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sebster wrote: If the focus was on guns that killed people, they'd look to ban handguns. But instead the focus is on guns that can effectively fight tyranny, and so they look to ban whatever the hell 'assault weapons' are.

Fixed that for you.

 SickSix wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Bottom line is that we are safer then we have ever been at any point in U.S. history crime wise. (as far back as we have records any way) so why in the world would people be freaking out and trying to push "crime control" bills constantly?

Simple. Control. Not of crime, but of you.

Exactly.

Legal and responsible gun owners stop/prevent/mitigate crime all the time, but the only place you'll read about it is the local paper or newstation where the event happened. The MSM refuses to run those stories, huh, wonder why?

I dunno, it's probably because the headline "Interesting Crime Prevented from Happening Before it Even Started" isn't going to get as many clicks or newspaper sales as "Hideous Murder Occurs in Family of 12's Home, See Inside For All The Gory Details".

For all this talk of "OH MY GOD THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS POLITICISING EVERYTHING" It is also primarily a business, so headlines that seem vaguely boring (Crime isn't allowed to happen) aren't going to get anywhere near as much attention as "exciting" headlines (Crime Occurs that is horrifically violent, come and look at the gory details so that you can be outraged!)

 SickSix wrote:

sebster wrote: If the focus was on guns that killed people, they'd look to ban handguns. But instead the focus is on guns that can effectively fight tyranny, and so they look to ban whatever the hell 'assault weapons' are.

Fixed that for you.

Yeah, how DARE they ban SAMs, anti-tank rockets and anti-personel mines from private ownership?

Oh wait, you're just spouting macho drivel about how guns are the only things between you and tyrrany. Carry on then. Don't mind me.

 sebster wrote:
Sort of. But keep in mind a lot of killings are also done with legally purchased, legally possessed guns. There's also something of a myth that gun violence is purely a scumbag, career criminal thing (to which the implied answer is having a gun of your own). Lots of gun deaths are the product of otherwise law abiding citizens having a gun on hand at the wrong time.

The overwhelming majority is violence involving criminal enterprise, committed by disadvantaged minorities. We have statistics on that. We don't on the "crime of passion" angle, but I suspect it's probably nowhere near what people think it is. You're around tools that can easily kill your fellow man all day.

Absolutely. If the focus was on guns that killed people, they'd look to ban handguns. But instead the focus is on guns that look scary, and so they look to ban whatever the hell 'assault weapons' are.

They can't ban handguns. The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Since gun sales aren't recorded, it's impossible to know the opening statement is factual.

Sales are actually meticulously documented by FFLs.

My pistol purchase sure as heck was. Federal forms, state forms, a phone call for the background check, not to mention the fact that the FFL I purchased my pistol from is going to have that paperwork on file for as long as he holds his FFL at the minimum.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Oh wait, you're just spouting macho drivel about how guns are the only things between you and tyrrany. Carry on then. Don't mind me.

Maybe the threat of tyranny is overstated but guns as self defense is not.

 Breotan wrote:

That was heart wrenching listening to that poor lady on the phone to 9/11 as someone is breaking into her house. A few minutes seems like forever listening to the call, I'd hate to be in her shoes

 easysauce wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

 Valion wrote:
Whether the conclusions drawn are correct or not, nobody's disputing the statistics. Gun crime is way down.

Except that really isn't what the thread is about; it is about drawing a conclusion and saying it is correct. Even the title of the thread says it is about saying that higher gun sales = lower crime.

exccept thats not what he is saying at all, he simply stated facts such as gun crime is down, and gun ownership is up, he has made his own conclusion but he does not assert it as some kind of "100% proven double blind study". unlike all the more guns = more crime crowds

simply saying causation=/=correlation is a cop out catch all answer that sounds like you did not read to the end with an open mind. if you actually read the whole thing.

No it's not a cop out, it's a faulty argument: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

The author dismisses the gun law argument with his ending statement calling it an illusion, so I don't know where you get the idea that he's not making an argument for causation. He just passive aggressively dismisses debate against his point of view.

