Sure do! I am always happy to provide sources for a kindly requester.:)
These are both biased sources, but they name their factual sources so you can look and see how they came to their numbers and make your own decision about it:
Well, $50 for something one would be proud to carry.
As for powder, a moderate student of history can make at least two types of propellant without much difficulty, one of them with off-the-hardware-store-shelf materials.
A more homogenous culture is thought to result in a reduced rate of homicides. Some countries in Africa disprove this.
In the US, we have white, black, asian, hispanic, and native American represented very strongly. Just in the white communities, we have Polish, Jewish, French-Canadian, Irish, and German (and more) who self-identify strongly. We also have a very large number of lesser-represented racial and cultural groups. Immigration to this country is ongoing from all over the world. There are significant Somali, Cambodian, Sudanese, and Vietnamese contingents just in my area. We have a lot going on here.
Not false. I live here, I know what it is like. Do you live somewhere else?
Our violence problem stems from the drug war. Legalize marijuana, end the violence. It is that simple.
It is important to understand this, because increasing gun restrictions will not slow down drug-related firearms prevalence. The black market for drugs is very well established here. Outlawing firearms will simply shift demand onto the drug networks, which are likely more than capable of supplying demand.
Sorry, should have been more clear. I meant individual countries versus the United States. The population of Europe as a whole has a comparable population, but then the population of Europe as a whole includes some pretty high murder rates depending on how you define "Europe."
The drug war here in the US has a whole lot more to do with the violence than guns. Your countries take a different approach to drugs, even the countries with stricter laws do not take it anywhere nearly as far as we do here in the US.
It simply means the problem is extremely concentrated and has very simple and obvious solutions. It is not endemic to the US nor is it a problem of overall violence. It is specific, highly-localized violence with solutions that are clear, scientific, and easily attainable.
Hint: the solutions do not have anything to do with guns.
Are you really questioning whether European countries are more homogenous? Really? Good lord.
I suggest you do a little googling. There are quite a number of news articles on the topic over the years. If you are actually curious, I'd be happy to point you in the right direction but I suspect strongly you are merely another time-wasting internet troll.
If you take a tiny handful of small neighborhoods out of the equation (places like Flint, Michigan) the United States is actually an extremely peaceful place.
Nearly all of the violence is concentrated in tiny areas, and most of that is fueled by the drug trade.
Why we don't address those areas instead of fucking around on a national scale is beyond me, but you shouldn't generalize the violence in Flint, Detroit, and Chicago to the rest of the country.
For fuck's sake, the murder rate in Chicago is greater than that in Baghdad. The rest of the country is not even close to this.
Right, who are very nearly always gang members, connected to the drug trade. If we legalized marijuana, those murders would start to drop overnight. Outlawing guns doesn't work so well when you have a thriving drug trade that would immediately start carrying steel as well as weed. Fix the drug problem, you fix the crime problem, and without all the drama.
> There is a child under 5 killed with a firearm every week in the US.
That's irrelevant. Vastly greater numbers of children die in swimming pools or even buckets.
> Any gun that is accessible enough to be used in 'self-defense' within 1 minute 20 seconds is going to be accessible to a child.
Absolutely correct. This is why it should be mandatory to teach minimum gun safety to every child in America. With 290+ million guns, it is the height of irresponsibility to train your children to the NRA minimum:
STOP! DON'T TOUCH! LEAVE THE AREA! TELL AN ADULT!
If you do not teach your children at least this much, then you are part of why that many children under 5 die every week.
All the dead of WWI or WWII pale in comparison to the vast Communist genocides of the 20th century, all of which were committed on disarmed populations.
Get your facts straight. OP wasn't talking about war dead.
Legal gun owners are statistically less likely to commit any crime than the general population. Owning a legal firearm is correlated with a reduced likelihood to commit murder.
The UK gun murder rate is essentially zero because the UK police are drastically underreporting crime by a factor of 1/3 by conservative estimates. They have an investment in underreporting or failing to report violent crime.
If you take a tiny handful of ultra-violent neighborhoods out of the equation, the murder rate in the US is considerably lower than Europe. Places like Flint, Michigan.
We have hundreds of millions of people compared to Europe's tens of millions. Also, European countries are vastly more homogenous. Comparing the two directly is simply a case of apples-and-oranges.
You are correct, of course, about government surviving despite a more limited role in the nation's money. To me, the problem is that the current government is not likely to be able to survive the loss of the dollar. What happens then? I sincerely hope the principles of liberty are still rooted strongly enough in our collective hearts that we have peace.
You have a really nice reply, with some excellent sources that I will read carefully later tonight. Thank you.
