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Study Finds 3 Laws Could Reduce Firearm Deaths By 90% (meta.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The study, published in The Lancet, used a cross-sectional, state-level dataset relating to a host of topics associated with firearm mortality including gun ownership and even unemployment from across the U.S. to examine the relationship between recorded gun deaths and gun-control legislation. The study found that some laws, such as those that restrict gun access to children through locks and age restrictions, were simply ineffective while others, such as the stand-your-ground law that allows individuals to use deadly force in self-defense, actually increase gun-related deaths significantly. According to the study's model, a federal law expanding background checks for all gun purchases could reduce the national gun death rate by 57%, lowering it from 10.35 to 4.46 per 100,000 people while background checks for all ammunition purchases could lower the rate by 81% to 1.99 per 100,000 and firearm identification could reduce it by 83% to 1.81 per 100,000. If the federal government implemented all three laws, the scholars predict that the overall national rate of firearm deaths would drop by over 90% to 0.16 per 100,000.
'Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Gun Policy and Research, told the Washington Post, “Briefly, this is not a credible study and no cause and effect inferences should be made from it.” Webster is later quoted, stating, “What I find both puzzling and troubling is this very flawed piece of research is published in one of the most prestigious scientific journals around Something went awry here, and it harms public trust.”'
Who was it that said we don't need gun control, we need bullet-control. If a bullet cost five thousand dollars there would be no innocent bystanders. Was it Chris Rock?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
the arguments are old. There are scholars that say opposite things. The only sure way to prevent firearm death is to get rid of all firearms on the planet. That won't happen.
People are dying in droves. Stop the slaughter! Make it illegal to operate a motor vehicle.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Of course, that even presumes that reducing gun deaths should be a direct policy goal of federal policy at all, something many people disagree with.
So, the question is what will happen in response? Will the pro-gun groups stop claiming that none of these measures will help. Will the pro gun-control groups stop claiming that the ineffective laws are effective? Or will both groups just keep screaming at each other?
...such as the connect-to-the-internet law that allows individuals to connect to the internet, actually increase people connecting to the internet significantly.
...never gonna happen
I didn't know robotic firearm incidents were such a big issue on the US yet.
Regardless of your position on this, if the Second Amendment can be restricted so can all the others. They are necessary controls on government power (sans Prohibition), be careful what you wish for.
"...stand-your-ground law that allows individuals to use deadly force in self-defense, actually increase gun-related deaths significantly."
Really, no shit. Allowing people to defend themselves with guns leads to gun-related deaths. Shooting people dead that are invading your house trying to harm you is a bad thing? I suppose they want the homeowners/renters dead instead. Way to cherry pick facts. I have no problem with stand-your-ground as long as it is a justified shooting. Conversely those that not justified stand-your-ground should be an immediate firing squad (see what I did there).
Bullshit facts such as the above are not going to help those who are trying to convince people that all-guns-are-bad.
"By the way, I hear giving people driving licenses leads to an increase in vehicular deaths. We should ban it immediately." I await the all-guns-are-bad people picking apart that statement (while completely missing the point).
Study finds correlation between three laws and decreased gun deaths.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Good. Someone who invades your castle *should* get shot.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Stand your ground laws significantly increase firearms deaths? Really? First, I doubt it causes that much of an increase. Second, whatever increase it does cause is IMHO to the benefit of society. Third, if you read TFA it says no such thing.
Heck, the Three Laws could reduce firearms deaths by 100%! (I'm assuming that the First Law states "no firearm shall harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.")
There is almost no funding for gun violence research because the gun lobby knows it will produce more papers like this one.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new...
Hopefully that will change, but i think the U.S. will switch to the metric system first.
Study finds that not being born reduces risk of death by 100%
This is horseshit. Only people kill other people not guns.
Nah, just give everyone a free 9mm and reinstate the law of the old west.
Guns don't kill people, Americans do.
That all gun deaths are "equal." That's simply not true. The average unincarcerated career criminal costs society $2m per year, so if we can increase legal fatalities of criminals, we're better off economically--not to mention that deaths of violent criminals will increase safety for all the rest of us left.
Criminals dying by gun violence? Regrettable, but overall good for society.
Innocent people dying by criminal gun violence? Bad, should be reduced by all reasonable means.
Suicides by gun? Meh, while there may be some effect by reducing access to guns, international suicide rates suggest that people who want to off themselves will find other ways to do so.
So, unless we're actually reducing the gun deaths of INNOCENT PEOPLE, none of the rest really matters, does it?
They can't keep firearms themselves out of the hands of formerly convicted criminals and those only number in the hundreds of millions. Around 10 BILLION rounds of ammunition are sold each year in the US. Ah here we go, The Lancet is a MEDICAL JOURNAL. This is a little like an automotive journal publishing a study on farm productivity. They know next to nothing about the subject, and have no real world experience with its application.
Florida! Tuesday! Vote TRUMP 2016 or DiE BaRt DiE!
Of 25 firearm laws, nine were associated with reduced firearm mortality, nine were associated with increased firearm mortality, and seven had an inconclusive association....Very few of the existing state-specific firearm laws are associated with reduced firearm mortality
Not enough information in the Lancet summary to draw any conclusions, but expecting a drop of 90% doesn't sound realistic.
It is ugly to pretend to know another's mind, I know, but it sort of sounds like a fellow like you would come off in favor of fewer Americans.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Why does shit like this get posted on this site? Is there a way to block posters so i don't have to read their drivel?
It's a another red flag of the US falling into tyranny when (UK) public health gets trolled-out to curtail basic rights.
If there was any really justice to these causes why not have laws against drug companies that design, lobby and conceal their drugs killing hundreds of thousands of people.
(Read up on Avandia, Vioxx, and others http://prescriptiondrugs.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=005528 )
To the young people that read this understand this country has changed a lot since 9/11 and government interests are desperate to remain in control as your student loan debt keeps you from starting a family, having economic security and owning a home.
Mass firearm registration is a first step under the cover of "helping you." The next will be a lot of insurance requirements to register guns and pay for them.
Not rich enough money to secure your gun rights? Oh well. The American experiment was interesting.
Want to enjoy a place with fanatical gun laws. Travel to northern Mexico.
Why is this even being posted on Slashdot?
Like Trayvon Martin.
Background checks won't reduce gun deaths by a dramatic amount as criminals do not get their guns from legal sources:
https://d3uwh8jpzww49g.cloudfr...
About 60% of the gun deaths in the US are suicides:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10...
Additional background checks are unlikely to put a dent in that number as suicidal people use legally bought and lawfully owned firearms to do the deed.
It's a fine number -- but how many people give up their guns?
What the fuck does this have to do with fucking tech? Fucking Slashdot is becoming very, very non-relevant....
Be patient, buddy, we've started a gofundme page to purchase another adjective or two for you!
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
People were less likely to die from gunshot wounds on the western frontier in the 1800s than they are in modern-day Detroit, Chicago, or Washington DC (all cities with idiotic and unconstitutional victim-disarmament statutes).
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's simple, we lock every American in their own jail cell 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Why bother locking them up? Why not just shoot them?
Sure, firearm deaths would go up a bit temporarily, but it would solve the problem for good.
I think more people should be killed, because they were probably bad people anyway.
Besides, if I can't have a gun to cuddle in bed with, isn't that basically the same as having the government control all my actions? Yes. Yes it is. Only guns prevent the government from being tyrants, with their "making sure poor people don't starve" and "kids probably should have regular medical care no matter what" and "college students shouldn't need to take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans to get an education." All that socialism will destroy real Americans.
And besides, who cares what "researchers" think. They probably just want to take more money to find more things that are killing people. They can take my bacon away once they've tried to take my gun away!
This "make background checks mandatory for private sales" thing sounds good, but won't work. It won't work for the same reason that no one pays sales tax at a garage sale: you're supposed to do so, but there's no way for the government to enforce the sales tax laws on people who don't hold a business license.
The existing background check system works because it's tied to firearm dealers' licenses: they've got to do it to keep their business license.
Ironically, during the Clinton administration the feds went on a "too many people have FFLs, let's make them much more expensive and hard to get!" spree. Which now means that many fewer people participate in the background check system, as a result of another initiative that sounded good to people who have a tenuous connection to reality.
For what it's worth, if you do go buy a firearm on the internet, odds are really good that you're getting a background check anyway. Why? Because to ship a firearm, it's got to go from FFL to FFL. And the FFL in your town handling your shipment is required to do a background check.
But, it sure does sounds good to propose such a law: to people who have no clue how things actually work. Which, it turns out, is true of most of the "feel good!" solutions non-gun owners concoct to impose on gun owners. Comes of trying to legislate to match what they see in movies and in cop shows rather than what actually happens in reality. So, I wonder how this study came up with their numbers. Did they just say "hmm, X% of people buying their guns person to person commit a crime, a BG check would magically change that number to 0%"? I suppose it might, if 100% of the people followed the new, easily ignorable law. Considering that they're going and ignoring other, stricter laws to commit their crimes (like, "killing people is illegal"), that sounds rather optimistic.
... are *good* - not to mention all the lives *saved* by the use of firearms in self defense that don't end with any fatalities.
When the secret service is willing to give up their weapons in defense of themselves and others, then I'll start taking the idea of unarmed defense seriously.
Until then, molon labe.
and who paid for this study exactly?
statistics!
Gun deaths per 100,000? How is that meaningful to anyone? I'll show you meaning- my deliberate death by gun or whatever would be a tragedy. The shooting death of my closest relatives and friends would be very sad. Your death, meh, OK very sad.
