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 Seaward wrote:
The Swiss have a lot of guns, yeah. What you're missing is that they have so many guns because most of them are state-issued due to their weird militia rules and no longer in the "owner's" home. You're trying to make the claim that Switzerland has more gun homicides due to more uncontrolled guns, but - oops - that may just not be the case, unless you can tell me how many guns are actually in private ownership in Switzerland. And I doubt you can.

Whether or not they personally own the gun in their house doesn't alter the fact that they have a gun in the house...

I would like them to have done a bare basic amount of research before calling the idea of being able to draw a gun quickly absurd, though.

I suspect that for those of us from countries where criminals don't habitually wave guns around, the idea of someone actually thinking that trying to outdraw someone currently pointing a gun at you is a good idea seems a little crazy to begin with...

Put up some open, honest solutions designed to reduce firearm crime and you'd probably get it.

I believe the solution has been suggested: Reduce or better regulate the number of firearms that are available to the public.

Fewer firearms means less firearm related crime.

And yes, laws don't stop the bad guys from carrying guns. But there's a school of thought that says that people having guns for self defence simply serves to encourage the criminals to carry them, where amongst a less well-armed population, they're less likely to feel the need. They carry guns not because they're bad guys and bad guys carry guns, but because the people they're bad guy-ising might be carrying guns.

No idea what research there is to back that up, although I can at least say that far more store hold ups here in Oz are carried out by guys with knives or (for some bizarre reason) screwdrivers than with guns.

 insaniak wrote:
Whether or not they personally own the gun in their house doesn't alter the fact that they have a gun in the house...

The gun's in the house. The ammo isn't.

I suspect that for those of us from countries where criminals don't habitually wave guns around, the idea of someone actually thinking that trying to outdraw someone currently pointing a gun at you is a good idea seems a little crazy to begin with...

Why, exactly?

I believe the solution has been suggested: Reduce or better regulate the number of firearms that are available to the public.

Fewer firearms means less firearm related crime.

That's great and all, and draconian efforts to get rid of guns might pay off in, say, a century or two, but again. 89 guns per every 100 people in this country. They aren't going anywhere. You could stop all sales on every type of firearm tomorrow and anyone who wanted one would still be able to easily get a gun fifty years from now. "Guns bad" is not a solution that's going to work.

 Seaward wrote:
Either we have such a terribly high violent crime rate in this country that we need to do something about it, or else the probability of ever needing to defend yourself - and therefore the violent crime rate - is staggeringly low. You cannot have it both ways when you realize your argument doesn't make any sense.

Something needs to be done. Owning a gun is something. Therefore it must be done.

Which is, I guess, a kind of logic. Doesn't really matter that owning a gun doesn't really impact the crime rate, or your odds of surviving a home break-in.

And, also, the US doesn't have that high of a crime rate. Home break ins, muggings, all sorts of other person on person crimes, you're not far from other developed countries. You've just got a really high homicide rate.

I'd be worried, but my 'cause' is actually gaining ground, according to polls. More people than ever before support the right to own handguns in this country, sebster. That's post-Sandy Hook. It went up, not down.

And in 2004 opposition to gay marriage spiked as well, and lots of social conservatives thought they'd bested that horrible gay marriage issue. Because you can get people to believe crazy nonsense for an election cycle or two. But ultimately, the trend is towards sanity.

And even if you don't buy into that, there's a much greater trend at work here, and that's steady, 60 year decline in gun ownership rates.

So really, if you want to ensure good gun laws that let people who want to own guns with a minimum of fuss, then you better get to work on forming sensible, long erm sustainable policy while you've got a political advantage. Because the longer your side insists on crazy nonsense like denying the basic correlation between guns and gun deaths, the quicker you'll lose legitimacy.

That's not what we were discussing when you decided to hop on in without reading.

No, you weren't. That's the point. You were talking about silly little hypotheticals about drawing down on armed attackers, and ignoring the basic stuff that really matters.

It'd be a bit like talking about WWII and focussing in on the quality of German gun sights and how important they are to winning a war, without any context given to simple fact that they're not that important compared to lots of other stuff, because the Germans lost.

And so yeah, a person might be able to whip out a pistol and shoot down a killer, and every so often in a country of 300 million people that's going to happen. But in the context of 10,000 gun murders a year it's pretty close to meaningless.

