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Chicago Debates Merits of ShotSpotter Technology
theodp writes "After a week that saw more than 40 people shot and at least 4 killed, Chicago politicians and police are at odds on whether to implement ShotSpotter, a camera and acoustic sensor-based gunshot-location system that is designed to pinpoint a shooter's location within seconds. The Chicago Police Department opposes such a move, saying ShotSpotter wasn't reliable in an earlier trial and — at $250,000 for a square mile of coverage — is too expensive. The company says the system has dramatically lowered crime rates in cities across the country. ShotSpotter is currently deployed in two countries and 51 US cities and counties."
Well, if the Chicago police are saying "we tried it and it doesn't work", I'd listen to them rather than the company.
Real ShotSpotter reduces crime by X amount. Plastic ShotSpotter is probably about X(.80).
Not exactly. Firearms are banned within the Chicago city limits (and probably a couple other smaller towns, but I dunno), but the state issues firearm owners licenses. No concealed carry permits in the entire state, though.
There's been a big push lately to repeal Chicago's anti gun laws, with some recent court decisions.
...and with it shall go the supposed evidence. The paltry statistic of 244 gunshots in a two month period vs. 177 in another does not indicate anything about supposed trends in gun crime. Furthermore, yearly gun crime is what is of importance, not a few weeks.
Or we could have reasonable gun control laws.
Guns are already illegal within the Chicago city limits. Guess those "reasonable gun control laws" aren't quite working out like you'd hoped, huh?
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Here's a radical idea: stop letting our society turn to shit. Why not actively work to:
Your solution is just as close to realistic as mine (studies are inconclusive about carrying reducing crime*), with the difference that yours emphasizes social mistrust, isolation, and violence, whereas mine is an attempt to get people to care about each other again. Yours obviously has more hollywood appeal, but that alone should make you want to re-think advocating it.
*e.g., "When Lott's data was re-analyzed by some researchers, the only statistically significant effect of concealed-carry laws found was an increase in assaults, with similar findings by Jens Ludwig."
Anything that increases compound bow or crossbow homicides can't be bad.
I don't think they should have cameras, but the technology is sound- and it certainly is better use of tax money than where most money is going (all sorts of anti-terrorism crap.) The question: why is such a simple technology so hideously expensive? There should be little patentable in the field, given how old and obvious sonic triangulation is. The equipment is super simple- an embedded computer in an outdoor enclosure with a microphone...
Please help metamoderate.
Unenforced legislation is no different from no legislation. If that reasonable law were enforced, then all of these people wouldn't be dead.
Meanwhile, France and the UK and most of continental Europe do enforce gun control laws, and have much lower murder rates. But don't bother with the facts. Use your biases to pretend that you already know the truth.
Ummm, my wife has a firearms license, and we live in Illinois.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
Charge $300,000 per sq mile and kick $50k back to the police department for 'overtime related to training and special classes.' Don't monitor if the classes are performed or even necessary. Don't check if the system is used after implementation.
The police get funding - they win. The company gets cash - they win. The politicians get to look like they're doing something using cutting edge technology against crime which they can feature in their next election - they win.
It's the perfect solution! No one who matters (in the mind of our leaders) gets hurt.
So your solution to "too much shooting" is more guns?
Amazing.
Better yet, get law abiding citizens to carry flame throwers or hand-grenades. Criminals wouldn't stand a chance.
It works great, or so I'm told. They're able to get cops to where the shooter fired within minutes- and in plenty of time to round up witnesses who swear they "saw nuttin".
There's been at least one drive by in my 'work' neighborhood, and about a dozen+ deaths within a mile. Two bullets in our building. One in the front door within 5 minutes of me entering it (now THAT will freak you out- come into work, forget something, go back to the car and the door has been shot).
Last time I heard of this technology, it worked great in open areas. But if it was deployed in a place with many hard surfaces, like the average city, it became confused by all the echoes and didn't do so well.
Bats don't have any problem with cave interiors, so it would seem locating gunshots despite the hard surfaces should be possible, maybe even easier with all the echoes. Maybe they've solved this by now?
There any independent lab or testing organization that can say? Or any other organization that's tried it and can report on their experiences? The military is very interested in this, and are the ones that paid for the much of the early work. I'm supposing the military's opinion would count highly with the police.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Kind of meaningless without national controls, it's not like this can be controlled at the city limits in the way a national border is maintained (and even that isn't entirely successful).
Plus even with national controls you would need decades of strict enforcement to see a difference.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
Dude: You come here quoting Chomsky and expect to be taken seriously? C'mon...!
40 people shot and at least 4 killed in a week??? That are insane for a city with only 2.8 million people. Is Chicago the hell hole of all crime in USA?
imo its a shame a lot of american citizens think like that.. with the response time and technology of the police nowadays that section of your constitution doesnt make a whole lot of sense to me.. how could the solution to a gun crime problem involve more guns.. id have thought a better solution is to ban guns nation wide effectively making it easier to spot them and prosecute violations.. if anyone uses "hunting" as an argument against it, theyre sadistic rednecks, so you can disregard w/e they say.
Well, if the Chicago police are saying "we tried it and it doesn't work", I'd listen to them rather than the company.
Police aren't unbiased either. If a tool (or effective policing) pushes crime out of an area, you don't need as many police officers in that area, do you? And if it works in one part of the city, it'll probably work in others. That means layoffs. Let me know when you hit that stage of your life where you realize that the police have little incentive to effectively enforce the law.
Sorta similar to firefighters. Fire calls have dropped in the last 20-30 years to 1/4 of what they used to be; more sprinkler systems, better building and electrical codes, etc. We just don't need nearly as many firefighters these days. So rather than lay off firefighters (or reassign them to work in small rescue crews, or in ambulances as rescue techs) the city of Boston now sends out in many cases TWO fire trucks to any medical or vehicle crash call, putting unnecessary miles on expensive heavy equipment and running up fuel bills.
But, they get to look busy...
Please help metamoderate.
Another hugely expensive technology to not look into the real problem of firearms ubiquity in US ?
Anybody thinking about limiting the availability of firearms rather than attempting to pinpoint shooters ?
Appart from that I can't start to imagine how such a prop could ever cost 250K per square mile. I'm pretty sure 2/3 microphones per block + a cleverly hacked strongarm could achieve the same goal.
Let's see... $250 grand per square mile. What's it cost to obtain a silencer from the friendly neighborhood gun dealer?
After a dozen or so people get caught with this technology, I give it about a year before all the gangs in chicago start using silencers as standard equipment.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
How long are these expected to last? If it is only like 10 years.... It would be cheaper to hire 'listeners' at minimum wage and spread them across the city. And that money gets better distributed and helps employ people. Give em a walkie talkie or a cellphone w/ a camera.
TBH though I can't imagine how it could possibly cost so much. For that price you could say.... Create a city wide wifi system and stick a microphone on the top of every third telephone pole in the city. Which would be more accurate. The microphones don't need to be good at all. And really there are far cheaper things than this I just figured having city wide wifi would make it not totally worthless.
BTW this audio system would cost 150M to do chicago's city center (600km^2). CCTV setup for london costs 200M (over 10years), they obviously get quite a bit more and london is a lot bigger(1700km^2).
More than twice the cost of cctv for audio only for a system that hasn't proved its self? Fuuuuuck that.
Not quite...
In Illinois, if you even want to TOUCH a gun, you need a FOID card (firearms owner ID).
In Chicago, all firearms must be registered, and no handguns can be registered after some date in 1982-ish (basically, you can have a shotgun or rifle, but can't own a pistol).
Open and concealed cary are basically banned in IL, unless you are retired police (in other words, Drew Peterson could conceal carry, but R. Lee Ermey couldn't).
All these restrictions are unconstitutional. Period.
I _DARE_ mayor Daley to produce copies of the perpetrators' FOID cards, and the registration of their firearms.
What's that? They don't have one?
Well, I for one am SHOCKED that someone who would shoot at another human being just because they felt like it, wouldn't at least make sure they could legally do so.
(Heavy sarcasm there).
As for the shotspotter system, I remember seeing examples of this about 12-15 years ago; it was highly touted for a bit, then kinda dissappeared...
It was combined with all the police cameras that were going up back then (just in bad neighborhoods, we swear... sorry, but now EVERY neighborhood is a bad one, so we need cameras everywhere).
The last part is not an exaggeration... next time you go through Chicago, look for little blue blinking LEDs on the lampposts... then ask yourself who won the cold war.
you link to a lie, propaganda by the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs that has been debunked. Only 17% of Mexican guns confiscated were traceable at all, the others were from non-US foreign countries and without means of tracing. But you believe the anti-guns lies of a U.S. agency because it suits your anti-gun bias.
The high murder rates in the U.S.A. occur in areas with subcultures that have breakdown of family structure. No father to raise and keep young males in line means a sufficient number of them act as savages to turn a neighborhood into a lawless war zone.
That has nothing to do with gun ownership by normal law-abiding citizens, you rabid anti-gun nuts need to stop implying I or people like me will act as lawless savages with our guns because other groups of people have not the maturity or respect for human life to be trusted with the means to defend themselves.
"Meanwhile, France and the UK and most of continental Europe do enforce gun control laws"
And meanwhile you *still* get situations like biker gangs in Denmark going at each other with shoulder fired AT4-HEAT antitank grenades.
Contrast and compare to Switzerland - an entire country that is armed to the teeth in every house across the land, and there isn't mayhem.
Gun control laws do absolutely nothing to stem violence, a fact that anti-gun people tend to ignore.
--
BMO
They had this in Deus Ex hong hong, as a mechanism to prevent you from doing any shooting on that level
not amazing at good, huge difference between decent law-abiding citizens exercising their constitutional right to bear arms, and evil lawless savages banding together in gangs who have no regard for human life or for morality. Already a proven fact that lawful concealed carry reduces crime rate.
You're missing the point.
Gun control laws do nothing to stop criminals from carrying guns, but they do stop law abiding citizens from carrying guns.
If I'm just a regular guy who wants to carry a gun for defense purposes, I'm not going to do it if it's illegal.
If I'm planning to commit a felony with a gun, do I really care if having the gun itself is illegal?
The idea of keeping guns out of the hands of criminals entirely is laughable.
Handguns use 100 year old technology. Criminals want guns. It would be just as effective as prohibition:
Someone will set up a shop in their basement and start cranking out illegal guns at $1000 each for a massive profit.
That's if people don't take the easy route and smuggle them across the border.
And this doesn't even get into the humans rights side of gun ownership, or the fact that it is guaranteed in our constitution and very much a part of our national philosophy.
Life is too short to proofread.
Most of this activity is taking place in one ethnic neighborhood next to another ethnic neighborhood so most of the victims are going to the 2 or 3 closest hospitals.
The logistics of supplying troops in Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Somalia are what caused their defeat. There are hundreds of military and national guard installations, a huge reserve of oil, and years worth of supplies located on a national network of well-maintained roads and bridges, railways, and thousands of airports.
Curious to note that Switzerland, with high gun ownership levels, is a very low-crime zone. The UK, by contrast, is the most violent country in Europe.
The swiss are trained in a national guard and allowed to keep their semi-automatic weapon. In America there is no prerequisite to gun ownership. Here are the Swedish requirements via Wikipedia:
To purchase a firearm in a commercial shop, one needs to have a Waffenerwerbsschein (weapon acquisition permit). A permit allows the purchase of three firearms. Everyone over the age of 18 who is not psychiatrically disabled (such as having had a history of endangering his own life or the lives of others) or identified as posing security problems, and who has a clean criminal record (requires a Criminal Records Bureau check) can request such a permit.
To buy a gun from an individual, no permit is needed, but the seller is expected to establish a reasonable certainty that the purchaser will fulfill the above-mentioned conditions (usually done through a Criminal Records Bureau check). The participants in such a transaction are required to prepare a written contract detailing the identities of both vendor and purchaser, the weapon's type, manufacturer, and serial number. The law requires the written contract to be kept for ten years by the buyer and seller. The seller is also required to see some official ID from the purchaser...
Basically, the sale of automatic firearms, selective fire weapons and certain accessoires such as sound suppressors ("silencers") is forbidden (as is the sale of certain disabled automatic firearms which have been identified as easily restored to fully automatic capability). The purchase of such items is however legal with a special permit issued by cantonal police. The issuance of such a permit requires additional requirements to be met, e.g. the possession of a specific gun locker. ...Ammunition sales are registered only at the point of sale by recording the buyer's name in a bound book.
Curious that you don't know the difference between "reasonable gun controls" and "let's have unregulated gun bazaars, give every idiot with $1000 a semi-automatic assault rifle, and see what happens."
Well, the other ideas have been tried and failed. Yet politicians keep trying and trying...
Contrast and compare to Switzerland
That's because they're properly trained to use the guns while they do national service. You can hardly compare mass ex-military gun control to what we have where they're nothing more than penis extensions for morons and cowards.
So your solution to "too much shooting" is more guns?
Amazing.
