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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)
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.
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?
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.
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.")
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.
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
Well i can tell you where about ~50% of the homicides and murders happen and by who with very little to no research needed. Just look at DOJ stats.
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?
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.
You're making the (sadly typical, in this sort of debate) incorrect assumption that the goal is to prevent everything everywhere. Everyone knows that's impossible. If the US could reduce its gun death rate to the rate of other developed countries, then we'd be getting somewhere.
This, of course, makes the 0.16 per 100,000 figure completely unbelievable. The largest contributor to the firearm death rate, in every country that isn't a warzone, is suicide. It could be possible to reduce the homicide-plus-accident rate to 0.16 per 100k; that would put it on par with a place like Australia or Sweden. Reducing the rate of suicide significantly would require being the US being serious about public health and social inequality, and three laws won't fix that.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
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."
My goodness, correlation != causation.
How could the authors - Dr Bindu Kalesan, PhD, Matthew E Mobily, MD, Olivia Keiser, PhD, Jeffrey A Fagan, PhD and Sandro Galea, MD - have forgotten about that? Back to the drawing board, you silly billies and try harder next time.
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.
Not live in a paranoid fantasy world where criminal hoards are seaking to storm our homes at any moment?
Most of America is incredibly safe. We dont need laws that only encourage people to shoot each other.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
So you are trying to say that the reduction in gun deaths in a location RESULTED in a law being passed requiring background checks?
That's not what they said at all. "Correlation does not imply causation" is not at all like "causation in the opposite direction". How could you confuse the two?
the law was obviously causative to the change in deaths
Ah, so your reading comprehension problem was caused by a preexisting bias. Don't worry - with time, that's fixable.
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 guess I should correct myself. According to that link 79 people were killed in the 20 years before Port Arthur in Massacres in Australian. In the 20 years since 74 people were killed which is about 93% of 79.(So it's an improvement, just not much of one.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
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.
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.
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
Correlation is not causation but it sure is a hint.
-- Edward Tufte
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
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.
That may sound weird but you are spot on. How the hell can these researchers simply lump together all "gun related deaths"? A guy who gets shot while committing a robbery, a woman shooting a guy attempting to rape her, a child finding his dad's gun and shooting his brother by accident, some idiot cleaning a loaded weapon and killing his neighbour, a guy committing suicide by firearm, a cop shooting a fleeing suspect, a wife mistaking her husband for a burglar and shooting him... All of these cases are different and should be counted differently. If a guy gets shot while committing a serious crime, that may not be the sentence that the law prescribes but I call it justice. Screw them, that's the risk of committing violent crimes. That's not a point against gun ownership, but for it, if it means that a violent crime has been prevented. The other examples are points against gun ownership, or at least against letting idiots have guns. But talking about "gun related deaths" is pointless if you fail to distinguish the circumstances under which these events took place.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Why leave out accidental deaths and murder-suicide and ignore woundings?
You also ignore the possibilities of rehabilitation, wrongful conviction, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, knocking on the wrong door, having one drink too many and all the nuances and mistakes which make up our lives. I've given up with the links - just Google any of the phrases with "gun" (US can usually be assumed) or conversely Google them with "US" where gun can usually be assumed. It must be very cold and hard in your black and white world but real life isn't like the movies, where only the bad guys get hurt and justice rules.
"Being somewhere they are not supposed to be..." Not what's happening so your argument is worthless.
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.
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...
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.
That's from yet another bogus "study" by the Lancet.
As for the Self part. That's just Darwin in action.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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.
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.
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
The CDC isn't allowed to research gun violence because they produced a "scientific" paper that was nothing but a political wish list to ban guns. It was so completely debunked that the fallout was them losing the right to do that research in the future. Basically, they lied so blatantly that they can't be trusted.
-- 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?
and who paid for this study exactly?
That is an interesting question.
According to Forbes Bindu Kalesan says the the Boston University study was "self funded".
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
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.
Nope. The exact opposite. We are at an all time low for gun accidents. You believe the opposite because the media has been pushing that lie.