The death of a terrible criminal should not be too deliberate but if it happens none shall mourn. The death of Kim Jong-un should be rewarded. The death of Bernie Sanders would be an outrage.
The fact is that the value of human lives is variable according to local customs and individual opinions. When criminals kill each other it's different from when they kill nice people.
...omphaloskepsis often...
I forget, which castle did Trayvon invade?
More people were killed in mass killings in Australia in the ten years after Port Arthur(gun ban) than the 10 years before it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Studies show that tech websites that get taken over by SJWs lose readers and have greatly diminished traffic.
Even if they are 3 laws safe it seems dicey to arm them.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Also call themselves scholars.
If gas stations required:
- a valid driver's license
- no previous DUI convictions
- no other criminal records
- eyesight examination
- prescription pills check
- valid car insurance
- other wide net criteria
there could be fewer traffic accidents.
I imagine there were some anxious moments there lest the study find that completely removing [y]our beloved guns from [your] society might have a significant impact on gun-related deaths.
Requiem for the American Dream
I don't know if you got the numbers backwards, but it's closer to 21000 a year, not 12000.
while others, such as the stand-your-ground law that allows individuals to use deadly force in self-defense, actually increase gun-related deaths significantly
I'm pretty sure that part is a designed feature, where a homeowner can kill a rapist or a burglar.
Being somewhere they are not supposed to be is not, nor should it ever be, a valid reason to murder them.
Just enforce the laws already on the books. Nobody has tried that yet, but I bet your next paycheck that it will work.
Because the USA does come across as a little insane when it's people turn on each other so viciously. How about a free box of antipsychotics with every box of bullets? The abuse of stimulants seems to be driving similar trends in other countries too, again fundamentally a mental health rather than a legal issue.
It didn't matter, the guy with the gun "stood his ground". U-S-A! U-S-A!
You are right, no one should ever murder another person, but thats not what we are talking about here. Murder is the UNLAWFUL taking of life. There are many instances where it is completely lawful to commit homicide, including that person being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Good-bye
There is an appalling rate of gun accidents in this country. Many of these involve the death of serious injury of children (with children themselves often pulling the trigger). Yet the irresponsible gun owners who left their loaded and unlocked firearms sitting around almost never face any punishment.
If you really think you need a weapon on you at all times for defense, you can keep that opinion. But if you are lazy and you leave that weapon around and someone is hurt, you should be prosecuted the same as if your finger was on the trigger and you did it on purpose. This would not harm responsible owners in any way, shape or form. This would not prevent responsible people from purchasing weapons if they want them. It would however send a strong message to buyers that they need to be responsible for their purchases.
In the US we average one accidental gun death of a child every day. These are not gang members missing their target, these are kids getting their hands on some stupid fuck's gun and pulling the trigger.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
"Being somewhere they are not supposed to be..." Not what's happening so your argument is worthless.
There were far fewer guns per capita in the 1800s than today.
You are welcome on my lawn.
As a very clear example why this (and most) anti-gun "studies" are silly, one large category is suicides. They measured suicides that used guns before a ban/law to how many suicides used guns afterwards. They found that people who kill themselves are less likely to use a gun if guns are less available. What they didn't find was a drastic change in the number of suicides. Still the same number of people dead. They pretend that if someone dies jumping off a bridge, that's fine, suicide is only bad if they use a gun.
This same fundamental error (trick?) is used in most anti-gun studies, they say "gun deaths" and "gun crime". Comparing murder, rape, robbery, and total violent crime for the ten years before the UK gun ban vs the ten years after, we find that murder, rape, robbery, and total violent crime all doubled immediately after the ban. The kooks publish studies saying it's great that there were fewer "gun murders". According to their reasoning, it's better to have two people stabbed to death than one person shot.
OK, The 100% White Population of the Western Frontier of the 1800's compared to statistics of the White Population of Detroit, Chicago, Washington DC indicates that it is far safer today, (white people statistically are extraordinarily unlikely to shoot anyone except themselves in a suicide attempt brought on by living in this culture). So... looking at those numbers it's obvious that... some factor... lets see... what could it be... maybe affinity to broccoli? shoe size? humm... who knows? Well, lets blame guns. I heard they didn't have those in 1800's Western Frontier. Yeah, guns are the problem.
In 2012, four people were killed by guns in Japan. Three of them were Yakuza. In the same year, 22 people were killed by bee stings.
And stand-your-ground, castle doctrine, etc. did not apply in the Trayvon case. What is your point?
Now if Zimmerman had stormed into Trayvon's home threatening his life, then stand your ground would apply and Trayvon would be justified in emptying the magazine into Zimmerman.
After being attacked. You left out that part.
Um,what? I made no comment about what I believe, and I'm not sure how you would get any guess about what I believe from my comment. Also, in your analogy, who exactly is the equivalent of Monsanto here?
It's simple, we lock every American in their own jail cell 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Gun deaths will plummet.
Alternately, shut down Detroit, New Orleans, Oakland, and Baltimore, and the U.S. drops from #10 out of 44 countries for which there are statistics, to #41.
Which would put it lower than Germany, Sweden, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and Spain, but still higher than Japan or the UK (just like all those other countries are higher than Japan and the UK).
http://www.nationmaster.com/co...
No gun law is going to fix a frigging thing. If you ban them, only criminals will have them. Like I said, give everyone a 9mm and let western law deal with the thugs.
Totally disingenuous. They're talking about "firearm deaths", most of which are suicides. Looking at suicide rates for other Western countries, there's no real correlation with gun ownership so all you'd be doing is shifting suicides to other methods.
I noted above that most gun control laws completely fail to reduce crime, to reduce murders, etc, and they tend to INCREASE rape and sexual assault. There are a couple of things that work, though, in the right combination.
Texas had success with combining a mandatory sentence for make use of a deadly weapon in commission of a crime along with heavy promotion/ advertising of it. On city busses, billboards, etc you'd see ads like this:
Robbery: Two to five years in prison
Using a weapon in a robbery: Ten more years
After the ads were run, fewer robbers used weapons, resulting in fewer deaths. Interviews with convicts confirm that word got around the "thug" community: don't bring a gun if you're thinking of committing a crime.
Similar promotion of the concealed handgun law was also effective. Ads targeting high-crime communities reminded potential bad guys that the good guys now have guns, and may shoot back.
Already the objections are being raised in print, so it's not like others are overlooking this study.
Of course, the eventual corrections or retraction won't get anywhere near the press the original study did. It never does.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
They failed to mention the required starter law that would need to be passed before any of those other three can.
A gods-damned amendment to the constitution.
The concept of Rule of Law is too important to just throw away because you believe that the legal process for changing a law is just "too damn haaaaard".
Talk to some gun owners sometime. You'll find many of them rather uneasy about the idea of selling to someone without a BG check. Thing is, there's nothing you can do other than to sell the gun to a dealer and have them resell it, which of course eats up money you might get. People do what they can to CYA, you can find forms online they'll print and have the other person fill out (none of which they are required to do). Some will just decide to do it through a shop anyways.
I'm one of those people. I'm not super in to firearms, but I like them, own 3 of them, and have a reasonably good working knowledge about them. Some time ago I decided to sell off one of my pistols. I had gotten a second one that I liked much better and didn't want the old one. It was a Glock 17, they sell pretty easy. However I was just uncomfortable selling it with no way of checking on the buyer, so I decided to eat the cost and sold it to a dealer. They offered me about half of what I'd get from an individual, no surprise since they were going to sell it for about what I would get (standard retail markup is about 100%).
I'd love the ability to have a good private BG check system, and you can be damn sure I'd use it.
How much would such a thing help? I'm not sure but I have trouble believing it would hurt.
People were less likely to die from gunshot wounds on the western frontier in the 1800s than they are in modern-day Detroit, Chicago, or Washington DC (all cities with idiotic and unconstitutional victim-disarmament statutes).
You're going to have to support this with some references, because I'm finding contradictory information that appears to be more credible than your assertions:
Rick Santorum’s misguided view of gun control in the Wild West
“Carrying of guns within the city limits of a frontier town was generally prohibited. Laws barring people from carrying weapons were commonplace, from Dodge City to Tombstone,” said Adam Winkler, a professor at UCLA’s School of Law and author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. “When Dodge City residents first formed their municipal government, one of the very first laws enacted was a ban on concealed carry. The ban was soon after expanded to open carry, too.”
The result was that, by contemporary standards, gun homicides were relatively rare. In cattle towns such as Tombstone or Dodge City, the average number of homicides was only 1.5 or 2 a year, according to path-breaking research by Robert R. Dykstra of SUNY-Albany. The murder rate was much higher in mining towns, such as Bodie, Calif. During its boom years, the town had 29 murders a year...
White noted that the violence was restricted to narrow social milieus, such as armed and drunk young men. “The towns such as the cattle towns that disarmed young men lowered the rates of personal violence considerably,” White wrote. “Those towns such as Bodie and Aurora that did not disarm men tended to bury significantly more of them.”
Homicide Rates in the American West
For instance, the adult residents of Dodge City faced a homicide rate of at least 165 per 100,000 adults per year...
This is interesting, because Dodge City, with its very strict gun control according to the previous article, had an incredibly high homicide rate. And yet... the towns without gun control were apparently even more violent, also according to the previous article.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
He is the kid who was followed home by some cop wannabe and decided to leave his home and search out the wannabe in order to beat him. When he found him, that is what happened and the wannabe shot him in legal self-defense.
I guess the castle was his victim's life.
If America had a larger welfare system / was more socialist there would be a lot less people with nothing to lose. I suspect that if people had more to lose they would be less likely to pull the trigger.
