I'd prefer to think of things that way then to cynically surmise that this is simply a case of "when it's an MS bug, let's roast them with a 0-day disclosure, but if its anyone else, let's give them a fair shake at fixing it"
To be fair, one of the main points to consider is how the vendor has behaved historically. If you submit bugs to a given vendor and they completely ignore them, sometimes for years, until that bug is made public, then no good is likely to come of your discovery until the bug is made public. There is no point then, in waiting, or certainly not waiting very long unless the vendor makes a specific commitment to fix the bug in a reasonable timeframe. If, however, the vendor tends to immediately begin work on the bug and fix it very quickly, then publicly announcing it is not prerequisite to motivating them. In which case, unless their is a trivial user workaround and you think it is being actively exploited, overall security is better served by holding off on public announcements.
This isn't a case of everyone treating MS one way and other vendors differently. It is a case of MS and a few other problem vendors being treated in a way that makes sense given their reluctance to take security issues seriously.
Who knows how many IE security bugs MS is not disclosing or acknowledging.
According to anecdotes from former MS employees, about 50-60% of all bugs with security implications are prioritized such that they are never announced publicly or fixed (across the company, not IE specific). Since they don't announce most of the ones they fix internally either, I'm guessing they have a ratio similar to most companies where you have about 1 publicly discovered bug for every 20 found internally. I'm guessing that means they were and probably still are vulnerable to at least one of them pretty much every day.
So spammers and marketers and others are data mining social networking sites. Great, I think it is the duty of each of us to go create a fake site with a fake name and link to a few other people. Heck we can even get creative and talk about "favorite" products. Maybe I'll accidentally post the number of a local law firm claiming it is my home number:)
how would people download firefox from the internet without IE with Windows?
They would use whatever browser was included by the OEM that sold them their computer, which may very well already be Firefox. The law forbids MS to bundle or tie Windows to IE, not other companies from selling Windows+some browser+some hardware.
Firefox is good. people know about it and are downloading it.
Firefox has been better for 5 years, easily, and still it has under 25% of the market. People aren't downloading it. More importantly, Web developers don't know if a user will have Firefox but they do know a user will have IE, so instead of developing to standards they develop to IE and maybe to standards as well, resulting in the entire Web being used as a proprietary lock-in.
I don't think we have to tell Microsoft what to do in order to give firefox a chance.
When a free product, which is obviously superior to its competitor can remain vastly superior for years and still not take more than a small fraction of the market, what hope is there? The market is broken and needs to be returned to a free and open market, where the innovation brought by capitalism can again apply. It is pretty basic economics.
I think you're missing the main cause. Sure open source apps get more people reviewing them, but there are plenty of fairly secure closed source apps. The real problem is motivation. Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop. Pretty much everyone buys Windows. When they buy Windows, some of that money pays IE developers. If a user decides to use Windows+Firefox, Microsoft does not lose any money. What is their motivation to make IE secure?
So long as MS is allowed to bundle products with and tie them to their Windows desktop OS, consumers in other markets like Web browsing, media players, servers, etc. will take it up the butt. This is exactly how anticompetitive abuse hurts consumers and the industry. If you want a secure IE or just secure Web browsers in general there is one simple step. Get the courts to enforce the law and stop MS from bundling it with Windows. Then, if they want to control the market for Web browsers they will have to compete, based upon quality. As a result they will improve quality and solve their security problems.
Yup, by putting me in a category with certain people. This speaks not at all to my arguments and is thus irrelevant to them. I would like to repeat my previous request. Please educate yourself about logic, rhetoric, and the scientific method. If you plan to "argue" with people in the future at least learn how to do it in a sensible way and how to form correct opinions based upon fact. The last thing this world needs is more people with uneducated opinions based upon illogical and unscientific decision making who feel the need to express those opinions vociferously anyway.
The very next sentence I wrote was, "What countries have no gun violence?" That is a challenge for you to support your assertion.
The number of gun deaths per annum is a couple per year on average.
So you were wrong. several people a year is not none.
In any case, who cares? Does it matter if people are killed with guns or hammers? The issue is violent crime, not "gun crime." Why would you assume the violent crime rate had anything to do with the gun control laws in place?
I have no idea why you put those words in my mouth. I never said that.
I wrote, "he correlation between gun bans and violent crime is negligible." to which you replied, "Maybe in the US, where you've never really tried. Try visiting a civilised country." Are you now claiming your intention was not to claim that I was mistaken and that there is a correlation between violent crime and gun bans? What then were you trying to say?
Anyway, I've argued with gun nuts, creationists and Scientologists...
This is the logical fallacy of argument by association. Thousands of years ago people already formally recognized the inherent error in this line of thought. You failed to address any of my points or debunk any of the facts I presented. Then you tried to weasel out of your initial statement. Now you try to dismiss my argument because of my assumed affiliations since all people who believe ay of these things must be wrong for some reason.
Please go read a good book about logic, rhetoric, and the scientific method. Your reasoning is so poor as to be embarrassing.
o if someone lies to you, they do not ALWAYS take away your right to be told the truth?
I recognize that every person has a fundamental right to express themselves. Most people acknowledge that this is a fundamental human right that needs to be protected. I don't believe that I have a fundamental right to be told the truth and I don't know any civil rights groups that acknowledge such a right either.
If you are lied to sometimes, and sometimes not, how would you know the truth?
The truth is often subjective, a matter of perspective. Even when people believe what they are saying, that does not make it true. People are mistaken much of the time. So I don't know if something I am told is the truth or even if the person telling me something believes it. Since the only person who does know for sure is the speaker (and even then they may not know) trying to enforce "truth" with law is unworkable.
Would it not be better to not get bad law passed in the first place?
We don't have the option of rewriting history so that all the "bad" laws passed before we were born are erased from history. Also, as societies grow, what is a "bad" law changes at least by the perspective of society. Is theft always wrong? In some cultures theft is considered normal and daring and is applauded. It is a demonstration of cleverness. If no one objects to a successful theft, what harm is done by it? Many laws deal with subjects like these that are very subjective.
That is why we need UNBIASED free news media.
Bias is simply a matter of perspective as well. I don't believe in such a thing as an "unbiased" opinion. Media more removed from government influence, however, has proved beneficial elsewhere.
Technological tools are available to everyone and works both ways.
Some tools are more effective when deployed en masse, by a large organization. As such, they are more dangerous in the hands of the government.
It is never the tools that are the problem, but how they are used or abused.
The problem is, some abuses are not banned because those abuses are considered impossible. For example, there is no law that says people can't use a mind control device to win an election. If, however, someone invented a mind control device, arguing that candidates should not be banned from using it because it is just a tool, is not particularly constructive. I don't object to cameras. I object to ubiquitous surveillance by the government without good cause. You're right, cameras are just the tool used in that surveillance, but previous to that tool, such ubiquitous surveillance was not possible due to manpower restraints.