-- Will program for bandwidth
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 ?
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.
Not live in a paranoid fantasy world where criminal hoards are seaking to storm our homes at any moment? Most of America is incredibly safe.
So tell me...
When you get in your car, do you put on your seatbelt? I mean accidents are incredibly rare and you can always sneak it on if you get pulled over.
Would you train a kid how to handle fire before teaching him the fun of a lighter and WD-40? He probably won't torch anything important.
Speaking of fire, do you have fire alarms in your house? It's very rare for someone's home to burn down you know. Just think of what percentage of time a fire alarm spends warning of a fire.
By that measure just building one sensor would be an unconscionable waste of resources.
Why do we keep taking precautions against things that hardly ever happen?
BTW, I left out the one about condoms and sex resulting in pregnancy. You're welcome.
That's because they have katanas and monofilament wires and wrist rocket launchers.
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.
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
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.
"mental competence" = you are buddies with the local Sheriff or the mayor.
At least that's how it's been practiced in the past, especially in states with oppressive gun laws.
That is how it is currently practiced in many parts of Rhode Island.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
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
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!!!
Let's try fixing the broken parts of our prison and drug laws first and see where that goes. I'll bet we get close to European numbers just by doing that.
>Most of America is incredibly safe
>We need drastically stricter gun laws.
If we're incredibly safe why do we need stricter gun laws?
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.
Because they have an agenda. If something matches with your agenda then correlation is absolute proof of causation.
"There is an appalling rate of gun accidents in this country. "
Really? I've seen the rates of gun accidents in the past years and I don't recall them increasing. While the death of every child is tragic I don't believe that the gun control laws that The Lancet proposes would do anything to reduce it.
Tell me something, which of the following would reduce child deaths more... School gun free zones or armed guards at schools? Parents keeping the firearm on their person in a holster or keeping it on a high shelf in the closet? Locking up guns in a basement safe or having it in a quick access security box on the bedside table? Because people that break into houses always call ahead, no? Teaching children gun safety as soon as they are able to understand or keeping them ignorant of what a gun is, what it can do, or how to act if they find one?
I remember reading about an experiment done by a TV station, they put a gun (unloaded) in a toy box at a preschool and watched with cameras recording. The children from gun owning homes stayed far away while the children from homes that did not own a gun played with it like any other toy. The best way to kid proof a gun is to gun proof the kid.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Secondly, even normally left leaning organizations don't buy it: https://www.washingtonpost.com...
The rest of the Western world gets along just fine without stand your ground gun laws or even mass gun ownership. In fact, the only reason so many US criminals have guns is because there's so many guns in this country to begin with. It's not like there are illegal gun factories.
You're the one with their head buried in the sand. Pull it out and look at the world around you and you'll see we dont need to live in fear and paranoia.
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only 5 of which were killed by a gun.
nearly every spree killing before 1996 was a shooting.
only one after involved a gun. the rest were arson, or knives.
and each individual incident before 1996 had more fatalities than the incidents that followed 1996
seems like an improvement to me.
nice try.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
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.
speaking of bullshit
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
i can too:
cities and states that lack gun control, or are barred from enacting local gun control by state law.
cities like New Orleans, St Louis, Detroit, Birmingham.
meanwhile cities with gun control dont appear on those lists. cities like chicago (not the murder capital), new york (safest in the country).
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I understand. You learned all your debating skills from Monty Python skits.
-- Will program for bandwidth
The average gun owner is more likely to defend themselves with a gun than to use it to hurt anyone.
It's not always necessary to fire a shot in order to use a gun for self-defense. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, guns are used for self-defense over 225 times per day. This study is on the more conservative side of most such studies: Firearm Violence, 1993-2011.
The statistic "more likely to kill themselves or a family member" is a purposeful manipulation of the statistics. Nobody has to be killed in order to successfully use a gun for self-defense.
U.S. Department of Justice says guns are used over 200 times a day for self-defense.