The good old Wild West, where cities and towns banned guns altogether.
You're right, I do wish we went back to a model of allowing people to carry guns only in lawless zones with almost zero population density and threats from bears, wolves, and angry subjugated natives. There might be a ranch or two in Nevada and Montana where that could still apply.
Guns don't kill people, Americans do.
Except for some strange reason, Americans in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire are less likely to kill people -- not just less likely than other Americans, but even less likely than the average Canadian, or even many Europeans.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
What do you want to achieve exactly? You want to reduce mass murders? The are spectacular, however they are marginal in the stats. You want to reduce the homicids? Target criminal groups, they are not very likely to respect any legislation about firearms in first place. And to simplify, two thirds of the deaths are suicide and the other is homicids. Accidents and mass murders are marginals.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Why? If someone breaks into my home I'm going to assume they are up to no good.
-- Will program for bandwidth
such as the stand-your-ground law that allows individuals to use deadly force in self-defense, actually increase gun-related deaths significantly.
Yeah, and who are the dead people? Because if it's a bunch of criminals that are being killed then - and I hate to say this - I don't care. They had a choice, after all.
I really can't imagine why anyone would think that another person has no right to defend himself, up to and including the use of deadly force where necessary. But, as others have pointed out, this "research" is really anti-gun loonery from the usual suspects.
How it's "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters", I don't know.
Do you have ESP?
There are a couple of dozen gunfighters' graves on Boot Hill - in about 40 years. Gunfights were a rare occurrence; that's what made them stand out in history.
It sounds like whatever stats someone shovels your way is what you believe, ...
If it fits what you already believe. Which is normal. And why people like you don't get to the make the decisions.
Oddly enough, the lead author for this Boston University study refused to take outside funding; this study was paid for by Boston University, with no grants provided by groups with a strong bias on either side of the issue.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
If we vote for that, Excise the South.
"If the Feds could just keep encryption under control (keys, backdoors, etc), because TERRORISM". Oh, wait...
I think there is one point which most people can agree on. People who shoot people for reasons other than defense of life and limb are not right in the head.
How is a background check going to identify those if it doesn't violate the DR. patient privilege? People who seek help for depression and other mental issues already face a stigma in society in general and to a much greater degree in the military rather than the support and respect they deserve. Allowing further gun denial based on a criminal history that has nothing to do with the illegal use of a gun introduces a very slippery slope. Certainly those already openly denied firearms are getting guns somewhere that is not a legal channel, and that is not likely to change based on passing new laws. Maybe they could introduce the Facebook check, and deny guns to those who have already published ranting manifestos, or plans to shoot everyone in their school or place of work.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Ironic that in the "lawless zones" people tend to treat each other with decency and respect, and therefore have very low crime rates. While in the "lawful zones", it's all out fucking anarchy.
Once again, the government's actions resulting in the exact opposite effect of which it claimed.
while others, such as the stand-your-ground law that allows individuals to use deadly force in self-defense, actually increase gun-related deaths significantly.
And just how are those not deaths by people who, for societies sake, are better off dead? Would it have been far better to reduce the death by guns slightly and sharply increase the rate of successful rapes?
That's what I really truly despise about the anti-gun fanatics, they have no concept of the differences in deaths that exist in one simple number, seemingly no ability to feel compassion for those who would have lives destroyed had they not used deadly force against another. I know the anti-gun people mean well but they are literally killing the good people for the sake of protecting criminals, and we have seen in countless cities that have strong gun laws.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My position on guns has me yelled at by both sides. I would like something like a driver's license to be required for buying guns and ammo. The license is earned (ideally at no cost or at a very nominal fee) by demonstrating that you can shoot what you are aiming at, clean a gun safely, and store it properly. You can lose this license by committing a violent crime with a firearm, being drunk or high with a firearm on you, or leaving your firearm unsecured where small children can get to it. Apparently this stance makes me a horrible monster to both sides of the debate.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
In 2012, four people were killed by guns in Japan. Three of them were Yakuza. In the same year, 22 people were killed by bee stings.
While that sounds good, also keep in mind that Japan's total murder rate is lower than America's non-firearm murder rate, so no law restricting a particular weapon is going to get us down to Japanese levels of homicide -- but eliminating handguns from the USA would likely bring our rape rate up to the true rape incidence in Japan...
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
The majority of gun deaths are suicides, the next highest number are gang and criminal related, then comes a small numbers of murders and then accidents.
And no one ever covers defensive use, which outnumber the gun deaths statistics.
Criminals will always get guns and suicides should not be counted towards "gun violence".
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
People in the old west were also much more likely to ignore laws, ignore the rights of others, and do whatever the hell they felt like at the time. The good old days weren't all that good.
No one is banning them, or trying to ban them. We're talking about regulations.
I wouldn't mind if they tried to leave again and we let them. Except then we'd have a horrendous refugee crisis.
If by "stood his ground" you mean got tackled from behind and was in the process of having his head repeatedly smashed into the street then yes, he stood his ground. People with better info. on the situation than you or me have made a decision on this. Why are you still whining about it?
A (gun) may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A (gun) must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A (gun) must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
That'd do it!
It's never going to happen in America. Ever.
Once again they focus on the guns and not the issues that cause the violence in the first place; poverty, lack of education, unemployment and lack of opportunities to escape poverty.
Sweden has about the same gun ownership rate as the USA but less than half the gun related homicides. Why? It sure as hell isn't the number of people who own guns. Maybe its the culture and the rational and reasonable gun laws they have.
Bit of trivia about the "old west". Shooting a man in the back was considered murder, and you were swung from a handy branch for doing it. Shooting an unarmed man was considered murder, and you swung for it.
Bit of trivia from modern day law enforcement - more unarmed young black males are shot in the back by police each and every year.
I say, hand the cowardly rat bastards who hide behind a gun and a badge.
And, these are the very same cops who are going to enforce gun control? Think about it.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Particularly School Buses
Think of the Children!
Why the focus on "gun deaths"? Are not other deaths just as terrible? What history has taught is that when gun control is enacted you do, almost by definition, reduce gun deaths but that does not mean the total death rate is reduced.
From the article:
In fact, some laws, such as those that restrict gun access to children through locks and age restrictions, were simply ineffective while others, such as the stand-your-ground law that allows individuals to use deadly force in self-defence, actually increase gun-related deaths significantly.
Reducing child injury and death from unsecured weapons is certainly important, just like we don't let children play with knives, power tools, or household chemicals. What we have seen though is that people end up dead from having self defense weapons restricted from access to them by trigger lock laws. I recall a SCOTUS justice mocking such laws during arguments when the DC gun control laws came before them.
Also, I'm not so sure I want "stand your ground" deaths to go down. In those cases it is something like a young lady that is going home late at night from a bar, college campus, or work at a night shift, the lady is assaulted by some young punk with nothing better to do, and that punk ends up dead from the lady's lawful use of that weapon. The alternative is that lady being raped, robbed, and stabbed to death.
Another common tactic on counting "gun deaths" are including suicides. Removing guns from the hands of the suicidal does tend to prevent them from blowing their brains out but does not typically prevent them from ending up dead. Instead they will find some rope, a high bridge, gasoline and a match, a knife or razor blade, or whatever else and end their life that way. The gun control people then pat themselves on the back.
Another good bit from the article:
According to the study's model, a federal law expanding background checks for all gun purchases could reduce the national gun death rate by 57%, lowering it from 10.35 to 4.46 per 100,000 people while background checks for all ammunition purchases could lower the rate by 81% to 1.99 per 100,000 and firearm identification could reduce it by 83% to 1.81 per 100,000.
I'd like to see this "model" since it is in total contradiction to how criminals get their weapons. I recall a study where they asked criminals in jail about how they got their weapons and a large portion of them either stole the gun or had a friend or family member buy it for them. This law would only work if the murderers of the world would follow the law on gun transfers and volunteer to submit themselves to a background check. These transfers do not happen at a gun show, or in a gun dealers shop, they happen between two people willing to break the law or by someone stealing it from another.
The laws on ballistic fingerprinting and microstamping is science fiction. No one has been able to prove either technology would work. Much of the problem with these technologies is that it tells you who last registered the weapon that was used in the crime. Since something like 5 of 6 or 9 of 10 guns used in a crime were obtained illegally such information is worthless. Which just goes with the background check fantasy, thinking that people willing to knowingly hand over weapons to a criminal will register that transfer. The desire for a background check is just a more politically correct way to say they want to register every gun owned. The only use a gun registry has to the government is so they can take the guns from people they don't like.
One more thing, this was published in The Lancet, a medical journal. I'll take my advice on gun control from physicians right after I take advice on kidney transplants from the National Rifle Association. Crime is a social problem, that's something I'd expect people like psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, or perhaps even economists, or biologists, to consider.
These people are Luddites, just people scared of a technology they don't understand. So, their response is not to learn more about the topic but instead trying to remove it from society so they don't have to.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
that all deaths by gun are bad.
Some criminals deserve to get shot. Why are we spending so much wasted effort to protect the assailants from the victims and bystanders who may very well otherwise also become victims.
Arm everyone, then see how much gun crime continues--when every would-be criminal finally gets it through their shallow brain that citizens won't put up with them and their odds of winding up dead for attempting felonies is much higher.
Maybe you'd like to click some of these links - https://www.google.com/search?...
Authors of trash fiction and Hollywood have instilled the belief that homicide rates were extremely high in the "wild, wild west". Facts are, there have been hundreds of gunfights in Hollywood, for every real-life gunfight in the American west.