If the cops know they are on camera, they will also be more careful to follow the rules.
Sometimes. You'll note, however, that the video of the police in britain shooting an innocent man in the back of the head multiple times were immediately confiscated by the police, but the police later said those tapes were blank and the cameras had malfunctioned. If the police control the tapes, it does not deter them at all.
They who want to do wrong, will not do so if they know they are being watched and all their actions are recorded for review.
Sure they will. They'll just do it in a place without a camera, or while wearing a disguise, or after disabling the camera. Or they'll assume even though they're on tape the tape will never be reviewed, since most of the time, this is true. It acts as some deterrent, but is certainly not going to make a fundamental difference in that way.
A camera is an accurate, impartial witness in court.
Not so. Illusionists have been fooling cameras for years. Video editing is such that you can remove and replace people from live video feeds. I saw a demo back in the 90's where they pulled a person out of a famous assault video in real time and it looked like the victim just fell down. In fact cameras may provide false sense of certainty
When did I call you a liar? I said I don't believe you. One does not imply the other. I think you're mistaken and ignorant. I don't believe there is any country in the world with no gun violence and I challenged you to support your assertion that you had lived in several of them.
You don't, by the way, seem to believe you need to support your beliefs. You make assertion after assertion, with no support or facts and simply fail to address either logically or factually when I call you on them. Let me repeat the fundamental disagreement. Why do you believe their is a strong correlation between violent crime and gun control laws, when there are no facts to support such a belief?
And there is absolutely nothing wrong with a school controlling what is available on the Internet in the school.
That sort of depends upon what it is filtering and why, now doesn't it? For example, while it might be legal for a school to block all mention of Darwin or evolution from the internet access they provide it doesn't make it ethical. Nor would it be ethical to block all mention of the holocaust and anything debunking the view that the Nazis were right from high-school students at a private school for anti-Semites.
It is unethical to lie and deceive, which can be accomplished via filtering. More importantly, all of society is responsible for helping children to grow and develop. People these days bitch about how kids never want to take responsibility for themselves, and yet they support never providing children with the freedom to make mistakes for which they must take responsibility. I'm not opposed to all filtering, but at some point a 17.99 year old who has never had access to an unfiltered internet connection will get that access, and if they've never learned to be responsible, the results will be all the worse.
You use the traditional methods of using troops who have some resentment or disconnect against the populace. Eg, in Beijing, 1989, the troops who rolled into Tiananmen were mainly from rural areas, with no empathy for the well-off urban student demonstrators.
That only works on a small scale. Say you destroy the neighborhood and "make an example of them" as you said. Say you use troops from somewhere and those troops don't care. How does this stop the friends and relatives of the people you killed from becoming angry and rebels themselves? An example is no good if you somehow cover it up. And it's not like no one will notice when their relations go missing, especially in the US where people are more apt to move away from home, but remain in contact.
Yes, they'll change their mind from shooting over their heads to between the eyes.
Sure they will, and that will create more people who are willing to fight, not less. It also makes the soldiers not want to do it because people are naturally averse to killing and killing children and risking their own lives.
Think of the movements that WERE successful.
You mean like the french revolution, the american revolution, etc.? Almost all successful revolutions have been violent. Mentioning a few exceptions does not change the facts.
Gee what a persuasive argument. When people refuse to address facts or logic and instead rely upon irrational assumptions and rhetoric it is no wonder so many are ignorant and easily misled.
I've lived in several countries. In none was there common gun ownership, in none was there any gun violence.
I don't believe you. What countries have no gun violence? Who in their right mind cares about "gun violence?" You know if blue pants are made illegal we can greatly decrease "blue pants violence." Is either of these a meaningful subset of violent crime?
The only people who do such "research" are those wiht[sic] an axe to grind.
I see so everyone who has ever studied the effects of violent crime in relation to gun control and gun ownership rates was prejudiced. Further, without doing any research or having any facts you instinctively know the "truth." How scientific of you.
There's no point, no one is going to change their laws regardless.
Countries and localities do change their laws and it makes a lot of sense to be informed. Perhaps you might consider in future basing your opinions on the facts rather than trying to find facts to support your opinions.
If IE is not bundled with the OS, how is the average user supposed to download firefox?
Using whatever browser the OEM includes: Firefox, IE, Opera, or whatever. The point being since it doesn't come with Windows developers can't assume it will be there and make stupid design decisions based upon that.
Don't you think it would be better if EVERYBODY had to tell the truth at all times?
No, I don't. I find it unethical to force my personal beliefs upon others. I support each individual's right to free speech, even if that speech is lies, so long as those lies do not take away the rights of others. I might think it unethical of them to lie, but I don't think it is my right to impose that upon them via armed policemen and threat of punishment. If people avoid lying only because they are under duress have they made the right decision and exercised free will?
If that promise of eternal damnation did not prevent people from telling lies, what makes you think that singling out and passing laws against government officials would stop them from or anybody else from telling lies?
I don't think it would stop them from telling lies, I think it would provide them with motivation to avoid it in some cases, since they would be risking jail time.
Cameras can also be used to establish innocence. If you are accused of a crime, yet a time stamped camera clearly shows you being miles from the crime scene, the cops would have to find the true culprit.
Presumably since everyone is innocent until proven guilty, this should never be an issue. I you were miles away there should not be evidence to prove you were not.
If everybody were on camera at all times, then wrong or questionable acts would be rare.
Human nature does not change because of cameras. Also, be very careful here. Do you mean "wrong" or "illegal" act will be rare? The two words are not synonyms. Breaking the law as a means of changing the law has a long established tradition in this country and is the only way some very unethical laws were changed. The truth is, even with cameras everywhere most of the time no one would review that image so most instances people would still get away with crimes. In other cases, cameras would be disabled or people would don disguises. They might even disguise themselves as someone else, like you.
I don't think cameras everywhere would increase our quality of living and I do think they would pose a huge risk of becoming a tool of an oppressive government. It would certainly be abused as it has been already in the UK. Consolidation of power always increases the risk of totalitarianism. That is why widespread socialism fails, with all the power in few hands it is simply to easy for one person or group to bypass democracy. Lets not make that same mistake.
From Firefox on Windows with internet explorer disabled the pdf opened inside acrobat then proceeded to display the resulting PDF file in internet explorer.
It sounds like your problem is with Acrobat Reader, Windows, and IE. Acrobat shouldn't launch a non-default browser and Windows should allow you to disable or remove IE. For that matter, IE should not be bundled in the first place, so that developers don't rely upon it being there and develop their applications to be browser independent.
PDF itself is just a format, and a nice one. Since I would never browse general Web sites with Windows, let alone with acrobat installed, I don't have to worry about that problem.