I've used a gun for self-defense. I was sitting in a BBQ joint minding my own business when someone decided to start beating the hell out of the woman who was with him. He didn't take kindly to me telling someone to call 911 and turned his attention to me. I never had to fire a shot but I did need to be prepared to do so.
I wasn't in a bad part of the country, or state or city. I was with a number of other people in a nice little BBQ restaurant minding my own business. While I didn't expect violence, I was prepared for it. Are you?
The fantasy world is the one in which you reside where one can control their environment to the point that they have nothing to worry about. Chances are that you'll never have to defend yourself or anyone you're with or a complete stranger. But if you do what will you use?
And before you say that you'll wait for the police, the entire incident was over before the police ever answered the phone.
Wait, now I'm confused. Do guns keep us safer or not? Either the country is safe or it isn't. You seem to be saying, the country is safe enough that we don't need stricter gun laws, but too dangerous to have stricter gun laws.
BTW, I'm not necessarily on either side, I just hit the bottom of this rabbit-hole of a thread and now I can't remember which way is up.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
In my experience, preexisting bias is incredibly difficult to fix.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
I suggest that you take a trip around the world first and then see.
The amount of actual control enforced that I have experienced was the worst was in the US, "public servants" attempting to control your whereabouts was the highest in the US - in an impolite manner.
So US citizens are in the western world graded a lot higher on the rank of being subjects than they imagine themselves.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
wrist rocket launchers
Fuck, you're right, that would be way cooler. Let's change the second amendment so we can own those instead.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
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
I've seen fights break out in public too and a gun wasn't needed to end them. I remember one time I saw some racist trash verbally abusing the Hispanic staff of a restaurant I was at. The manager (also Hispanic) came over pretty quick to talk to him. After some very polite dialog from the manager and abusive from the customer the customer decided it was a good idea to throw his weight around and shoved the manager. Half a second later the restaurant staff had the guy on the ground, his arms pinned and the cops on the way. Problem solved and no guns needed. (It was also very satisfying to see the extremely long line of customers happily weighting in line to tell the cops what a piece of trash this guy was.)
Fact is, every other first world nation gets by just fine without mass gun ownership. There's no reason we can't.
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Have you ever traveled to other first world nations? In my experience if the topic of guns comes up the typical response is the shaking of head in bewilderment that Americans think they need so many guns to keep themselves "safe". While our violent crimes rate is very similar to other other first world nations our gun violence and homicide rates are much higher. Clearly all of our guns arent keeping us safer.
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You lost me here. So all of those innocent people dying from gun violence don't matter because sometimes guns don't need to be shot?
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And incidentally the population of australia almost doubled in the same time frame
so the numbers should be re normalized as % of death by massacre to really compare.
Last things first, I never came close to implying self-defense should not be allowed. Way to make things up though.
As for rest, as I've said in a few other posts, every single other first world nation gets by just fine without mass gun ownership. We could too.
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Oops, except for Switzerland too.
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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/...
Here is some help with that:
Why Congress Cut The CDC’s Gun Research Budget
In another discussion I provided the link below. Have you read it yet?:
Democrats Were Wrong on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - The White House called for tighter regulation 17 times
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
How many kids are killed or seriously injured on the way to/from school? Should all deaths from auto accidents be treated as intentional?
"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.
Those cases should be counted differently, but they are not independent. When a large group of people buy firearms for self-defence and the result is, for example 1000 deaths due to accidents and 23 deaths of perpetrators as a result of self-defence, the time has come to question if allowing guns for self-defence is worthwhile.
In particular, you can't predict what's going to happen if those laws were implemented.
You can because other countries have implemented those or similar laws and have massively lower gun deaths per capita.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
I'll just leave this disgusting list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
>> The study is based on correlations; you cannot infer causation from those correlations.
Yeah, sure. Give weapons to everybody, "just in case". people will never shoot at each other.
aaaaaaa
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...