And as far as those statistical studies go concerning "stopping power" and thus the rationale behind mag capacity bans - what the Canuck and I were arguing about - the data's in my favor.

Yeah, sure. No argument there. But, as I've pointed out, having little sub-debate while ignoring the greater context of the massive number gun killings in the US is disfunctional.

I do, actually, I just happen to know more than you. It's a common theme to our little contretemps.

You keep saying that, right in the middle of me explaining to you something you're oblivious to, or repeating something you missed when I posted it previously. Which is quite an odd thing to still be happening, I must say.

The Swiss have a lot of guns, yeah. What you're missing is that they have so many guns because most of them are state-issued due to their weird militia rules and no longer in the "owner's" home. You're trying to make the claim that Switzerland has more gun homicides due to more uncontrolled guns, but - oops - that may just not be the case, unless you can tell me how many guns are actually in private ownership in Switzerland. And I doubt you can.

"The rate of private gun ownership in Switzerland is 45.72 firearms per 100 people"
http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/switzerland

Any other questions, or are you just going to stop looking like an idiot, and accept that just because you don't know anything doesn't mean there isn't information that the rest of us can use to develop intelligent opinions?

This is the problem with taking a position before bothering to learn anything at all about it.

I've read and learned about this issue for a touch more than a decade. Which I'm sure is less time than you're about to tell me you've spent, but of course the difference is I've spent my time reading about the effect of guns on a population, while you've spent it insisting that because you don't know anything, no-one else must either.

I don't require that my statisticians be in gunfights to comment on statistics.

Then you accept that gun ownership correlates strongly with gun homicide, accidental gun death and gun suicide? Good then. Now that you've come to accept the basic statistical facts of the situation we can finally move on to a sensible discussion of how to limit the number of gun deaths in the US each year.

I would like them to have done a bare basic amount of research before calling the idea of being able to draw a gun quickly absurd, though.

Seriously, that's the claim you're falling back on? After I explain;
"A person most certainly can be that skilled with a firearm. The issue is with the staggering improbability of the individual ever being presented with a situation in which he'd have to draw and put rounds into an armed assailant."

And you then quote that and reply to it, implying you read it... then in the same damn post repeat the same stupid nonsense that I was doubting it is possible. I mean, come on, that is just not good enough. Even by the fairly crappy standards of dakka, that's woeful.

Put up some open, honest solutions designed to reduce firearm crime and you'd probably get it.

While you're carrying on like this? No, not possible at all. All we'd get is the same semi-coherent nattering you've put into all these gun threads.

A part of me kind of wishes that the US is like a wild west film where every citizen quickly draws there 6 shot revolver shooting down the evil bandits and then riding off into the sunset.

 Seaward wrote:
So your contention is those homicides would not have occurred if firearms weren't available?

Yeah. And you might argue that they'd just use another weapon, but I'd point out that frankly that's just you ignoring the numbers, yet again. The US has a homicide rate of 4.8 per 100,000. Compare that to other developed countries, like Germany, 0.8, the United Kingdom, 1.2, France, 1.1, Australia, 1.0, Canada, 1.6, and you find the US is way above any of them. And none of them are inherently free of the drug and social problems that drive murder rates (though the greater level of economic equality could be expected to reduce the rate somewhat, but nothing like the four fold decrease you see compared to the US).

Nor does your 'its all gangs and drug violence' match up when you look at the motives reported by FBI studies on murder in the US - with 25% being killed by family members (where the killer was known) you've already got as much inter-family murder per capita as another developed country has in total. Meanwhile felony circumstances only accounted for 23.1% of killings, meaning that simply isn't an explanation for the roughly four fold increase in killings compared to other developed countries.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded/expandhomicidemain

So you either have to conclude that Americans are somehow a uniquely murderous, crazed people, who will kill family members as often as the rest of us kill in total, or that there is something in America that makes killing happen a lot more often.

And all those guns, which are afterall tools designed to make killing easier, seem a pretty solid explanation for what it is that makes killing happen.

 sebster wrote:
Something needs to be done. Owning a gun is something. Therefore it must be done.

Which is, I guess, a kind of logic. Doesn't really matter that owning a gun doesn't really impact the crime rate, or your odds of surviving a home break-in.