I'm reasonably certain that the availability of hand guns is a factor in the crime rate.
Why? Studies show very little correlation between gun laws/availability and violent crime rates.
They're one of the easiest lethal weapons to carry and use.
Carry yes, use, are you joking? Most people can't hit anything with a handgun, especially in a stressful situation. In any case, this speaks not at all to whether these properties lead to increased or decreased crime.
Lowering the "barrier of entry" to murdering someone is almost certainly going to raise the crime rate.
And if the same action also provides others with the means to stop/prevent crime what then? Which factor is more significant?
Of course, the question is merely how much it increases the rate.
Yeah gun control laws increase the murder and violent crime rate by about negative 1.5%. That is to say, statistically they slightly decrease the murder and violent crime rate according to most studies that showed any statistical significance.
There's always the question of whether the liberty of handgun ownership is worth the hypothetical 1500 lives a year that banning them might save (out of 30,000 firearm related murders).
That might be the case if you neglect to include the number of times handguns are used in self defense or to prevent crimes every year and if you neglect to take into account the number of crimes that aren't committed out of fear of handguns and if you assume all of those crimes would be prevented instead of committed with a different weapon. Of course if you're making all of those assumptions I think you're not really assessing a realistic scenario at all so I'd discard your opinion.
Anyone who can answer that question quickly and definitively is probably not to be trusted. They either choose not to value liberty or the lives of their fellows, both extremes are exceptionally dangerous.
You present a false dichotomy. Regardless of the merits of having the liberty to own a handgun, there is little or no support for the belief that banning handgun ownership will reduce violent crime and some small amount evidence that it will do the opposite.
You can talk about "pro-gun propaganda" all you like but I challenged Slashdot before to come up with any reputable study that showed a correlation between gun control laws and reduced violent crime an no one was able to do so. On the other hand both in this discussion and in previous one people have cited numerous studies that show no correlation or a negative correlation. If you look at all the data and conclude otherwise, maybe you should consider whether you're really forming an opinion from the data, or just looking for support for a decision you already made based upon emotion.
If I was a despot seizing power, and a neighbourhood was resisting my troops like that, I'd make an example of them. Some napalm perhaps. Or just roll some tanks over the houses. Then cut off water, roads and food distribution if they remained recalcitrant till they were begging to give up their guns. I might not win hearts and minds, but you'd give up or be dead.
Unless you can use some sort of mind control to brainwash your troops or replace them with robots, good luck. We're talking about a civil conflict. Every neighborhood you bomb contains friends and relatives of other citizens, some of whom are probably in your army. So good job, you killed off a neighborhood full of some loyal people and some disloyal. In the process you made several neighborhood full of new rebels, scattered about the country.
Also, the guns aren't their simply to stop the army, they're there to change the army's mind. Picture this, you're a fairly loyal soldier. You're ordered to go arrest some 17 year old protesters and move them to a reeducation camp. If they are unarmed, you can probably gas them, stick them in trucks and all is well. You've used a non-lethal solution and risked yourself very little. You may not completely approve, but it is easy to look the other way.
Now look at the same scenario, but the protesters have guns. The chances are you'll have to shoot them (or blow up downtown killing many others). They're going to be shooting back, so a few of you are going to die. So instead of being asked to non-lethally pacify protesters with no risk to yourself you're asked to go risk your own life to kill some kid. At this point you're going to consider much more carefully the ramifications, if only because you don't want to risk your own life for nothing.
Human nature being what it is, an armed populace foments much greater dissension among your troops than an unarmed populace.
P.S. I don't think you have what it takes to be a despot, maybe you should look into a different career.
Now, I'm not suggesting that arming all of society will end crime, but what I do think it will do is reduce violent crime significantly, leaving only the most violent criminals, which will slowly be phased out either through the justice system or self-defense.
There are countries with very high access to firearms and ownership rates similar to what you propose. What is interesting is that those countries do not have higher or lower rates of violent crime than other countries. Well, statistically speaking, they do have lower rates, but by such a small amount that it is nearly insignificant. Realistically, while I'm all in favor of gun ownership and training, they don't seem to be the answer to a violent crime problem.
If you're really interested in reducing violent crime, you should look to other measures that address factors that do strongly correlate with violent crime. Simply decriminalizing recreational drugs would probably have a huge impact in the US. Providing addiction management and rehabilitation clinics have also had large impacts in other locations. Providing reasonable socialist safety nets and health care also correlates very strongly. Actually the single strongest correlation with violent crime I've seen is wealth disparity. Places with progressive inheritance taxes on the high end, or flat wealth taxes every year almost invariably have very low violent crime rates. The corroborates the results of sociologists in the last decade who seem to indicate that the strongest deterrent to crime is moral, and the best way to demotivate crime is to eliminate justification for it.
The US as a society has never been very accepting of any of these measures because of a cultural tendency away from many kinds of centralized authority and towards personal responsibility and failure. For the same reason guns will probably remain prevalent in our society, we will also probably avoid measures that would lead to less violent crime. That prevalence of guns is somewhat beneficial, but I'm afraid I don't foresee it making a big dent in violent crime rates.
I think that I probably agree with you here, but I just question the difference between "decriminalization" and "legalization." It sounds a lot like the kind of hair-splitting a politician might engage in to avoid the word 'legalization.' Either something is verboten or it's not. If it's illegal but the prohibition simply isn't enforced, then it's effectively legal...
Allow me to clarify. Completely repealing prohibition on illegal drugs has very unclear long term results and a lot of negative immediate results. By decriminalizing, I mean not making the arbitrary sale or consumption of drugs unrestricted, but making it permissible in some, regulated circumstances and punishable by fines or other less harsh punishments when used outside those circumstances. Think of it this way. Drinking alcohol is not illegal, but neither is it always legal and possession, manufacturing, and sale are restricted. By decriminalization, the distinction is treat make marijuana like alcohol, rather than making it wholly unrestricted. You might maintain laws banning the transport, sale, possession, and use of cocaine, but make the punishments for such a crime such that people are not willing to shoot it out with the cops to avoid it. No prison sentences, possible deportation and large fines.
We need to avoid filling our prisons with people who commit victimless and nonviolent crimes, because it is those prison populations and the tertiary affects thereof on our culture that greatly contribute to our violent crime. Further addiction needs to be treated as a medical condition with government assistance, rather than as a criminal offense. The US culture is very opposed to many forms of socialism, even when those forms make a lot of sense. It is quite simply cheaper to give free heroin to addicts than it is to deal with all the negative results of their addiction on society. Pairing this with mandatory treatment has had hugely beneficial results in other parts of the world.
I hope that clarifies my opinions for you. For your comments on guns, aside from clarifying that national gun bans do, in fact, reduce availability of guns, I think you are spot on. It is important, however, to get all these facts right if we're to make proper decisions.