Welcome to Americans...
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
The city is looking into alternatives. Recent SCotUS arguments hint that there is a leaning to declare laws similar to the one in Chicago unconstitutional.
Read my other post on the very real, and very strict guns laws in Switzerland.
Denmark's homicide rate is per 100,000 per year is .88
The US homicide rate is 5.4
Gun control laws do absolutely nothing to stem violence, a fact that anti-gun people tend to ignore.
You're quite simply full of shit.
... just get quieter in response.
my wife and her cousin were mugged in full view of police camera on Argyle street ("vietnamese town"), and the images from the camera on telephone pole were utterly useless. couldn't see under hat brim to see face, the perps know they can just keep their chin slightly down with a cap and they can rob, rape, and murder in camera shot. the percentage of crimes solved using those camera pictures is in the realm of statistical noise.
Good decent people own guns in illinois and have their FOID card, but they aren't the ones doing drive by shooting or holding up liquor stores or banks. But that idiot hypocrite Mayor Daley, who relies on armed people for protection, says gun ownership by good decent law-abiding people (the ones who don't have guns in chicago right now) having the means to defend themselves would mean an explosion of crime. what a moron, both my brothers live in states that allow concealed carry, and in both their cities of residence the crime rate has plummeted.
Wouldn't it be great if everybody had a gun? (had a gun)
Wouldn't it be great if everybody had a gun? (had a gun)
Nobody'd ever get shot, 'cause everybody'd have a gun! (Makes sense!)
Wouldn't it be great if everybody had a gun?
Sorry kid. I've had this argument before.
Correction, April 22: We originally concluded that Obama’s 90 percent figure was “not true” and based on a “badly biased” sample of recovered guns. We are retracting both those characterizations, and we apologize to our readers for this error. We have rewritten the article throughout to correct this.
Our error was to think we had confirmed that Mexican officials submit for tracing only those guns they believe likely to have come from the U.S. Law enforcement officials say they don’t know if that’s the case.
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/counting-mexicos-guns/
Of all guns that can be traced that were submitted, with no selection bias (the Mexican officials didn't send information that makes them think they were of American origin), 90% came from the United States.
The high murder rates in the U.S.A. occur in areas with subcultures that have breakdown of family structure. No father to raise and keep young males in line means a sufficient number of them act as savages to turn a neighborhood into a lawless war zone.
Your thinly veiled racism fails to impress.
That isn't amazing at all.
Your statement implies that there is no difference between weapons in the hands of good people and those in the hands of criminals who would attack them.
That's very revealing, but there are many examples of effective, lawful self-defense using firearm. Many didn't involve firing them:
http://www.nraila.org/ArmedCitizen/
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
No. That is a gross oversimplification. The point is that handguns are illegal in Chicago, yet last week there were 40 shootings. Let me repeat that. Last week there were 40 shootings in Chicago despite the fact that handguns are illegal in Chicago. This seems to me to be a good indication that gun control laws like those that Chicago has do not work. It's all very nice to say that gee, if we just outlawed guns then nobody would have them and no one would get shot, but last I checked, we don't live in a world populated with unicorns and faeries.
You'd think that Chicago, of all places, would understand the implications of prohibition. When alcohol was illegal it still flowed underground. Why would the politicians expect that making guns illegal would make the m go away? In fact, from where I sit it has made the situation worse, because the law abiding citizen, following the law, has no gun, but the criminal, not giving a fuck about the law, does.
Anecdotally, I live in a small town (approx' 20K people) in Arizona. More than half the population here has a handgun (I have 2), closer to 75% if you add rifles and shotguns. In the last 2 years there has been 2 murders, only one with a gun, and that involved a gang that chased someone and happened to catch up with them in our town.
As I said, this is anecdotal, but in my personal current experience, a high proportion of gun ownership does not lead to more shootings. In fact, it seems to me that more guns, at least here, leads to lower crime overall, which suggests to me that socio-economic and cultural issues are the actual problem and not the presence of "too many guns"
My overall point is that the gun issue is not as simple as a lot of gun control advocates would like to make them, and that in a city with strict gun control laws large numbers of shootings occur. In Chicago, with strict gun laws, the murder rate is 18 per 100,000 residents. In Phoenix, the murder rate is 10.5 per 100,000 residents, yet Chicago has a strict no-handgun law, and in Phoenix you can buy and carry a handgun with no permit. Since the murder rate in Chicago is 75% higher than Phoenix, I'd say that the laws in Chicago weren't working so good. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Do you really believe that's a satisfying explanation? That it's normal and natural to assume humans will deal with social disparities by becoming criminals?
There are some people who grow up dirt-poor, with none of the luxuries many take for granted. Yet they don't steal, they don't murder, they don't deal with their situation that way. Others in the same situation become career criminals. I find the difference between those two to be much more interesting and worthy than the difference between rich and poor.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Who should I quote instead?
I imagine the first shots that ShotSpotter would pinpoint are the ones shooting them straight into oblivion. If you were a gun-wielding thug who knew these things were around, wouldn't you do your worst to get rid of them ASAP?
sorry kid, but your linked analysis proves my point, your initial assertion of 90% was B.S.
Your thinly veiled racism fails to impress.
hah! the racism is between your ears, I've flushed you out, racist! You had some racial group that came to mind when you read my words, but I can show you examples of what I'm saying using any major racial group in the USA. Their are european-descent "white" cities with the problem I've mentioned in Ohio, the problem exists in African descent "black" Chicago south side, the problem exists with some of the Latin parts of L.A.,.....the principal is universal to all races in the event of breakdown of family structure.
So you trust your gut over actual data? Gun control has been proven to do very little to prevent gun crime. The only people who don't believe it are those who are selling a message or those who think it is so obvious that they don't even look at the research.
While we're at it, putting people in jail for using drugs doesn't work either. We stopped putting people in jail for not paying their bill hundreds of years ago because it didn't work, maybe we should bring that back? Oh wait, the new bankruptcy laws are the first step in getting that done.
Stop using logic, as you know they wont.. They will just blame people over in Wisconsin or Indiana ( or even Michigan, by boat ) for their 'reckless gun laws, just across the border'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Reasonable expectation of privacy is the legal test, I think. The courts have ruled that in public, there is none. Chicago is the most over-surveilled city I could imagine. For probably fire or six years, there have been a huge number of CCTV cameras, mostly at intersections. In iffy neighborhoods, they are even in the middle of the block. They have large microwave link antennas, and can have a clear line of sight in four directions. If you look around a a square mile or so of hte city, you will see that they are all pointed at the closest precinct police station. They have ligt bars fomn police motorcycles on top of the (bulky) radio unit. A friend lives in a second floor apartment, and they put one of these outside his window.There are more cameras in lower-class neighborhoods, but they are everywhere. (Chicago is a patchwork of about 200 culturally and economically distinct neighborhoods). Mayor Daley several years ago mandated that any business open after midnight has to have cameras. Now the police department wants to use fresher technology to put covert cameras everywhere.
The cameras are clearly meant to intimidate. Daley is a man who's authority is not to be trifled with, and I cannot help but think that the embarrassment his father suffered from the 1968 police riot produced a "never again" mentality around dissent. Chicago has a long history of identifying and suppressing potential or perceived dissent. The infamous "red squads" ferreted out thought crimes until the feds ended the Chicago Police Department's Subversive Activities Unit in 1985.
Some things never change.
The cameras are clearly meant to intimidate. Daley is a man who's autority is not to be trifled with, and I cannot help but think that the embarressment his father suuered from the 1968 police riot has produced a :never again" mentality in his thinking. Chicago has a history of identifying and supressing dissent. The infamous "red squads" ferreted out thought crimes until the feds ended the Chicago Police Department's Subversive Activities Unit in 1985.
Some things never change.
"Meanwhile, France and the UK and most of continental Europe do enforce gun control laws"
And meanwhile you *still* get situations like biker gangs in Denmark going at each other with shoulder fired AT4-HEAT antitank grenades.
Contrast and compare to Switzerland - an entire country that is armed to the teeth in every house across the land, and there isn't mayhem.
Gun control laws do absolutely nothing to stem violence, a fact that anti-gun people tend to ignore.
-- BMO
That's why I often refer to this as a religious issue. For gun-control advocates, the comparison between Denmark and Switzerland requires an explanation. It seems they would rather ignore it. In my way of looking at things, if I were an advocate of gun control and encountered such a comparison, I must either give a truly satisfying explanation for it that is consistent with gun-control, or I must abandon gun-control.
There is no shame in abandoning gun-control if I notice that there are fatal flaws in its reasoning. At that point, abandoning it and never advocating that view again would be the only blameless thing to do. I don't see gun-control advocates trying to seriously address such patterns. The best they seem able to do is to discredit the statistics, even when they're quite sound. All they seem to do with data contradictory to their expectations is to dismiss it or ignore it. They never seem to respond to it or feel a need to do so. This is a religion that refers to data only when it is convenient.
That makes it obvious to me that they have an inferior worldview, and it frankly makes me suspicious of their motives. Their inability to respond to objections is so obvious that I believe one or both of two things are happening. Either these people are so thoroughly ignorant about how to advocate a position that they don't see these things as problems, or they know they are problems and don't care because gun-control is about disarming law-abiding citizens and was never about reducing crime. I suspect that a combination of the two is occurring. The gun-control advocates who have real media presence and real political clout know that it's bullshit, and regard their well-meaning-but-ignorant supporters as "useful idiots."
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
imo its a shame a lot of american citizens think like that.. with the response time and technology of the police nowadays that section of your constitution doesnt make a whole lot of sense to me.. how could the solution to a gun crime problem involve more guns.. id have thought a better solution is to ban guns nation wide effectively making it easier to spot them and prosecute violations.. if anyone uses "hunting" as an argument against it, theyre sadistic rednecks, so you can disregard w/e they say.
Because the idea of "spot and prosecute violations" is all based on the noble idea of playing fair. You seem to embrace the notion that our criminals run around like they are up against some Victorian-era detective like Sherlock Holmes, and will logically surrender when ordered to do so by police.
At some levels we've dropped way beneath that high water mark of civilization. If the criminals believe that they can simply shoot their way out of a situation, then they do. If they believe there will be no retribution for harming someone, then they harm people with impunity. They've realized that laws are ineffective if the risk of penalty is low enough. And criminal gangs demonstrate a military understanding of statistics: if you start with 100 armed criminals, and three get locked up or shot while committing a crime, you still have 97 armed criminals.
You also seem to believe that by outlawing all guns, all guns will suddenly go away. They will not. Guns are precision-built machines that last a hundred years or more. Even if they are outlawed today, our great-grandchildren will still have access to guns. Guns are buried in our psyche: the ancient idea of defending yourself and your family, and providing yourself with food via hunting, are very deeply ingrained in our people. Outlawing guns will simply result in hidden caches of weapons located across the country. It's why even gun registration is so vehemently opposed: if forced to register guns, in many people's minds that's the last step prior to confiscating them when they're banned. And they're not wrong in that assumption.
Couple the "immediacy" of committing armed violence with the interminable legal delays involved in prosecuting a criminal with the high chances of getting off with little to no punishment, and you have created a class of people who believe and act as if they are completely beyond the rules.
Arming the citizenry acknowledges that, while there is no immediate legal punishment for violating the law, the threat of a corporal punishment meted out immediately will still act as a deterrent. This country is filled with empirical proof: Chicago and New York have some of the highest gun crime rates and yet have the most restrictive gun laws. Restrictions simply don't work in our society. Not anymore.
John
"with the response time and technology of the police nowadays that section of your constitution doesnt make a whole lot of sense to me"
WTF are you babbling about? Been watching too many cop shows methinks. :)
Unless you live next door to a police station, response time is still "reaction time", not "intervention/interdiction/prevention".
That means the cops show up to scrape your dead arse off the pavement if you lost the fight.
In my case, I lived far enough out that the cops couldn't find my house for more than a half-hour. The white trash crackheads partying on my perimeter road told my wife (I was deployed at the time) to piss off when she asked them to leave. That they didn't do more is likely because she was carrying a 5.56 Ruger Mini-14. She returned to the house, put a few rounds into the ground (NOT horizontally, no one was in danger) where they couldn't see the impact area but we could dig up the bullets if required), and they left rapidly never to return.
The sheriff was pleased, our neighbors ditto, and we got no more visitors. Beats going home to a fucked/dead wife and a looted house in my book.
BTW, the US can't be peaceful because it is too culturally and economically diverse. American subgroups have nothing in common, so the only way to keep society reasonably peaceful is to contain the most violent by force. Even the Coalition allows Iraqi heads of household to have one full-auto battle rifle because it is necessary in order to avoid being a victim.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Oh, and before anyone makes the incorrect assumption, no, I do not have nor have I ever owned any guns myself. I don't hunt. And I do not belong to the NRA. I just look at the crap going on in the urban areas, and can see that gun restrictions are completely failing our society.