It does, actually. I'd post the numbers again, but you just keep whining about how you don't like them ever since Kalashnikov first put them up.

And, also, the US doesn't have that high of a crime rate. Home break ins, muggings, all sorts of other person on person crimes, you're not far from other developed countries. You've just got a really high homicide rate.

And it's on the way down. Sounds like what we're doing is working. Problem solved, we can all stop talking about it.

And in 2004 opposition to gay marriage spiked as well, and lots of social conservatives thought they'd bested that horrible gay marriage issue. Because you can get people to believe crazy nonsense for an election cycle or two. But ultimately, the trend is towards sanity.

And even if you don't buy into that, there's a much greater trend at work here, and that's steady, 60 year decline in gun ownership rates.

Fortunately, the support for gun ownership has been trending up even if actual ownership hasn't.

So really, if you want to ensure good gun laws that let people who want to own guns with a minimum of fuss, then you better get to work on forming sensible, long erm sustainable policy while you've got a political advantage. Because the longer your side insists on crazy nonsense like denying the basic correlation between guns and gun deaths, the quicker you'll lose legitimacy.

We've got it. Problem solved.

That's not the agenda of the opposition, unfortunately.

No, you weren't. That's the point. You were talking about silly little hypotheticals about drawing down on armed attackers, and ignoring the basic stuff that really matters.

See, this is the problem, sebster. They're hardly hypotheticals, and they matter a great deal. When people refuse to acknowledge that you can in fact defend yourself with a gun, it's a very easy way to simply paint the entire notion of owning a gun as lunacy.

[quote[And so yeah, a person might be able to whip out a pistol and shoot down a killer, and every so often in a country of 300 million people that's going to happen. But in the context of 10,000 gun murders a year it's pretty close to meaningless.

d-usa wrote:What about people tripping over Chihuahuas?

Just so long as they're not Assault Chihuahuas.




Seaward, I was going to call you out on your crap again but I see that Sebster has basically done that for me, so I really have nothing further to add here. I have to spend half my time dealing with your strawman arguments, and I'm getting bored. Rather than having a decent debate, you've instead decided to just start blatantly making stuff up, and I have no patience for that. Best of luck there big guy.

 sebster wrote:
Nor does your 'its all gangs and drug violence' match up when you look at the motives reported by FBI studies on murder in the US - with 25% being killed by family members (where the killer was known) you've already got as much inter-family murder per capita as another developed country has in total. Meanwhile felony circumstances only accounted for 23.1% of killings, meaning that simply isn't an explanation for the roughly four fold increase in killings compared to other developed countries.

I'm missing the part where they break down killings involving gang activity or drugs. You seem to be throwing out the inter-family murders as having nothing to do with either, when there's no data either way to support that, as well as the murders that occurred related to another felony.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 azazel the cat wrote:
Seaward, I was going to call you out on your crap again but I see that Sebster has basically done that for me, so I really have nothing further to add here. I have to spend half my time dealing with your strawman arguments, and I'm getting bored. Rather than having a decent debate, you've instead decided to just start blatantly making stuff up, and I have no patience for that. Best of luck there big guy.

Does this mean we won't be getting anymore "Why would anyone possibly need more than a musket?" garbage? I'm crushed.

 Seaward wrote:
It does, actually. I'd post the numbers again, but you just keep whining about how you don't like them ever since Kalashnikov first put them up.

Yeah, pointing out the numbers have a chronic problem in their methodology (using a cold call method on an event with a very low % produces an overwhelming false positive rate), and pointing out the absolutely insane conclusions of those figures (more rapes stopped by firearms than there was a total number of rapes and attempted rapes that year) and referencing the FBI report that stated this is whining about the numbers.

fething seriously, get better at this.

And it's on the way down. Sounds like what we're doing is working. Problem solved, we can all stop talking about it.

Of course, because as countries get richer, and education rates improve the murder rate goes down. But the idea that having a murder rate that's fourfold other developed countries is okay if it drops by 2 or 3% is flying rodent gak crazy.

Oh sure, if we had a murder rate like the United Kingdom then 7,500 less people would have been killed last year. But the rate did drop 2%, so everything is good.

Fortunately, the support for gun ownership has been trending up even if actual ownership hasn't.

