Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 DarkLink wrote:


By that standard, cars are scary, stoves are scary, airplanes are scary, powerlines are scary, coffee pots are scary, anything that might theoretically hurt you is scary. I mean, who would ever want to strap themselves into a plastic container with wheels and a hunk of metal filled with controlled explosions and hurtle down a road so fast that hitting just about anything larger that a small dog can be instantly fatal?

Actually, no. None of those things were purposely made to make the act of killing easier and more efficient.

So the only thing scary about that is to see how much amazing stuff we can create to help unite the world, yet we spend so much time developing new ways to kill people.

A gun is just a hunk of metal and plastic. A massive number of Americans use that hunk of metal and plastic to do little more than punch holes in pieces of paper for fun, and do so with an incredibly low injury rate compared to far more "acceptable" activities like football, soccer, riding a bike, etc. Assigning arbitrary values to an inanimate object doesn't change the fact that it's perfectly possible for large numbers of people to safely and responsibly handle firearms with no meaningful risk to them or their families. Statistics bear this out. Rich white people own like twice as many firearms as anyone else in the USA combined, yet have the lowest violent homicide rate and have the lowest number of people killed or injured by firearms of any ethnic group in the USA. When you look at numbers like that, you have to accept that maybe something other than owning those violent death-murder-machines is driving firearm fatalities, things like gang and drug related crime and irresponsible gun handling procedures.


Plus, you would be amazed at how much of the good things in the world were developed exclusively because the military needed some new technology. Everything from gps to computers to tissue paper was invented because there was a military need for it, and once the technology was developed a commercial use for it was found. Combined with the fact that violent crime in the industrial world has been steadily dropping for decades and isn't showing any signs of stopping, it feels like you're reading too many sensationalist headlines and have an unrealistically pessimistic view of the world. You're directing your ire at the wrong things. If you want to make the world a better place, stop wasting time bitching about personally owned firearms and start working on improving social mobility, particularly for minorities. Lower poverty rates leads to less crime and higher standards of living and a huge number of other benefits. Gun ownership rates, in the meantime, have no meaningful correlation with said issues.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Relapse wrote:


The irony is the amount of economic damage alcohol does when you look at lost work, along with health and family problems that have to be dealt with on taxpayer dollars.

Same with cigarettes, on the health costs at least

Very true. Man has to be the most self destructive critter there is.

Relapse wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Relapse wrote:


The irony is the amount of economic damage alcohol does when you look at lost work, along with health and family problems that have to be dealt with on taxpayer dollars.

Same with cigarettes, on the health costs at least

Very true. Man has to be the most self destructive critter there is.

Damn those opposable thumbs we have

'Twas our downfall. The "forbidden fruit" if you will.

 Jihadin wrote:


Damn those opposable thumbs we have

Sadly we can't blame our alcoholic tendencies on those as some animals in the wild like to get drunk off fermented fruit yet don't indulge to the point of liver failure

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Jihadin wrote:


Damn those opposable thumbs we have

Sadly we can't blame our alcoholic tendencies on those as some animals in the wild like to get drunk off fermented fruit yet don't indulge to the point of liver failure

Monkey see monkey do in effect

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Jihadin wrote:


Damn those opposable thumbs we have

Sadly we can't blame our alcoholic tendencies on those as some animals in the wild like to get drunk off fermented fruit yet don't indulge to the point of liver failure

Funny to see Deer in an apple orchard.

I Don't live in the US, but the way i see this gun problem (and i guess its solution) Instead of: a) letting every sick owning an arsenal of AR15s for house "protection" and B.) Confiscating every gun any civilian ever bought and destroying it, simply make guns unavailable to people from choice a)???? Never actually researched about firearms laws in Croatia, but since my Grandfather was a military doctor during a war, he was given a TT57 (I THINK) hand gun. He was allowed to keep it after the war, since he was deemed sane for a proper use of firearms , but since he had to go on those "annoying psychology tests which costed about a kidney" he decided to simply disable it and hand it to me as a souvenir.
tl; dr IMHO guns are DEFINITELY not meant for anyone, so if you really enjoy shooting from it, you should pay a lot of money for the psychology tests, registration, ammo etc etc. simply because everything has its price.