Maybe in the US, where you've never really tried. Try visiting a civilised country.
This includes data from around the world. Have you ever bothered doing any research? Sweden with one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world has gun ownership and laws nearly the same as the US. What would possibly lead you to think there was a strong correlation between these factors?
Uh, it's not happening now and those jobs offer the same power.
Umm, do you know any cops? I do. Almost all of them have a "funny" story about abusing their power. I know no less than three cops who became cops because they couldn't get in the military and they wanted to "shoot some people." In this state citizens cannot get a concealed pistol permit if they have been convicted of a violent felony including domestic violence... unless they are a police officer. This exception was added because the politicians involved needed support and otherwise a huge number of cops would have lost their pistol permits. I find your belief that violent psychopaths and sadists are not disproportionately represented in the police to be contrary to both my personal experience and the available data on the subject.
While it's been a while since the U.S. has told its soldiers to bring their own weapons, the skill of using those weapons is easily transferable from the civilian world to the military.
Amen.
Regional gun bans didn't work, and a national gun ban wouldn't either: the U.S. can't even stop the flow of people across it's borders, or inspect every cargo container coming in and out, and a handgun is a lot easier to smuggle than a person...
This depends upon what you mean by "work." Statistically, national gun bans do reduce the availability of guns to criminals and reduce the number of crimes committed with them. Unfortunately, neither of those results in a net decrease in violent crime in general, as the reduced availability of guns to criminals is more than compensated for by the reduced deterrent to violent crimes presented by a randomly armed populace.
A national gun ban would be just as ridiculous as the war on drugs;
Statistically speaking, decriminalization (not legalization) of recreational drugs is much more likely to decrease violent crime than any gun ban.
The root causes of crime are probably much more subtle, and have to do with things that no politician wants to deal with directly: issues like wealth distribution, education, job availability, single versus two-parent households, teen pregnancy, etc.
This is very true. In order the largest correlative data sets I've seen are wealth disparity, decriminalization of drugs, socialized health care, and drug treatment programs.
The AK47 is available for very little money the world over but we still have plenty of tyrannical regimes.
Ahh, but do we have more or less than we would without them?
Technology has moved on to the extent that a handgun or rifle does not help you overthrow a tyrannical regime who are armed with tanks and apache helicopters.
This is a nice assertion, but I don't see it supported by the facts, particularly for a civil war situation.
It is also worth noting that even in the USA, the general public are not allowed armour piercing weapons
Both my compound bow and my deer rifle penetrate most body armor. A friend of mine sells it to police and insists on testing it with a variety of weapons. Even some large pistol rounds go through everything we've tested.
...the reality is that they are not an effective defense in a modern context.
Repeating your assertion is still not supporting it. It is fine that you believe this, but why? What evidence have you based your belief upon?
The reality is they want to keep firearms legal so they keep making money from selling them, regardless of how many innocent lives it costs.
Okay, you've made another assertion. I quickly researched the NRA's funding. As far as I could tell gun companies fund their gun safety courses for children that teach kids to not pick up guns and call and adult. Aside from that, it looks like mostly member dues. Do you have any support for this opinion of yours? More importantly, why should the motivation of this lobbying group have any bearing on my analysis of the facts? If the NRA is only interested in making money, does this make gun laws more or less effective in reducing violent crime?
A nationwide ban on the other hand would be alot more effective in the long run as bringing guns in from a neighbouring country would be alot more difficult.
Statistically a nationwide ban on guns probably would reduce both firearm availability and crimes with firearms. Statistically it would also increase violent crime and murder, in general. Is the former a good thing if the latter is the cost?
This implies that the US singlehandedly won the 2nd World War.
Agreed. I hereby declare the US to have been thanked enough for its part in WWII. From now on other countries can comment upon our more recent actions with mentioning this issue.
Compared to the tens of thousands of gun related deaths reported annually in the US, there's just a handful here, and practically every single one of them makes national news.
This misleading statement of the problem has lead so many people to erroneous conclusions. Is anyone in their right mind interested in decreasing "gun related deaths" as opposed to just deaths? Picture this. You live in a remote village with lots of polar bears. Every two years a citizen accidentally shoots themselves and dies. By banning guns, you can reduce this to one person accidentally shooting themselves once every ten years, but at the same time the rate of people being killed by bears and criminals goes up by 30 people a year. So looking at the problem of people being killed it is clear this measure drastically increases the rate of death and is a bad idea. Looking at it in terms of "gun deaths" is logically misstating the problem and leads to the erroneous conclusion that "gun deaths" are reduced to 1/5 their former level and this measure is a good idea.
Statistically gun ban laws tend to slight increase the rate of violent crime and murder, while decreasing the rate of "gun crime." The problem is people looking to support their opinion, rather than form an opinion based upon the facts tend to find the latter, misleading statistics. If they instead had objectively looked at the data based upon a proper statement of the problem they would have found the opposite is most probable.
It's completely different here (and in practically every other country on the planet, for that matter).
While violent crime and death in the UK is lower than the US, it is not reasonable to just assume that is because of the gun laws. The UK and the US differ in many ways, some of which very strongly correlate with violent crime levels. Socialized health care, drug treatment programs, wealth disparity, and decriminalization of illicit drugs all correspond very strongly with violent crime levels while gun laws do not. I assert that it is these factors, not gun laws that are the reason the UK has lower violent crime than the US. You might also note, the UK still has relatively high violent crime levels compared to Europe and are astronomically higher than some countries like Sweden that have gun ownership rates and laws similar to the US. Your assertion that gun control is the reason, is not supported by the facts.
For guns to make a place safer, there'd have to be some mechanism to ensure that only `good` people get guns, and only do good with them.
This does not logically follow. For guns to make a place safer they simply have to prevent more crimes than they facilitate. Statistically, this seems to be the case, although by a very small margin.
...it's quite clear that whatever it is, it isn't working in the US.
What isn't working in the US is putting more people in prison than almost any other nation, for the nonviolent offense of using recreational drugs, ruining their lives and dumping them back on the streets with no job, no way to get a good, job, a lot of anger from being anally raped and abused, and expecting this to not result in violence. What isn't working in the US is kicking the majority of the people with mental disorders out onto the street a few decades ago and providing them with little or no way to get free treatment other than to get locked up. What isn't working in the US is making sure drug addicts know that if they go to a hospital or clinic they will arrested and the only way they are going to get their next fix is by committing a robbery. What isn't working in the US is concentration of wealth such that half the population lives in constant debt while 1.5% of the population has ever increasing shares of the money without ever working a day in their life.