John
They're trying to cover their ass, after lying the first time. That's the number Mexico gives, and the number the ATF gives. Factcheck throws up their hands and claims that "no one can no what the number is." Everyone else, except for Fox's failure at basic math, agrees with the number.
And you're right, I shouldn't have called you a racist. You're probably just ignorant. The two tend to go hand in hand.
East Palo Alto was the first city to have complete coverage. They say it has helped reduce shootings. It is also helping to resolve a mystery regarding a plane crash - http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/audio-of-tesla-plane-crash-may-help-in-determining-cause/ . I knew the pilot, who was extraordinarily careful about flying his plane and had flown out of Palo Alto airport hundreds of times. We suspect he lost his left engine during takeoff and was pulled left into the power lines (normal procedure is to veer right towards the bay). These audio recordings might determine what happened.
> You're missing the point.
> Gun control laws do nothing to stop criminals from carrying guns, but they do stop law abiding citizens from carrying guns.
Too often the difference between a law abiding citizen and a criminal is the point when he/she pulls the trigger.
I read an article yesterday about 6 people being shot in the same location in two separate incidents. The second time the shooters came by, the ambulances and fire trucks had just left, it was the police and some bystanders at the scene. No police returned fire even though being fired on.
Id believe the 40 people shot in a week thing.
Im a troll because I disagree with you.
I had no idea believing in reasonable gun control laws and backing that up with statistics was called trolling. Thanks for reminding me to get back to wrapping things up, and getting the hell out of here.
You've got the right to buy a gun without a permit and watch people get murdered on television and your choice of chain fast food restaurants, but you can't see a nipple or have a reasonable discussion on the merits of socialized services or have any time off from work without the fear of getting fired.
And you think you're fucking winners. Way to go.
There is not such thing as a "Semi Automatic Assault Rifle". You either have a semi automatic rifle or a select fire "Assault Rifle".
You mad
Vermont is the only state that has no gun licensing or permits of any kind. They would have low gun crime because they are vermont. But you did say freely carry so I digress. Also you would be wrong anyways unless you have some good citations. Below I provide links allowing you to compare gun law strictness to gun deaths by state.
/. mods don't mod people up unless they've done some homework.
http://newsbatch.com/gc-stateglaw.html
http://newsbatch.com/gc-regionowndeath.html
Since it isn't obvious enough from that picture I bothered getting the raw data and punched it all into excel to make a pretty graph just for you!:
http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/7756/gunlaws.png
Proving you fairly definatively wrong. Please
I don't think you appreciate one very simple thing. What you mention there means that if a Swede went nuts and decided one day to go on a shooting spree, his weapon training would make him a more effective and more dangerous murderer. So not only is he armed, he's also trained in how to kill since it's pretty hard to have a military without having such training. Yet there is very little gun crime in Switzerland, especially when compared to places with stricter gun control.
I submit to you that this cannot possibly be reconciled with the gun-control advocates' notion that disarming people is the best way to reduce crime. We can split hairs and quibble about the fine nuances of Swedish law, but it won't change that. Not when anyone in Switzerland who wants to grab a gun knows where to find one.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
How much does a basement shop cost to set up, and how much is the machinists time worth, and how long does it take to make an effective handgun, and how much would the cost of materials be?
Not trolling, as I'm all for back street manufacturing and it would be interesting to know.. one thing you didn't factor in is that your basement shop had better remain secret because as soon as the law comes knocking you lost everything.. so, probably its a team or "gang" making these guns and in the nature of things, the machinist is getting a *lot* less than a massive profit, he will be working for a wage and thats about it. No job security or health benefits.
Also, "Criminals want guns" sure, but many of them want a piece, man.. they want to appear tough, they want a "fucking Glock, yeah?" not some shitty unbadged thing from the back streets.. and one of the things about branding is that you are relying on the history of the brand to provide quality. Smith and Wesson (random arms manufacturer name, don't shoot me) have a history of producing quality firearms and their company database has a lot of information about what works and doesn't work and how fine the tolerances need to be. Your back street guy can probably make a gun, but it might not fire as nice as a modern corporate masterpiece.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Either Ann Rand, L. Ron Hubbard or Steve Jobs. Those are our favorites.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'm not well versed in all the novel ways there are to kill humans. But thanks for the correction.
Your thinly veiled racism fails to impress.
Why don't you take a peek at crime statistics by city and then take a peek at the articles for each city listed (preferably, the cities with high numbers of violent crime per year). Tell us if you think the poster above you is being racist then.
Hell, you could even do some volunteering for some school or organization in your local ghetto and ask some people about what goes on where they live. Let us know what you find.
Who said I wanted to disarm the population?
Reasonable gun control laws aren't synonymous with disarmament. There are people who can't drive because of the danger they present to other people on the road. Similarly, there are people who shouldn't have access to guns because of the dangers they present to others. The controls only work if everyone is required to follow rules and restrictions when it comes to purchasing, keeping, and using weapons and ammunition.
And if you don't want to fill out the paperwork or spend the money on the proper gun safe, guess what... who gives a fuck. The privilege of owning deadly weapons should have a certain bureaucratic cost, just like anything else that give you destructive power, like becoming a doctor or driving a tractor trailer.
The link goes to a newspaper article about the expansion of the existing SF shotspotter system and the justification for doing so. Nothing is mentioned about shotspotter's impact outside of SF, let alone nationwide.
Fifth Ward Ald. Leslie Hairston wants Chicago to reintroduce the Shotspotter gunshot location technology. After all, Shotspotter's web site says it can reduce crime. So why isn't the CPD using it? Don't they care?
The CPD did adopt Shotspotter and found mixed results in Chicago. Specifically:
The city is going forward with installing the technology in the Loop. However, Shotspotter is an expensive technology and the CPD decided it wasn't the best use of their scare resources. The city of Chicago is approximately 227 square miles, so to cover the entire city would cost close to $50 million.
The Shotspotter technology locates gunshots. In a dense city, 911 calls often serve the same function. Gunshot location is a useful piece of information for police officers, but it is not a silver bullet. It cannot by itself reduce crime. If the system is reliable and works well with officers, it could lead to less shootings (but not necessarily less crime). The independent studies I have seen show the results are quite mixed.
In Chicago, there has been a rash of shootings in Chicago were no regard for the police or cameras. Shotspotter is now the silver bullet. I am concerned that Shotspotter is seen as the answer because people are scared. It doesn't make sense to spend money on technology that makes us feel better, but is ineffective. The city can address this by making public its tests of Shotspotter. I would like more details about the tests, for example: How many gunshots were there during the tests? How accurate was the system?
Link
UK & US (Texas) doctors compare notes in a meeting. How many shootings does your hospital get? UK: 1-2 a year. US: 2-3 per night. We win, eh!?
http://northern-doc.blogspot.com/2010/02/couple-of-old-chestnuts-001-trauma.html
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Off topic, but -- I'm realizing that from nature-of-argument and general writing style, I can usually guess a Slashdot user's ID (at least to order-of-magnitude). I could tell this one had to be up in the high 6-digits.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Yeah, Chicago now has the strictest gun laws in America. They also, coincidentally I am sure, happen to have one of the highest violent crime rates involving guns. Perhaps what the OP meant was that they should have REASONABLE gun laws instead of the ridiculous ones they currently have.
Ayn Rand: "Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue."
L. Ron Hubbard: "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own religion."
Steve Jobs: "I was worth about over a million dollars when I was twenty-three and over ten million dollars when I was twenty-four, and over a hundred million dollars when I was twenty-five and it wasn't that important because I never did it for the money."
I suggest you take a better look at those state graphs, because they do not support your contention.
If what you say is true, then states with stricter gun laws and lower gun ownership should have the lowest death by gun rates, but the graphs show the opposite. Just look at California, New Mexico. Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. Look at the Midwest
The correlation is just not there.
As for your graph, it does not necessarily show any a correlation because you do not have the data labeled by state, there is no explanation of what each axis is, and there is no explanation of the correlation and/or any statistical significance. Your graph looks like it came straight out of "How to lie with statistics". I will not even go into source bias as it the evidence is there for anyone to see.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
> And meanwhile you *still* get situations like biker gangs in Denmark going at each other with shoulder fired AT4-HEAT antitank grenades.
1) They're shooting at each other (there was collateral damage in some cases, but they mostly hit each other)
2) If you happen to be carrying a gun, I doubt it's going to save you against such people.
3) So should the USA also allow people to have shoulder-fired antitank grenades? Those are still "arms" right?
It is indeed. And all the cop bashing is 1000% true when it comes to the CPD. You'll never meet a larger force of fat ignorant armed thugs masquerading as "law enforcement" Implement ^ up there was right. Throw some money make some speeches and go back to doing absolutely nothing. Good thing there is a handgun ban in Chicago right? No guns there.
Interesting that you mention Switzerland, because like most of Europe they have very strict gun control laws. You need a permit to buy firearms and ammunition (except rifles for hunting) and an additional permit to carry it. To get the latter you need a valid reason, like working in a security firm, and getting one when your job doesn't require it is rather unusual. The permits are only granted by a limited time and you also need to pass an examination before it is granted.
While a lot of people have a service rifle at home you basically can't do anything with it apart from taking it to a shooting range without breaking the law. Futhermore the rifle is converted to allow semi-automatic fire only before you can take it home by the army.
This notion that in Swizerland people are safe because everybody has a gun is a fiction that I heard many times on US sites. The reality is that there is simply less violent crime in general, hardly anyone carries a gun and the service rifles people have in their homes are mainly used for suicide or less often murder-suicide within the family.
It's not so much about being versed in how people can be harmed. It's about understanding the subject you are considering. It's not a mere technicality that is being corrected here, not when the media inaccurately uses terms like "assault rifle" in order to make something seem more threatening. When you consider that the distinction between the weapons available to civilians and the military-grade weaponry that is correctly called an "assault rifle" is well-known among anyone who has done five minutes of research, there is no excuse for the media constantly getting this wrong.
How many reporters and editors does it take to properly vet a story and ensure that blatantly false labels are not used? It would be so easy to correct this error that it has to be intentional. If it's intentional, then it's an attempt to inject emotional fear into what is otherwise a reasoned debate. No one, but no one, who does this is interested in truth.
GP is correct. An assault rifle is a weapon that has a select-fire switch. This switch is used to control whether the rifle is semiautomatic and/or fully automatic and/or three-round-burst. By comparison, the difference between a deer rifle and the AK-47s that anyone in the USA can buy is that the AK-47 looks a bit more scary. The actual results of being shot by either are quite similar.
Also, most gun owners don't want to kill anyone. Most of the time that a citizen has used a gun to stop a crime, no shots were fired. That the would-be victim demonstrated the ability to defend himself was enough. Criminals want helpless victims, they don't generally want to have shootouts, and I bet that's hard for the gun-control mentality to understand.
The media is very careful not to report this, but you can do your own research and see for yourself that this is true. I'm not kidding about that one. There is a concerted effort to downplay any positive uses of firearms for self-defense. Most cases where this is what happened, the media does not say "the citizen held the criminal at gunpoint until police arrived and no shots were fired". Instead, they say "the criminal was subdued until police arrived" and don't explain how. Yet they give you the blow-by-blow account of the situation when it's a police officer or other official who uses a gun in the line of duty. The message is clear. Please don't take my word for it. See for yourself that there is an agenda here.
The awareness that there is such an agenda, that the pro-gun-control mentality has no problem using such underhanded and dishonest tactics has probably produced more pro-gun-ownership individuals than any amount of argumentation. You really have to ask yourself why an agenda would need to use dishonest tactics if it truly knew that the facts were on its side. You really have to wonder that if they are willing to lie about the positive uses of guns by law-abiding citizens, maybe they are also lying when they say their goal is to reduce crime.
The way I see it, there are a few gun-control advocates who have media presence and political connections who are advancing an agenda and are aware that it's a dishonest one. Then there are legions of useful idiots who don't understand what's wrong with that. They mean well, and they sincerely but naively believe that gun-control is a great way to stop crime.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
It has been PROVEN that only "law-abiding citizens" disarm themselves in "gun-free"zones, while armed criminals flock to them due to the easy pickings. What a shocker there eh?
-Oz
The cops are against it because their vigilante death squads will be revealed.
In what way is he 'ignorant'? Have you actually been to any of the areas he talks about (I have many times)? Think back to when you were a teenager. If you had no parental authority in your life how would you have acted? I know I would have been the biggest douche in the world (or at least tried to be). Many teenagers do not think past tomorrow. Why should they, they have no experience in thinking ahead. Now put that same someone who during their most influential years just did 'whatever the hell they liked' and put that same person as an adult.
As I like to tell everyone 'you may be an adult but you are not a grownup'.
His basic premise of a breakdown in the family structure holds. Think back in American history as to the other groups that were considered minorities. But they are not that way any longer. As they have formed family structures that cleans this mess up nicer than anything.