Someone send me a IM when we get around talking about Switzerland and their gun culture

edit

Wrong country at first

 DarkLink wrote:
You're directing your ire at the wrong things. If you want to make the world a better place, stop wasting time bitching about personally owned firearms and start working on improving social mobility, particularly for minorities. Lower poverty rates leads to less crime and higher standards of living and a huge number of other benefits.

The sad thing is that the people who are the strongest supporters of gun ownership are often the strongest supporters of social darwinist attitudes about how poor people "deserve" to be poor because of their obvious failures.

ThatSwellFella wrote:
simply make guns unavailable to people from choice a)????

Would you like to post your method for separating "sick s" from "responsible gun owners", preferably one that doesn't depend on stereotypes about race/mental illness/politics/religion/etc?

tl; dr IMHO guns are DEFINITELY not meant for anyone, so if you really enjoy shooting from it, you should pay a lot of money for the psychology tests, registration, ammo etc etc. simply because everything has its price.

IOW, "only rich people should own guns, if you're poor then you don't deserve one".

@Peregrine: I said i am no expert since i only have a disabled gun from my grandfather. And look at my previous conments. You go to a psychiatrist for an (as objective as it can be) personality test, meaning no bullcrap such as muslims and blacks aren't allowed to own guns because news say that they do most of the guncrimes (before you attack me on the matter, i agree with you that it is a bull stereotype)
definitely isn't 100% reliable, i admit it, recently there was a case about a maniac shooting a toddler with a handgun here in Croatia, but as far as i can remember last scenario where a mentally unstable person shot someone with a LEGALLY AQUIRED firearm was like 6 years ago(General Ivan Korade, google it, i assume it were legally acquired since he was a general) when you put illegal ones, you would get a timespan between this incident and last like year and a half. That is why i said to make guns less available and stricter control on gun owners.
and one last thing: judging by your tone in previous post this is just my opinion, and i am not preaching how it shall be done with gun problems in the US(TBH not like i care a lot, since i don't live there )

I've moderate PTSD and own quite a few weapons one being an M4/AR15.

Edit

I spent a year in a control environment seeing Mental Health Specialists along with some other acquired "injuries".....before i go off on a tangent
Clarify a bit more

ThatSwellFella wrote:
definitely isn't 100% reliable

No, it isn't even close to 100% reliable. There is no magic "this person shouldn't own a gun" test. Many people who commit violent crimes are perfectly "sane" by mental illness testing standards, and many people who would fail those tests are able to take them dishonestly and pretend to be fine long enough to get their gun purchase approved. And then there's the huge problem that "mental illness" =/= "violent criminal", so you either use an incredibly specific test that only prevents the most extreme cases from owning a gun (someone who admits to struggling to control violent impulses, for example) or an unreasonably broad test that excludes a lot of people who are not a significant risk based on bad stereotypes about mental illness. In fact, this kind of testing would probably do more harm than good, both by supporting bad stereotypes and by giving a false sense of security about people who pass the test.

 Peregrine wrote:

 DarkLink wrote:
You're directing your ire at the wrong things. If you want to make the world a better place, stop wasting time bitching about personally owned firearms and start working on improving social mobility, particularly for minorities. Lower poverty rates leads to less crime and higher standards of living and a huge number of other benefits.

The sad thing is that the people who are the strongest supporters of gun ownership are often the strongest supporters of social darwinist attitudes about how poor people "deserve" to be poor because of their obvious failures.

ThatSwellFella wrote:
simply make guns unavailable to people from choice a)????

Would you like to post your method for separating "sick s" from "responsible gun owners", preferably one that doesn't depend on stereotypes about race/mental illness/politics/religion/etc?

tl; dr IMHO guns are DEFINITELY not meant for anyone, so if you really enjoy shooting from it, you should pay a lot of money for the psychology tests, registration, ammo etc etc. simply because everything has its price.

IOW, "only rich people should own guns, if you're poor then you don't deserve one".

Yeah, party-line politics and general intolerance of anyone who doesn't share your opinion generally annoys me. Sure, I have my opinions, and I like to think they're pretty well supported by fact, but I won't begrudge anyone for disagreeing with me. Within reason of course, I mean, if someone went around shouting 'heil hitler' or something, I wouldn't look too favorably on that, but if someone feels that ultimately the best course of action for reducing crime is unilaterally getting rid of all the guns everywhere, no big deal.