In modern day Hollywood, there have been billions of deaths in space by violence. In reality, how many humans have died in space? And, none by violence.
http://libertarianstandard.com...
In Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City, and Caldwell, for the years from 1870 to 1885, there were only 45 total homicides. This equates to a rate of approximately 1 murder per 100,000 residents per year.
In Abilene, supposedly one of the wildest of the cow towns, not a single person was killed in 1869 or 1870.
Zooming forward over a century to 2007, a quick look at Uniform Crime Report statistics shows us the following regarding the aforementioned gun control “paradise” cities of the east:
DC – 183 Murders (31 per 100,000 residents)
New York – 494 Murders (6 per 100,000 residents)
Baltimore – 281 Murders (45 per 100,000 residents)
Newark – 104 Murders (37 per 100,000 residents)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Prohibition was not a ban on alcohol. Marijuana has never been banned either, merely regulated.
Apparently "Stand Your Ground Laws" are flawed, and they should all be replaced with "Just give the criminals everything they want and let them shoot your entire family" laws.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
No one is banning them
Yet. The problem is that the vast majority of proposed laws are incapable of actually having any notable impact on violence. So what happens when nothing changes? More laws. Eventually it reaches the point where large scale restrictions amounting to backdoor bans come into effect.
And all the laws in various states aren't banning abortions either.
They're just setting up progressively tougher, contradictory, expensive hurdles towards obtaining an abortion. Some of which are intended to deliberately spread misinformation (in one state, doctors are required to "inform" patients that having an abortion increases the risk of breast cancer (when it doesn't), or forces a patient to have and view a sonogram and observe unconscionable waiting periods that may put them beyond the legal timeframes where abortion is allowed.
It's so bad that some states now have a maximum of ONE abortion clinic, and that one is slowly being driven out of business.
That's the same thing happening with gun legislation.
They keep tacking prerequisites on, thinking that somehow penalizing legitimate gun owners/buyers is going to stop a criminal from obtaining and using a gun.
Because, to them, anyone who owns a gun is a criminal.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
What gun control really means is "Centralized gun ownership"; in the hands of the government and small number of people approved by the government ---- thus gun control is diametrically opposite to the 2nd amendment which is intended to guarantee the states and people the rights to have militia as a defense against enemies both foreign and domestic, and a check against the power of the federal government and its military.
So where exactly are these militias? What training do they get? What is the chain of command (is the governor the CINC)? What are the rules of engagement? Do they have to follow the UCMJ while "on-duty"?
Because IMHO a bunch of folks running around with open-carry ARs don't seem "well regulated" to me.
Background checks won't reduce gun deaths by a dramatic amount as criminals do not get their guns from legal sources:
https://d3uwh8jpzww49g.cloudfr...
A counter-argument:
* http://www.armedwithreason.com/debunking-the-criminals-dont-follow-laws-myth-2-0-how-criminals-respond-to-gun-control/
About 60% of the gun deaths in the US are suicides:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10...
Additional background checks are unlikely to put a dent in that number as suicidal people use legally bought and lawfully owned firearms to do the deed.
About 24 studies show that a firearm in the home is a strong risk factor for suicide:
* http://www.armedwithreason.com/643/
If you have children, you probably owe it to your family not to have firearms (also search for "suicide"):
* http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/130/5/e1416.full
This article misses the point that the largest number of gun related deaths are suicides. Something like 60%. So the 90% reduction in deaths is severely flawed. But don't let facts change your position. Trump 2016.
Given two thirds of deaths by firearms are suicides. I don't believe any of these will reduce the rate as much as it is claimed. In fact, even if you reduce the suicides by firearms, which is the bulk of the deaths, you will probably still have see an increase of suicides by other means.
The American Academy of Pediatrics would disagree with you:
* http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/130/5/e1416.full
There are at least 24 studies that show that having a firearms in the house is a ridiculously high risk factor to suicide, especially in 15-19 year olds:
* http://www.armedwithreason.com/643/
* http://www.armedwithreason.com/guns-and-children-a-tragic-combination/
Yes, you're right that suicide attempts may still occur, but most other methods are less effective, and so have a higher chance of failing--after which mental health and counseling can intervene. While a firearms-based attempt has a fatality rate of 90%, and so there's unlikely to be a "second chance" at life once the mental state of the person is finally recognized.
The "original document" (a.k.a., The Constitution) was designed to limit the power of the Federal Government. The Founders didn't believe they needed a Bill of Rights because the power of the Federal Government was limited to only those powers contained within The Constitution.
We've seen how that turned out.
Now it's backwards, the Federal Government has almost unlimited power and the rights of the ordinary citizen is limited to what is in the Bill of Rights.
Secondly, even normally left leaning organizations don't buy it: https://www.washingtonpost.com...
no, it was designed to increase the power of hte Federal Government, because the Fed such as it was under the Articles was useless and ineffectual, and the country threatened to fracture into 13 seperate countries.
and quit referring to the founders as a single monolithic bloc and learn some history.
there were many factions, each with a different view. its why the constitution is a mixed up hodge podge of bad compromises and vague statements.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The study of course only touts supposed benefits and fails to say what the price of these three laws would be. Hell, I'll propose one law that trumps their outcome without doing a study : ban all guns. Bunch of tossers
In the foreseeable future, further restrictions to firearm ownership are off the table due to the prevailing political climate. One idea that is gaining traction is that of requiring firearm owners to purchase liability insurance, analogous to how most states require drivers to have some kind of auto liability insurance.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
1. A gun may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A gun must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A gun must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
Or... get to 0.22 per 100,000 by just banning them.
The UK rate is just that... no hypothesis, guesswork, or estimation. It's 0.22.
And this is the 20th anniversary of Dunblane, possibly our largest "school shooting" ever. It happened. Kids died. We banned a lot of private ownership. It hasn't happened since.
Stop pissing about guessing, and work out what other countries DID and had WORK.
Even out of our 0.22, 0.16 is suicide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"At one time, the US Constitution said it was legal for one human being to own another."
Which right was abolished by the 13th Amendment in 1865. The people decided long ago that slavery wasn't a good thing. They decided gun control (likely as proposed by this study) wasn't a good thing even earlier than that with the 2nd Amendment. The opinion of the populace doesn't seem to be moving in the direction of the promoters of restricting guns....
"Being somewhere they are not supposed to be is not, nor should it ever be, a valid reason to murder them."
Actually, it is if being there constitutes a felony (like a burglar entering your house, for example.) I should mention that "murder" is an unlawful killing: killing in self-defense isn't murder.
Breaking news ... less access to guns and bullets means less people end up getting shot.
Most advanced civilizations have managed to figure this out, but for some reason a significant proportion of the American nation seems to be unable to see this, and I suspect that the rest of the western world regards some of America as being very backward in this regard.
Obviously there is the right to bear arms and the American's perpetuated belief that guns stop their government from going bad. This argument is obviously false:
- the weaponry available to the US government (bombs, missiles, tanks, etc) means that a few hand guns/rifles wouldn't make any significant difference.
- evidence of other current/recent civil wars (e.g. take Syria as an example) indicates that getting access to light arms isn't a problem. It is having access to heavy and sophisticated Russian weaponry that is giving the Syria government the advantage over the rebels.
More American's have died in peacetime due to the American firearm laws than have died in all your wars! Only restricting firearms will ever change that.
Do you see no other political solution to your grievance than buying a gun?
Sure there are lots of other solutions... until the day those break down. Hopefully that will never happen. Hopefully.
Ask the Poles. The armed Warsaw Uprising was not very successful, yet the unarmed Solidarity movement seemed to have been able to get rid of an authoritative government.
Look, the Three Laws have never been the problem.
It's the actual robots to do all the work that we are having trouble with...
Just this week in Vicksburg, MS, there was a gunshot death due to the Castle Doctrine. If the couple hadn't used their *unlocked* firearm, the alternative would likely have been 3 stabbing deaths (this guy had already raped a elderly lady, kidnapped and killed her, and had just escaped prison--pretty sure these folks were marked for death--he was in the process of raping the wife.) Sorry, don't feel any sympathy for this "gunshot victim".
I'm going to file this under:
* https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal
A UPenn study has shown that people packing heat are four times more likely be shot themselves in an assault:
Objectives. We investigated the possible relationship between being shot in an assault and possession of a gun at the time.
Methods. We enrolled 677 case participants that had been shot in an assault and 684 population-based control participants within Philadelphia, PA, from 2003 to 2006. We adjusted odds ratios for confounding variables.
Results. After adjustment, individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 (P < .05) times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession. Among gun assaults where the victim had at least some chance to resist, this adjusted odds ratio increased to 5.45 (P < .05).
Conclusions. On average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault. Although successful defensive gun uses occur each year, the probability of success may be low for civilian gun users in urban areas. Such users should reconsider their possession of guns or, at least, understand that regular possession necessitates careful safety countermeasures.
* http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/
With your gun loaded by your side, waiting for that burglar or rapist to break in so you can shoot them.
Or are you asleep, the gun properly and as legally required, controlled and unloaded so as not to risk the life of your children or pets, and woken up by a stray loud noise by a burglar or rapist who is armed because there are armed idiots supposedly sitting in bed waiting to shoot them. So either you get up, making a noise and the burglar only has to wait until you walk through the door to the room he is in to shoot you in the narrow opening whilst you peer into the darkened room to find out where and if you should be shooting. Or you wait, he waits and making no noise you an hear, you go back to sleep. Or he doesn't wake you. Then they end up in your bedroom, take your gun point it at your head and fire. Then rape your wife and steal your stuff. Because you can't shoot whilst you're asleep, and you can't be ready for every night, but the burglar only has to be ready on the night they decide to burgle.