And if you think that's sustainable then I wish you luck in your crazy journey into the brave new world of "Seaward ignores demographics because he thinks that is a thing people can do".

The Republican party that you try so very much to distance yourself from thought demographics were just a thing in other people's reality. Then they hit the maxxed out white people vote and lost the 2012 election anyway. Thing about political parties is that they can make those kind of screw ups, and re-brand themselves as something else.

But the people in favour of gun rights can't do that. So they have to put this issue to bed before the gun owners find themselves much smaller than the people who think 10,000 murder victims are year is a serious issue.

See, this is the problem, sebster. They're hardly hypotheticals, and they matter a great deal. When people refuse to acknowledge that you can in fact defend yourself with a gun, it's a very easy way to simply paint the entire notion of owning a gun as lunacy.

Of course you can defend yourself with a gun. That isn't at question, no matter how much you keep trying to pretend it is.

The point, simply, is that the instances in which people defend themselves with guns is very small. No matter how much of a gun toting bad ass you might personally be, the odds of someone breaking in to your house, coming to your bedroom and pointing a gun at you, just in time for you to draw and put three in him is very, very small. I can't believe I had to type that.

Meanwhile, we can see the effect of guns on the nation as a whole, divorced from any personal little dreams of taking down an intruder. And those numbers are not gun friendly.

Yep, you're right.

Thanks for accepting that.

Mexico, I noticed, is quite a ways down on the list. Since you're the expert here, and you've been making the claim that the number of firearms available in the country is the only statistic relevant to the firearm homicide rate, could you explain Mexico for me?

See how I kept saying 'developed countries'? I did that because in poorer countries, with lower police resources (and more corruption lowering the effectiveness of what police resources there are), greater poverty rates, minimal social security and all the rest, then you get other factors taking a lead in driving the murder rate.

Which is why Mexico has the murder rate it does. But the US is a wealthy country, with great police resourcing, welfare systems and all the rest. There's no reason it should be such an outlier compared to Germany, Spain, the UK, Australia and all the other developed countries. But there it is, sticking out all by itself.

Sure. As they're trending down anyway, I'd say do nothing. I'm utterly unconcerned with gun suicides, and gun homicide is overwhelmingly associated with the drug trade and gang activity. Get rid of drugs and gangs, I'd say, because that's been working out great for decades.

Again, a couple of percent drop in murder rates, when the overall rate is four times other developed countries, is just not a 'its okay do nothing' situation.

And as I pointed out later in my answer, drugs and gangs just don't explain the rate.

Again, if being confronted with an armed assailant is staggeringly improbable, I'm not sure why you're so vehement that something needs to be done about guns. You keep trying to have it both ways - guns are a huge problem, but your chances of ever being confronted with one are next to nil. It simply cannot be both.

No, the situation you describe is something that, statistically, doesn't happen very often. Exactly why this is doesn't matter, it is known that such responses aren't very common. It could be that armed assailants commonly work in pairs or more. Or that gun owners don't react as effectively as they'd personally like when that situation presents itself. Or that armed attackers don't often prey on the middle class men who most commonly carry guns.

I don't know exactly why, but it could be a combination of some of the above and a bunch of other stuff as well. The point is that we simply know from the stats that the situation you're describing is not that common.

I want to point out the most troubling factor in all of this is not guns, of that I am sure. The human condition is to blame, plane and simple we have built up society around us and allowed ourselfs to think we are enlightened, but in truth we are blind to our very own nature. Let's take a look at nature, there are the eaters and eaten. All the eaten(for the most part) have eyes in the side of there heads or in a best place to better detect predators, and the predator has eyes to the front, to better detect its pray, its eyes are sensitive to movement, its chemical and biological system is geared to aid in the kill and preserve itself. Oh what.... that's us?!?!?! Yes we are predators, and if you allow yourself to believe there are not people among us that would make a meal of you then thats on you.

We have been killing each other since the beginning of time, for one reason or another.

2nd amendment "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Many argue this is the keep the "boogy man" away, I am inclined to believe this to be true in the literal sence of, bad guy in my house but an another also,I would point out "necessary to the security of a free state", I am inclined to believe that the German citizens of WWII would have stood up to the nazis, had there right to bear arms not been infringed(what rational person in a position to act would stand idly) But history shows that once the people were no longer a threat (disarmed) to the government, that government commited some of historys worst crimes against humanity. In 1930s/40s I am sure (just like today) that the people belived themselves to be the most advanced and civilized people of history. I am willing to bet the average person today believe that to be true of todays people.