The media? Bullshit. If anything the media goes out of their way to bury the rate of gun accidents. Most of the gun accidents involving death or grave injury of young children barely make it past the local media, if they even make it to the local media. By digging you can uncover around 1 death or grave injury per day of this sort, but the fact that they almost never make national news suggests they are strongly underreported.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I guess I should correct myself. According to that link 79 people were killed in the 20 years before Port Arthur in Massacres in Australian. In the 20 years since 74 people were killed which is about 93% of 79.(So it's an improvement, just not much of one.)
Yay for fiddling with statistics. You cannot ignore the 35 people shot dead in Port Arthur when you want to study gun control in Australia (which would make your 20 years previous total at 114 rather then 79).
My count makes it 95 in the 10 years up to, and including, the Port Arthur massacre (with a possible up to 12 extra) and 17 in the ten years after (with a possible up to 12 extra). The "up to 12 extra" is due to the Snowtown murders which took place over 7 years from 92-99 which probably shouldn't be on that list as Ivan Milat's body count is not there (7 known murders over 3 years with quite a few possible unproven extras - i.e. those missing from the period who matched the pattern of Ivan's victims yet no bodies were found).
Of the 62 dead people from the "massacres" after Port Arthur, only 13 died to fire arms while 114 died to firearms in the 20 years before that (pretty much all of the massacres on your link from 1973 (after a arson attack in Fortitude Valley QLD) to the Port Arthur massacre were all committed with firearms). A closer look at all those "massacres" committed with firearms shows that all (other then the Monash Uni shootings) were committed in rural areas where you are permitted to own guns for pest control. And look at all the attacks, arson accounts for over half of the body count (36 out of 62) over the 20 years since Port Arthur.
Gun control is working in Australia. Gun related incidents are far below what occurs in the USA and violent crime is generally lower. Being an island out in the middle of no where makes smuggling in weapons very difficult and our social welfare system and universal healthcare system helps keep those less fortunate from becoming anti-social.
In the US we average one accidental gun death of a child every day.
So about 300-400 a year? That matches the number of children who drown in swimming pools. I don't see concerned mothers running around demanding that we ban pools.
That is only a useful comparison in terms of numbers, but not by responsibility. If I bring my children to someone else's house and that person has a swimming pool I can generally see that immediately and know that I need to make sure my kids are safe around it. I can even choose to just not go to that house if I am concerned that for some reason my kids cannot be safe around it. Hence with the swimming pool it is very easy to place responsibility with the parent.
However if I go to someone else's house I generally have no way to know if there is a loaded gun sitting around some place where my kids can get to it. Should I methodically sweep through every room of someone else's house before letting my kids in? I suspect privacy advocates would be opposed to such a thing, and considering that kids left alone might go under beds or into drawers such a sweep could take quite a while and be quite invasive. Hence the guns need to be the responsibility of the owners.
I don't care how many guns a gun owner wants to own. I own a few myself. I don't care how many rounds they want to shoot at a proper facility. I just want the owners to be responsible with their guns and be held responsible by the law when they are irresponsible with them. I don't even care if they want to carry a gun on their person all day long, as long as they don't set it down some place where a kid can get it. That should be standard policy for gun ownership.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
"There is an appalling rate of gun accidents in this country. "
Really? I've seen the rates of gun accidents in the past years and I don't recall them increasing. While the death of every child is tragic I don't believe that the gun control laws that The Lancet proposes would do anything to reduce it.
What I proposed is not the same as any of the proposals in The Lancet. I consider The Lancet a quality publication but I'm not sold on their proposals here.
School gun free zones or armed guards at schools?
First of all, that does not relate to my point. These accidents are not school shootings. These accidents that I refer to are the direct result of irresponsible gun owners.
That said, there are two important points to consider. One, school shootings are actually very very rare. Two, proposing armed guards but not proposing any way to pay for them without sacrificing the education budget is irresponsible. A full-time armed guard generally is paid more than a teacher in their first year of full-time teaching (often quite a bit more) so does the school have to fire a teacher to pay a guard? You said guards with an s, so do they need to fire two (or perhaps three) teachers to hire two armed guards? And if they want to have two at all times shouldn't they hire at least three so they can cover in shifts?