Gun control is a boogieman. Guns are scary, and the world views the US as one of those ultra-violent movies that comes out of hollywood. The truth is, guns aren't the probl
Slashdot Mirror
I'd prefer to think of things that way then to cynically surmise that this is simply a case of "when it's an MS bug, let's roast them with a 0-day disclosure, but if its anyone else, let's give them a fair shake at fixing it"
To be fair, one of the main points to consider is how the vendor has behaved historically. If you submit bugs to a given vendor and they completely ignore them, sometimes for years, until that bug is made public, then no good is likely to come of your discovery until the bug is made public. There is no point then, in waiting, or certainly not waiting very long unless the vendor makes a specific commitment to fix the bug in a reasonable timeframe. If, however, the vendor tends to immediately begin work on the bug and fix it very quickly, then publicly announcing it is not prerequisite to motivating them. In which case, unless their is a trivial user workaround and you think it is being actively exploited, overall security is better served by holding off on public announcements.
This isn't a case of everyone treating MS one way and other vendors differently. It is a case of MS and a few other problem vendors being treated in a way that makes sense given their reluctance to take security issues seriously.
Who knows how many IE security bugs MS is not disclosing or acknowledging.
According to anecdotes from former MS employees, about 50-60% of all bugs with security implications are prioritized such that they are never announced publicly or fixed (across the company, not IE specific). Since they don't announce most of the ones they fix internally either, I'm guessing they have a ratio similar to most companies where you have about 1 publicly discovered bug for every 20 found internally. I'm guessing that means they were and probably still are vulnerable to at least one of them pretty much every day.
So spammers and marketers and others are data mining social networking sites. Great, I think it is the duty of each of us to go create a fake site with a fake name and link to a few other people. Heck we can even get creative and talk about "favorite" products. Maybe I'll accidentally post the number of a local law firm claiming it is my home number :)
how would people download firefox from the internet without IE with Windows?
They would use whatever browser was included by the OEM that sold them their computer, which may very well already be Firefox. The law forbids MS to bundle or tie Windows to IE, not other companies from selling Windows+some browser+some hardware.
Firefox is good. people know about it and are downloading it.
Firefox has been better for 5 years, easily, and still it has under 25% of the market. People aren't downloading it. More importantly, Web developers don't know if a user will have Firefox but they do know a user will have IE, so instead of developing to standards they develop to IE and maybe to standards as well, resulting in the entire Web being used as a proprietary lock-in.
I don't think we have to tell Microsoft what to do in order to give firefox a chance.
When a free product, which is obviously superior to its competitor can remain vastly superior for years and still not take more than a small fraction of the market, what hope is there? The market is broken and needs to be returned to a free and open market, where the innovation brought by capitalism can again apply. It is pretty basic economics.
I think you're missing the main cause. Sure open source apps get more people reviewing them, but there are plenty of fairly secure closed source apps. The real problem is motivation. Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop. Pretty much everyone buys Windows. When they buy Windows, some of that money pays IE developers. If a user decides to use Windows+Firefox, Microsoft does not lose any money. What is their motivation to make IE secure?
So long as MS is allowed to bundle products with and tie them to their Windows desktop OS, consumers in other markets like Web browsing, media players, servers, etc. will take it up the butt. This is exactly how anticompetitive abuse hurts consumers and the industry. If you want a secure IE or just secure Web browsers in general there is one simple step. Get the courts to enforce the law and stop MS from bundling it with Windows. Then, if they want to control the market for Web browsers they will have to compete, based upon quality. As a result they will improve quality and solve their security problems.
No, I was categorising your personality type.
Yup, by putting me in a category with certain people. This speaks not at all to my arguments and is thus irrelevant to them. I would like to repeat my previous request. Please educate yourself about logic, rhetoric, and the scientific method. If you plan to "argue" with people in the future at least learn how to do it in a sensible way and how to form correct opinions based upon fact. The last thing this world needs is more people with uneducated opinions based upon illogical and unscientific decision making who feel the need to express those opinions vociferously anyway.
You didn't "challenge" me.
The very next sentence I wrote was, "What countries have no gun violence?" That is a challenge for you to support your assertion.
The number of gun deaths per annum is a couple per year on average.
So you were wrong. several people a year is not none.
In any case, who cares? Does it matter if people are killed with guns or hammers? The issue is violent crime, not "gun crime." Why would you assume the violent crime rate had anything to do with the gun control laws in place?
I have no idea why you put those words in my mouth. I never said that.
I wrote, "he correlation between gun bans and violent crime is negligible." to which you replied, "Maybe in the US, where you've never really tried. Try visiting a civilised country." Are you now claiming your intention was not to claim that I was mistaken and that there is a correlation between violent crime and gun bans? What then were you trying to say?
Anyway, I've argued with gun nuts, creationists and Scientologists...
This is the logical fallacy of argument by association. Thousands of years ago people already formally recognized the inherent error in this line of thought. You failed to address any of my points or debunk any of the facts I presented. Then you tried to weasel out of your initial statement. Now you try to dismiss my argument because of my assumed affiliations since all people who believe ay of these things must be wrong for some reason.
Please go read a good book about logic, rhetoric, and the scientific method. Your reasoning is so poor as to be embarrassing.
o if someone lies to you, they do not ALWAYS take away your right to be told the truth?
I recognize that every person has a fundamental right to express themselves. Most people acknowledge that this is a fundamental human right that needs to be protected. I don't believe that I have a fundamental right to be told the truth and I don't know any civil rights groups that acknowledge such a right either.
If you are lied to sometimes, and sometimes not, how would you know the truth?
The truth is often subjective, a matter of perspective. Even when people believe what they are saying, that does not make it true. People are mistaken much of the time. So I don't know if something I am told is the truth or even if the person telling me something believes it. Since the only person who does know for sure is the speaker (and even then they may not know) trying to enforce "truth" with law is unworkable.
Would it not be better to not get bad law passed in the first place?
We don't have the option of rewriting history so that all the "bad" laws passed before we were born are erased from history. Also, as societies grow, what is a "bad" law changes at least by the perspective of society. Is theft always wrong? In some cultures theft is considered normal and daring and is applauded. It is a demonstration of cleverness. If no one objects to a successful theft, what harm is done by it? Many laws deal with subjects like these that are very subjective.
That is why we need UNBIASED free news media.
Bias is simply a matter of perspective as well. I don't believe in such a thing as an "unbiased" opinion. Media more removed from government influence, however, has proved beneficial elsewhere.
Technological tools are available to everyone and works both ways.
Some tools are more effective when deployed en masse, by a large organization. As such, they are more dangerous in the hands of the government.
It is never the tools that are the problem, but how they are used or abused.
The problem is, some abuses are not banned because those abuses are considered impossible. For example, there is no law that says people can't use a mind control device to win an election. If, however, someone invented a mind control device, arguing that candidates should not be banned from using it because it is just a tool, is not particularly constructive. I don't object to cameras. I object to ubiquitous surveillance by the government without good cause. You're right, cameras are just the tool used in that surveillance, but previous to that tool, such ubiquitous surveillance was not possible due to manpower restraints.