Then lets say you poof remove all of the guns out of the world. What would happen? Instead of using guns people would just pick up a nice sturdy bat put a few nails on the end and do the same thing. It just isnt as effective. Ever here the phrase 'guns dont kill people people do'. This is what they are talking about. This is what 'gun freeks' are talking about. Removing guns is the wrong answer. It is a knee jerk reaction and not really fixing the real problem and only covering up one part of the symptom. You assume you can reason with someone like that because you are a reasonable person. You do not think all someone can understand is 'how can I not get caught at this time'. That is all they are concerned about at the moment as they live in the moment and not for tomorrow. The only way to protect yourself against thugs like this is to show them 'you will get caught RIGHT NOW if you mess with me'. They will tend to avoid you then.
These groups even when they interact with each other show that they know this to be true. You get in some sort of altercation and the first words out of their mouths is 'im gonna kick your ass'. Why would someone jump to physical violence right away when it is a 'oh whoops' moment? They use it as a way to defend themselves against the others that move among us that only live for the 'will I get caught right now'.
If you think gun control laws will stop these crazies from getting weapons. Well then your the 'ignorant' one. There are real fixes for the social issues here. But unfortunately they are 'hard' to do. So few want to do it. If you think you can legislate your way into fixing these issues your ignoring the past.
Read my other post on the very real, and very strict guns laws in Switzerland.
Denmark's homicide rate is per 100,000 per year is .88
The US homicide rate is 5.4
Gun control laws do absolutely nothing to stem violence, a fact that anti-gun people tend to ignore.
You're quite simply full of shit.
Unfortunately for you, crime statistics here in the U.S. disagree with you. Just because something works in your country does NOT mean that it will work by default in our country.
Here in America, the right to own and bear arms is very much a deeply rooted ideal that stems from the founding of this country. It is statistically proven over and over that here in America, states and cities that allow their law abiding citizens to carry firearms have much lower crime rates than in states or cities that restrict gun ownership by law abiding citizens.
As I have said in previous comments, before 2005 Washington D.C. had a general gun ban. No one in the city limits was allowed any firearms at all. D.C. had some of the highest crime rates in the country.
When the Supreme Court ruled the ban unconstitutional in 2005 and lifted the ban, violent crime rates plummeted, dropping 25% within the first year and continued to decline after.
Prior to 2005, D.C. had extremely high crime rates. After 2005, D.C. is no longer in the top 10 list of highest crime rated cities in the U.S. In reality, it's not even one of the top 25 of most violent places to live. The only thing that change... the gun ban was lifted.
In the U.S. more legally owned guns means less crime. Our statistics prove that over and over again.
I also reference a town called Kennesaw in Georgia. This town actually REQUIRES that all home owners maintain atleast one firearm WITH ammunition. This was passed in 1982 and to this day, the town sees some of the lowest crime rates in the country. In the first year the law being passed, crime fell 75%.
Here is the link where you can read about it:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/738709/firearm_ownership_is_mandatory_for.html?cat=17
Guns are necessary to a free and safer America, and are an essential liberty that needs to be maintained.
"Those who would give up essential liberties for a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security." - Benjamin Franklin
The folks who are not deterred by the existing laws against murder, and who smuggle large quantities of drugs across the border, would have no trouble adding weapons to their wares. Of course, making submachine guns is very basic machine shop work (doing Stens from scratch is easy enough) so all that might require smuggling is ammo, Kalashnikovs are commonly made all over the world...
Gun control doesn't disarm people who don't care about the law. It DOES disarm those who have sufficient linkage to society that they can be coerced by law.
Gun confiscation (the goal of "gun control") is desirable to humans who refuse to make the distinction between toxic and non-toxic people. I'm in no danger from my (many) well-armed friends because I will never rob/rape/assault them and hence won't require shooting. I behave myself. So do they. We are a "polite society" in that respect. Other, less polite folks know not to violate our space because we can hurt them. If they don't get the hint, we are prepared to stop them in the way someone with a fire extinguisher is prepared to stop a fire.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I don't see gun-control advocates trying to seriously address such patterns.
One country is not a freaking pattern.
That makes it obvious to me that they have an inferior worldview, and it frankly makes me suspicious of their motives.
Yes, this kind of attitude makes me really want to look further into the views of people who want to legalize guns. Your statistics are off, your inferences are not born out by the people in the area (ask the Swiss what they think about US gun laws) and you come across like someone who has absolutely no clue what he's talking about.
It's a shame, really, because guns are here to stay in the US. It's just a question of how to go about it. But sadly, it's impossible to have a civilized discussion with gun-advocates on the topic.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Your thinly veiled racism fails to impress.
You see racism where there is none. Plenty of broken white families have produced the same results. Crime has nothing to do with race or guns. It has all to do with wealth inequality and dysfunctional families.
Curious to note that Switzerland, with high gun ownership levels, is a very low-crime zone. The UK, by contrast, is the most violent country in Europe.
Here are the Swedish requirements via Wikipedia:
One major problem with your argument: Switzerland is a DIFFERENT COUNTRY to Sweden. Agree with your point about training in a national guard however.
Sure the company like to quote reduced gunshot detections, but the fact is that the murder and crime rates were unchanged. So either the system because less able to detect the shots or less shots were actually fired in the covered region. Maybe the criminals switched to smaller fireams, suppressors, or knives. Or maybe the gun range on the south side of town shutdown.
Besides, responding to a gunshot several minutes later is pointless once the criminals figure out not to stick around. I'm sure they know where the cameras are as well. Personally, putting up cameras (working or fake) is probably a better crime deterrent.
Yeah, I missed that in the proof read. However, the article correctly links to Switzerland.
...we don't live in a world populated with unicorns and faeries.
Clearly you're not from San Francisco.
Then there are legions of useful idiots who don't understand what's wrong with that. They mean well, and they sincerely but naively believe that gun-control is a great way to stop crime.
And then there are legions of idiots who ignore all of the data available from around the world that prove that strict gun control rates are associated with very low homicide rates, and engage in worthless speculation to claim that guns don't make it much easier to kill people.
If guns weren't so effective at ending human life, the Army would still be using bayonets. Give one idiot a gun, and he can kill half dozen people with virtually no prior training. Give everyone a gun, and they kill each other and themselves on a more regular basis.
You can prove me wrong by pointing to a nationwide enforced gun control policy that has resulted in higher homicide rates.
No.
But don't worry, thanks to clever manipulation of statistics, crime is going down. Don't mind the bullet holes.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You probably won't like this; so be it. When I see this kind of response, my initial reaction is "get over yourself." Maybe that's a misunderstanding on my part that you can correct. Still, I'll explain why.
I never made the claim that you said you wanted to disarm anyone. To quote myself, here's what I did say:
I submit to you that this cannot possibly be reconciled with the gun-control advocates' notion that disarming people is the best way to reduce crime.
Without changing its meaning at all, it can be rephrased this way:
I submit to you that this cannot possibly be reconciled with the gun-control advocates' (whether or not you are personally a member of this group we are discussing) notion that disarming people is the best way to reduce crime."
I went on to explain that the particular nuances of Swedish law have no effect on this greater point. I strongly doubt that a Swede who flips out and goes on a shooting frenzy is going to care about the fact that he had to show ID to buy the ammo. Your personal beliefs really don't change that one way or the other. It's sort of like me talking about Americans and having someone pipe up with "but I'm Australian!" That's just fine and dandy, but we can still talk about Americans. Likewise, I wasn't concerned with whether you personally want to disarm anyone.
What are those regulations designed to accomplish? If someone goes nuts and goes on a rampage, how do you intend to prevent this by requiring that he show ID before purchasing the weapons/ammo? At the time of purchase, he has not yet murdered anyone. If he has to unlock his gunsafe and take the weapon out of it before committing murder, how is that going to prevent the murder? They are largely feel-good measures. The gun-safe requirements might prevent accidents by making sure young children can't play with guns, but by definition accidents are not crimes and have no place in a discussion about crime. Besides, do you honestly believe a good parent would need the government to explain this to them?
That those regulations are useless is bad enough. That would mean they are just a waste of time and resources. The other problem is that dictatorships throughout history progress in stages. One stage is they start requiring the registration of all firearms. The next stage is they confiscate those firearms, now that they know where they are and who owns them. The next stage after that is they become police states and there's nothing to stop them. It's amazing how consistent this pattern has been. Castro did this in Cuba, Hitler did this in Germany, Stalin did this in Russia, Mussolini did this in Italy, and on and on.
What benefit does registration offer that makes it worth this risk? Can anyone name a single instance where a crime was prevented by using such a registry? As a citizen I do have an interest in crime prevention. I have a strong preference for not being shot by some thug. If I saw even one good reason why registration was in my interests, I'd support it. Right now, I would explain it this way: what do you call an it when we implement an idea with an unlikely but terribly serious downside and no real benefits? Bad decision-making.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Here in America, the right to own and bear arms is very much a deeply rooted ideal that stems from the founding of this country. It is statistically proven over and over that here in America, states and cities that allow their law abiding citizens to carry firearms have much lower crime rates than in states or cities that restrict gun ownership by law abiding citizens.
I live in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm quite familiar with the standard issue backwater responses to gun control. Canada has even more guns per capita and less homicide rate due to their strict enforcement of gun laws. Same goes for most of Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Local gun control policies don't work because they are local. It's like having a dry county. People are still going to drive a few miles and get liquor.
Those who would give up essential liberties for a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security." - Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin owned slaves, and the most modern gun technology during his day allowed a person to fire a round every twenty seconds. He had some good things to say, but treating the founding fathers with any sort of reverence would be something they abhorred, since most of them believed that dogmas are evil and that reason was the path to enlightenment.
All those cameras around the city are active cameras filming footage 24/7,
ShotSpotter is a passive technology only activated when the sensor picks up a gunshot.
Those active cameras are mostly as deterrent against crime; making criminals uncomfortable doing their behavior on camera. If these would be real candid camera's, crime could drop although privacy concerns will rise. I guess there is no real solution for this; since the entire mess around surveillance is in the wrong hands to create confidence with the general public.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
And then there are legions of idiots who ignore all of the data available from around the world that prove that strict gun control rates are associated with very low homicide rates, and engage in worthless speculation to claim that guns don't make it much easier to kill people.
If guns weren't so effective at ending human life, the Army would still be using bayonets. Give one idiot a gun, and he can kill half dozen people with virtually no prior training. Give everyone a gun, and they kill each other and themselves on a more regular basis.
You can prove me wrong by pointing to a nationwide enforced gun control policy that has resulted in higher homicide rates.
First off, I would really like for you to provide statistical evidence to support "Give everyone a gun, and they kill each other and themselves on a more regular basis". Be sure to pull these statistics from AMERICAN crime rates. Again, what happens in other countries doesn't mean anything when compared to the U.S. Different cultures and different states of mind.
Second, why did you only respond to the last sentence of his argument? You also never even acknowledged anything that I said in direct response to YOU in my post #31725576.
Please, as you are obviously very anti-gun, respond in an intelligent and respectful manner to arguments we bring up. If not, then all you are doing is proving that you have a biased opinion on a topic, and cannot or will not back up your claims with any statistical data.
I am not trying to start a flame war or be labeled as a troll, but for once I would like to get some kind of thought out arguments from anti-gun people about the issue. They seem to always ignore what they can't argue.
"Those who would give up essential liberties for a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security." - Benjamin Franklin
Castro did this in Cuba, Hitler did this in Germany, Stalin did this in Russia, Mussolini did this in Italy, and on and on.
If you believe in the slippery slope argument, you can't be helped. There are dozens of nations who have strict gun control registries that haven't turned into dictatorships.
It's far more dangerous to have a standing army susceptible to being overtaken and used for coups d'etat. Yet I see no arguments for that particular point of view.
All of your arguments are made from the assumption that guns should be unregulated. You have to ask, should guns be regulated, look at the data for countries that do regulate guns -nationwide and with real consequences for breaking the law - versus those that do not, and then you have a chance of arriving at a useful answer.
There is no permit required to buy ammunition. Just a copy of your criminal record (Strafregisterauszug).
The permit to buy firearms is the same as the background checks done in the US. If you're a Swiss citizen with no criminal record, all you need to do is send in your papers, wait for a week, and you get your permit (Waffenerwerbsschein).
There is no permit needed to own a gun, just to buy one. That's an important distinction.
You're right about carry licenses though - it's unusual for people to carry guns here and it's next to impossible to get a carry license if you don't *need* one.
On the other hand, there is very few crimes here. A murder or a body found always make national news, and these are not daily.
It's a comparison between two countries, actually. Unless you have tunnel-vision, it's also a small part of a much larger pattern. Other components of the larger pattern include the reduction in violent crime that has happened in every U.S. state that enacted conceal-carry permits. If you don't see that larger pattern, it's because you don't want to. If you want to close your eyes, that's fine, but then don't complain that you cannot see.