Point in case....... http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-10-2008/marines-in-berkeley

At the end of the day to fix the worlds gun problem we need to go back in time and un-invent them, as it stands this day....... we can't. So how can I legitimately ask a fellow citizen to give up a right or even make up their mind for them? I personally don't believe anyone, government or otherwise has the RIGHT. It rests completely on the individual as to what they deem necessary for their needs.

battle8rother wrote:

I am inclined to believe that the German citizens of WWII would have stood up to the nazis, had there right to bear arms not been infringed(what rational person in a position to act would stand idly)

What. How many times has this been gone over in just this thread I wonder. Did you know that the Nazis actually relaxed gun ownership for everyone except Jews?

 Seaward wrote:
I'm missing the part where they break down killings involving gang activity or drugs. You seem to be throwing out the inter-family murders as having nothing to do with either, when there's no data either way to support that, as well as the murders that occurred related to another felony.

Oh for feth's sake, read. Please just fething once read one of my posts, actually fething figure out what I wrote, think about it, and then give an answer based on what I fething wrote, not some bizarro world interpretation based on a loose skimming of the key words. fething please.

And when you read my response, you'll realise that I recognised that the murder linked to other felonies are an indicator of your 'it's drugs and gangs and stuff' explanation. But that number is only 23.1% of killing, nothing like what it'd have to be to explain the four fold greater rate of murder in the US compared to other developed countries. I mean, if you want to get all maths wonk about it, assuming felong related murder was also 23.1% of murder elsewhere in the world, then in the US it'd have to be more like 80.7% to be an explanation for the four fold increase in murder.

But it isn't.

And yeah, inter-family killings are unlikely to be related to drugs. Claiming otherwise would require claiming that the roughly 1/3 of family killings that involve the husband killing the wife are because the wife couldn't pay for the coke she snorted last week, and husband ain't gonna tolerate that. Given that's insane, we're gonna have to conclude it ain't true.

 sebster wrote:
Yeah, pointing out the numbers have a chronic problem in their methodology (using a cold call method on an event with a very low % produces an overwhelming false positive rate), and pointing out the absolutely insane conclusions of those figures (more rapes stopped by firearms than there was a total number of rapes and attempted rapes that year) and referencing the FBI report that stated this is whining about the numbers.

fething seriously, get better at this.

How many times need we point out that most defensive gun uses go unreported? Someone tries to assault me, I pull a gun, assault doesn't occur, I don't shoot. That's how, if my memory of KM's numbers serves, most DGUs go. Neither side in that encounter has an incentive to report it, and according to the statistics posted, they overwhelmingly don't.

Of course, because as countries get richer, and education rates improve the murder rate goes down. But the idea that having a murder rate that's fourfold other developed countries is okay if it drops by 2 or 3% is flying rodent gak crazy.

The problem with that assertion is that guns alone don't make up the difference in the murder rate, so you're kind of proving the point that guns are not the one and only factor at play in America's homicide problem.

And if you think that's sustainable then I wish you luck in your crazy journey into the brave new world of "Seaward ignores demographics because he thinks that is a thing people can do".

Why do you think demographic shifts will have anything to do with it? Are minorities more unlikely to support firearm ownership? If so, I'd like to see some evidence. Support's on the rise as this great demographic shift occurs, so I'm not sure where you're drawing your conclusion that demographics will shift massively against gun rights from.

Of course you can defend yourself with a gun. That isn't at question, no matter how much you keep trying to pretend it is.

Seriously, go back and read the posts about this topic before you joined the thread again. The only reason it's come up at all is that we had some Canadians claiming nobody could use a gun to defend themselves against someone who already had a gun drawn on them. That's it. I keep explaining it, and you keep arguing some other issue.

The point, simply, is that the instances in which people defend themselves with guns is very small.

This brings us back to KM's numbers. I think it's a lot more frequent than you're giving it credit for.

Meanwhile, we can see the effect of guns on the nation as a whole, divorced from any personal little dreams of taking down an intruder.