Further more, he does not provide sufficient statistics of gun purchases during the same time period that he quotes homicide statistics. He gives two years worth of gun purchase and background checks compared to the 18 year decrease he compares it against. He quotes statistics that are diluted such as non-fatal violent crimes, which means that bar fights, domestic abuse and any number of other crimes fall under this. As goes the old phrase, "lies, damn lies and statistics."

Overall, it's a terribly slanted editorial that is wrapped up in his point of view and makes no attempt to be detached from the issue. It can hardly be considered good journalism.

right on brother, those DOJ nut jobs dont know what they are talking about,









im just gonna leave those there, not like more correlation for the last 20 years or so could hurt.

 SickSix wrote:
Fixed that for you.

Seriously, that crazypants nonsense has to go away.

Owning a rifle doesn't make you an effective freedom fighter. Buying a gun and pretending that now you can fight your government is just a more expensive, more silly version of playing with GI Joe figures.

Effective anti-government work requires highly disciplined, highly sophisticated cell strucutures, so that elements of the resistance can work in support of each other while at the same time remaining independant, so that compromising one cell won't compromise any others. If you have that in place then getting your hands on some guns is a piece of cake.

Effective anti-government work requires highly disciplined, highly sophisticated cell strucutures, so that elements of the resistance can work in support of each other while at the same time remaining independant, so that compromising one cell won't compromise any others. If you have that in place then getting your hands on some guns is a piece of cake.

Or a bunch of states not going with the Fed gov't

 sebster wrote:
Effective anti-government work requires highly disciplined, highly sophisticated cell strucutures, so that elements of the resistance can work in support of each other while at the same time remaining independant, so that compromising one cell won't compromise any others. If you have that in place then getting your hands on some guns is a piece of cake.

I thought communism was ended in Europe through riots?

All starts with a bread line.....

 Valion wrote:
The overwhelming majority is violence involving criminal enterprise, committed by disadvantaged minorities. We have statistics on that. We don't on the "crime of passion" angle, but I suspect it's probably nowhere near what people think it is. You're around tools that can easily kill your fellow man all day.

You're completely wrong. Here's the 2011 FBI breakdown on homicide;
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-10

Of the 12,664 killings in the US, a whopping 673 of them were gangland killings. Now, to that you can add the felony crimes committed against strangers and acquaintances (we'll just assume those were all criminal enterprises run by 'disadvantaged minorities' to help out your case as much as we can), and you're up to 1,564, or 12.3% of murders. To put that in perspective - arguments (over romance, money, fueld by drugs etc) caused 3,633 murders or 28.7% of the yearly total, more than double the number you claimed was the 'overwhelming majority'.

Seriously, this myth in the US that gun murders are all due to gang problems and drugs is just wrong. The most likely way you'll die by gunshot (other than shooting yourself) is if you piss off someone you know.


And then we get on to the idea that there's murder weapons everywhere, so guns don't change that. Well yeah, you can kill someone with a kitchen knife, it's a lot harder but it's do-able. But the simple, plain fact of the matter is how hard it is matters. We know this because we can look at murder rates in developed countries, as per this table;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

And then we can see all the developed countries track at around 1 intentional murder per 100,000, and then we see the US, at 4.8 murders per hundred thousand. From there we can argue one of two things, that the US is just inherently a more murderous, insane group of people, or that just maybe having a lot more tools designed to kill people around means that when someone has that instinct to kill, they're more likely to do it.

They can't ban handguns. The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.

First up, that wouldn't make a ban impossible, it just gives it a much harder political hurdle.

Second up, you could still limit and control them without outright ban, if there was popular support and the political will to do so. But there isn't, and it's a useful exercise to think about why that might be.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Breotan wrote:
I thought communism was ended in Europe through riots?

Effective violent resistance, obviously.

Non-violent public protest is kind of outside of the context on a discussion on the needs for guns to resistance guns, obviously.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jihadin wrote:
Or a bunch of states not going with the Fed gov't

Umm, the South lost. When attempting armed resistance, the point is to not lose.