I think you might have misinterpreted my original comment, however. I was carefully avoiding value judgements. I believe we are rapidly heading for a world in which anonymous cryptocurrencies will lead to the complete destruction of any form of government larger than a moderate and well-run municipality. Furthermore, I believe that the improvement of 3D printing -- including the addition of inexpensive additive metal printing -- will lead to a worldwide flood of firearms in hands regardless of any laws or regulations that may attempt to stop it.
Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?
I do not know. I am more interested in how to best live in that world, because I believe it is approaching fast. I believe it will favor those who can see ahead and embrace it with open arms.
(...personally, I think if we trust someone with a driver's license, we should trust them with a firearms license. If that seems extreme or scary, maybe we shouldn't be so liberal with handing out drivers' licenses.....)
You are correct, but there are still broad classes of people who are unable to own firearms. Anybody with a felony record, for example, is generally unable to own a firearm. Additionally, illegal aliens and green card holders are generally (completely?) prohibited. We are adding whole classes of "mental illnesses" to prohibited categories. As 3D printing becomes more commonplace, these people will be able to obtain firearms for themselves.
I am personally not worried about it, as long as law-abiding citizens are able to legally own and carry firearms. There will be no epidemic of violence as long as this remains the case.
However, outside of the US, there will be huge changes!
To vividly illustrate to the left that the first amendment is inextricably tied to the second. You cannot secure freedom of speech without first securing freedom of arms.
I will admit that many countries (northern European in particular) have made moderate exception to this, but frankly the demographics are completely different. If our country were divided up into pieces no larger than Denmark, gun violence would look a lot different.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure do! I am always happy to provide sources for a kindly requester. :)
These are both biased sources, but they name their factual sources so you can look and see how they came to their numbers and make your own decision about it:
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2011/12/foghorn/ny-times-uses-deceptive-statistics-to-promote-anti-gun-agenda-again/
http://hawaiiccw.com/gun-myths/concealed-carry-myths/people-permits-commit-crimes/
Well, $50 for something one would be proud to carry.
As for powder, a moderate student of history can make at least two types of propellant without much difficulty, one of them with off-the-hardware-store-shelf materials.
A more homogenous culture is thought to result in a reduced rate of homicides. Some countries in Africa disprove this.
In the US, we have white, black, asian, hispanic, and native American represented very strongly. Just in the white communities, we have Polish, Jewish, French-Canadian, Irish, and German (and more) who self-identify strongly. We also have a very large number of lesser-represented racial and cultural groups. Immigration to this country is ongoing from all over the world. There are significant Somali, Cambodian, Sudanese, and Vietnamese contingents just in my area. We have a lot going on here.
Most of Europe has nothing in comparison.
Ah. I was quoting the parent poster. Did you mean to reply to him instead of me?
More like the systematic 5-crime-per-person cap that the BCS uses to arbitrarily limit the number of crimes that are counted.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6239864.stm
Since the number of violent crimes has not jumped 84 percent since then, I can only conclude that the practice continues.
Fuck off.
Not false. I live here, I know what it is like. Do you live somewhere else?
Our violence problem stems from the drug war. Legalize marijuana, end the violence. It is that simple.
It is important to understand this, because increasing gun restrictions will not slow down drug-related firearms prevalence. The black market for drugs is very well established here. Outlawing firearms will simply shift demand onto the drug networks, which are likely more than capable of supplying demand.
Sorry, should have been more clear. I meant individual countries versus the United States. The population of Europe as a whole has a comparable population, but then the population of Europe as a whole includes some pretty high murder rates depending on how you define "Europe."
The drug war here in the US has a whole lot more to do with the violence than guns. Your countries take a different approach to drugs, even the countries with stricter laws do not take it anywhere nearly as far as we do here in the US.
State-level is still too high. You need to get down to the neighborhood level before you can see what is actually happening.
Once you do, the answer becomes very clear and it has nothing to do with guns, and very little to do with poverty.
Not sure what your message is, here...?
It simply means the problem is extremely concentrated and has very simple and obvious solutions. It is not endemic to the US nor is it a problem of overall violence. It is specific, highly-localized violence with solutions that are clear, scientific, and easily attainable.
Hint: the solutions do not have anything to do with guns.
Are you really questioning whether European countries are more homogenous? Really? Good lord.
A man with a (legal) gun is less likely to kill someone than the average man.
This answers your question, "how likely is it for each gun owner to kill someone with a gun eventually?"
I suggest you do a little googling. There are quite a number of news articles on the topic over the years. If you are actually curious, I'd be happy to point you in the right direction but I suspect strongly you are merely another time-wasting internet troll.
In the UK, a few behaviors have been publicized in recent years.
1) Report multiple-victim crimes as a single crime. I.e. if 3 people die, only one is counted officially.