Ah, yes. Do I also have personal little dreams of my house catching fire because we installed a sprinkler system in it?

Again, a couple of percent drop in murder rates, when the overall rate is four times other developed countries, is just not a 'its okay do nothing' situation.

I disagree. It is when the trend is continuing down, and the other proposed solutions that anyone takes seriously have already had their time in the sun here and been proven not to work. AWB? Didn't do anything, by the DOJ's own analysis. Mag cap bans? We tried that, too. They don't work.

Universal background checks might make a dent, but I doubt it, to a degree. Either way, I'm in favor of them, but the problem is they come packaged with all this other crap that we know, for fact, doesn't do anything.

No, the situation you describe is something that, statistically, doesn't happen very often. Exactly why this is doesn't matter, it is known that such responses aren't very common. It could be that armed assailants commonly work in pairs or more. Or that gun owners don't react as effectively as they'd personally like when that situation presents itself. Or that armed attackers don't often prey on the middle class men who most commonly carry guns.

I don't know exactly why, but it could be a combination of some of the above and a bunch of other stuff as well. The point is that we simply know from the stats that the situation you're describing is not that common.

Personally, I think it's because the overwhelming majority of Americans don't carry guns.

battle8rother wrote:
I want to point out the most troubling factor in all of this is not guns, of that I am sure. The human condition is to blame, plane and simple we have built up society around us and allowed ourselfs to think we are enlightened, but in truth we are blind to our very own nature. Let's take a look at nature, there are the eaters and eaten. All the eaten(for the most part) have eyes in the side of there heads or in a best place to better detect predators, and the predator has eyes to the front, to better detect its pray, its eyes are sensitive to movement, its chemical and biological system is geared to aid in the kill and preserve itself. Oh what.... that's us?!?!?! Yes we are predators, and if you allow yourself to believe there are not people among us that would make a meal of you then thats on you.

Now, given the US has a rate of murder that's four times that of other developed countries, you either have to argue that the people of the US are either super-predators with a simply greater murderous desire, or there is something else at work.

I mean, to extend your argument, consider a species that is a super-predator because it is more capable of killing others of its own kind. Don't you think such a species would commit such an act more often, that if instead of having to beat a victim about the head many times, the predator could just kill from a distance with little more than simple motion. And then consider that's what a gun allows for.

Isn't it just common sense that when a thing becomes easier, we do it more often?

I am inclined to believe that the German citizens of WWII would have stood up to the nazis, had there right to bear arms not been infringed

Their guns weren't taken away. The firearms act of 1938 actually loosened the gun laws for everyone except the Jews. Firearms were permitted in Hussein's Iraq.

Basically, the nature of political oppression is just not as simple as 'we don't have the guns to fight them'. If you want to talk about human nature, then talk about the sad but undeniable reality that horrific governments are generally supported by a significant portion of their population (the ones who are the victims of oppression). Hitler wasn't that unpopular until the war started going badly.

 Seaward wrote:

 Smacks wrote:
I'm not really used to everyday people I meet in the street, or in shops or on trains having absolute power over life and death. How are you supposed to have argument or a fight with someone with the constant threat of being shot looming all the time?

This argument comes up from our friends in the Commonwealth so often that I'm forced to conclude the only thing stopping you guys from constantly killing each other over petty arguments is the lack of readily available weaponry.

I really wanted to contrast this with what sebster wrote. Since it was requoted a couple of times as a dig at the commonwealth.

 sebster wrote:
...FBI studies on murder in the US - with 25% being killed by family members (where the killer was known) you've already got as much inter-family murder per capita as another developed country has in total...

link

So you either have to conclude that Americans are somehow a uniquely murderous, crazed people, who will kill family members as often as the rest of us kill in total, or that there is something in America that makes killing happen a lot more often...

@ Seaward: These statistics do indicate that when weapons are readily available people do kill each other more... notably Americans. Seems ironic that your snipe at the commonwealth should be corroborated by the violence currently taking place in your own country.

 sebster wrote:
Oh for feth's sake, read. Please just fething once read one of my posts, actually fething figure out what I wrote, think about it, and then give an answer based on what I fething wrote, not some bizarro world interpretation based on a loose skimming of the key words. fething please.