This will be something more than your desire to make this into a personal matter the moment you tell me why my arguments are unsound. As it stands now, you're saying "you're wrong!" without explaining why I'm wrong, and either you're bitching or you falsely expect this to be persuasive. As you conveniently ignore, I did not just say that I believe one worldview is inferior to another. I also backed that up with an explanation. If you wish to be taken seriously, dispute my explanation. Do your own research about how the media treats this issue and tell me if you found something different than what I found when I did the same.
So I explain what I believe to be true. Rather than expecting you to take it on faith, I provide several reasons why I believe it is the truth. I'm not concerned with whether that truth is flattering or unflattering to any particular group because that's a petty concern in the face of an important issue. I am only concerned with whether it's true. Either my reasons are relevant or you can explain why they're not. Either my logic is sound or you can point out where I have committed a logical fallacy. You've so far been unwilling to do that, and now you have the nerve to complain that you can't have a civilized discussion on this subject.
If you think that what you just did is quality debate, it's no wonder your discussions have been unsatisfying. You are reacting emotionally and resorting to ad-hominems. You are not showing me what's wrong with my reasoning and how it may be corrected. You're not being honest with yourself if you think it's the other guy's fault when this doesn't work out for you. It's possible that right now, you think I'm just saying that to give you a hard time. I'm actually trying to tell you something important about yourself as it's obvious to me that no one else has been both willing and able to do it.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Ugh. "Gun control" != "taking away law abiding citizens'" guns. How about the requirements for legal gun ownership are as stringent as getting a drivers license? Or gun ownership is as carefully regulated as car ownership? I love me some shooting, and I've been trained to RESPECT and CAREFULLY handle guns (by cops, no less). Not everyone has been so trained-- and not everyone shot with a gun has been shot by a criminal. We can't prevent criminals from doing criminal acts, as you so helpfully pointed out. Possibly we can prevent dimwits from handling tools they aren't competent to use?
You can't see the forest for the trees. The proof is American crime rates because the problem is American law.
The US, UK, Canada, and Australia are pretty similar. Same language, exposure to similar media, largely democratic, largely Judeo-Christian, and except for the UK, sparsely populated.
Murder Rates per 100,000:
5.4 United States
2.0 United Kingdom
1.8 Canada
1.2 Australia
It could also be that there is no safety net to help people get back on their feet in the US, or the fact that we have the highest incarceration rate in the Western world which have been shown to create criminals instead of treat them, or that violence is more celebrated in our culture, and sexuality more repressed, or that our wealth inequality is ten times more severe, but the easy access to guns doesn't seem to be helping.
I appreciate your responses, but again, you failed to address certain points. How do you explain the drop in crime rate in D.C. when the gun ban was lifted in 2005? Or Kennesaw, Georgia where they mandate home owners have at least one firearm having their violent crime rates drop by 75% in the FIRST YEAR the law was put into effect?
This statistical PROVEN data says otherwise about "the easy access to guns doesn't seem to be helping." How do you respond to that?
Why is it that people think that carring a gun is somehow going to protect you? I realize that it is a seductive fantasy to be the gun-toting hero that kills a bad guy on a murderous rampage, but that is not a realistic situation. In a mugging the criminal already has the drop on you. He has his gun out and pointed at you, and any attempt to draw yours is just going to get you killed. And just telling a bugeler that you have just called the police is likely to be more effective then yellling "freeze" at them when you point the gun at them. You are more likely to startle them into doing something stupid (firing their gun) than subduing them.
The police are effecive with fireams because they are well trained, and you know that they have already called in the well of infinete backup by the time they draw their firearm. Dealing with one cop vioently is just a recipie for getting more after you. Killing a single person with a gun is not going to have the same immediate effect.
Oh... and I don't know many basements that could hold a firearm ready forge in them. Gunsmithing requires a lot of skills.
America-with its traditions of individual liberty-cannot import Switzerland's culture of social control.
You know where I got that quote from? www.guncite.com, a pro-gun site. It was from an excellent post discussing not only a few statistics, but also a good number of external laws, history, and social mores. I suggest you take notes from it on how to make a sound argument for gun control.
Any comparison about Swiss vs US gun laws that does not also include a cultural discussion is either ignorant, or willfully misleading.
I'd love to talk facts with you; sadly, your post contained none. And you can quit the condescension, as it weakens your point. It's a weak attempt at a flame, and an even weaker attempt at being educational.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Is it sort of civil war? Ethnic or race conflict? Why do not I find a gun somewhere and start shooting?
These therms are confusing: "shooting", "violence", "crime", etc. Can anyone explain in plain English words what is going on in Chicago. And why?
You are entirely right. And I apologize. I haven't done stats in a long time (my understanding is ok, I haven't produced any graphs in many years). The failure wasn't intentional. And it was really rushed. In that one the x-axis is states in order (i just highlighted and used w/e excel's standard settings were). Anyways, here is a fix:
.558 correlation. Which may not be super strong BUT it is the complete opposite of what OP said which was my problem. And I do realize that 'law strictness' is an unnatural measurement so it isn't a perfect reflection of actual strictness (unmeasurable), which makes the correlation value matter less as well.:
/. spam filter, I apologize for the ugliness)
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/3007/gunlaws2.png
States are obviously the various diamonds. I labeled a few outliers (unreadable if I labeled them all).
And here is the data. If my graph still sucks graph it how you like. No matter how you graph it there will still be a negative
-*/*/%$&*/*/state laws deaths
-*/*/%$&+-+*/*/Alaska 4 20
-+*%$&/*/-+*/*/Louisiana 2 19.5
-*/*%$&/+-+*/*/Wyoming 9 18.8
-+*/%$&*/-+*/*/Arizona 6 18
-*/*%$&/+-+*/*/Nevada 11 17.3
-*/*/-%$&+*/+*/Mississippi 5 17.3
-*/*/-%$&+*/+*/New Mexico 6 16.6
-*/%$&*/-+*/+*/Arkansas 6 16.3
-*/*%$&/+-+*/*/Alabama 15 16.2
-+*/%$&*/-+*/*/Tennessee 7 15.4
-*/*%$&/+-+*/*/West Virginia 4 14.7
-*/*/%$&+-+*/*/Montana 8 14.5
-*/*/%$&-+*/+*/South Carolina 9 13.8
-*/*%$&/-+*/+*/North Carolina 20 13.6
-*/*/%$&-+*/+*/Georgia 7 13.4
-*/*%$&/-+*/+*/Kentucky 2 13.1
-*/*/%$&-+*/+*/Oklahoma 2 13.1
-+*/*%$&/*-+*//Missouri 4 12.3
-+*/%$&*/*-+*//Idaho 6 12.3
--*/%$&*/+*/+*/Indiana 8 11.7
--*/*%$&/+*/+*/Colorado 16 11.5
-+*/*%$&/-+*/*/Maryland 53 11.5
-*/*/%$&--+*/*/Florida 6 11.1
-*/*/-%$&+*/+*/Virginia 18 11.1
-*/*/+%$&-+*/*/Texas 9 11
-*/*%$&/+-+*/*/Michigan 22 10.9
-*/*%$&/+-+*/*/Oregon 18 10.5
-*/*/+-+*/%$&*/Pennsylvania 26 9.9
-*/*/+-+%$&*/*/California 79 9.8
-*%$&/*/+-+*/*/Illinois 28 9.7
-*/*/+-+*%$&/*/Kansas 7 9.7
-*/*/%$&-+*/+*/Utah 4 9.7
--*/%$&*/+*/+*/Vermont 9 9.6
-+*/*/-+*%$&/*/Ohio 13 9.3
-+*/*/%$&-+*/*/Washington 18 9.3
-+*/*/-+*%$&/*/Delaware 22 9.1
-+%$&*/*/-+*/*/North Dakota 4 9.1
-+-*/*/+*%$&/*/Wisconsin 12 8.1
-+-*%$&/*/+*/*/Nebraska 10 8.1
-+-*/*/+*/%$&*/South Dakota 6 7.9
-+-+*/*/*%$&/*/Iowa 16 6.7
-+*/%$&*/-+*/*/Maine 12 6.5
-+-*/*/+*/%$&*/Minnesota 11 6
-+*/%$&*/-+*/*/New Hampshire 11 5.8
-+-*/*/+*/%$&*/Rhode Island 47 5.1
-+*%$&/*/-+*/*/New York 51 5.1
-+*/*/-+*/*%$&/New Jersey 63 4.9
-+%$&*/*/-+*/*/Connecticut 54 4.3
-+*/*/-+*%$&/*/Massachusetts 54 3.1
-+*/*/%$&-+*/*/Hawaii 43 2.8
(I had to add dashes and shit before each state due to the
It's ironic that you claim the main factor influencing gun violence is the presence or absence of concealed carry. It's ironic because your signature pretty much sums up why you don't know that the guns laws in Chicago and Phoenix are the main factors in influencing the crime rate. How do you know that there aren't more gun crimes in Chicago because that city has more than twice the population and a history of organized crime? Don't claim to know, because your hypothesis is subject to criticism as well. Indeed there are other factors (geography, ethnography, slum housing) that are influencing this Chicago crime wave as well.
I don't buy the "PUBLIC" crap.
If I go out, in public, I don't need a cluster of cams, recording every movement through a city for 24/7.
Does that make me a murderer or a criminal? Not even the slightest.
Privacy is a lot more than having in-house secrets. It defines who one can be and evolve. Being watched 24/7 surely changes that entire area of evolution.
When a television crew is filming in the city, I mostly go out of the way; because I can.
Are you also going to pull the "public" excuse, when I am maintaining my own privacy that moment?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Those active cameras are mostly as deterrent against crime;
That really hasn't been proven, and the dispute has been posted here on slashdot at least a few times.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3360287&page=2
They only appear to be helpful after the fact, and only if they're pointed in the correct direction when the crime occurred. (same article)
I could drag up more, but google is your friend.
since the entire mess around surveillance is in the wrong hands to create confidence with the general public.
That's because the right hands do not exist.
It's a flippant reply, but you know it's right.
--
BMO
America-with its traditions of individual liberty-cannot import Switzerland's culture of social control.
You know where I got that quote from? www.guncite.com, a pro-gun site. It was from an excellent post discussing not only a few statistics, but also a good number of external laws, history, and social mores. I suggest you take notes from it on how to make a sound argument for gun control.
Any comparison about Swiss vs US gun laws that does not also include a cultural discussion is either ignorant, or willfully misleading.
I'd love to talk facts with you; sadly, your post contained none. And you can quit the condescension, as it weakens your point. It's a weak attempt at a flame, and an even weaker attempt at being educational.
Actually you are the first person in this thread to compare Switzerland with the USA. The comparison that was made, the one to which I was responding, was between Denmark and Switzerland. I find it strange that you wouldn't have noticed this, since I quoted it in my post that you responded to. I honestly don't know whether you are deliberately trying to sidetrack the discussion, but I will say it sure does look that way.
If I am making "a weak attempt at a flame" then surely you can put me in my place by telling me why I'm wrong. If my post has no facts and no valid reasoning, then surely it should be easy for you to show that my position is baseless and the facts concerning gun-control are on your side. If your disdain for my words is legitimate, then surely you can demonstrate that it is condescension and not a reasonable response to what you gave me to work with.
And finally, if I made a weak attempt at educating you, you can convince me of this. All you'd have to do is demonstrate that the way you have tried to deal with me has absolutely no connection to the response you received. I'll even help you by explaining one way you could do that. Just demonstrate that your use of emotionalism, ad-hominems, and failure to notice that the comparison was between Denmark and Switzerland are signs that you should be taken seriously.
I'm willing to listen if you are willing to do any of those things. Personally, I would love to rid myself of any false beliefs I may hold. To do that, I need to know why they are false. I don't mind being wrong for one moment if it leads to my edification, not even when the other person thinks it is a pissing contest and childishly gloats about his "victory". If you want to disabuse me of a false notion, I'm on board. I'm with you. But it will take more than your assertions and complaints to do it, and rightfully so.
I have repeatedly invited you to tell me why you think I'm wrong. Find one thing I said that is demonstrably false. Find one instance of me using a logical fallacy. Do that and I'll have no problem thanking you for correcting me, for showing the error of my ways. But you won't do that and I have to assume that's because you know that you can't.
I think I'm done here. I enjoy a good debate, and am grateful to have encountered people more knowledgable than me who have given me a lot of good information. I'm not getting that kind of impression of you. I honestly believe you just want to be right no matter what, in which case this is more about your insecurity than it's about gun-control. Unfortunately that makes it impossible to reason with you, but I sincerely tried.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I'd like to see that too, and was about to ask before I noticed that you already did. Honestly, I'm not holding my breath for that one.
I see that all the time. Either there is a great deal of ignorance concerning the extreme weakness of resolving contradictions this way, or people who do this are hoping that you won't notice. Little do they know, what they don't say is at least as important as what they do say. The really amazing thing is they seem totally blind to this and can't imagine why anyone would think there's something wrong with it.