Though ironically enough, if you could keep guns out of the hands of the poor, the gun crime rate would drop off a cliff. Well over 80% of all gun crime is committed with handguns, and mainly cheap models, primarily because they're cheap and concealable. AR-15s and similar firearms that Democrats like to ramble on about are used in like 3% of gun crimes, because they're expensive and hard to find. Independently of this, most crime guns are either stolen or lent to the criminal by a third party, often a drug dealer or family member. That's a big part of the reason why restrictive gun laws have little to no effect on the crime rate, because they're either easy to circumvent for criminals or they don't target the guns/people actually committing the crimes. You can try and ban .50 caliber rifles all you want, but it won't have any effect on the crime rate because criminals simply don't use .50 caliber rifles for crimes.

I have a feeling that you might probably get more accidents involving guns in countries with more guns available. However the amount of gun violence probably has a lot more to do with social issues, poverty and drug use than anything else. Switzerland has a lot of military weapons among the citizens. Here in Sweden, there are a lot of hunting weapons (moose hunting is huge). Home guard soldiers (70 000 back in the day) used to keep their assault rifles at home. Recreational shooting with hand guns is also a lot more popular than most people realise.

I do think that weapons should be properly secured though.

If your parents get drunk and start waving weapons around I think that the message should encourage kids to contact a social worker or the police rather than bringing a gun to school.

 Ouze wrote:

 skyth wrote:
I'm going to claim that 40 million children an hour are saved from pedophile cannibal clowns by responsible AR-15 owners.

Don't forget the study that showed how 15.8 kids are saved each second from angry hoards of hungry spiked hair bikers by 12 gauge shotgun wielding war gamers.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DarkLink wrote:
Though ironically enough, if you could keep guns out of the hands of the poor, the gun crime rate would drop off a cliff. Well over 80% of all gun crime is committed with handguns, and mainly cheap models, primarily because they're cheap and concealable. AR-15s and similar firearms that Democrats like to ramble on about are used in like 3% of gun crimes, because they're expensive and hard to find. Independently of this, most crime guns are either stolen or lent to the criminal by a third party, often a drug dealer or family member. That's a big part of the reason why restrictive gun laws have little to no effect on the crime rate, because they're either easy to circumvent for criminals or they don't target the guns/people actually committing the crimes. You can try and ban .50 caliber rifles all you want, but it won't have any effect on the crime rate because criminals simply don't use .50 caliber rifles for crimes.

Ye Gawds man! You can't go spouting logic and reason in a debate about GUNS!!! You have to come up with BS statistics and insult everyone who disagrees with you! Don't you know the first thing about internet etiquite!?!

Oh and you need to type in ALL CAPS!!!




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DarkLink wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 DarkLink wrote:


By that standard, cars are scary, stoves are scary, airplanes are scary, powerlines are scary, coffee pots are scary, anything that might theoretically hurt you is scary. I mean, who would ever want to strap themselves into a plastic container with wheels and a hunk of metal filled with controlled explosions and hurtle down a road so fast that hitting just about anything larger that a small dog can be instantly fatal?

Actually, no. None of those things were purposely made to make the act of killing easier and more efficient.

So the only thing scary about that is to see how much amazing stuff we can create to help unite the world, yet we spend so much time developing new ways to kill people.

A gun is just a hunk of metal and plastic. A massive number of Americans use that hunk of metal and plastic to do little more than punch holes in pieces of paper for fun, and do so with an incredibly low injury rate compared to far more "acceptable" activities like football, soccer, riding a bike, etc. Assigning arbitrary values to an inanimate object doesn't change the fact that it's perfectly possible for large numbers of people to safely and responsibly handle firearms with no meaningful risk to them or their families. Statistics bear this out. Rich white people own like twice as many firearms as anyone else in the USA combined, yet have the lowest violent homicide rate and have the lowest number of people killed or injured by firearms of any ethnic group in the USA. When you look at numbers like that, you have to accept that maybe something other than owning those violent death-murder-machines is driving firearm fatalities, things like gang and drug related crime and irresponsible gun handling procedures.


Plus, you would be amazed at how much of the good things in the world were developed exclusively because the military needed some new technology. Everything from gps to computers to tissue paper was invented because there was a military need for it, and once the technology was developed a commercial use for it was found. Combined with the fact that violent crime in the industrial world has been steadily dropping for decades and isn't showing any signs of stopping, it feels like you're reading too many sensationalist headlines and have an unrealistically pessimistic view of the world. You're directing your ire at the wrong things. If you want to make the world a better place, stop wasting time bitching about personally owned firearms and start working on improving social mobility, particularly for minorities. Lower poverty rates leads to less crime and higher standards of living and a huge number of other benefits. Gun ownership rates, in the meantime, have no meaningful correlation with said issues.