Your not current with state gov's concerning gun laws and Obamacare there Sebster


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and the Mary J happy plant for a clue in

 Jihadin wrote:
Your not current with state gov's concerning gun laws and Obamacare there Sebster

No, you're just not following my argument.

The basic, plain simple and undeniable reality is that a population gets the society it wants. As an example, you had in multiple states both formal and informal processes that produced racial segregation. Eventually, as a nation as a whole you got to a point where that wasn't what you wanted. And so you changed things, through a variety of measures, and if those measures had proved insufficient then you would have driven through more changes.

As such, it becomes a nonsense to claim that you couldn't change the laws on guns. There are government processes, both formal and informal, that make such change harder, but not impossible. The plain reality is that if there was a real, genuine groundswell of support for removing guns from society, it could be done.

It isn't because, while you might get strong majority support for specific pieces of gun reform the US population as a whole is in favour of people being able to buy a gun if they want to.


The point, ultimately, is just to be honest enough to own that fact, for both sides to stop dreaming about a ban on guns (in that I'm not sure who's sillier, the anti-gun folk who dream of a total ban that will never happen at the expense of developing legislation that might actually pass and be useful, or the pro-gun folk who like to scare each other with stories of government coming to take their guns). Just accept that you a gun owning culture, and then to be honest about all the good and all the bad that comes from it.

Off the racial kick Sebster. I see where your going

Where I was going was example Washington and COlorado legalizing weed. Notice the federal gov't not really getting involved?
Multiple states......Kansas...being one...Kentucky....a slew of states passing state laws praticuly ignoring what ever federal laws that might come out from the federal gov't. Yes I know Fed law trumps state laws. Fed enforcement officers need support of state LEO to do their job. See the hang up there
A whole slew of states republican and democrat gov's are not implementing Obamacare and some states passing laws to make implementing Obamacare illegal.

So basically.IMO...we in the US are protesting at state level. Not MLK protest but paperwork protest. Then states go to courts with the Feds and then everyone gets really mad at the federal government. Basically a battle of court and taxs payer money.

Whew.....chemo, pollen allergies, and pain meds are goooddd but I try to hang in here for this

 Jihadin wrote:
So basically.IMO...some people in some states in the US are protesting fecklessly at the state level.

Fixed for accuracy.

Thanks Aht I like that one better

 easysauce wrote:
right on brother, those DOJ nut jobs dont know what they are talking about,









im just gonna leave those there, not like more correlation for the last 20 years or so could hurt.

Well congratulations, I think you completely ignored what my post actually said and replied to the post you wanted me to write. FYI, being snarky doesn't make you win an argument, it just makes you look like an ass.

You claim that absolutely nothing else impacted crime between those time periods is your claim. An increase in right to carry by 600% of the population resulted in a 30% drop in violent crime rate and handguns alone reduced property crime. It couldn't be better police methods, harsher sentencing, economic factors or anything else, just guns. You've taken two graphs completely out of context of what ever report they may have been in and presented them alone to support a claim on a complex issue. This is why correlation =/= causality is an argumentative fallacy, as it ignores all other factors that may be involved. You failed to even refute anything I said about the article itself and how poorly written it is. Instead, you attacked a position I never stated, you assumed I had taken a position, and attacked it in the least convincing manner and demeaning tone you could have possibly conceived. Good day.

 Jihadin wrote:
Off the racial kick Sebster. I see where your going

Sorry, not sure what you mean by racial kick?

Where I was going was example Washington and COlorado legalizing weed. Notice the federal gov't not really getting involved?

Meh, state opposition is fundamentally limited. The issue is not so much that Fed law trumps state law, but that the Fed raises income tax, and sends it out to the states. What the states collect in sales taxes and the like is just a fraction of what they need to keep their programs and institutions running.

Basic fact is if you want healthcare that amounts to much more than a guy with a rifle out behind the woodshed, then you need Fed dollars.

Now sure, there's scope in the short term to make some grandstanding claims about rejecting this thing or that, or even passing goofball laws that make enforcement of those laws illegal. And maybe, if you're smart, you can use that showmanship to bargain for the eventual practice of programs to be a bit more like what you'd like.

