Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
5 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,817 Year: 3,074/9,624 Month: 919/1,588 Week: 102/223 Day: 0/13 Hour: 0/0


EvC Forum Side Orders Coffee House Gun Control Again

Summations Only

Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Gun Control Again
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 4 of 5179 (683934)
12-14-2012 4:19 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by Rahvin
12-14-2012 3:46 PM


If the guns had never been legal in the first place, the parent wouldn't have the guns to steal.
Well, this is true. For instance, this is how Japan maintains such a low rate of gun homicide - they didn't have any guns to begin with, and they prevented people from getting any more of them.
In the US, though, even if you banned guns tomorrow there'd still be 80 guns per every 100 people, or more than 2.5 million firearms. If you want to reduce the number of guns, you're talking about a program to confiscate guns, primarily from people who have not ever used them to any harmful purpose. Even in a country with no Second Amendment, we'd still have the Fourth Amendment, so how could such a program be legal?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by Rahvin, posted 12-14-2012 3:46 PM Rahvin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 6 by Rahvin, posted 12-14-2012 4:32 PM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


(1)
Message 10 of 5179 (683941)
12-14-2012 4:49 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by Rahvin
12-14-2012 4:32 PM


But it would limit the ability to move guns. You couldn't just go to a gun show and buy one.
You can't now "just go to a gun show and buy one." Gun vendors at gun shows have to follow the same laws at the gun show that they have to follow anywhere - they can't sell to you without running you through the FBI's criminal database, which requires ID, which is a requirement both of Federal law and of owning a Federal Firearms Dealer's license.
But why use confiscation? Use a gun-buyback program.
That's great, for people who want money more than guns. But the reason that people have guns in the first place is because they wanted the gun more than they wanted the money. You can certainly get some guns off the street like this - people at the margins who have a short-term need to liquidize their firearm "asset" - but the very fact that people buy guns proves that you'd have to spend absurd amounts of money to make any dent in gun ownership.
That's not to mention the distorting effect of a gun buyback on the local gun market; gun buybacks actually increase ownership of guns in an area because you're basically paying people to exchange their nonfunctional or inferior guns for better ones. Gun buybacks don't reduce the amount of guns; they actually make it more valuable to own a gun, so people get more guns.
Combined with the threat of steep fees or even jail time for being caught owning guns (without the necessity of a door-to-door search)
How are you going to "catch" people owning guns without a door to door search? You're proposing a "war on guns" almost topologically identical to the "war on drugs." How well has the war on drugs worked in terms of getting rid of drugs? How have our civil liberties fared under the war on drugs? Haven't we, in fact, already almost arrived at "police state" as a result of criminalizing possession of drugs?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by Rahvin, posted 12-14-2012 4:32 PM Rahvin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 23 by Rahvin, posted 12-14-2012 5:14 PM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


(3)
Message 12 of 5179 (683944)
12-14-2012 4:52 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by dronestar
12-14-2012 4:49 PM


Re: guns versus mentality
Does this recent tragedy move you to do something to prevent the next tragedy?
I think we'd all love to do something to prevent the next tragedy. But you have to prove that what you want to do is something that would prevent the next tragedy without itself being a tragedy.
For instance, why are we proposing legislation around the circumstances that cause less than 1% of gun deaths? Why not legislate on the basis of 99% of gun deaths? Or for that matter, why don't we legislate on the leading cause of death in the United States instead of drafting Federal policy on the basis of which events grab headlines?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by dronestar, posted 12-14-2012 4:49 PM dronestar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 16 by dronestar, posted 12-14-2012 5:02 PM crashfrog has not replied
 Message 17 by Tangle, posted 12-14-2012 5:02 PM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


(1)
Message 19 of 5179 (683951)
12-14-2012 5:07 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by Tangle
12-14-2012 5:02 PM


Re: guns versus mentality
And you can't and won't ever get that USA has a gun fetish and that trying to do something obvious about that can only help - you know, like making guns just a tad harder to get.
I'm happy to tell you that the USA has a gun fetish. Or, at least, many in the US fetishize guns. Many in the UK and other countries fetishize guns. Many fetish them as items of power.
Many, like you, fetish them as items of fear. But they're just tools, to be used for good or ill. That's why the "serious conversation" never goes anywhere - gun opponents present examples of guns used for ill, and gun proponents present examples of guns used for good, and then gun opponents present examples of guns being prevented from being used for ill, which they say is good, and then gun proponents present examples of guns being prevented from being used for good, which they say is bad.
And they're both right. That's the problem.
you know, like making guns just a tad harder to get.
Let's say guns were harder to get. Presumably, that would prevent the least-motivated school shooters from shooting up schools. But it wouldn't prevent the most-motivated, so schools would still be shot up. But presumably, school shootings would become incredibly rare.
But school shootings are incredibly rare. They represent not even one tenth of one percent of gun homicides. So we're already at the point where gun control is so effective it makes school shootings incredibly rare. Do you really believe we could even have no school shootings at all? Even in Japan, where it's illegal for you to own a gun there are still two or three gun murders every year.
The question is, as tragic as these school shootings are, isn't the response disproportionate to the risk? Legislating in response to school shootings is like mandating that every American has to wear a parachute at all times because a plane crash was on the news. Or, you know, it's like making airline travel incredibly inconvenient because once, some terrorists crashed a plane on purpose. It's all very well and good to say that inconvenience isn't as important as safety - but the TSA's security regime kills more than 500 Americans every year, entirely due to that inconvenience. How many people are going to be killed by your gun control? Did you even think to wonder?
Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.
Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 17 by Tangle, posted 12-14-2012 5:02 PM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 22 by dronestar, posted 12-14-2012 5:13 PM crashfrog has replied
 Message 27 by Tangle, posted 12-14-2012 5:19 PM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 26 of 5179 (683958)
12-14-2012 5:17 PM
Reply to: Message 22 by dronestar
12-14-2012 5:13 PM