In a book hated by both left and right making it most likely full of truth the steady drop in crime rates was attributed to legal abortion.

Stop for a moment before firing off your manifesto filled with righteous indignation.

Who commits the majority of violent crime? Poor people, out of desperation. Why are many of those people in poverty to begin with? They were born there. Why were they born into poverty? Most likely because the poor girl without anyone to help her couldn't get an abortion. Legalized abortion allowed those young women to not be saddled with a child that will be raised in poverty thus reducing the overall number of potential criminals.

Sure it sounds horrible to say it. On one site I mentioned it I was compared to Bob Barker. They said I wanted to spay and neuter the ghetto trash.

But the truth of the matter is desperate people do desperate things. They aren't going to stop before shooting someone in a bank robbery and say "this gun is illegal and I'd better not have it." Once you decide to rob the bank, breaking a gun law or two isn't a big deal.

 jorny wrote:
I have a feeling that you might probably get more accidents involving guns in countries with more guns available. However the amount of gun violence probably has a lot more to do with social issues, poverty and drug use than anything else. Switzerland has a lot of military weapons among the citizens. Here in Sweden, there are a lot of hunting weapons (moose hunting is huge). Home guard soldiers (70 000 back in the day) used to keep their assault rifles at home. Recreational shooting with hand guns is also a lot more popular than most people realise.

I do think that weapons should be properly secured though.

If your parents get drunk and start waving weapons around I think that the message should encourage kids to contact a social worker or the police rather than bringing a gun to school.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
when you go to this page and see america is not close at all to any western democracy in regard to homocides per 100000 . Perhaps changes to attitudes should be more prominent. Social issues are involved, sure, but i don't see too may first world countries with such a high homicide rate. IS it gun control, or are americans more murderous? If it aint a lack of gun control what is it?

 Bullockist wrote:

 jorny wrote:
I have a feeling that you might probably get more accidents involving guns in countries with more guns available. However the amount of gun violence probably has a lot more to do with social issues, poverty and drug use than anything else. Switzerland has a lot of military weapons among the citizens. Here in Sweden, there are a lot of hunting weapons (moose hunting is huge). Home guard soldiers (70 000 back in the day) used to keep their assault rifles at home. Recreational shooting with hand guns is also a lot more popular than most people realise.

I do think that weapons should be properly secured though.

If your parents get drunk and start waving weapons around I think that the message should encourage kids to contact a social worker or the police rather than bringing a gun to school.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
when you go to this page and see america is not close at all to any western democracy in regard to homocides per 100000 . Perhaps changes to attitudes should be more prominent. Social issues are involved, sure, but i don't see too may first world countries with such a high homicide rate. IS it gun control, or are americans more murderous? If it aint a lack of gun control what is it?

It's especially interesting when you consider that the majority of the murders happen in a few large urban centers, like Chicago. If you take a few of those out of the equation the difference between the US and other western democracies isn't as drastic.

 Bullockist wrote:
If it aint a lack of gun control what is it?

Economic inequality/racism/etc that create a lot of desperate people with nothing to lose, often packed into dense cities where opportunities for crime are abundant. Then on top of that you add a legal system that focuses on punishment instead of rehabilitation, and an idiotic war on drugs that turns victimless crimes into life-destroying mistakes. If you stop considering the US as a whole* and look at where crime happens you see a lot of places with high gun ownership and low violent crime rates, and places with strict gun control laws and lots of violent crime. And the places with the highest crime rates tend to be the places where the non-gun factors all converge and motivate violent crime. At best you could argue that a lack of gun control contributes to violent crime rates by making the necessary tools easier to get, but IMO that argument seriously overestimates the difficulty in making your own guns.


*Something that is important to remember is that the US is not a single homogenous mass, there are huge regional differences in wealth/culture/population density/etc.

but most other first world countries have those large urban centers and they don't have those murders. FFs australia has the largest spread urban centers anyway ( that may be an exageration) and we have feth all homicides.

Britain has a huge urban center, in fact if your going on your theory it should have more murders than america. let alone Germany.or france, or spain, or poland, or denmark, or ireland.