And the Feds know this. Plain fact is Obamacare was built with it very firmly in mind - Obamacare is a great deal for the states.

Sebs the states raise a pretty fair amount of their budgets from state sources, sales, property tax, state income tax, the list goes on.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Sebs the states raise a pretty fair amount of their budgets from state sources, sales, property tax, state income tax, the list goes on.

Yes, they raise their own money. I already stated that. I then went on to state that they can't do without the money coming from the Federal Government.

And that can be established quite easily - just by looking at any State government budget. We can pick out Virginia if you'd like, where just a tick under 14% of state revenue is federal grants. That's basically how the states fund their entitlement programs.

And before you ask, no, a state can't just ignore 14% of its income. That cashflow from the Federal government to the states is real, serious power.

Actually that money is spread to hell and yonder, national level funding for LEOs, roads, etc, I wouldn't count the majority of it off as being earmarked for entitlement programs. Also I'd say with a little reorganization, I have absolutely no doubt that most of the states could get by without the federal government in all it's "beneficent" and "magnanimous" "glory". Some gak holes are only riding everyone else's coat tails for help, but that's any group.

Either way I think you're underestimating state power, especially when large numbers of states are operating in concert to oppose federal action, it's part of the system and it's designed to be that way.

I'd also say I fail to see how Obamacare is a great deal for any one, much less the states, and considering the large amounts of resistance to it on the state level, I'd say plenty of states agree with me. If any one can actually tell what exactly is all IN it's 600+ pages of legalese drivel, it's a useless cluster feth of a bill that while it does do a FEW useful things (no discrimination, extending the time span students/dependents can be covered by their parents, etc) for the most part it's an over costly wheezing mutant monstrosity that needs to be dragged out behind the wood shed and mercifully shot in the head by that guy with the rifle you were talking about.

A freaking nationalized health care program would cost us LESS then Obamacare. That's not just a failure, it's a MASSIVE failure. As a nation we need to pony up and make a choice, either a full socialized Canadian (and therefore rationed) healthcare system, or go full capitalist with appropriate protections and watchdogs installed to ensure fair play and access. Half donkey measures benefit no one and hurt everyone.

Side note: I think we need to make a law where ANY bill proposed by a senator that cannot be effectively summarized in one paragraph and oh I'll be generous ten bullet points is immediately thrown out and the Senator is fined a percentage of his or her pay for the year.

 sebster wrote:
Of the 12,664 killings in the US, a whopping 673 of them were gangland killings. Now, to that you can add the felony crimes committed against strangers and acquaintances (we'll just assume those were all criminal enterprises run by 'disadvantaged minorities' to help out your case as much as we can), and you're up to 1,564, or 12.3% of murders. To put that in perspective - arguments (over romance, money, fueld by drugs etc) caused 3,633 murders or 28.7% of the yearly total, more than double the number you claimed was the 'overwhelming majority'.

Fair enough. Now out of those 3,633 murders due to arguments, what percentage of them involve someone with an existing criminal record? Gang-bangers don't just come into existance in the 'gang-banger's hangout'; they have parents and siblings and friends and accquaintances and coworkers and lovers and spouses and kids. And discounting violent crimes committed by people with criminal records as 'not committed by a known criminal' just because the crime was committed against someone the criminal knows is cooking the numbers to support a conclusion.

 Ahtman wrote:

That's kinda misleading...isn't it?

whembly wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

That's kinda misleading...isn't it?

This is the exact kinda of idiocy that I suggested (albeit far less inflamatory) and that the OP posted.

THE. EXACT. SAME. KIND.

[delete: Never mind. Too much disrespect being tossed around in the gun control debate.]

 whembly wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

That's kinda misleading...isn't it?

Nonsense. Clearly climate change is the only factor on the number of pirates in the world.

 Laughing Man wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

That's kinda misleading...isn't it?

Nonsense. Clearly climate change is the only factor on the number of pirates in the world.

It's supposed to be read the other way though, but leaving out the explaining text does make it kinda confusing.