And when you read my response, you'll realise that I recognised that the murder linked to other felonies are an indicator of your 'it's drugs and gangs and stuff' explanation. But that number is only 23.1% of killing, nothing like what it'd have to be to explain the four fold greater rate of murder in the US compared to other developed countries. I mean, if you want to get all maths wonk about it, assuming felong related murder was also 23.1% of murder elsewhere in the world, then in the US it'd have to be more like 80.7% to be an explanation for the four fold increase in murder.

But it isn't.

And yeah, inter-family killings are unlikely to be related to drugs. Claiming otherwise would require claiming that the roughly 1/3 of family killings that involve the husband killing the wife are because the wife couldn't pay for the coke she snorted last week, and husband ain't gonna tolerate that. Given that's insane, we're gonna have to conclude it ain't true.

I read what you wrote. I think you need to re-read what I wrote. Namely, that there's no indication to conclude it's only the murders linked to other felonies that involve drugs or gangs. Pretty simple concept.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Smacks wrote:
@ Seaward: These statistics do indicate that when weapons are readily available people do kill each other more... notably Americans. Seems ironic that your snipe at the commonwealth should be corroborated by the violence currently taking place in your own country.

No, they really don't.

And the "snipe at the Commonwealth" was taken due to remembering the article from 2005 posted here a couple months back about British docs recommending a ban on pointed knives due to the number of Britons being killed in the heat of a passionate argument due to their ready availability.

 Seaward wrote:
No, they really don't.

Given that 4.8 is greater than 1. I put it to you that they do.

 Smacks wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
No, they really don't.

Given that 4.8 is greater than 1. I put it to you that they do.

So you believe that if guns vanished from America overnight we'd suddenly have Britain's homicide rate?

Whatever floats your boat, I suppose.

 Seaward wrote:
So you believe that if guns vanished from America overnight we'd suddenly have Britain's homicide rate?

Whatever floats your boat, I suppose.

Let me just get this straight. With one hand you say the British people are somehow more violent, and the only thing that stops them killing each other is lack of firearms.

Then with the other hand you are saying that Americans (who I assume you consider much more civilised) would still kill each other 4 times more, given the same access to weapons that the British have?

One of your hands doesn't make sense. I think it's both of them...

If all guns disappeared overnight, murder rates would plummet. Particularly crimes of passion. Pulling a trigger is too easy. See how killy you all feel when you have to murder each other up close and personal with spoons, like the British. I'd be surprised if you made it over 0.9.

 Smacks wrote:
Let me just get this straight. With one had you say the British people are somehow more violent, and the only thing that stops them killing each other is lack of firearms.

No. I said that the frequent refrain from Brits and Aussies that they'd be terrified of constantly getting shot if they had access to guns suggests that the only thing keeping them from killing each other right now is the lack of access to guns.

Then with the other hand you are saying that Americans (who I assume you consider much more civilised) would still kill each other 4 times more, given the same access to weapons that the British have?

I absolutely think we'd still be killing each other four times more than the Brits if guns vanished overnight from America. I also don't think we're "more civilized" than they are. I kind of like it that way, personally.

If all guns disappeared overnight, murder rates would plummet.

I doubt it. If we look at Australia, for example, the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research concluded in 2005 that their near-ban legislation in 1996 had little to no effect on violence.

 Seaward wrote:

 Smacks wrote:
Let me just get this straight. With one had you say the British people are somehow more violent, and the only thing that stops them killing each other is lack of firearms.

No. I said that the frequent refrain from Brits and Aussies that they'd be terrified of constantly getting shot if they had access to guns suggests that the only thing keeping them from killing each other right now is the lack of access to guns.

How is that not the same thing?

Then with the other hand you are saying that Americans (who I assume you consider much more civilised) would still kill each other 4 times more, given the same access to weapons that the British have?

I absolutely think we'd still be killing each other four times more than the Brits if guns vanished overnight from America.

I'd love to hear why?

If all guns disappeared overnight, murder rates would plummet.

I doubt it. If we look at Australia, for example, the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research concluded in 2005 that their near-ban legislation in 1996 had little to no effect on violence.

Yes but all guns did not disappear over night. That is not the same thing at all.

I think after 10 pages, which to be fair include a delightful excursion to the world of Zardoz, we're not going anywhere new or worthwhile now.


Interested parties can of course carry on via PM.