 Bullockist wrote:
but most other first world countries have those large urban centers and they don't have those murders. FFs australia has the largest spread urban centers anyway ( that may be an exageration) and we have feth all homicides.

Britain has a huge urban center, in fact if your going on your theory it should have more murders than america. let alone Germany.or france, or spain, or poland, or denmark, or ireland.

Peregrine nailed it. Check his post. It is the urban centers, but it's more than just that. And a lot of the urban centers that are having problems also already have very strict gun control laws in place.

ok, so instead of regarding the states as a whole i am to regard it as parts? i'm cool with that , just want to make sure before the next gun monkey gets in with a comment.

I'm not surprised there is localised crime in the us, there is localised crime everywhere .Even if you want to go the socio economic route, aboriginal australians are responsible for 25% of convictions ( at roughly 2% of population)
so wheres our increased murder rate, we most surely have a VERY marginalised minority?
or p0erhaps gun laws play a part,

sweden , denmark, switzerland ect.

What's a gun monkey? I'm interested to know what you mean by that.


You can regard the US however you want to. I think the point is however, that the situation is more complex than comparing the entire US directly to western European nations, all of which are much smaller and many of which have populations that are much more homogeneous than the US might indicate.


Keep in mind, like Peregrine said, there are areas of the US with very low crime and very high gun ownership, and areas with low gun ownership, strict gun controls, and very high crime.

and with gun control the converse is likely true.

A gun monkey is a primate who has a gun but wants to fling poo everywhere.

The US has a high homicide rate as compared to any other first world country. WHy is this so? I have no idea why in the name of self defence you want to live in a country that has far more OFFENCE! makes no sense, i have far better self defence here, without a gun.

"Gun Monkey" is a reference to those individual manning a artillery piece. Being they look like a bunch of monkey's moving all over the piece to fire thereby putting "Steel on Target"

 Bullockist wrote:
and with gun control the converse is likely true.

A gun monkey is a primate who has a gun but wants to fling poo everywhere.

The US has a high homicide rate as compared to any other first world country. WHy is this so? I have no idea why in the name of self defence you want to live in a country that has far more OFFENCE! makes no sense, i have far better self defence here, without a gun.

With gun control the converse of what is likely true?


And no. You do not have better self-defense without a gun against an armed assailant. You do not have better self-defense without a gun against an assailant bigger or stronger than you. You may feel safe, and that is fine, but there is virtually no situation in which not having a gun is a better defense than having a gun.


And more than one of us has explained to you why the US has a high homicide rate compared to other first world countries. Was there something confusing about our posts?

and that's Jihadin, continually improving my US army/forces colloquial terms and 3 letter codes.

any reference on gun violence? and I don't mean iraq?

 Jihadin wrote:
"Gun Monkey" is a reference to those individual manning a artillery piece. Being they look like a bunch of monkey's moving all over the piece to fire thereby putting "Steel on Target"

I thought the accepted term was "gun bunny."

 Hordini wrote:



?


And no. You do not have better self-defense without a gun against an armed assailant. You do not have better self-defense without a gun against an assailant bigger or stronger than you. You may feel safe, and that is fine, but there is virtually no situation in which not having a gun is a better defense than having a gun.


And more than one of us has explained to you why the US has a high homicide rate compared to other first world countries. Was there something confusing about our posts?

I have better self defence without firearms, i have less chance of being murdered. a figure your defence figures can not argue.I have less chance of being killed....and I don't need a weapon

 Bullockist wrote:
The US has a high homicide rate as compared to any other first world country. WHy is this so?

I just gave you some reasons, and none of them involve gun ownership rates.

I have no idea why in the name of self defence you want to live in a country that has far more OFFENCE!

Because the best defense is a good offense, and because you recognize that gun control does very little to stop violent crime and mostly just annoys the people who own guns and never break any laws with them.

i have far better self defence here, without a gun.

Only if you don't have the various non-gun factors that encourage violent crime. You can build your own machine gun with some cheap parts from your local hardware store and a bit of effort, and with a decent machine shop you have a gun factory. IOW, if people have a desire to commit crimes with a gun making guns illegal isn't going to stop them from getting a gun. So you lacking a gun doesn't make you much safer, your extra safety is the result of living in a place that doesn't have as many people with a desire to hurt you.