience. The wise learn from history."
weirdly a lack of access to weapons for the most part reduces it.
Oh Australia...you so crazy
after 2000 the numbers have kept reducing. Maybe it isn't less guns being available, maybe it's more Lebanese being involved in our underworld so more knives
and the buyback only got 643000 guns out of the system. This harmed us as our government dissolved all our rights ...dammit i wish we had guns to stop that democratic vote.
That death by firearm would reduce after confiscating thousands of them should be no surprise to anyone. If we ban cars tomorrow traffic accidents will drop too. The interesting thing to look at though is that the overall rate of homicides in Australia only dropped significantly 8 years after the ban. During this time people were still buying approved firearms, and the level of gun ownership was rising.
In the US the homicide rate has been falling for decades, and yet the level of firearm ownership has continued to rise.
Among President Obama’s 23 new executive orders purportedly aimed at reducing gun violence, it is one which may appear relatively innocuous that perhaps poses the greatest danger as an assault upon our Second Amendment protections. Referring to this issue as a “public health crisis”, the president is determined to resurrect a previously failed Clinton tactic to build public support for stringent gun control gun regulations premised upon trumped-up “guns as a public disease” rationale based upon federally-funded medical pseudo-research.
Labeling his not-so-concealed gun control weapon as science, Obama took aim at the NRA and their inconvenient gun-totin’ ilk, declaring: “While year after year, those who oppose even modest gun-safety measures have threatened to defund scientific or medical research into the causes of gun violence, I will direct the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to go ahead and study the best ways to reduce it.”
Perhaps the president has forgotten that the CDC has previously been funded, then later defunded, regarding medical research for gun violence. His directive, if funded again by Congress, would end a virtual 17 year ban which stipulates, quite appropriately, that none of CDC’s federal financing can be used to advocate or promote gun control…exactly what CDC was originally doing.
In 1996, the Congress axed $2.6 million allocated for gun research from the CDC out of its $2.2 billion budget, charging that its studies were being driven by anti-gun prejudice. While that funding was later reinstated, it was re-designated for medical research on traumatic brain injuries.
There was a very good reason for the gun violence research funding ban. Virtually all of the scores of CDC-funded firearms studies conducted since 1985 had reached conclusions favoring stricter gun control. This should have come as no surprise, given that ever since 1979, the official goal of the CDC’s parent agency, the U.S. Public Health Service, had been “…to reduce the number of handguns in private ownership”, starting with a 25% reduction by the turn of the century.”
Ten senators who strongly supported the CDC gun research funding ban put their reasons in writing: “This research is designed to, and is used to, promote a campaign to reduce lawful firearms ownership in America…Funding redundant research initiatives, particularly those which are driven by a social-policy agenda, simply does not make sense.”
Sociologist David Bordura and epidemiologist David Cowan characterized the public health literature on guns at that time as “advocacy based upon political beliefs rather than scientific fact”. Noting that The New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association were the main outlets for CDC-funded studies of firearms, they observed that “reports” with findings not advocating strict gun control were rarely cited. Bordura and Cowan found that “little is cited from the criminological or sociological field”, and also that the articles that are cited “are almost always by medical or public health researchers.”
All too often, they witnessed that “assumptions are presented as fact:”… that there is a causal association between gun ownership and risk of violence, that this association is consistent across all demographic categories, and that additional legislation will reduce the prevalence of firearms and consequently reduce the incidence of violence.” They concluded that “…incestuous and selective literature citations may be acceptable for political tracts, but they introduce a bias into scientific publications…Stating as fact associations which may be demonstrably false is not just unscientific, it is unprincipled.”
A major danger of treating gun violence as a public health issue is that invites a false, politically-driven association of guns with disease, rather than the addressing much more fundamental mental health and social causes underlying violent behavior in general. This mischaracterization is made clear in 1994 American Medical News interview with Dr. Katherine Christoffel, head of the “Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan”, a CDC-funded organization who said: “guns are a virus that must be eradicated… They are causing an epidemic of death by gunshot, which should be treated like any epidemic…you get rid of the virus…get rid of the guns, get rid of the bullets, and you get rid of deaths.”
In the same article, Mark Rosenberg, who then headed CDC, agreed: “Kathy Christoffel is saying about firearms injuries what has been said for years about AIDS: that we can no longer be silent. That silence equals death and she’s not willing to be silent anymore. She’s asking for help.”
That same year, Rosenberg told the Washington Post: “We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like we did with cigarettes. Now it [sic] is dirty, deadly and banned.” And in the previous year, he had subtitled his part of an article on the public health approach to violence published in Atlanta Medicine: “The Bullet as Pathogen.”
This conflation of gun and disease research even drew criticism within other CDC divisions. As C.J. Peters, head of its Special Pathogens Branch told the Pittsburgh Post- Gazette in 1996, “The CDC has got to be careful that we don’t get into social issues. If we’re going to do that, we ought to start a center for social change. We should stay with medical issues.”