Many people do this, it's just that gun-control provides some particularly egregious examples. They constantly do this and then they seem to wonder why we don't consider their position "merely different but equal" to ours. Any movement that has serious problems with the legitimacy of its arguments and doesn't view that as something it should address yesterday is a religious belief, even if it doesn't call itself that.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Provide links to your sources. Worldwide homicide rates are widely available.
PS I live near Kennesaw. Their police department is largely a crock of shit.
Excellent reply, sir. Next, they'll need a toy even more sensitive to collect the sound of knives swooshing through the air. Or, maybe cars heading towards humans. Save your money and invest in "Minority Report" - the real weapons are the humans.
I think easy access to gun doesn't even quality as a footnote, and that the other issues you mentioned are more likely to provide real answers. The War on Drugs is related to the incarceration rates, as many of these are non-violent and otherwise law-abiding except that they engage in victimless crimes. If you take these people and lock them up with gang members, rapists, and murderers, it doesn't take a genius to predict what will happen. The bothersome thing is that we know beyond doubt that this is what happens, but we aren't doing anything about it. It's as though this is a feature of our prison system and not a bug. We refuse to take a hard look at such things to protect a War on Drugs that hasn't done anything to stop anyone from obtaining drugs. The Puritannical urge to use force to make sure no one does anything you disapprove of is really that powerful.
The sexual repression doesn't make much sense to me. It's acceptable to graphically depict all kinds of violence on broadcast television, but not acceptable to show nudity. The message is that a guy getting his head blown off with a shotgun is normal and healthy but a pair of breasts is not and must be censored. This is not a healthy message.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The regulation of automobiles and the requirement of having a license to legally operate one is based on the idea that driving is a privilege, not a right. That's why I don't think you can make a valid comparison between car ownership and gun ownership, because one of those is a civil right guaranteed by the Constitution and the other is a privilege.
Further, I appreciate that before regulations were put into place for automobiles, it was understood that those regulations needed to be justified. The justification is that driving is not a civil right, therefore there is nothing wrong with placing limits on it and deciding who may or may not do it. It follows that placing limits on a recognized civil right and deciding who may or may not exercise it needs an even stronger justification before we do it. I have seen no such justifications that were rooted in reason instead of fear.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Canada has even more guns per capita and less homicide rate due to their strict enforcement of gun laws.
Oh really? If you ask Michael Moore, you know that anti-gun demon that conservatives love to vilify, he'll tell you it has nothing to do with Canadian gun laws - laws which weren't particularly strict until just a few years ago - he'll tell you it is mostly about fear, the canadian press isn't a bunch of fear-mongering idiots like the american press is. When people aren't scared witless of their neighbors and fellow humans, they tend to be less trigger-happy.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I strongly doubt that a Swede who flips out and goes on a shooting frenzy is going to care about the fact that he had to show ID to buy the ammo. Your personal beliefs really don't change that one way or the other.
Then again, you are a retard of the highest order and your doubts and beliefs are completely irrelevant.
Feel free to argue back and forth with yourself about your stupid illogical fantasy scenario. Maybe afterwards you can fantasize about someone breaking into your house and trying to rape your wife so you can come scare him into submission by waving your huge cock ed gun around.
Truth, not amazing at all.
Chicago, 1982, 39% of all violent crimes involve firearms.
1983, Chicago firearms ban enacted.
Chicago, 2008, 79% of all violent crimes involve firearms.
Gun control doesn't work and never will. When the crooks and punks know the victim is unarmed, they get brave.
Washington DC has had a 70% drop in armed violence since the Supreme Court overturned their handgun ban in 2008.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Anyone who is somewhat important in a gang would be wise to get all the kids in the neighborhood to damage the acoustic sensors. If this was impossible, another smart move would be to start shooting A LOT. Not at anything in particular-- just grab a pistol, put it in a bag, and fire. Get out of the area quickly (ditch the gun if necessary) and waste police resources tremendously. I'm betting that after thousands of rounds being pumped into the ground the police will stop responding.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
These type of systems were originally developed to detect & track aircraft in the days before radar came into play. Many countries had developed & equiped their military with such sound detection/tracking systems during the interwar years (ie the 20s' & 30's). They never really matched their assumed potential & often required too much talent & skill from the operators to be practical. At best they were an early warning system
Contrast and compare to Switzerland
That's because they're properly trained to use the guns while they do national service. You can hardly compare mass ex-military gun control to what we have where they're nothing more than penis extensions for morons and cowards.
So do you consider US veterans who are gun owners to be morons or cowards?
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Is it just an FOID or does it allow her to carry?
More crap to buy now and mortgage off onto the next 30-50 years of taxpayers.
Who knows! Maybe Chicago won't be happy until taxes on everything in the city are at 50% plus whatever the Obama Administration decides to tack on for "free universal health care".
This about sums up my feelings. If you want to be truthful, double it.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
All these restrictions are unconstitutional. Period.
Please go find another soap box. Gun restriction laws have been tried over and over, and they are quite legal by the constitution. Thank goodness.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
No. That is a gross oversimplification. The point is that handguns are illegal in Chicago, yet last week there were 40 shootings. Let me repeat that. Last week there were 40 shootings in Chicago despite the fact that handguns are illegal in Chicago. This seems to me to be a good indication that gun control laws like those that Chicago has do not work. It's all very nice to say that gee, if we just outlawed guns then nobody would have them and no one would get shot, but last I checked, we don't live in a world populated with unicorns and faeries.
Actually, what doesn't work is having armed citizens as a means of protection. The last I checked, there was no nation wide ban on guns. As long as one state allows over allows firearms, there's nothing keeping them out. What we need is a national ban on guns, across the board. Then we may start seeing some improvement.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Or we could have reasonable gun control laws.
Guns are already illegal within the Chicago city limits. Guess those "reasonable gun control laws" aren't quite working out like you'd hoped, huh?
When you can go one county over, or over to Indiana to get a gun, it's not that effective. But it's a start, and hopefully the pro-gun areas will get a clue one of these days and institute their own bans on guns. Then we may start seeing some positive effects.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Most firearm incidents are accidents &/or acts of compulsion/impulse.
Example:- Johnny & Jack come home from the pub pissed as farts & get in a argument & end up blueing. One ends up with the upper hand & the other comes off second best with the furniture, in anger he reaches for his gun & points/threatens his mate & then through drunkeness & carelessness, etc, the gun accidently fires & his mate gets blasted.
Such a scenario correlates with many more firearm incidents than pre-meditated acts by career criminals. Gun control laws & gun storage laws are there to minimise such scenarios. The only effect gun control & storage laws have on preventing firearm acts by career criminals or lifestyle criminals is by limiting the amount of firerms stolen & being diverted into the black market. Of course in regards the US it's too late, the place is so satuated with firearms already.
It's not the cost of the hardware. Just ask any electrical contractor. The actual parts installed are typically 10-20% the cost of the job. Securing the property rights to install these, even if the mic's are atop utility poles or streetlights, may also be a factor. However, installing a separate branch circuit for power, running conduit, installing boxes to hold the gear, pulling cable and terminating it, and having it all done proper to code... that's what drives up the cost of any municipal or commercial electrical project. Blame the IBEW if you'd like, but there's prolly a generic commercial electrical contractor to do the actual install and a separate low-voltage contractor to finish and setup the microphone and configure the controller. Plus there's drawings to be done first (think AutoCAD), plus paperwork (submittals, as-built's, operation & maintenance manuals, permits, bonds....)... All that adds up and is counted as labor. Plus those contractors want some profit too, so there's markup. $250k per sq. mile is all mostly labor.
Sometimes I wish we could install stuff like homeowners.... nail it to the side of the house, plug in to the nearest outlet, drill a hole thru the wall to fish some cat5 or whatever, get a drink, and call it a day
Chicago gun ban (actually ceasing to issue permits) happened in 1982
Homicide rates:
1980: .02933%
1985: .0222%
1990: .03057%
1995: .02996%
2000: .02178%
source: http://www.disastercenter.com/illinois/crime/3111.htm
This really tells us nothing except that after the ban went into effect the homicide rate fluctuated quite a bit.
I understand your point, but my point is that historically prohibition does not work. It didn't work for alcohol, it doesn't work for drugs, and it doesn't seem to work for guns.
You've also made my point for me which is that it is more complicated by far than simply more guns = more murders.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Most firearm incidents are accidents &/or acts of compulsion/impulse.
Example:- Johnny & Jack come home from the pub pissed as farts & get in a argument & end up blueing. One ends up with the upper hand & the other comes off second best with the furniture, in anger he reaches for his gun & points/threatens his mate & then through drunkeness & carelessness, etc, the gun accidently fires & his mate gets blasted.
Such a scenario correlates with many more firearm incidents than pre-meditated acts by career criminals. Gun control laws & gun storage laws are there to minimise such scenarios. The only effect gun control & storage laws have on preventing firearm acts by career criminals or lifestyle criminals is by limiting the amount of firerms stolen & being diverted into the black market. Of course in regards the US it's too late, the place is so satuated with firearms already.
Thay're about minimising firearm incidents regardless of premeditation or who has a criminal past. A bloody good percentage of firearm incidents are accidents &/or acts of compulsion/impulse.
Example:- Johnny & Jack come home from the pub pissed as farts & get in a argument & end up blueing. One ends up with the upper hand & the other comes off second best with the furniture, in anger he reaches for his legally owned gun & points/threatens his mate & then through drunkeness & carelessness, etc, the gun accidently fires & his mate gets blasted.
Such a scenario correlates with many more firearm incidents than pre-meditated acts by career criminals. Gun control laws & gun storage laws are there to minimise such scenarios. The only effect gun control & storage laws have on preventing firearm acts by career criminals or lifestyle criminals is by limiting the amount of firerms stolen & being diverted into the black market (less legal access often means less illegal access, even if there's no statistical correlation). Of course in regards the US it's too late, the place is so saturated with firearms already.
It allows her to carry, except in the cities / villages that have outlawed them (like Chicago, Morton Grove, etc.)
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
Anecdotally, I live in a small town (approx' 20K people) in Arizona. More than half the population here has a handgun (I have 2), closer to 75% if you add rifles and shotguns. In the last 2 years there has been 2 murders, only one with a gun, and that involved a gang that chased someone and happened to catch up with them in our town.
0.5 murder per 10k population per year, or .005 per 1000. If your town was a country, that would make you the 20th most violent country in the world according to Nationmaster's list (first Google result for "murders per capita"). Being kind and comparing to the national average, it makes your town about 1.17[1] times worse than it should be. If I wasn't to be kind, I'd exclude the large cities, which tend to be above the national average.
Of course, if I was to be really serious, I'd compare it to areas without such lax gun controls as the US *near by*, and I'd find that many European countries manage to have about 1/4th as much murders as the US. But guns is unlikely to be all of that (Norway and Switzerland have lots of guns) - more likely, there are other cultural factors. How would you change the US culture to make you murder each other four times less? (I personally would start with changing the idea that private violence for 'defense is reasonable. In Norway at least, guns are for hunting or for war, not for "defense against intruders" and similar - "defense against intruders" isn't a topic for discussion at all.)
Eivind.
[1] I doubt that your data is accurate to 3 digits, but let's pretend for a moment.
Carrying a firearm is illegal by state law in Illinois, regardless of what permits someone might have. Period.
Uhmm Heller?
It's either false dichotomies, or the terrorists win, you decide.
I think there is *no* causal relation between gun ownership and crime. Pro CCL people like myself like to point out that license holders commit less than half the crimes of non license holders. So more license holders means less crime right? Wrong. You select a bunch of people with a clean mental health and criminal record at 21 or older, and of course they will commit less than half as many crimes on average, if you didn't get into hot water at all by the time you are 21 you are probably a pretty reasonable person. The fact is there are violent criminals, and they are a small percentage of the population. What the rest of us do or don't do doesn't have much effect on them. Chicago has a gun ban, I don't think it works, but I suspect they have a gun ban because the knee jerk reaction to there being a lot of shootings allowed them to convince people it was a good idea at the time. My point is, that if making a law and putting people in jail can't be proven to have a large positive effect on everyone else's well being, then it's a bad idea. This is where we're at on gun laws, no one has made one that significantly decreased crime, ever, so why harass all the shooting and collecting enthusiasts who never hurt anyone?
It's either false dichotomies, or the terrorists win, you decide.
Anecdotally, I live in a small town (approx' 20K people) in Arizona. More than half the population here has a handgun (I have 2), closer to 75% if you add rifles and shotguns. In the last 2 years there has been 2 murders, only one with a gun, and that involved a gang that chased someone and happened to catch up with them in our town.
Anecdotally, I live in a large country (approx' 20M people) in the Southern Hemisphere. In the 10 year period from 1991-2001, 5083 were killed by guns (3930 suicides). So that's 0.0025% of people per year killed with guns (or 0.00057% excluding suicide). From the latest statistics we see 260 murders in 2008, 12% of which were committed with firearms - 31 murders with a gun. Out of 21 million people (population reached 21 million in 2008). That is 0.00014%.