If the cops know they are on camera, they will also be more careful to follow the rules.
Sometimes. You'll note, however, that the video of the police in britain shooting an innocent man in the back of the head multiple times were immediately confiscated by the police, but the police later said those tapes were blank and the cameras had malfunctioned. If the police control the tapes, it does not deter them at all.
They who want to do wrong, will not do so if they know they are being watched and all their actions are recorded for review.
Sure they will. They'll just do it in a place without a camera, or while wearing a disguise, or after disabling the camera. Or they'll assume even though they're on tape the tape will never be reviewed, since most of the time, this is true. It acts as some deterrent, but is certainly not going to make a fundamental difference in that way.
A camera is an accurate, impartial witness in court.
Not so. Illusionists have been fooling cameras for years. Video editing is such that you can remove and replace people from live video feeds. I saw a demo back in the 90's where they pulled a person out of a famous assault video in real time and it looked like the victim just fell down. In fact cameras may provide false sense of certainty
When you baldly call me a liar...
When did I call you a liar? I said I don't believe you. One does not imply the other. I think you're mistaken and ignorant. I don't believe there is any country in the world with no gun violence and I challenged you to support your assertion that you had lived in several of them.
You don't, by the way, seem to believe you need to support your beliefs. You make assertion after assertion, with no support or facts and simply fail to address either logically or factually when I call you on them. Let me repeat the fundamental disagreement. Why do you believe their is a strong correlation between violent crime and gun control laws, when there are no facts to support such a belief?
And there is absolutely nothing wrong with a school controlling what is available on the Internet in the school.
That sort of depends upon what it is filtering and why, now doesn't it? For example, while it might be legal for a school to block all mention of Darwin or evolution from the internet access they provide it doesn't make it ethical. Nor would it be ethical to block all mention of the holocaust and anything debunking the view that the Nazis were right from high-school students at a private school for anti-Semites.
It is unethical to lie and deceive, which can be accomplished via filtering. More importantly, all of society is responsible for helping children to grow and develop. People these days bitch about how kids never want to take responsibility for themselves, and yet they support never providing children with the freedom to make mistakes for which they must take responsibility. I'm not opposed to all filtering, but at some point a 17.99 year old who has never had access to an unfiltered internet connection will get that access, and if they've never learned to be responsible, the results will be all the worse.
You use the traditional methods of using troops who have some resentment or disconnect against the populace. Eg, in Beijing, 1989, the troops who rolled into Tiananmen were mainly from rural areas, with no empathy for the well-off urban student demonstrators.
That only works on a small scale. Say you destroy the neighborhood and "make an example of them" as you said. Say you use troops from somewhere and those troops don't care. How does this stop the friends and relatives of the people you killed from becoming angry and rebels themselves? An example is no good if you somehow cover it up. And it's not like no one will notice when their relations go missing, especially in the US where people are more apt to move away from home, but remain in contact.
Yes, they'll change their mind from shooting over their heads to between the eyes.
Sure they will, and that will create more people who are willing to fight, not less. It also makes the soldiers not want to do it because people are naturally averse to killing and killing children and risking their own lives.
Think of the movements that WERE successful.
You mean like the french revolution, the american revolution, etc.? Almost all successful revolutions have been violent. Mentioning a few exceptions does not change the facts.
Gee what a persuasive argument. When people refuse to address facts or logic and instead rely upon irrational assumptions and rhetoric it is no wonder so many are ignorant and easily misled.
I've lived in several countries. In none was there common gun ownership, in none was there any gun violence.
I don't believe you. What countries have no gun violence? Who in their right mind cares about "gun violence?" You know if blue pants are made illegal we can greatly decrease "blue pants violence." Is either of these a meaningful subset of violent crime?
The only people who do such "research" are those wiht[sic] an axe to grind.
I see so everyone who has ever studied the effects of violent crime in relation to gun control and gun ownership rates was prejudiced. Further, without doing any research or having any facts you instinctively know the "truth." How scientific of you.
There's no point, no one is going to change their laws regardless.
Countries and localities do change their laws and it makes a lot of sense to be informed. Perhaps you might consider in future basing your opinions on the facts rather than trying to find facts to support your opinions.
If IE is not bundled with the OS, how is the average user supposed to download firefox?
Using whatever browser the OEM includes: Firefox, IE, Opera, or whatever. The point being since it doesn't come with Windows developers can't assume it will be there and make stupid design decisions based upon that.
Don't you think it would be better if EVERYBODY had to tell the truth at all times?
No, I don't. I find it unethical to force my personal beliefs upon others. I support each individual's right to free speech, even if that speech is lies, so long as those lies do not take away the rights of others. I might think it unethical of them to lie, but I don't think it is my right to impose that upon them via armed policemen and threat of punishment. If people avoid lying only because they are under duress have they made the right decision and exercised free will?
If that promise of eternal damnation did not prevent people from telling lies, what makes you think that singling out and passing laws against government officials would stop them from or anybody else from telling lies?
I don't think it would stop them from telling lies, I think it would provide them with motivation to avoid it in some cases, since they would be risking jail time.
Cameras can also be used to establish innocence. If you are accused of a crime, yet a time stamped camera clearly shows you being miles from the crime scene, the cops would have to find the true culprit.
Presumably since everyone is innocent until proven guilty, this should never be an issue. I you were miles away there should not be evidence to prove you were not.
If everybody were on camera at all times, then wrong or questionable acts would be rare.
Human nature does not change because of cameras. Also, be very careful here. Do you mean "wrong" or "illegal" act will be rare? The two words are not synonyms. Breaking the law as a means of changing the law has a long established tradition in this country and is the only way some very unethical laws were changed. The truth is, even with cameras everywhere most of the time no one would review that image so most instances people would still get away with crimes. In other cases, cameras would be disabled or people would don disguises. They might even disguise themselves as someone else, like you.
I don't think cameras everywhere would increase our quality of living and I do think they would pose a huge risk of becoming a tool of an oppressive government. It would certainly be abused as it has been already in the UK. Consolidation of power always increases the risk of totalitarianism. That is why widespread socialism fails, with all the power in few hands it is simply to easy for one person or group to bypass democracy. Lets not make that same mistake.
From Firefox on Windows with internet explorer disabled the pdf opened inside acrobat then proceeded to display the resulting PDF file in internet explorer.
It sounds like your problem is with Acrobat Reader, Windows, and IE. Acrobat shouldn't launch a non-default browser and Windows should allow you to disable or remove IE. For that matter, IE should not be bundled in the first place, so that developers don't rely upon it being there and develop their applications to be browser independent.