Shall Not Be Infringed
Or did you want 100% reduction before you do anything about it? In which case do away with all laws, since none of them are 100% successful at stopping 100% of lawbreaking.
That would reduce gun crime by about 90%, I think you'll find...
But then, that would be AWFUL for the poor, hard done by non-whites - they'd actually have to live around their own kind!
Apparently, white people have some 'magic power' that makes them better people to live around than non-whites - otherwise, why are you so desperate to FORCE non-whites into white people's living spaces?
And as for "the stand-your-ground law that allows individuals to use deadly force in self-defense, actually increase gun-related deaths significantly." - sure - gun-related deaths of CRIMINALS, no doubt. And we can't have that, because "We're all the same" according to the nation-wrecking Jew...
If it where you could just make it illegal to shoot people except in certain rare circumstances.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If more guns make you safer, then the US should be the safest country on earth yet last year there were 12,236 deaths and a further 24,755 injuries from shootings(3.53 per 100,000). This casualty toll includes 640 children aged 0-11 killed or injured by guns.
Canada has outstandingly low gun casualty statistics. In 2009, there were 0.5 deaths per 100,000 from gun homicide — only 173 people. Still, the ownership is comparatively high — there are 23.8 firearms per 100 people in the country.
There is no legal right to possess arms in Canada. It takes sixty days to buy a gun there, and there is mandatory licensing for gun owners. Gun owners pursuing a license must have third-party references, take a safety training course and pass a background check with a focus on mental, criminal and addiction histories.
Licensing agents are required to advise an applicant's spouse or next-of-kin prior to granting a license, and licenses are denied to applicants with any past history of domestic violence. Buyers in private sales of weapons must pass official background checks.
Canadian civilians aren't allowed to possess automatic weapons, handguns with a barrel shorter than 10.5 cm or any modified handgun, rifle or shotgun. Most semi-automatic assault weapons are also banned. As a result of exemptions, several kinds of assault weapons are still legal in Canada, although this has been the source of some controversy.
You would think there would be more crime in Canada as almost no one carries a concealed weapon yet the per capita rate of all crimes is much lower than the US
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
We should make laws against illegal gun use! Criminals are just not obeying current gun laws so we need to add more of them in hope that the criminals will follow those.
Dear criminals, please follow the law.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Maybe it has more to do with packing people into tight geographic areas like rats than the guns themselves
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
n one state, doctors are required to "inform" patients that having an abortion increases the risk of breast cancer (when it doesn't)
Thats fucking wrong and any doctor making that claim should have their license revoked and never be allowed to practice again.
or forces a patient to have and view a sonogram
Awe, you don't actually want to know the consequences of your actions before you do them? Too fucking bad. Look at what you're about to terminate and grow a pair or STFU and keep your dick in your pants/legs closed. (I understand not everyone is consensual, but that tiny amount is another special case and you're going to pretend its the majority in your response so again, STFU).
observe unconscionable waiting periods that may put them beyond the legal timeframes where abortion is allowed.
They only do so if the woman waited too long to make her decision ... or more importantly before she even started considering the decision.
And you need to stop acting like you have a fucking clue. You have no fucking idea what its like AFTER you have an abortion that you can't take back, can't change your mind, have to live with for the rest of your life even though the way you felt before that event may be entirely different than the way you feel even the day after it happens. Abortions are not fucking outpatient procedures where you're removing a mole on your back. You are terminating a life form (we can argue semantics about consciousness at another point if you want), regardless of anything else in your life, NO ONE WALKS AWAY FROM THAT WITHOUT SCARS PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL.
It's so bad that some states now have a maximum of ONE abortion clinic, and that one is slowly being driven out of business.
Thats fucked up too.
I'm not for more gun regulation, but your abortion clinic analogy is a clear 'I'm pro choice and no one should have any right to have any say in it', and you're wrong. You may be right about being pro-choice (I'm pro-life, but I'm a man so its not my decision anyway, which kind of makes me pro-choice by proxy), but your pretending that this is not a decision that society as a whole gets to have an opinion on. They do get to have an opinion and it does turn into a group decision because it is so important to so many people.
You're using this gun control article as a pro-abortion proxy and you suck for doing so.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Why the f*** is this on Slashdot? This has literally nothing to do with tech and everything to do with pushing Slashdot's leftist agenda. So we started with incessant Climate Change (TM) articles, now we're pushing gun control, what's next? Coordinating violent attacks on conservative/Republican political rallies?
Seriously, go f*** yourself, Slashdot editors.
You do realize thats where the majority of the nations economy is, right?
Do you people not have a clue about history or economics.
The Civil war wasn't just about ending slavery, had the south been allowed to leave the north would have ceased to exist in a very short period of time.
Now its even worse considering the rust belt is the way it is. California would presumably stay with 'the north' so you'd probably survive, but then you'd just be doing whatever they decided to do in San Francisco ... which means in 5 years you'd have 0 taxes, unlimited social programs, and no electricity or food for any of those great things you enacted into law while lowering taxes ...
You think its a good idea because you're too stupid to know how the country actually works and what makes it strong.
Let me give you a hint: In order to survive you need product, the north has no product. You can claim the business sectors of Chicago, Baltimore and NYC as product ... but the only reason the stock market exists is because of the people who DO actually PRODUCE something tangible, not bits in a stream.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I find these comments absolutely incredible. So much doubt and almost 100% of the rest of the world (e.g. not America) does not have the issues you are all describing. Ad hominem, straw man, slippery slope, etc. A summary: ... don't. Why? Because most people are not criminals, and don't like to sell their cars illegally. This is a game of attrition, a game of inches, of statistics. There are always exceptions, yet if you look at Australia, for example, you find that it all works, by and large.
1. Most criminals don't get their guns from legal sources: Yes, even if true, most gun deaths are not from criminals. And criminals still need bullets. And eventually sources dry up when lots of red tape and police activity is allowed.
2. Second amendment musings: Of course these laws would limit the second amendment. Last I checked I was not able to purchase a hand grenade, either. And if the purpose of the 2nd amendment is what I am told to be true, my pea shooter has no chance against a Abrams M-1 tank, either.
3. Suicides: You know that suicides, while sad, would not be my number one goal with a gun law. It would be the taking of my life by ANOTHER person that I would be targeting my laws at.
4. BG checks impractical: You know that I can still steal a car at any time. Yet people
Go ahead and doubt all you gun nuts. You probably all bought your guns and bullets legally with background checks, so none of this in any way impacts you, at least until you are shot by a criminal on a murdering rampage and your gun is locked up at home in your gun locker.
is this like those global warming models?
The study proposes 3 laws, and suggests combining them to get a drastic drop in gun deaths. (from 10.35 to .16 or 98%)
They claim they have three separate laws which each can lower the total deaths by 57%, 81%, and 83% respectively.
These laws work by limiting access to guns and ammo to folks who pass background checks and by requiring firearms to be 'identified' (registered?).
They then statistically combine the effects of these laws to claim a big cummulative effect.
To combine the statistics of the laws, they would have either account for cross correlations in the combining,
or show that the effects of the laws are independent.
That is show that each law prevents a separate set of deaths from the whole.
I don't see that they do either.
It seems reasonable to expect that each of the laws targets the same pool of crazies.
If a person is unlikely to pass a background check for a gun, he is also unlikely to pass one for ammo, and unlikely to want to register.
The question is, given such an obvious statistical error, what are these folks (the authors and the publishers) up to?
Two additional clues are calling registration 'identification' and dialing back their 98% statistics to a more plausible 90%.
Gun control may or may not be a good idea, but playing loose with the facts to sway public opinion is not the way to proceed.
For those in favor, the spin calls to question the original 3 studies as well.
For those opposed, it is yet another rant to have to calmly answer.
It sounds like a case of a group thinking that the ends justifies the means.
The problem is that the ends have negative consequences (bad guys end up with a monopoly on guns) and the means seem unlikely to work (statistically nuts)
"while others, such as the stand-your-ground law that allows individuals to use deadly force in self-defense, actually increase gun-related deaths significantly." ... which is way better because there is no gun-related death
no stand-your-ground law, ban on guns (Washington DC, Chicago) and there is no gun related deaths.
Instead of
"Smith shoot rapist/robber/burglar" which is gun-related death
we read
"Smith was killed by rapist/robber/burglar" with knife, blunt weapon, pantyhose
Unfortunately, there are people who will consider second output the better one because there was no gun in the picture. Phobias should be treated not propagated.
The gun control was one variable of many. Many things changed after the Massacres, and they all played a part in subsequent life in Australia. Examining that incident and concluding that the gun control was responsible for reduced deaths is a fallacy of "post hoc ergo propter hoc," the most popular form of demonstrably irrational reasoning.
I will also add that this phrase "gun violence" is a weasel-word. Yes, it is true that you can reduce "gun-violence" if no guns are available. But that doesn't mean you have reduced "violence." If people just use other tools to do the same job, you haven't done any good at all.
I, for one, would love to see a meaningful reduction in car violence. I am not joking.
* Don't include suicides
* Don't include justifiable homicides
* Use the same, contiguous years for cross state comparisons
Take it or leave it
"Guns in America: You know the case for background checks is weak if..."
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion...
A human being may not injure another human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
And yet when you compare the figure of 100% of US residents that murder people with guns to the Canadian gun stats, somehow the US stats are much higher. I don't know what it means but some genius should study those figures. We could have a murder-fee society in just a few years. I'm actually going to propose a study that will determine if gun manufacturers are embedding some type of ignorance drug into the metal, wood and plastics that guns are made of recently.