Now in your example you have 1 murder out of 20k, i.e. 0.005%. That makes your "safe" example 33 times more dangerous!
--- "When you're strange"
so you actually list 5 confounding factors and then dismiss them arbitrarily in favor of your gun theory? I would say the incarceration rate and glorification of violence alone would account for the almost triple murder rate of the UK. I'm sure there are also other reasons.
It's either false dichotomies, or the terrorists win, you decide.
Thanks. I asked because the NRA gives the strong impression that there is simply no process in Illinois for non-LEOs (and some on-duty security guards) to lawfully carry.
You can prove me wrong by pointing to a nationwide enforced gun control policy that has resulted in higher homicide rates.
No problem at all: Jamaica, in the early 1970's.
The government imposed a complete prohibition on guns. Possession of a bullet meant a mandatory life sentence. There was even a special gun court where people were tried in secret.
After a drop in homicide and crime rates that lasted only 6 months, both increased rapidly until they were double and triple the rates before the crackdown, only a few years later. At one point, the "justifiable" homicide rate by police officers was higher than the overall homicide rate in the US.
Another example that isn't really a cause-effect relationship, but is more like a cause-no effect relationship: The United Kingdom. Before enactment of gun control, gun crime was practically non-existent. From 1890-92, there were only 3 handgun homicides (an average of one a year) among a population of 30 million. In 1904, there were only four armed robberies in London.
Gun control began in the UK in 1920, and accelerated in 1954. Violent crime has been climbing every since. After a 1997 ban on handguns, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40% in the following two years. Over a six-month period in 2001, robberies at gunpoint rose by 53% in London.
In 2002, the chances of being mugged in London were six times greater than being mugged in New York. The rates of assault, robbery and burglary in the UK were much higher than the US. In 2002, 53% of UK burglaries occurred while the occupants were at home, compared with only 13% in the US -- where apprehended burglars admit they fear armed homeowners more than the police.
In a UN study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, 2002, England and Wales led the Western world, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.
Of course, the homicide rate in the US is still higher. But here's an interesting fact: if you remove all the homicides committed with a firearm in the US, the remaining homicide rate is still higher than the UK.
The US homicide rate is dominated by criminals killing each other over disputes. Deaths of innocent people caused by strangers gets all the press coverage, but in reality they are much less common.
Yeah, but what about heavy sack beatings?
I have bad news for you. This very law (the Chicago handgun ban) is at issue in the Heller follow-on McDonald v. Chicago currently being considered by the Supreme Court. Consensus in constitutional law circles, as far as I can read it, is that the law is about to be struck down.
This makes sense considering that the only real issue, after the Heller decision that a handgun ban is in fact a 2nd-amendment violation, is whether states can abridge their citizens' 2nd amendment rights any more than D.C. can. So it's not really even a 2nd-amendment case any more so much as it is really just another in a string of so-called 14th amendment "incorporation" cases where the Supreme Court decides, one by one, that rights created in the Bill of Rights can be enforced against the states under the 14th amendment due process clause.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
caritj.org
Yes, Switzerland is absolutely free of mayhem.
Wide availability of guns does nothing to stem violence either, a fact pro-gun people tend to ignore.
Contrast and compare to Switzerland
That's because they're properly trained to use the guns while they do national service. You can hardly compare mass ex-military gun control to what we have where they're nothing more than penis extensions for morons and cowards.
Bah.
Like most people who hold "training" in such high regard and believe that it's the difference between someone who can be trusted with a dangerous weapon and someone who cannot, I'm sure you've never had any.
Training teaches some useful things, certainly. One very important thing that it teaches is how to safely handle a weapon. But that portion of the training only takes about 30 minutes (though many hours of practice help to ingrain the safe-handling habits). Beyond that, all of the training that soldiers and police receive with their firearms is primarily about marksmanship and tactics. The difference between cover and concealment and how to make use of them. Shooting accurately from cover, with either hand. Shooting accurately while moving. Tactics for building clearing. Tactics for assaulting various sorts of prepared positions. That sort of thing. Police also spend a lot of time on the legalities of shooting, on defending their firearms from gun-grab attempts, etc.
With that understood, can you tell me, please, just what aspect of all of that training it is that makes the difference between a person who can store a fully-automatic main battle rifle in their closet for decades and never harm a soul and someone who likes to wave his pistol around and cap anyone who offends him?
I'll answer my own question: NOTHING. The difference between those two is their social responsibility and emotional stability, not their training. Criminals rarely shoot people accidentally -- they shoot people because they want to, because it gives them power over people. It especially gives them power over unarmed people.
Firearms training doesn't change what you do with a gun, it just changes how effectively you do it. The fact that all those Swiss gun owners have been trained is not what keeps them from shooting up their neighborhoods.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gun_ownership
Says the US has 3x the guns per capita of Canada.
Luckily, it's extremely likely that the Supreme Court with incorporate the second amendment against the states (if you read the oral argument transcript, the whole discussion was basically about which way to incorporate it). I won't be surprised if it's a 9-0 ruling, actually.
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So you would agree that more guns doesn't necessarily mean fewer murders either?
What we need is a national ban on guns, across the board. Then we may start seeing some improvement.
The UK has this, and the advantage that it's an island nation, near a continent whose nations also have strong gun control. And yet violent crime has risen since the UK banned handguns. In fact, violent crime using handguns has risen since the ban was enacted. I'm not saying that the increased violence is a result of the ban; cause and effect are very hard to tease out given the large number of factors that affect crime rates.
Meanwhile, many US states have liberalized carry laws, and a greater percentage of Americans carry a handgun daily today than any time in the last hundred years, and the US has seen a decline in violence, and a greater decline in areas where carry has increased the most. Of course, the American rate of violence is still higher than the UK rate, and again I can't say that increased carry is the cause of the decreased crime rate -- but at the very least these data points argue that there is no reason to expect that a nationwide ban would provide any improvement.
Meanwhile, it would certainly infringe the rights of law-abiding citizens, a right that is codified in our Bill of Rights, as well as in the constitutions of the majority of the US states.
Personally, while we're speculating on ways to reduce violence, I think that ending the War on Drugs would do a lot more to reduce the violence. Much of the violence is gang-related and it's drugs that fund the gangs.
In the interest of full disclosure: I do believe that citizen carry reduces violence. Whether or not it reduces overall rates, it reduces the number of law-abiding folks who are victims of violence. I believe this strongly enough that I've gotten certified as a concealed carry permit instructor so that I can work in my spare time to increase the number of people who carry every day.
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Exactly.
Criminals are going to have guns whether it's illegal or not. The very definition of being a criminal, after all, is willful disregard of the law.
If you give citizens the means to defend themselves instead of helplessly bending over to an armed robber, then people looking to make an easy buck will be less apt to go after someone that they realize just might shoot back.
the most modern gun technology during his day allowed a person to fire a round every twenty seconds.
Where in the constitution does it mention "guns"?
It says "arms" for a reason, the idea being that the populous have access to enough hardware to protect from a tyrannical government (foreign or domestic).
The first thing the redcoats would do when taking a town would be to take the armory. Which would leave everyone pretty much defenseless (and running out to get blunderbusses from farmers).
Now, you can argue that those circumstances no longer apply. But allowing local (or even Federal) governments to rewrite the constitution however they see fit is a bad precedent.
The "right way" to get gun control would be a new constitutional amendment giving the government the power to control gun ownership (a power the government doesn't currently have, despite all those local licensing hurdles). You would also have to strike the 2nd amendment.
Of course, now you see why it's easier to just ignore the constitution. And the more people we have clamoring to ignore it because they want gun control, the easier it will be for the government to ignore it for other reasons.
In the year 2000, the rate of deliberate murder by firearm was approximately 18.64 people per 100,000 in the USA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_Census
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States
In Canada, the murder rate was approximately 1.73 people out of 100,000 in the year 2003. Studies show that shootings generally account for around 30% of all murders in Canada. This means that the rate of deliberate murder by firearm was approximately 0.519 people in 100,000 in the year 2003 in Canada.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Canada#Violent_crime.2C_suicide_and_accidents_in_Canada
Thus, the USA has a murder rate from firearms that is approximately 36 times higher than that of Canada. Meanwhile, it has a population that is approximately 9 times the size of ours.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_2001_Census
Now, aside from the fact that I am obviously not a statistician, and that my cited numbers come from a range of years between 2000 and 2004, I think that we can all agree that 36 is not equal to 9. This simple fact shows quite obviously that the number of murders due to firearms is not related to population. How about firearm density?
In 1996, it was shown that about 22% of Canadian households contain a firearm of some sort. The same study showed that 2.3% of Canadian households contain a handgun. This means that the vast majority of guns in Canada are likely for sport - not the sort that one gang member kills another with.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Canada
Meanwhile, 40% of US households have at least one firearm, and the country as a whole has the largest number of privately owned guns per capita and in total on the planet earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_the_United_States#Firearms
Again, I'm not a statistician, but those who claim that gun control laws don't work may want to check their evidence first.
As for using the city of Chicago as an example of gun control laws - no. Nobody is stopping people on entrance to the city and searching them for firearms. You cannot expect a city-wide ban on firearms to work, when there isn't a matching law in the surrounding area. Finally, gun control laws do in fact do quite a lot to stop criminals from carrying guns. In 1998, the ATF (United States' Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives) estimated that only 18% of guns used criminally that were recovered by law enforcement officials were in the possession of their original owner. That means that 82% of guns recovered by police were stolen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States#Firearms_market
Now what if there were less guns available in the country? By relation, there would be less guns available to be stolen. And perhaps then, the rate of murder by way of firearms would drop. Radical thinking, I know.
Wait, wait.
You can't make gun control work now in a limited area with almost absolute authority so your solution is to take the non-working rules and impose them EVERYWHERE ELSE?
Do you work for the government or did you suffer a severe head trauma?
Why do you only count firearms murders? It's pretty reasonable to assume that people who want to kill someone and have access to a gun will often use a gun, but if guns are hard to get, they'll choose the weapons that are at hand.
If you look at all homicides, the US has a much higher rate than Australia, of course. 4.8 times higher. In fact, the rate of non-firearm homicides in the US is greater than the rate of ALL homicides in Australia. Clearly there's something at work besides the guns.
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your anecdote is worthless. you're comparing a town of 20k people to a city of several million. you know this, but you post it anyway. pathetic.
again, phoenix isn't chicago.
have you considered that cities ban guns _because_ they have a problem with violence?
I dunno, it seems reasonable that lack of a dad could contribute to delinquency. I suppose I'll still buy the argument that "newer members" tend to word things like they're writing for a talk radio show, though. :)
The problem with your data is that it counts 'gun deaths', not crime levels. Your data includes suicides and accidental shootings with the violent crime. That's a very convenient set of data to present if your agenda is to outlaw gun ownership, but it's a bit disingenuous.
So I'm going to counter with a few graphs of my own.
First, http://img339.imageshack.us/i/89312727.png/
This is the one you already made: gun laws on the x axis, gun deaths on the y. I guess most people can be convinced there's a negative correlation there. Let's move on.
I assert that suicides contribute a significant amount to that correlation. In support, I present http://img691.imageshack.us/i/96131586.png/ (source: http://www.afsp.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewpage&page_id=05114FBE-E445-7831-F0C1494E2FADB8EA) as support. The shape of the two graphs is pretty similar. This kind of makes sense, because guns are a pretty effective way to kill yourself, but I digress. Instead...
http://img249.imageshack.us/i/21700353.png/
That's gun laws versus murder rates (source: http://www.infoplease.com/us/statistics/crime-rate-state.html). Suddenly the correlation is much less obvious. On the low end of strictness, data is all over the place, and on the high end, as availability of guns goes down, murders actually go up.
The same trend repeats with violent crime ( http://img220.imageshack.us/i/72421515.png/), property crime ( http://img260.imageshack.us/i/21861589.png/), and robbery ( http://img176.imageshack.us/i/84688439.png/). Interestingly, though, not with rape ( http://img519.imageshack.us/i/45149589.png/); can't really explain that one.
So, yeah. I don't think anyone would argue that more guns leads to more gun-related deaths (which the data you provided does show, however weakly), but we were never arguing about gun deaths. We were arguing about crime, where the correlations are much less clear-cut.
Hi, I live in Australia. With our law, I wouldn't even know wher to start to go get myself a gun, neither do all of my mates. I cant tell you the last time I have even seen a gun, would be getting on 10 years or so, and that was just a 22 on a farm.
Only 5% of Australians legally are licenced to have guns, yes ofcourse there are people that have them that shouldn't, but its much easier to go pick up a knife or a michettie and go lay into someone then tracking down the almost extinct handgun.
The reality is, if someone wants to hurt someone they can do it easilly in our countly, but if someone wants to walk into a shopping mall and massicare 50 people, its extrememly hard.
Canada has even more guns per capita and less homicide rate due to their strict enforcement of gun laws.