Parents keeping the firearm on their person in a holster or keeping it on a high shelf in the closet?
Actually, I'm fine with the owner keeping it in a holster, as long as they are responsible and the holster is always on them, with the gun always in it. The problem is when the gun comes out and is carelessly left in the open where a kid can get it. If you want to be armed around the clock, I'm OK with that as long as you are responsible with where the weapon goes.
Locking up guns in a basement safe or having it in a quick access security box on the bedside table?
I consider a security box to be responsible as long as it properly deters a child from opening it. I'm not trying to take the guns away, I'm just trying to keep them from causing fatal accidents involving kids.
I remember reading about an experiment done by a TV station, they put a gun (unloaded) in a toy box at a preschool and watched with cameras recording. The children from gun owning homes stayed far away while the children from homes that did not own a gun played with it like any other toy.
I'd really like to see a citation for that. I haven't heard of that experiment. It doesn't sound unreasonable.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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
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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.
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Thats pretty much true of anything the CDC produces.
I've seen them lie on national television about statistics that are flat out proven wrong by the actual data they have on their website! And we're talking about the flu here, not something actually important.
No one with a clue cares about the CDC or what they say.
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Interesting comment. The day before this incident a man my age was killed by a single punch to the head in a "knock out game." Are you suggesting that the proper action would have been to wait to see if I survived a physical assault?
People use guns every day to defend themselves. People also use guns for a lot of other legitimate and perfectly legal reasons, every day.
Most of those "innocent" people losing their lives every day to "gun violence" are choosing to end their own lives. Many of the other "innocents" are involved in criminal activity.
Why is it when guns are involved it's labeled as "gun violence" instead of violence? Why isn't the movement against violence rather than guns?
When it came to drunk driving we didn't look to ban automobiles or alcohol, we looked to modify behavior.
When it comes to violence we look to ban the object used rather than the behavior. Banning the object used only affects the law-abiding, the very people who aren't out their with violent behavior to begin with. In your world you would prevent those innocent, law-abiding people from defending themselves.
What moral right do you have to prevent people from defending themselves or dictating the manner in which they should defend themselves?
So murders by a gun are somehow worse than murders by other means? Aren't they just as dead?
* 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 doesnt matter if i kill you with a knife a gun or strangle you
the end result is the same.
you are the one cherry picking
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Most of the world got by just fine yesterday without fire extinguishers, paramedics, police officers, safety belts, etc. Do you actually have a cogent point? Should people be reduced to being victimized by those physically stronger? Should people just take their beat-downs and accept it?
Do you just assume that you'll never have to defend yourself and, therefore, no on should have the option to do so?
Or, do you believe that you are physically capable of defending yourself against any threats and too bad for those who can't?
Perhaps in my personal case that I cited I should have just minded my own business and let that woman take a beating or get killed. Then again, maybe you believe she deserved her beating.
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.
Every other first world nation has violent crime rates roughly in line with us. Meanwhile we have notably higher homocide and gun violence rates. My point was that in situations where guns apply to personal safety every other first world nation is doing at least as well as the US and by some metrics a good bit better
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care to back that claim???
also you seem to ignore where the gun stopped the crime but wasnt used to kill
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
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.
.....so ask?? is that really so damn hard? most gun owners have no problem telling a friend they have guns (and if they arent friends why would you allow your kids in their home anyway?
your argument amounts to "im too lazy to know who is hanging out with my kids make the government do it"
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Based on your Slashdot posting history, yes.
Given you're infinitely more likely to shoot me with your firearm than I am to punch you in the head, you're the dangerous idiot around here.
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.
i can too: cities and states that lack gun control, or are barred from enacting local gun control by state law. cities like New Orleans, St Louis, Detroit, Birmingham.
meanwhile cities with gun control dont appear on those lists. cities like chicago (not the murder capital), new york (safest in the country).
FYI, Chicago now has very little gun control, and is prohibited by the 2013 statewide preemption law from enacting new gun control. Chicago's 1982 catch-22 handgun registration (ban) law has been overturned, it's now possible (if you have time and money to spare), to obtain a concealed carry permit even if you are a Chicago resident.