2) Report murder as a lesser crime such as manslaughter.
3) Fail to report the use of a firearm.
There are other serious issues with crime reporting in the UK, but those are the most pertinent and egregious ones I can remember.
It's going to be hard to enforce those gun laws as 3D-printed guns become cheaper, safer, and more popular.
If you take a tiny handful of small neighborhoods out of the equation (places like Flint, Michigan) the United States is actually an extremely peaceful place.
Nearly all of the violence is concentrated in tiny areas, and most of that is fueled by the drug trade.
Why we don't address those areas instead of fucking around on a national scale is beyond me, but you shouldn't generalize the violence in Flint, Detroit, and Chicago to the rest of the country.
For fuck's sake, the murder rate in Chicago is greater than that in Baghdad. The rest of the country is not even close to this.
> its the 0.005% who do.
Right, who are very nearly always gang members, connected to the drug trade. If we legalized marijuana, those murders would start to drop overnight. Outlawing guns doesn't work so well when you have a thriving drug trade that would immediately start carrying steel as well as weed. Fix the drug problem, you fix the crime problem, and without all the drama.
> There is a child under 5 killed with a firearm every week in the US.
That's irrelevant. Vastly greater numbers of children die in swimming pools or even buckets.
> Any gun that is accessible enough to be used in 'self-defense' within 1 minute 20 seconds is going to be accessible to a child.
Absolutely correct. This is why it should be mandatory to teach minimum gun safety to every child in America. With 290+ million guns, it is the height of irresponsibility to train your children to the NRA minimum:
STOP!
DON'T TOUCH!
LEAVE THE AREA!
TELL AN ADULT!
If you do not teach your children at least this much, then you are part of why that many children under 5 die every week.
All the dead of WWI or WWII pale in comparison to the vast Communist genocides of the 20th century, all of which were committed on disarmed populations.
Get your facts straight. OP wasn't talking about war dead.
Legal gun owners are statistically less likely to commit any crime than the general population. Owning a legal firearm is correlated with a reduced likelihood to commit murder.
That doesn't work well in a world where anyone with $2-3,000 can just print themselves a gun whenever they want.
Or $50 worth of pipe and metal at a hardware store, for that matter...
The UK gun murder rate is essentially zero because the UK police are drastically underreporting crime by a factor of 1/3 by conservative estimates. They have an investment in underreporting or failing to report violent crime.
If you take a tiny handful of ultra-violent neighborhoods out of the equation, the murder rate in the US is considerably lower than Europe. Places like Flint, Michigan.
We have hundreds of millions of people compared to Europe's tens of millions. Also, European countries are vastly more homogenous. Comparing the two directly is simply a case of apples-and-oranges.
I think we are on a very similar page.
You are correct, of course, about government surviving despite a more limited role in the nation's money. To me, the problem is that the current government is not likely to be able to survive the loss of the dollar. What happens then? I sincerely hope the principles of liberty are still rooted strongly enough in our collective hearts that we have peace.
You have a really nice reply, with some excellent sources that I will read carefully later tonight. Thank you.
I think you might have misinterpreted my original comment, however. I was carefully avoiding value judgements. I believe we are rapidly heading for a world in which anonymous cryptocurrencies will lead to the complete destruction of any form of government larger than a moderate and well-run municipality. Furthermore, I believe that the improvement of 3D printing -- including the addition of inexpensive additive metal printing -- will lead to a worldwide flood of firearms in hands regardless of any laws or regulations that may attempt to stop it.
Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?
I do not know. I am more interested in how to best live in that world, because I believe it is approaching fast. I believe it will favor those who can see ahead and embrace it with open arms.
(...personally, I think if we trust someone with a driver's license, we should trust them with a firearms license. If that seems extreme or scary, maybe we shouldn't be so liberal with handing out drivers' licenses.....)
You are correct, but there are still broad classes of people who are unable to own firearms. Anybody with a felony record, for example, is generally unable to own a firearm. Additionally, illegal aliens and green card holders are generally (completely?) prohibited. We are adding whole classes of "mental illnesses" to prohibited categories. As 3D printing becomes more commonplace, these people will be able to obtain firearms for themselves.
I am personally not worried about it, as long as law-abiding citizens are able to legally own and carry firearms. There will be no epidemic of violence as long as this remains the case.
However, outside of the US, there will be huge changes!
To vividly illustrate to the left that the first amendment is inextricably tied to the second. You cannot secure freedom of speech without first securing freedom of arms.
I will admit that many countries (northern European in particular) have made moderate exception to this, but frankly the demographics are completely different. If our country were divided up into pieces no larger than Denmark, gun violence would look a lot different.