Commonly stated, but only half true. Canada has a lower intentinal homicide rate (1.83 per 100k residents, compared to 5.4 in the USA), but also a lower gun ownership rate (31.5 per 100 residents, compared to 90 in the USA).
Some have claimed that gun ownership in Canada is more popular than official figures suggest, because of a purported plethora of unregistered rifles. By law, all guns must be registered. However, if gun ownership is a lot higher than quoted, then it cannot be the case that gun laws are "strictly enforced".
imo its a shame a lot of american citizens think like that.. with the response time and technology of the police nowadays that section of your constitution doesnt make a whole lot of sense to me
The reason it "doesn't make a whole lot of sense" to you is that you're not using rational thought. The mechanisms that you are using to draw conclusions is invalid, and you don't get to change reality just because your brain can't make sense of it. Quantum mechanics doesn't make sense to a lot of people. That doesn't mean transistors can't work. The idea of things getting heavier when they go faster (special relativity) doesn't make sense to some people. That doesn't change the fact that it still happens. Similarly, it doesn't make sense to some people (such as yourself) that having more guns in an area means crime rates go down, but that too is a fact born out by the available statistics.
You think you "know" things that are completely wrong, and refuse to analyze your own beliefs in favor of retaining your existing misconceptions. I suggest that the next time you are in the US, you order a pizza and call the police. Then see which shows up first. The idea of a large number of private individuals carrying guns reducing crime makes perfect sense to anyone who grasps the concept of latency. Even if the police could show up rapidly, they couldn't show up as rapidly as the potential victim.
how could the solution to a gun crime problem involve more guns
I think this demonstrates how your brain is broken. There isn't a gun problem. There is a crime problem. Guns are inanimate objects, and generally inert without a human operator.
Violent crime, and murders are on a long term decline in the UK. The handgun ban is irrelevance, as before the ban hardly anyone had a handgun other than enthusiasts. It's not like the entire population was walking around like John Wayne.
You'll find that socio-economic factors have more to do with crime than anything else, and they can't be solved by yet more expensive technology.
Violent crime, and murders are on a long term decline in the UK.
Are you sure about that?
The handgun ban is irrelevance, as before the ban hardly anyone had a handgun other than enthusiasts. It's not like the entire population was walking around like John Wayne.
But the whole point of the ban was to reduce the availability of handguns to criminals... If the ban was irrelevant and ineffective, then why limit the freedom of the law-abiding enthusiast?
You'll find that socio-economic factors have more to do with crime than anything else, and they can't be solved by yet more expensive technology.
On that we certainly agree. It's the motivation to do violence that's the primary issue, not the availability of tools with which to do it (especially since there's no eliminating them), nor the means used to identify, apprehend and punish the doers.
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You're not thinking from the gun-control point of view. Gun crime happens; gun crime is bad; gun crime couldn't happen if the criminals didn't have guns; therefore: ban guns. It's the exact same logic used for website filtering or other "ban bad stuff" schemes.
My hypothesis: I suspect that population density is a factor in crime rates, and Phoenix has 1/4 the population density of Chicago.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
"I don't think anyone would argue that more guns leads to more gun-related deaths"
OP:"Let the law abiding citizens carry guns like the constitution allows them to do and you'll see gun crime drop dramatically."
So the guy I was responding to (who was modded UP at the time) would argue that and people agreed. Though mods can be insane, your well constructed post modded to 0 atm is an example... unless you happen to have shit karma I guess.
Suicides I'll give you, but accidental shootings are a danger and an unintended consequence I would argue that it should count. No one would argue that highways besides parks are safe just because most of the deaths are accidental... But back to the numbers.
In the graph for murder rates the correlation is -.10 so stricter laws do have a weak correlation to lower murder rates still. Violent crime(-.01) and property crime(-.25) seem to have almost no strong correlation. Robbery (+.29) seems to increase a bit with less guns while rape (-.48) rates drop fairly clearly.
Murky at best and without doing a MUCH larger study taking into account a far far wider range of variables to control for we can't learn much at all. I didn't have any huge believe that anti-gun laws had any major protective effect. But OP argued that the correlation was the reverse which is just wrong. And my graph compared exactly the two things he mentioned. (BTW I think trading rape for robbery is a good deal even if the other stats are more murky)
And thanks for putting effort and research into it, using figures is how it should be. Another stat you might want to look up is murder rates/gun crimes before and after various strictness laws were passed to help control other variables (though the effect may take a few years). Also, an interesting control (not really do-able) is looking only into murders of passion, though i'm sure you could argue it doesn't matter I still wonder how strong the correlation between gun laws and passion murders is.
Our community of 30,000 has had the shot spotter system for about a year. We have caught no one with it nor have we seen a decrease in gun crime.
One problem is false positives. Things like the slam of a dumpster lid and other routine noises detected as gunfire. System filters are constantly being updated in a continuous seesaw between sensitivity and selectivity. Should we settle in the middle ground I'm not at all assured the system will yield a positive value proposition.
Another problem problem is having people in position for rapid response. This requires additional bodies dedicated to a particular area. Even though Federal funds paid for most of our system, there is still a financial pinch adequately supporting the system.
If we cannot throw more bodies at the problem then we need augment the system with other technologies such as video surveillance. Again, there is a financial burden but hopefully we will get more funding.
One of the nice things about the shot spotter system is the ability to monitor and record conversations within closer proximity of the site monitors. In some cases we can get audio from within vehicles and buildings.
At the moment I'm inclined to reflect upon the shot spotter system as a developing technology that will become integral to future crime suppression efforts moving forward. In the meanwhile we are looking at substantial build outs to our video surveillance systems. Again depending on funding realizations.
It is perhaps noteworthy to reaffirm the Shot Spotter system is just one component of the entire signals intelligence theater. The end game will be accomplished with total population lock down which is within our grasp with adequate application and access to current and developing technologies upon refinement.
Currently, our greater successes have come from enabling our individual crime fighters with lower cost personal technology tools and inter-vehicle networking with multi-agency access.
Canada has even more guns per capita and less homicide rate
That doesn't do much to help your point. :)
Makes me wonder why we actually have those active camera's in town, recording 24/7/365...
Some people come up with the but it's public excuse; does that mean we just have to blindly accept? To go anywhere but home, we have to cross that public turf; no other choice. Why should law enforcement have all -that- on tape? If I wanted to keep such log of myself, I'd already have my own twitter-tool logging my locations by GPS.
Raises the question if such CCTV systems should exist in the first place, if there is no one right to control it.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
crack babies
car crashes
infectious syringes left around (beach...)
impaired judgement leading to fights, rape, pregnancy...
economic drag on the nation
You missed most of the good ones! Many are really cool ways too kill people.
A modern crossbow can be pretty small. It's less than a foot wide, and about a foot long. It takes bolts that are half a foot long. Optional: add poison, such as ricin.
The attack dog is already popular in the UK. They are fast and deadly.
A blow gun can work. Poison is required.
The molotov cocktail is good, especially if you hit the sole escape route from a building (commonly an interior staircase) or lob it into a moving car.
The compound bow, as used for hunting, is a bit large but otherwise excellent. People with balls the size of watermelons use bows to hunt bears.
I think you underestimate how difficult it is to get a handgun in the UK. So what about enthusiasts? They're a small number of nut-jobs, and gun possession isn't a divine right.
Gun control laws do nothing to stop criminals from carrying guns
Then why do the majority of British criminals not carry guns? The gun laws are strict, and the population mostly unarmed - according to you this should be a recipe for a bloodbath of innocent victims, no? And yet your average British criminal does not own or carry a gun, and homicide rates in the UK are lower than the USA .
You're in a society where you can be shot by the cops by mistake.
Last week there were 40 shootings in Chicago despite the fact that handguns are illegal in Chicago. This seems to me to be a good indication that gun control laws like those that Chicago has do not work.
That's because you can drive to Cicero (a few miles away) and buy a gun. Now, if you can't drive anywhere within a 500 mile radius and buy a gun, that's an entirely different matter.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I think you underestimate how difficult it is to get a handgun in the UK. So what about enthusiasts? They're a small number of nut-jobs, and gun possession isn't a divine right.
I think you overestimate how difficult it is to get a handgun in the UK. Google for "handgun violence UK" and spend some time reading what comes up.
As for the enthusiasts, why should their freedom be restricted to no purpose? Perhaps we should take your hobby away, too, just because we feel like it? Free societies don't arbitrarily restrict their members without compelling reason, and no real research has shown gun control to have a significant positive impact on violent crime, anywhere in the world.
Oh, and I disagree that gun possession isn't a natural right. But I'm sure we'll just have to agree to disagree on that point.
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Get yourself something to relax because you need it.
Take anything for granted which your government serves you and feel as safe as you like, because it's all for the greater you and only you.
You obviously missed the entire point; because you are too hot headed stuck in your own topic; ...
Try to read and understand instead of insulting and trolling; since the real point has been flying way above your head
ps: I guess you are using these forums as your back yard, where your attitude is better than a question. First shoot then ask questions, right?
I'm done here...
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Just noticed the alternate thread here .. really constructive!
I think it's time to upgrade to v2.0 .. Dave!
If you are trying to imitate Dave, you'll have to do better, atleast he had decent speech routines...
Ever heard of the term Netiquette? You might learn something new there; broke those rules myself replying here, but sure worth mentioning once...
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Super post. Absolutely true!
Funny thing, the people who cry "untrained penis extender lovers" and "having a gun makes you liable to shoot someone" and the like don't see any disconnect between that attitude and "smoking pot doesn't make you likely to do hard drugs", a view most of them also seem to espouse. In their minds, anything they're afraid of makes [whoever competently owns scary thing] more likely to do [scary act they're afraid of].
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw,_Georgia#Gun_law
That's actually not too high. In Memphis we average around 130 murders annually, or at least two per week, with a population under 750,000.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
I came to this party late, so still at 0. Anyway...
Regarding OP, I read that as, "Let people have guns, and murder, robbery, and other violent crime rates will go down." I don't think he was looking at deaths by shooting (suicides, accidental, and crime-related), or even deaths in general, but overall crime statistics, which 'total gun deaths' doesn't really address.
Part of what makes this hard to analyze is that there are two distinct portions of each graph: the 'low gun control' (strictness ~40), and they have radically different behavior: low gun control states have essentially no correlation between strictness and any violent crime metrics, while for higher gun control states, the correlation is positive for murder and robbery, negative for rape, and null for 'property crimes' (slightly positive for 'overall' violent crime).
Another interesting thing, though, is that in pretty much all (except rape) statistics, both the highest and lowest crime rates are found in the 'low gun control' states; this suggests to me that crime rates have less to do with the availability of guns than with other factors particular to each state.
Regarding your last point, Washington DC is currently an experiment-in-progress.
I believe the split is the jump from just concealed wep permits to full registration type setups. Don't quote me on that though.
"both the highest and lowest crime rates are found in the 'low gun control' states" true enough. I think that speaks more to the weakness of the correlation and the majority of states falling under 'low gun control'. But doesn't say there is NO correlation. I think if we controlled for variables the graphs could swing either way 30% still.
Although their is a lot of stabbings and muggings, and their citizens regularly get shot by police, you don't see much gun crime by criminals in Britain now a days, do you?
yep. As I said, where I live there are lots of guns, but very little crime, but I live in a nice area. Therefore I conclude, unscientifically, that the density of gun ownership is not the only, or even the primary factor.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
You mean the way we ban drugs nationally, and stop them so effectively at the border?
By your wording, it seems you are most likely an American. Did you miss out on 7th grade American History? Do you not realize that the only reason America isn't a British territory is because the citizens of the colonies forcibly resisted their government? They were only able to do this because they were able to own weapons relatively equal to that in the army of the government that controlled them. That is the whole reason behind the second amendment. Any people who cannot use force as a last resort against their government are slaves to the government. Government is supposed to be *for* the people, but governments have a world history of looking out for themselves more than they look out for the governed, and violently suppressing the governed.
The right (and frankly the *duty*) of every American citizen to own a firearm comes from the very principles of America's foundation. To restrict that in any way is to lessen your civic rights, to abandon your civic duty to protect the liberties of yourself and others, and to be willfully ignorant of the sacrifices that others have made for you and your way of life. Honestly, would you ask another, face-to-face, to lay down their life to protect you and your property if you're not willing to pick up a gun yourself? I would hope nobody would be that selfish, but many of our current laws show that some people are happy to hand over their freedoms and responsibilities to others (the police and armed forces).
The world is a dangerous place and some people will always find ways of hurting others. Legislating away your methods of self defense is not the answer. The people that would hurt you and those you care about will have the weapons anyway. You make *yourself* weaker with such legislation, not the criminals. If you want to live in a safe world, take responsibility for your own life and be prepared to defend yourself in measure with the threat. Legislate the very harsh punishment of those that abuse weapons or tyrranize others through force, don't make it harder for you to defend yourself. Don't shirk your own personal responsibility and ask someone else to put themselves in harms way for you. Don't buy false peace of mind with your liberties.