PDF itself is just a format, and a nice one. Since I would never browse general Web sites with Windows, let alone with acrobat installed, I don't have to worry about that problem.
I'm reasonably certain that the availability of hand guns is a factor in the crime rate.
Why? Studies show very little correlation between gun laws/availability and violent crime rates.
They're one of the easiest lethal weapons to carry and use.
Carry yes, use, are you joking? Most people can't hit anything with a handgun, especially in a stressful situation. In any case, this speaks not at all to whether these properties lead to increased or decreased crime.
Lowering the "barrier of entry" to murdering someone is almost certainly going to raise the crime rate.
And if the same action also provides others with the means to stop/prevent crime what then? Which factor is more significant?
Of course, the question is merely how much it increases the rate.
Yeah gun control laws increase the murder and violent crime rate by about negative 1.5%. That is to say, statistically they slightly decrease the murder and violent crime rate according to most studies that showed any statistical significance.
There's always the question of whether the liberty of handgun ownership is worth the hypothetical 1500 lives a year that banning them might save (out of 30,000 firearm related murders).
That might be the case if you neglect to include the number of times handguns are used in self defense or to prevent crimes every year and if you neglect to take into account the number of crimes that aren't committed out of fear of handguns and if you assume all of those crimes would be prevented instead of committed with a different weapon. Of course if you're making all of those assumptions I think you're not really assessing a realistic scenario at all so I'd discard your opinion.
Anyone who can answer that question quickly and definitively is probably not to be trusted. They either choose not to value liberty or the lives of their fellows, both extremes are exceptionally dangerous.
You present a false dichotomy. Regardless of the merits of having the liberty to own a handgun, there is little or no support for the belief that banning handgun ownership will reduce violent crime and some small amount evidence that it will do the opposite.
You can talk about "pro-gun propaganda" all you like but I challenged Slashdot before to come up with any reputable study that showed a correlation between gun control laws and reduced violent crime an no one was able to do so. On the other hand both in this discussion and in previous one people have cited numerous studies that show no correlation or a negative correlation. If you look at all the data and conclude otherwise, maybe you should consider whether you're really forming an opinion from the data, or just looking for support for a decision you already made based upon emotion.
If I was a despot seizing power, and a neighbourhood was resisting my troops like that, I'd make an example of them. Some napalm perhaps. Or just roll some tanks over the houses. Then cut off water, roads and food distribution if they remained recalcitrant till they were begging to give up their guns. I might not win hearts and minds, but you'd give up or be dead.
Unless you can use some sort of mind control to brainwash your troops or replace them with robots, good luck. We're talking about a civil conflict. Every neighborhood you bomb contains friends and relatives of other citizens, some of whom are probably in your army. So good job, you killed off a neighborhood full of some loyal people and some disloyal. In the process you made several neighborhood full of new rebels, scattered about the country.
Also, the guns aren't their simply to stop the army, they're there to change the army's mind. Picture this, you're a fairly loyal soldier. You're ordered to go arrest some 17 year old protesters and move them to a reeducation camp. If they are unarmed, you can probably gas them, stick them in trucks and all is well. You've used a non-lethal solution and risked yourself very little. You may not completely approve, but it is easy to look the other way.
Now look at the same scenario, but the protesters have guns. The chances are you'll have to shoot them (or blow up downtown killing many others). They're going to be shooting back, so a few of you are going to die. So instead of being asked to non-lethally pacify protesters with no risk to yourself you're asked to go risk your own life to kill some kid. At this point you're going to consider much more carefully the ramifications, if only because you don't want to risk your own life for nothing.
Human nature being what it is, an armed populace foments much greater dissension among your troops than an unarmed populace.
P.S. I don't think you have what it takes to be a despot, maybe you should look into a different career.
Now, I'm not suggesting that arming all of society will end crime, but what I do think it will do is reduce violent crime significantly, leaving only the most violent criminals, which will slowly be phased out either through the justice system or self-defense.
There are countries with very high access to firearms and ownership rates similar to what you propose. What is interesting is that those countries do not have higher or lower rates of violent crime than other countries. Well, statistically speaking, they do have lower rates, but by such a small amount that it is nearly insignificant. Realistically, while I'm all in favor of gun ownership and training, they don't seem to be the answer to a violent crime problem.
If you're really interested in reducing violent crime, you should look to other measures that address factors that do strongly correlate with violent crime. Simply decriminalizing recreational drugs would probably have a huge impact in the US. Providing addiction management and rehabilitation clinics have also had large impacts in other locations. Providing reasonable socialist safety nets and health care also correlates very strongly. Actually the single strongest correlation with violent crime I've seen is wealth disparity. Places with progressive inheritance taxes on the high end, or flat wealth taxes every year almost invariably have very low violent crime rates. The corroborates the results of sociologists in the last decade who seem to indicate that the strongest deterrent to crime is moral, and the best way to demotivate crime is to eliminate justification for it.
The US as a society has never been very accepting of any of these measures because of a cultural tendency away from many kinds of centralized authority and towards personal responsibility and failure. For the same reason guns will probably remain prevalent in our society, we will also probably avoid measures that would lead to less violent crime. That prevalence of guns is somewhat beneficial, but I'm afraid I don't foresee it making a big dent in violent crime rates.
I think that I probably agree with you here, but I just question the difference between "decriminalization" and "legalization." It sounds a lot like the kind of hair-splitting a politician might engage in to avoid the word 'legalization.' Either something is verboten or it's not. If it's illegal but the prohibition simply isn't enforced, then it's effectively legal...
Allow me to clarify. Completely repealing prohibition on illegal drugs has very unclear long term results and a lot of negative immediate results. By decriminalizing, I mean not making the arbitrary sale or consumption of drugs unrestricted, but making it permissible in some, regulated circumstances and punishable by fines or other less harsh punishments when used outside those circumstances. Think of it this way. Drinking alcohol is not illegal, but neither is it always legal and possession, manufacturing, and sale are restricted. By decriminalization, the distinction is treat make marijuana like alcohol, rather than making it wholly unrestricted. You might maintain laws banning the transport, sale, possession, and use of cocaine, but make the punishments for such a crime such that people are not willing to shoot it out with the cops to avoid it. No prison sentences, possible deportation and large fines.
We need to avoid filling our prisons with people who commit victimless and nonviolent crimes, because it is those prison populations and the tertiary affects thereof on our culture that greatly contribute to our violent crime. Further addiction needs to be treated as a medical condition with government assistance, rather than as a criminal offense. The US culture is very opposed to many forms of socialism, even when those forms make a lot of sense. It is quite simply cheaper to give free heroin to addicts than it is to deal with all the negative results of their addiction on society. Pairing this with mandatory treatment has had hugely beneficial results in other parts of the world.