As with the rest of the country, changes in gun laws show no correlation with changes in homicide rates in Chicago. None of the changes in Chicago's gun laws have made any difference in Chicago's crime problem -- not making them stricter, and not making them looser.
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.
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?
most gun owners have no problem telling a friend they have guns
That should be most responsible gun owners. This is where the problem really lies, here. Responsible owners will tell their friends about their weapons, and keep them in places where they won't cause problems anyways. Irresponsible owners will not be inclined to answer the question honestly (if they even know an honest answer to it).
your argument amounts to "im too lazy to know who is hanging out with my kids make the government do it"
I don't know what kind of drugs you are on to reach that conclusion. What I am asking for would not harm a responsible gun owner in any way, shape, or form. If you want to own dozens of weapons, that's fine; just keep them locked up. If you feel you need a weapon on your person at all times that is fine too, just don't set it within reach of a child.
This is all about responsibility. Aren't conservatives supposed to be in favor of personal responsibility? Be responsible with your weapons and you have nothing to fear from this at all.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
]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.
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.
ive read the rest of your thoughts on this thread and i cant fault your logic. I simply took exception with that statement. maybe i read it wrong or maybe it could have been presented differently im not sure which. but i dont find fault in your logic
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
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.
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!!!
There was this white supremacist who with his girlfriend murdered his own father and stepmother, a 19-year old kid whom they mistakenly believed to be Jewish, and a Black man. The two were finally stopped and apprehended by a police officer.
http://newportnewstimes.com/v2_news_articles.php?heading=0&story_id=44700&page=86
http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/crime/2014/08/04/white-supremacist-sentenced-carjacking-deaths/13598589/
And this piece of work who murdered one person and wounded five others during a shooting spree that included a carjacking and a home invasion (all of which were perpetrated by him).
http://news.sky.com/story/1447897/white-supremacist-charged-with-gun-rampage
So, yeah, if we can't get these white supremacists under control maybe all right-thinking citizens ought to arm themselves after all.
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."
The other day the rest of Western civilization got by just fine without being armed to the teeth.
You do realise that they are also getting on just fine by being armed to teeth, as well?
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
As for rest, as I've said in a few other posts, every single other first world nation gets by just fine without mass gun ownership. We could too.
Yeah, you could. But why would you want to if you're also doing just fine as it?
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
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.
Other countries had much lower gun deaths per capita before they implemented gun control. And if you look at recent examples like Australia, the effect of gun control was nil.
There is essentially no relationship between gun control and homicides, or gun ownership and homicides. People like you promoting that idea are utterly unscientific and irrational. You pick and choose your data to try to reach a pre-determined conclusions, and facts apparently don't matter to you. https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Restricting gun ownership is clearly ineffective as a method for reducing homicides, so, yes, the relationship you imply doesn't exist.
More important, a "war on guns" would be even more harmful than the "war on drugs" has been, while being even less effective in helping people. Do you really want to give police even more of an ability to detain people, invade their homes, sift through their receipts and finances, and increase the racial divide? Because that would be the consequences. You have to love a police state if you want a war on guns.
I'm not claiming anything specific, hence the words "for example" in my text. I'm just saying that while counting different classes of gun deaths separately is a good idea, you also need to look at the overall effect of a change in legislation. And yes, that should include e.g. successful prevention of robberies, although those would be difficult to measure.
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?
Considering that the places with the highest gun crime (in the US) are the ones with the most restrictive gun laws, a good way to reduce gun deaths would be to repeal all restrictions on firearms.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
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.
GP says the US is safe, so we don't need guns. If we're safe then there's no reason to not let us own guns as having them apparently doesn't make us unsafe.
If GP changes their mind and says we're UNsafe then, well, if we're unsafe shouldn't we be allowed to have our guns to help defend ourselves?
Up is that way.
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.