In fact, the CDC conducted a major two-year independent study of various regulatory laws in 2003. The investigation considered bans on specified firearms or ammunition; gun registration; concealed-weapon carry; and zero-tolerance for firearms in schools. The study concluded there was “insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed for preventing violence.”
[u]As Don Kates and Henry Schaffer point out in a 1997 Reason article, the main function of treating gun violence as a public health issue with a disease metaphor is to: “…lend a patina of scientific credibility to the belief that guns cause violence…a belief that is hard to justify on empirical grounds.” Kates, a civil liberties lawyer, and Schaffer, a professor of genetics and biomathematics, cite several examples where CDC has sponsored flawed research to advance that belief.
A key go-to guy for many of the CDC’s studies was their favorite gun researcher, Arthur Kellermann, the director of Emory University’s Center for Injury Control. In a 1988 New England Journal of Medicine article, Kellermann and his coauthors cited a book written by James Wright and Peter Rossi titled “Under the Gun” to support their contention that “restricting access to handguns could substantially reduce our annual rate of homicide.” Yet the book actually says the opposite. With reference to that particular notion, it actually said: “There is no persuasive evidence that supports that view.”
Then in 1992, writing in another New England Journal of Medicine piece, Kellermann cited an American Journal of Psychiatry study to back up a claim that “limiting access to firearms could prevent many suicides.” Instead, that study really concluded that suicidal people who don’t have guns find other ways to kill themselves.
CDC funded Kellermann and his colleagues to study whether guns in homes are a benefit or liability for protection from criminal intrusions. According to their examination of 198 incidents in which burglars entered occupied homes in Atlanta, they found that “only three individuals (1.5%) employed a firearm in self –defense”, therefore concluding that guns are rarely used. Closer examination of their data, however, tells a somewhat different story.
In 42% of those incidents, there was no confrontation between the victim and offender because, as they admitted, “the offender(s) either left silently or fled when detected.” When the burglar left silently, the intended victim wasn’t aware of the crime, and therefore had no opportunity to use a gun in self-defense, or alternatively, to call the police. The incidents where would-be intruders “fled when detected”, may actually indicate that that defensive gun ownership can be a crime deterrent, encouraging burglars to flee.
Dropping the 83 no-confrontation incidents from Kellermann’s 198- burglary list leaves 115 which should have been counted. Then, of those remaining, assuming that only about half of U.S. homes had guns at that time… and also that 70% of those that do store them unloaded where their use for self-defense wasn’t feasible… his 1.5% figure rises to 17%.
Even more problematic for his conclusion, Kellermann’s study only covered burglaries reported to police…and since police only catch about 10% of home burglars, the only good reason to report them is for insurance purposes. So if no property was lost because a burglar fled when a household member brandished a gun, many or most of those incidents may not have been recorded.
Kellermann and University of Washington pathologist Donald Reay examined gunshot deaths in King County, Washington from 1978 to 1983, concluding that of 398 people killed in a home where a gun was kept, only two were shot when trying to get in. They also claimed that there were “43 suicides, criminal homicides, or accidental gunshot deaths involving a gun kept in a home for every case of homicide for self-protection.”
Yet research by well-known criminalist Gary Kleck indicates that only a tiny percentage of defensive gun uses result in the deaths of offenders. In fact, even Kellermann and Reay conceded that: “Mortality studies such as ours do not include cases in which burglars or intruders are wounded or frightened away by the use or display of a firearm. Cases in which would-be intruders may have purposely avoided a house known to be armed are also not identified.”
Kates and Schaffer observe in their Reason article that “by leaving out such cases, Kellermann and Reay excluded almost all the lives saved, injuries avoided, and property protected by keeping a gun in the home.” Yet they note that gun control advocates continue to use that study as a basis for claims such as, “A gun in the home is 43 times as likely to kill a family member as to be used in self-defense.”
While CDC financing for research on gun violence hasn’t actually stopped completely, it is currently limited to research where firearms are treated only as a component of a broader problem. The CDC asks researchers it funds to give it a heads-up whenever they publish studies related to firearms, and as a courtesy, typically relays this information to the NRA.
As a result of CDC’s sensitivity to controversy, the circle of academics who study gun-related issues has fallen off dramatically, a circumstance that this research community is clearly unhappy about. Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis who had his CDC funding cut in 1996, knew who to blame: “The National Rifle Association and its allies in Congress have largely succeeded in choking off the development of evidence upon which that [government gun] policy could be based.”
Yup…you betcha! That “policy” was settled by our by our Constitutional forefathers long ago, and was recently affirmed by our Supreme Court. Those who care about our Second Amendment rights should be grateful that those judgments weren’t rendered on the basis of CDC advice.