I hope that clarifies my opinions for you. For your comments on guns, aside from clarifying that national gun bans do, in fact, reduce availability of guns, I think you are spot on. It is important, however, to get all these facts right if we're to make proper decisions.
Maybe in the US, where you've never really tried. Try visiting a civilised country.
This includes data from around the world. Have you ever bothered doing any research? Sweden with one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world has gun ownership and laws nearly the same as the US. What would possibly lead you to think there was a strong correlation between these factors?
Uh, it's not happening now and those jobs offer the same power.
Umm, do you know any cops? I do. Almost all of them have a "funny" story about abusing their power. I know no less than three cops who became cops because they couldn't get in the military and they wanted to "shoot some people." In this state citizens cannot get a concealed pistol permit if they have been convicted of a violent felony including domestic violence... unless they are a police officer. This exception was added because the politicians involved needed support and otherwise a huge number of cops would have lost their pistol permits. I find your belief that violent psychopaths and sadists are not disproportionately represented in the police to be contrary to both my personal experience and the available data on the subject.
While it's been a while since the U.S. has told its soldiers to bring their own weapons, the skill of using those weapons is easily transferable from the civilian world to the military.
Amen.
Regional gun bans didn't work, and a national gun ban wouldn't either: the U.S. can't even stop the flow of people across it's borders, or inspect every cargo container coming in and out, and a handgun is a lot easier to smuggle than a person...
This depends upon what you mean by "work." Statistically, national gun bans do reduce the availability of guns to criminals and reduce the number of crimes committed with them. Unfortunately, neither of those results in a net decrease in violent crime in general, as the reduced availability of guns to criminals is more than compensated for by the reduced deterrent to violent crimes presented by a randomly armed populace.
A national gun ban would be just as ridiculous as the war on drugs;
Statistically speaking, decriminalization (not legalization) of recreational drugs is much more likely to decrease violent crime than any gun ban.
The root causes of crime are probably much more subtle, and have to do with things that no politician wants to deal with directly: issues like wealth distribution, education, job availability, single versus two-parent households, teen pregnancy, etc.
This is very true. In order the largest correlative data sets I've seen are wealth disparity, decriminalization of drugs, socialized health care, and drug treatment programs.
The AK47 is available for very little money the world over but we still have plenty of tyrannical regimes.
Ahh, but do we have more or less than we would without them?
Technology has moved on to the extent that a handgun or rifle does not help you overthrow a tyrannical regime who are armed with tanks and apache helicopters.
This is a nice assertion, but I don't see it supported by the facts, particularly for a civil war situation.
It is also worth noting that even in the USA, the general public are not allowed armour piercing weapons
Both my compound bow and my deer rifle penetrate most body armor. A friend of mine sells it to police and insists on testing it with a variety of weapons. Even some large pistol rounds go through everything we've tested.
Repeating your assertion is still not supporting it. It is fine that you believe this, but why? What evidence have you based your belief upon?
The reality is they want to keep firearms legal so they keep making money from selling them, regardless of how many innocent lives it costs.
Okay, you've made another assertion. I quickly researched the NRA's funding. As far as I could tell gun companies fund their gun safety courses for children that teach kids to not pick up guns and call and adult. Aside from that, it looks like mostly member dues. Do you have any support for this opinion of yours? More importantly, why should the motivation of this lobbying group have any bearing on my analysis of the facts? If the NRA is only interested in making money, does this make gun laws more or less effective in reducing violent crime?
A nationwide ban on the other hand would be alot more effective in the long run as bringing guns in from a neighbouring country would be alot more difficult.
Statistically a nationwide ban on guns probably would reduce both firearm availability and crimes with firearms. Statistically it would also increase violent crime and murder, in general. Is the former a good thing if the latter is the cost?
This implies that the US singlehandedly won the 2nd World War.
Agreed. I hereby declare the US to have been thanked enough for its part in WWII. From now on other countries can comment upon our more recent actions with mentioning this issue.
Compared to the tens of thousands of gun related deaths reported annually in the US, there's just a handful here, and practically every single one of them makes national news.
This misleading statement of the problem has lead so many people to erroneous conclusions. Is anyone in their right mind interested in decreasing "gun related deaths" as opposed to just deaths? Picture this. You live in a remote village with lots of polar bears. Every two years a citizen accidentally shoots themselves and dies. By banning guns, you can reduce this to one person accidentally shooting themselves once every ten years, but at the same time the rate of people being killed by bears and criminals goes up by 30 people a year. So looking at the problem of people being killed it is clear this measure drastically increases the rate of death and is a bad idea. Looking at it in terms of "gun deaths" is logically misstating the problem and leads to the erroneous conclusion that "gun deaths" are reduced to 1/5 their former level and this measure is a good idea.
Statistically gun ban laws tend to slight increase the rate of violent crime and murder, while decreasing the rate of "gun crime." The problem is people looking to support their opinion, rather than form an opinion based upon the facts tend to find the latter, misleading statistics. If they instead had objectively looked at the data based upon a proper statement of the problem they would have found the opposite is most probable.
It's completely different here (and in practically every other country on the planet, for that matter).
While violent crime and death in the UK is lower than the US, it is not reasonable to just assume that is because of the gun laws. The UK and the US differ in many ways, some of which very strongly correlate with violent crime levels. Socialized health care, drug treatment programs, wealth disparity, and decriminalization of illicit drugs all correspond very strongly with violent crime levels while gun laws do not. I assert that it is these factors, not gun laws that are the reason the UK has lower violent crime than the US. You might also note, the UK still has relatively high violent crime levels compared to Europe and are astronomically higher than some countries like Sweden that have gun ownership rates and laws similar to the US. Your assertion that gun control is the reason, is not supported by the facts.
For guns to make a place safer, there'd have to be some mechanism to ensure that only `good` people get guns, and only do good with them.
This does not logically follow. For guns to make a place safer they simply have to prevent more crimes than they facilitate. Statistically, this seems to be the case, although by a very small margin.
What isn't working in the US is putting more people in prison than almost any other nation, for the nonviolent offense of using recreational drugs, ruining their lives and dumping them back on the streets with no job, no way to get a good, job, a lot of anger from being anally raped and abused, and expecting this to not result in violence. What isn't working in the US is kicking the majority of the people with mental disorders out onto the street a few decades ago and providing them with little or no way to get free treatment other than to get locked up. What isn't working in the US is making sure drug addicts know that if they go to a hospital or clinic they will arrested and the only way they are going to get their next fix is by committing a robbery. What isn't working in the US is concentration of wealth such that half the population lives in constant debt while 1.5% of the population has ever increasing shares of the money without ever working a day in their life.
Gun control is a boogieman. Guns are scary, and the world views the US as one of those ultra-violent movies that comes out of hollywood. The truth is, guns aren't the probl