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
As I've posted in response to several of your posts in this thread, the need for mass gun ownership to defend our homes or protect ourselves is shown to be non existant when you compare US crime rates to any other first world nation. We're armed to the teeth compared to everyone else and yet we have basically the same violent crime rates and notably higher gun violence and homicide rates. At best US mass ownership of guns isnt helping keep us safe at all and at worst its flooding the market making more guns available to criminals and destablizing our Southern neighbors.
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I guess that leads us right back to where it started: whether or not having guns makes us more safe or less safe.
starts climbing
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
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.
+1, Common sense is uncommon
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
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.
Maybe to reduce our gun violence and homicide rates so we can enjoy Western European standards? Our homicide three times theirs.
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Citation needed...
I've been to Europe, multiple times and multiple countries. By and large, it is not really that different to the US in terms of the appearance of freedom.
We have our faults too, so I'm not throwing stones from a glass house in general, but when it comes to freedom of personal safety and personal defense, we are in fact better off as a whole.
There are exceptions (Chicago, DC, etc.) but consider that gun rules there are tighter than they are in Dallas, Orlando, Denver, etc. Once you remove suicide from gun deaths and remove gang on gang violence, actual gun violence in the US is actually quite low. My risk of being shot where I live is darn near close to zero. My risk of being in a car accident is FAR higher, which is why I own a big truck and always wear my seatbelt and never text and drive.
But I still own an AR-15 among other guns, and it has yet to jump up and shoot someone by itself. In fact, such weapons almost never do that, the overall percentage of guns like that used in crime is a rounding error. But such weapons are useful to remind government that they serve us and not the other way around. One is useless, 100 million of them is not. And if you think Government always wins, tell that to the rebels in Syria.
Soooooo ... No.
I was considering personal experience, so citation is hard to apply in this case.
Ever considered that the reason to have the second amendment and guns is just a decoy to use in order to undercut the freedom in other areas? You get blinded by the light of that you get the perceived freedom to possess a gun.
Also realize that in order for the 100 million guns to be useful you need coordination and communication. Without that there will be no revolution. That's why the government fears freely available encryption - they can't listen in to daily conversations and coordination efforts.
With a sufficient amount of information and communication the guns aren't even necessary, just find the weak spots in the government and apply an action to them in a coordinated manner to topple it.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Actually, I agree with you. The guns by themselves may not help much if we ignore all our other rights, and yes, we have issues there.
I think we put people in prison for too long, take away their rights to vote too easily, and so fourth.
I think the government is kidding itself about encryption, the bad guys will just use other options besides the ones the government wants, but frankly a lot of people high up in the government don't understand technology, so that it what it is.
My point is that without guns, you're just subjects because you don't even have the option to revolt. I consider the Declaration of Independence just as important as the US Constitution, even if it isn't a legal document.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
^ That is hard to do without guns, sad to say. Humans are a rather violent species. :(
http://law.stackexchange.com/q...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...
In short, the US Government has said "If the people of Texas want to leave, they'll have to go to war to force the issue."
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 :-)
Clearly all of our guns arent keeping us safer.
Are all the things in your life simple black and white? Are you sure there are no other variables that could present an explanation?
...shaking of head in bewilderment that Americans think they need so many guns...
I'm going out on a limb here as for the most part I have not traveled much, but it's possible we don't do things the same way as other countries because we're different.
> 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"
So we can't compare anything to anything then? Any time you compare countries you have to be careful of cultural differences but Western Europe is a great region to compare to the US for the purpose of examining the effectiveness of government policies. We're culturally very similiar, have similiar standards of living, have similiar forms of governance, and in the context of this debate we have very similiar violent crime rates suggesting that they're as prone to violence as we are. At the same time they have a homicide rate that's 1/3 ours and a gun violence rate that looks almost nonexistent next to ours. I've said this elsewhere but at best this suggests all of our guns don't keep us safer and seems to also suggest that maybe they're making us less safe.
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You have no clue how the rest of the world works.
aaaaaaa
No, I'm afraid you don't. There is no evidence whatsoever that gun control reduces homicides. If you believe it does, you live in a fact free fantasy world.