It's interesting that the Lancet finds the 'stand your ground or Castle doctrine' increases deaths by guns. Of course it does. The law allows you to defend yourself when an attacker invades your house and puts both you and your family in danger. Since when is it a wrong thing to protect yourself at the expense of your assailant?
At least in the 80's in the US, a friend from school and I decided to reload our own shotgun shells to save money and the hassle of finding an adult to buy us ammo. Even at the time, I was a little baffled by the fact that my friend and I could walk into a store and buy cans of powder, primers, and shot, but couldn't buy factory made ammo.
Australia and England have the most restrictive gun laws in English speaking countries.
Gun death are down in both places.
Now, they have murder rate that are the same as before the gun laws, but hammers, sticks, and rocks are the weapons used.
Now only cops and criminals have guns. Generally, I see no difference as most of the cops I have had contact with are more dishonest and more vicious than the average person.
correct...but irrelevent to the martin case
as his girlfriend said on the stand..... (under oath) Martin got back home, and decided he was going to "go find that cracker" and teach him a lesson
if you go looking for a fight, dont be surprised when you find one
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I wish the gun control debate in the US could get beyond the 'do more guns result in more people getting shot?' question, and move on to 'Okay, so more guns means more people getting shot, but guns are important to us, so can we just discuss what level of people getting shot are we prepared to tolerate?'
It just seems so dishonest otherwise.
This was once one of the most respected medical journals in the world, but they were taken over long ago by left wing hacks. They came out of the closet many years ago when they blamed George W Bush for all the violence in Iraq. Bush is to blame for MANY things, but you cannot ascribe to him the blame for all the deaths on all sides (American, Shiite, Sunni, Iraqi government, insurgent,etc). Before Bush went in, Iraq was a barbaric and barely governable place whose order was only maintained with violence. After the capitol of Iraq fell to Hussein's opponents, there was a brief period of relative tranquility and simply no need for further violence - the people of Iraq themselves had a choice about everything that followed. Each and every person in Iraq who chose to take a life made that decision for himself and is responsible for that decision. The fact that the Lancet tried to blame all the deaths on Bush rather than the perpetrators illustrates full-well the feverish political thinking of the people now running that publication.
Now, they pretend that guns are to blame for the ways in which people use them, and that more laws which will only be obeyed by people who already obey existing laws and be broken by those who already break existing laws will have a positive effect. This is not even rational thinking, but it IS the rallying cry of the extreme left who are actually opposed to guns in America because they are a check against creeping totalitarianism. The harder you push people to surrender their liberty in a nation with 300000000+ guns, the closer you get to the point where the public will push back, and that limits the willingness of government bureaucrats to follow orders and oppress individuals. Remove guns from the equation, and each government bureaucrat feels invincible in any encounter with John Q Public, thus upping the speed of the decline of a once-free people.
Let's have more "gun control" only AFTER these do-gooders prove they can successfully employ "criminal control". The same people who are always seeking to grab guns from the average decent civilized citizen, are often found to be trying to shorten the sentences of jailed criminals, or re-direct them to programs where they will not be controlled at all. These same people who are always so concerned about suicides involving guns, are often pushing for legalized euthenasia, "death with dignity", legalization for many recreational drugs, etc. The people seeking to "get guns off the streets" need to first get all the criminals off the streets, and KEEP them off. After society proves it can permanently deal with all the violent nutbags, THEN we can talk about guns in the hands of the law-abiding
And yet when you compare the figure of 100% of US residents that murder people with guns to the Canadian gun stats, somehow the US stats are much higher. I don't know what it means but some genius should study those figures. We could have a murder-fee society in just a few years. I'm actually going to propose a study that will determine if gun manufacturers are embedding some type of ignorance drug into the metal, wood and plastics that guns are made of recently.
So it's ignorant to recognize that crime rates and laws are not uniform across provinces or across states?
There are parts of Canada with shockingly high violent crime rates, and high overall homicide rates. There are parts of the USA with shockingly high violent crime rates, and high overall homicide rates. It's almost as if homicide isn't a uniform issue in either of these nations, and firearms ownership does not show a strong correlation to homicide rate, which should lead the non-ignorant person to suspect there are other factors driving these problems.
Given that Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire have high firearms ownership (about 10% of residents carry handguns) and lower homicide rates than Canada, maybe we don't need new nationwide laws covering the entire US, maybe we should look at what is different about Maine and it's neighbors to make them safer not only than the USA average, but also safer than the Canadian average?
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Would you talk to a criminologist when you need medical advice? Would you talk to a physician when you want advice on criminology? This study is only slightly removed from using movie stars as reliable authorities for $topic_of_the_day.
DC – 183 Murders (31 per 100,000 residents)
New York – 494 Murders (6 per 100,000 residents)
Baltimore – 281 Murders (45 per 100,000 residents)
Newark – 104 Murders (37 per 100,000 residents)
London 118, (1.5 murders per 100,000 pop).
And London's murder rate spiked significantly in 2015, up from 83 in 2014.
The irony is, its safer here in London than it was in Perth (about 4 murders per 100,00) and there are more guns in Perth. Sorry gun nuts.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
"Killing is wrong" is not, and should never be, a valid reason to allow yourself (or your loved ones) to get killed.
Media latches on to the "positives", ignores the negatives.
"According to the study, gun dealer licensing, dealer state record reporting requirements, dealer police inspections, gun owner fingerprinting, closing of the “gun show loophole,” ammunition purchaser recordkeeping, child handgun restrictions, child access laws, juvenile handgun purchases, magazine bans, and may-issue carry permits, have little to no effect on firearm-related deaths. Further, their results show, semi-auto bans, firearms locks, “bulk purchase limitations,” and mandatory theft reporting, increase firearm-related deaths.
Other anti--gun researchers seem to think the study is flawed at best, possibly manipulated.
David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, said of the findings, “That’s too big -- I don’t believe that.”
P.S. Why is this a headline topic on Slashdot?
Not a single person was killed in Abilene between 1869 and 1870? That's interesting considering it wasn't settled until 1881!
Also the population in 1890 is recorded as just over 3,000. Who knows how big it was before it was actually built?
The government is banned from researching gun violence due to the NRA's lobbying. We are legally prohibited from doing anything about gun violence because the murderers at the NRA have made it illegal to even say "gun violence".
]Wikipedia]
"An example of the need for self-defense to enable substantial change in the Deep South took place in early 1965. Black students picketing the local high school were confronted by hostile police and fire trucks with hoses. A car of four Deacons emerged and, in view of the police, calmly loaded their shotguns. The police ordered the fire truck to withdraw. This was the first time in the 20th century, as Lance Hill observes, “an armed black organization had successfully used weapons to defend a lawful protest against an attack by law enforcement.”
"The Deacons for Defense and Justice was an armed self-defense group of African-Americans that protected civil rights organizations in the U.S. Southern states during the 1960s. Historically, the organization practiced self-defense methods in the face of racist oppression that was carried out under the Jim Crow Laws by local/state government officials and racist vigilantes.
The Deacons were a driving force of Black Power that Stokely Carmichael echoed. Carmichael speaks about the Deacons when he writes, “Here is a group which realized that the ‘law’ and law enforcement agencies would not protect people, so they had to do it themselves...The Deacons and all other blacks who resort to self-defense represent a simple answer to a simple question: what man would not defend his family and home from attack?”[3] The Deacons, according to Carmichael and many others, were the protection that the Civil Rights needed on local levels, as well as the ones who intervened in places that the state and federal government fell short.
The Deacons were not the first champions of armed-defense during the Civil Rights Movement, but they were the first as an organized force. Many individual activists and other proponents of non-violence protected themselves with guns. Fannie Lou Hamer, the eloquently blunt Mississippi militant who outraged Lyndon B. Johnson at the 1964 Democratic Convention, confessed that she kept several loaded guns under her bed.[4] Others such as Robert F. Williams also practiced self-defense. Williams transformed his local NAACP branch into an armed self-defense unit, for which transgression he was denounced by the NAACP and hounded by the federal government (he found asylum in Cuba).[4]
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was no stranger to the idea of self-defense. According to Annelieke Dirks, “Even Martin Luther King Jr.—the icon of nonviolence—employed armed bodyguards and had guns in his house during the early stages of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956. Glenn Smiley, an organizer of the strictly nonviolent and pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), observed during a house visit that the police did not allow King a weapon permit, but that ‘the place is an arsenal."[5] Efforts from those such as Smiley convinced Dr. King that any sort of weapons or “self-defense” could not be associated with someone holding King's position. Dr. King agreed.
In many areas of the “Deep South” the federal and state governments had no control of local authorities and groups that did not want to follow the laws enacted. One such group, the Ku Klux Klan, is the most widely known organization that openly practiced acts of violence and segregation based on race. As part of their strategy to intimidate this community [African Americans], the Ku Klux Klan initiated a “campaign of terror” that included harassment, the burning of crosses on the lawns of African-American voters, the destruction by fire of five churches, a Masonic hall, a Baptist center, and murder.[6] These incidents were not isolated since a significant amount of victimization of African Americans occurred in Jonesboro, Louisiana in 1964.
The African-American community felt that a response of action was crucial in curbing this terrorism given the lack of support and protection by State and Federal authorities. A group of African-American men in Jonesboro in Jackson Parish in north Louisiana
It may be "gun research", but when the hypotheses are presumed true and data is manipulated to support the predetermined outcomes, then it is bad research no matter which side is doing it. If the NRA produced "gun research" predetermined in its outcome, it would be fair to call it "pro-gun research"; so when a researcher starts from an anti-gun premise and attempts to support it, it is just as fair to call it "anti-gun research".
Same for research funded by Greenpeace or Big Oil, Big Tobacco or anti-smoking groups.
It is possible for research funded by an entity with a axe to grind to be still be good research, but I think I can be forgiven if I am skeptical of such research on its face.
In the countdown for the Top 30 Murder Capitals of America (http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/), it is pretty clear that one thing many of the cities have in common is strict gun control laws at the state or local level.
Rank City
30 Chicago Heights, IL
29 Baton Rouge, LA
28 Buffalo, NY
27 Hattiesburg, MS
26 East Chicago, IN
25 Birmingham, AL
24 Desert Hot Springs, CA
23 Compton, CA
22 Myrtle Beach, SC
21 Fort Pierce, FL
20 Harvey, IL
19 Bridgeton, NJ
18 Flint, MI
17 Rocky Mount, NC
16 Pine Bluff, AR
15 Petersburg, VA
14 Newark, NJ
13 Baltimore, MD
12 Harrisburg, PA
11 Jackson, MS
10 Wilmington, DE
9 Trenton, NJ
8 Riviera Beach, FL
7 New Orleans, LA
6 Camden, NJ
5 Detroit, MI
4 Gary, IN
3 St. Louis, MO
2 Chester, PA
1 East St. Louis, IL
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
90% reduction to .1 per 100,000...so what. At 1 per 100,000 that's a totally insignificant number of dead people...3500 a year. Besides, evolution needs help killing off the stupidest ones
a huge silver mine--his access to silver was essentially unlimited.
SWAT and Secret Service, and Marines, SEALs, police, etc. that have the training and also happen to side with the 2nd Amendment groups? Not to mention a large number of active-duty members of the same?
I wonder why people make this "outdated" argument? That's like saying the 1st Amendment is outdated, what with the internet and secular society no one needs a free press or freedom of religion.
More laws making the penalties for suicide steeper. No one will commit suicide anymore if we just make the punishment steep enough.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/c...
In 2013, there were 5723 murders recorded in the FBI stats.
https://www.nationalgangcenter...
In 2012, there were 2,363 gang-related homicides (2103 data not provided yet it seems), but it seems fair that around 2,000 gang-related homicides occur every year. In other words, about 40% of all murders in the US are gang-related homicides. With an estimated 770,000 gang members accounting for 40% (about 2300) of all murders, the rest of the population (314.8M) produced about 3360 murders, or about 1.06 murders per 100,000 non-gang people. This is clearly on par with other countries who do not have similar gang problems.
From the FBI numbers above, it also seems that black-on-black murders are quite disproportionately represented. At about 17% of the population, black-on-black murders were also about 40% of the total (2245). White-on-white murders were higher the same as an absolute number (2,509) but there are 195.6M whites compared to 53.6M blacks. The numbers say that blacks murder blacks at 4.1 per 100,000; whites murder whites at about 0.77 per 100,000. Blacks also murdered 409 whites; whites murdered 189 blacks.
On the other hand, men committed about 5000 murders in 2013, and women committed about 500.
End of story and this garbage liberal article.
The curve of the relationship between gun availability and homicide rates among different US states gives an S shaped, NOT a linear curve. This is similar to a bimolecular curve. Both the guns and the people using them are needed for violence, but while this curve implies a LOT of guns have to be removed to get a 50% reduction of violence, it also implies removing the people involved Or Their Access To Guns would work much better. The laws make sense in this context.
I'm not sure of ANY public health measures where the context matters. Do we care about drunk driving when we require seat belts? We do care about it when we make passive restraints, but again, the context doesn't matter except to say better protective devices work on ALL contexts. And these particular laws are likely to be effective especially BECAUSE they are the most context INDEPENDENT.
Here is the truth we have enough laws now. No more are needed
https://www.atf.gov/about/firearms-trace-data-2014
Slashdot wonders why its audience is disappearing, and why it is on the path to bankruptcy, just like what happened to Digg.
Keep letting the marxist liberals and eco-terrorist "Global Warming" wingnuts to use Slashdot as a platform for their propaganda, and you will witness the end of Slashdot.
Besides the implosion of Digg, Check out MSNBC's bottom-of-the-barrelratings, and Al Gore's failed CurrentTV channel.
If you cherry-pick data for locations, years, and populations to prove whatever you area about to assert. Torture data long enough and it'll confess to anything. They've done it with climate, they do it with guns: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/03/11/guns-in-america-know-case-for-background-checks-is-weak-if.html?intcmp=hphz05
Let's just stop pretending Liberals have any inclination to truth or honesty. I can't hear them over the sound of grinding axes, and nether can any of you, really.
n one state, doctors are required to "inform" patients that having an abortion increases the risk of breast cancer (when it doesn't)
Thats fucking wrong and any doctor making that claim should have their license revoked and never be allowed to practice again.
No, you don't understand, doctors in this state are REQUIRED BY LAW BY THE STATE to disseminate this misinformation.
or forces a patient to have and view a sonogram
Awe, you don't actually want to know the consequences of your actions before you do them? Too fucking bad. Look at what you're about to terminate and grow a pair or STFU and keep your dick in your pants/legs closed. (I understand not everyone is consensual, but that tiny amount is another special case and you're going to pretend its the majority in your response so again, STFU).
That's the thing, the law doesn't draw a line anywhere between consensual, nonconsensual, rape. PERIOD.
It's a needless procedure being performed with the hopes that it'll pressure someone who wants an abortion to put it off.
observe unconscionable waiting periods that may put them beyond the legal timeframes where abortion is allowed.
They only do so if the woman waited too long to make her decision ... or more importantly before she even started considering the decision.
And you need to stop acting like you have a fucking clue. You have no fucking idea what its like AFTER you have an abortion that you can't take back, can't change your mind, have to live with for the rest of your life even though the way you felt before that event may be entirely different than the way you feel even the day after it happens. Abortions are not fucking outpatient procedures where you're removing a mole on your back. You are terminating a life form (we can argue semantics about consciousness at another point if you want), regardless of anything else in your life, NO ONE WALKS AWAY FROM THAT WITHOUT SCARS PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL.
Okay so I have to have an abortion to even imagine what it's like?
Sorry, but no. I'm an actual adult, with a medical background, who has a PERFECTLY serviceable BRAIN.
As such, while comprehending post-abortion trauma may be beyond YOU, it isn't beyond me.
It's so bad that some states now have a maximum of ONE abortion clinic, and that one is slowly being driven out of business.
Thats fucked up too.
I'm not for more gun regulation, but your abortion clinic analogy is a clear 'I'm pro choice and no one should have any right to have any say in it', and you're wrong. You may be right about being pro-choice (I'm pro-life, but I'm a man so its not my decision anyway, which kind of makes me pro-choice by proxy), but your pretending that this is not a decision that society as a whole gets to have an opinion on. They do get to have an opinion and it does turn into a group decision because it is so important to so many people.
You're using this gun control article as a pro-abortion proxy and you suck for doing so.
Why? The fact is, both take facets of our rights as individuals into account.
Both have groups of buttinskies attempting to interfere with and control these facets to strip individual rights in favor of their "feels".
Neither of these situations has people attempting outright bans (as they're get bounced in court).
So both situations have the people attempting a de facto ban via slow, steady occlusion of legitimate avenues.
You don't have to like my argument style.
You don't even have to agree with me.
And hey, that's ANOTHER right that's becoming more and more occluded every day.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Try an experiment and implement these three laws in Chicago. See if there is any basis to the conclusion...... We will know quickly if it works.
Yeah but according to Mr. S. King the likelihood of death by alien, giant spider-thing, possessed car, zombie dog etc. are way above the national average in that region.
That group of bovine standing over there appears quite portentous. That's right it's an ominous cow herd.
The 100% White Population of the Western Frontier
What's your next guess, sparky?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Read the paper you linked to. In order to determine what effect the change in reporting would have, they reported in both ways for a couple of years. They found, according to the paper you linked to, that the revised reporting standard increased the reported numbers by 14%.
So the ~ 100% increase in robberies and 125% increase in rape was really "only" an increase of 86% and 111%.
Official crime rate information from the Home Office (linked below) indicate that in the five years prior to the ban, 1.2 million violent crimes were reported. After the ban took affect, there were over 5 million violent crimes in the following five years. Home Office data shows that rape went from 27,000 to nearly 47,000 when potential attackers were assured there was no risk that a law-abiding woman might defend herself with a firearm. Other serious crimes show the same pattern. Total sex offenses increased from 158,000 to over 245,00.
Source: Official Home Office reports:
https://www.gov.uk/government/...
Recorded crime statistics for England and Wales 2002/03 â" 2013/13.
https://www.gov.uk/government/...
Again, crime isn't some new problem that we have to start thinking about now. It's been around for a while, lots of different things have been tried, and now we know what has worked and what hasn't. We've tried different things, and we've seen the results.
The positive results of the sentencing guidelines for using a weapon in commission of a felony along with advertising the longer sentence in Texas aren't surprising if you think about one thing. If you specifically want criminals to use weapons less, if that's your goal, that's a matter of influencing people's behavior. Companies have spent billions over the last hundred years figuring out how to get people to buy this, not that, how to target a specific demographic, etc. That's called marketing, and we know how to do it. Marketing is well-studied, so we know how to get the message across to the thug demographic, and we now know what message works - using a weapon in the commission of a felony will put you in prison for years.
A tank, or a plane, or a drone, or anything really that has been in common usage in a modern military in say the last 75 years...
Your standing militia with civilian arms may have made sense when armies used muskets, however the argument doesn't really make any sense anymore.
They are really only a danger to themselves and other civilians. If the government and the US army/navy/airforce decided that you or your group should be a smoking crater, having easy access to firearms is going to make very little difference. In fact given rules of engagement, probably your best defense is *not* having a gun!
Jim Jefferies makes a pretty good point for an Aussie. Americans like guns, we get it, but don't try an call it something other than that. Gun crime? Easy, make them harder to get, more expensive, and you will pretty much eliminate that. Most deaths are from accidents.
No mod points this week, sorry.
You're absolutely right about Citizens United, it preserves the right of the People to speak freely and to use their money to ensure that others are able to hear that speech.
I'm not sure how people get so twisted into believing that preventing others from speaking is acceptable. Do they not realize that once they've taken this position, then they must also allow others to prevent _them_ from speaking as well?
San Francisco is not representative of California. It's not even representative of the bay area. The north has always been richer on average than the south. The north had most of the industry at the time of the civil war. The south was dependent upon a slave labor pool in many of their industries. And the war started because of the constant fight over whether new states got to be free or slave states, the leaders of the confederacy made it clear in their speeches that the reason for succession was slavery.
Vehicles are useful. But the UK manages without guns in every household. We have 98% less gun deaths than you. Yes 98% less. We have 50 times less gun deaths than you. And I'm not counting suicides or acceptable killings like defending yourself.
I will agree with: - a valid driver's license - eyesight examination but your others are meaningless. I can drive safely after several pints of beer. Pills virtually never cause problems driving. Criminal records are nothing to do with your ability to drive. Car insurance is nothing to do with your ability to drive. What they should do is to give you points on your license for an accident. If you have x accidents in y years (you could even award more points for more severe ones), then take your license away. Not for speeding or drink driving - I'd rather be on the road with someone who is drunk and never crashed than someone who is sober and always crashes. It's the ability to avoid crashing that counts and not one other thing.
P.S. how do you do carriage returns in slashdot? Mine are ignored. The above was laid out properly before I hit send.
Sure...because everyone with a gun and bullets follows the law and got them 90% legally.
Shit in the lab does not equal shit in the real world, people!
You will never see so many false equivalencies as when firearms regulations are discussed.
Scientist: "If we just did background checks on all purchases, firearms deaths would drop by 50%"
Ammosexual: "Background checks never stopped abortions!"
Scientist: "??? Uhhh.... background checks have prevented over 2.4 million purchases by felons. How many law-abiding citizens were prevented from purchasing a firearm during that time?
Ammosexual: "See! He wants to confiscate your guns!"
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
People were less likely to die from gunshot wounds on the western frontier in the 1800s than they are in modern-day Detroit, Chicago, or Washington DC
There were far fewer guns per capita in the 1800s than today.
Perhaps, if you consider the civilized Eastern Cities, where most of the population was located. But the comment was regarding the "western frontier", where essentially everybody not living in a town would have a weapon, and many of those who were living in a town would as well.
Per-capita numbers are problematic.
One has to take into account the fact that it is easier to manufacture and afford a gun today. As a result, the relative cost has gone down considerably (relative to disposable income). Many people today have 3-4 guns, and some have 10 or more. In the old days, the vast majority of those people would probably have had to make do with just one gun.
All this means that per-capita numbers are misleading; actual availability of weapons was higher then it is today, in terms of the percentage of the population with that access.
You know, take away a populations cultural icons, then disarm them. What's not to trust on that score? Loading for bear is the most logical way to accept change.
This is my sig.
Yes, they would have "a weapon".
Today, the number of guns in the US is equal to the number of men, women and children in the US. The people who own guns own a bunch of guns and there's no way there was a 1:1 ratio between the number of people in the "western frontier" and the number of guns. Think about it. Women and children were unlikely to own guns. They might have access to a family gun, but it's doubtful that a frontier family of a husband, wife and six children would own eight guns. The expense would have been too great. The majority of those people, remember, were sod-busters. The one long-gun inside the front door would have been the extent of their weaponry.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The very thing needed for a democracy to genuinely work at a national level is for people to be of one mind. That is obviously not the case in the United States and hasn't been since, well, ever. Even the American Revolution was driven by the minority of the population, as was, quite frankly, the Civil War. Today, the country is pretty sharply polarized, and no group really trusts each other and nor should they. We have liberals and other statists (including neoconservatives), evangelicals, libertarians, anarchists, all of them who have an idealized life that is completely different. Add to the mix of wide political outlooks that include continual race and gender based politics and political argument, and you've basically a country that can't help but be in a continual state of gridlock.
My ideal case is to deconstruct anything about the government. I resent that the courts have so much power over my family that they have soured my ability to trust any kind of governmental power whatsoever and my only answer is to vote to shut it down. This libertarian idea is impossible to reach, so the best bet is to let the powers that be bash each other, so, I always vote for divided government. Shut it all down, I say, at the Federal Level, then break up the states next!
This is my sig.
Soooooo ... No.
SHIFT-comma BR SHIFT-period
inserts a newline.
Like this?Testing....
Nope, didn't work. What do you mean by "BR SHIFT"? I assume you meant shift comma (which is a less than sign), then break (a space?), then shift period (which is a greater than sign). Maybe BR means enter/carriage return/etc? Testing.....Test ends.
Still failed :-) I don't understand your notation :-)
Here are some laws that might prevent gun deaths:
* Require everyone who has a remote chance of being shot to carry a vial of cyanide that a gunshot victim can crush between his teeth and quickly inhale. Deaths from cyanide poisoning would skyrocket, but gun deaths would plummet.
* Forbid bullets and expelled gases to travel at a faster than reasonable speed, say 35 MPH muzzle velocity. A bullet doing 35 would leave a nice welt, but it wouldn't kill anyone.
* Forbid criminals, who always obey gun regulations, to purchase guns. Likewise for anyone who is mentally unstable.
Catching any sarcasm here? I think we all know the truth: laws don't help. People who use guns to hurt others fall into several broad categories as far as society is concerned:
1. Ordinary folks acting in self-defense. Self-defense classes generally teach that you should worry about surviving the situation first, then think about the law. So even a blanket three word law, "don't shoot people," doesn't work on them.
2. Criminals doing criminal acts. When using guns, these folks either see themselves in category 1, or they knowingly use guns as coercive measures, or they're morons and haven't thought it through. Again, none of the above inclinations lead one to obey laws.
3. Law enforcement personnel. We've decided these folks have a duty to both carry and use guns when circumstances dictate that use is appropriate. Don't want to get into the debate about what's appropriate right now; the point is that they have privileges that their job descriptions necessitate.
4. Crazies. Anyone experiencing psychosis or any other mental breakdown sufficiently serious to motivate violent acts is incompetent to make good judgments. If they are not, they automatically fall into another category here. People with incompetent judgment can't be expected to follow laws, because following good laws requires good judgment or pure luck.
Now, as to dealers and makers. I'm all for controlling how dealers sell guns. We do that now, though admittedly our controls could be optimized to avoid nailing innocent sellers and get better at catching crooked ones. But suppose we prohibit the manufacture or sale of guns altogether. Considering how badly the last prohibition went, I doubt that would work out well for anybody not profiting from organized crime.
History and reality, folks. They're a real problem if you make laws for a living.
> stand-your-ground law that allows individuals to use deadly force in self-defense, actually increase gun-related deaths significantly.
Is a gun related death worse than a rape, robbery or death by beating, knife or strangling from the inability to prevent invasive violence?
http://www.infowars.com/woman-...
That is a gun related death. I support gun related deaths in those circumstances.
"No good deed goes unpunished"
make all three laws, you might as well shred the Constitution. What part "shall not infringe" do you not understand? Wonder if these eggheads even considered those who make their own ammunition when they can up the the BS number of 81% by performing background checks? These people are also under the serious misunderstanding that criminals, by definition, break the law; so what makes them think that creating more laws can solve the problem? Let's not forget the basics of Government, it is about force; law are a set of rules set by the government, which if you fail to comply with them, it can result in one of three outcomes, seizure of property (fines, licensing fees, court cost, and etc), confinement (probation, house arrest, jail, prison, or forcible hospitalization), or death. Our Founding Fathers had a clear understanding of this, and it lead to many disagreements, including the basic idea of the power residing in the States or the Federal government. By 1789, it was decided that the power had to rest with the Federal government, but because of that, it was necessary to limit the scope of this power to only essential services: National defense, Interstate/International Trade and Commerce, and national justice system to handle disputes between states and their respective citizens. Since then we have seen the Federal government expend its power under claim that it relates to one of these three responsibilities, from limitation on our Rights because the government national defense against terrorist (bull), to laws which restrict consuming certain intoxicates (by category or by age). We are now facing a potential presidential candidate which doesn't believe that the US Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and will continue the Progressive agenda to erode our rights because, as they see it, rights are GRANTED by the government (unlike our Founding Fathers who said OUR RIGHTS COME FROM GOD). Government is nothing more that a shared experiment in which we PROTECT these rights, but that is not the current government, regardless if its run by the Republicans or the Democrats the government is self serving, it seeks more money and power to justify its size. If we are SERIOUS about solving the Federal government problem, then the first step should be to repeal both the 16th and 17th Amendment, this will remove income taxes (less money for these greedy A__Holes to bribe the electorate) and restore States' representation in the US Senate. Save the United States, vote OUT a professional politician (with ridiculous benefits, like lifetime (taxpayer financed) Cadillac health insurance and a lifetime pension of 80% of their base income), and replace them with a CITIZEN (unpaid, no additional (taxpayer funded) benefits for serving, only a tax break when spending money related to service).