Re: guns versus mentality
No, the problem is 20 dead children.
Which 20? The 20 that died in this attack on a school? Or the 20 who died today in car accidents?
How about the 20 who died yesterday? How about the 20 who will die tomorrow, and on the next day?
Kids are incredibly safe in school. They're in incredible danger on the ride in. Why spend so much effort, and kill so many people, making kids safer where they're safest, and try to make them safer where they're actually in danger?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 22 by dronestar, posted 12-14-2012 5:13 PM dronestar has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 28 by Rahvin, posted 12-14-2012 5:22 PM crashfrog has replied
 Message 29 by Tangle, posted 12-14-2012 5:24 PM crashfrog has not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


(2)
Message 32 of 5179 (683964)
12-14-2012 5:34 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by Rahvin
12-14-2012 5:14 PM


Individuals can buy and sell firearms at gun shows without performing such checks.
Nobody who buys a gun needs to run a background on the seller, that's stupid. And an individual can sell a gun without having to run a background check anywhere, not just at a gun show. That's because it's impossible for individuals to run the background check. Regardless, though, it's still illegal for any individual to sell a gun to a felon, background check or not.
So there's really no "gun show loophole." The "loophole" is that we don't demand that individuals do something that it is illegal for them to do - run background checks on other private citizens without the other person's permission.
Again, I never claimed it was a full solution. It's simply an incentive.
Yes - an incentive for the manufacture and possession of guns.
Imagine if the US government started a massive, no-limit, no-questions "cocaine buyback program." Remember, Pablo Escobar doesn't care whether his cocaine goes up your nose or down the toilet, he just cares that your money goes into his pocket. Or someone's money. Don't you think, at that point, the largest industry in about six Central American nations would be smuggling cocaine into the US in order to sell it to the US government?
The government becomes the owner of the sold firearms, not private owners, and new sales are banned.
Why do you believe that "banned" is a synonym for "impossible"? Sale and distribution of cocaine is banned, as well. Is it therefore impossible to buy cocaine in the US? Isn't it, in fact, the case that the reason cocaine distribution and sale persists to the degree it does is because of the US demand for cocaine? Most of us liberals accurate perceive the drug problem as a demand-based problem - sales exist to meet demand, and the way you get less traffic, less distribution, less importation, and less sales is to reduce demand.
I think most of us rightly understand that where there is demand, supply will move to service the demand. So your solution is to create an infinite market demand for guns? And that'll result in less guns? How does that make any sense?
If a person carries a gun in public and it is reported, they can be arrested. If a person is served a search warrant and a gun is found, that's an additional charge that can be filed even if the warrant was for something else.
Sure. That's exactly how it used to be for marijuana - nobody cared enough to search door-to-door, but if you smoked a joint in public they nabbed you. If there was some pot in your apartment when they served a noise complaint, they nabbed you. Was it enough for the drug enforcement interests?
No, of course not. All the marijuana they weren't finding was proof that they needed new powers to find it, and since we'd already agreed that marijuana was bad, and what is bad should not be allowed, they got them. Now the police can serve a "no-knock warrant" - that is, they can break into your house in the middle of the night - on the basis of a dog's reaction to your yard, your car, or your person. Or on the basis of a "tip" from a CI on the police payroll.
I see the requirement to be reducing gun ownership by private citizens.
So when will it have been reduced enough? If it's a matter of life or death, isn't complete disarmament worth the same kinds of tactics we've already established are appropriate for drugs? Maybe you disagree but won't that be the argument? If it's ok to serve a no-knock warrant to find pot, why isn't it ok to serve one to find guns? Aren't guns more dangerous than pot?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 23 by Rahvin, posted 12-14-2012 5:14 PM Rahvin has not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


(1)
Message 33 of 5179 (683965)
12-14-2012 5:36 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by Rahvin
12-14-2012 5:22 PM


Re: guns versus mentality
This is a compelling argument to focus our attention elsewhere, on ways to minimize death and injury from more likely sources that can be more easily curtailed.
But that's not an argument against gun control. It's a red herring.
It's an argument against the need for gun control, I guess; it's an argument to focus our limited energies where they will do the most good and the least harm. We can't fix all problems. Better to focus on the low-hanging fruit, and work our way up. When the roads are safe, isn't that the time to solve the problem of incredibly rare school shootings?\

This message is a reply to:
 Message 28 by Rahvin, posted 12-14-2012 5:22 PM Rahvin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 35 by Rahvin, posted 12-14-2012 5:40 PM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


(4)
Message 34 of 5179 (683966)
12-14-2012 5:36 PM
Reply to: Message 27 by Tangle
12-14-2012 5:19 PM


Re: guns versus mentality
All I can say is that as a visitor to the US, seeing guns on sale in Walmart felt like I was visiting a truly schizophrenic and dangerous country.
Sure.
Because you're irrationally afraid of guns.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 27 by Tangle, posted 12-14-2012 5:19 PM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 36 by Tangle, posted 12-14-2012 6:06 PM crashfrog has replied
 Message 37 by Kairyu, posted 12-14-2012 6:10 PM crashfrog has not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


(1)
Message 43 of 5179 (683983)
12-14-2012 6:53 PM
Reply to: Message 35 by Rahvin
12-14-2012 5:40 PM


Re: guns versus mentality
which is different from debating how we can improve firearms legislation.
I'd love to have a debate about how we can improve firearms legislation. At issue, here, is the definition of "improve", where you contend that so long as even a single school shooting happens, our legislation needs to be "improved."
I disagree, because there's a point at which strict gun control causes deaths instead of preventing them. The way that it does that is two-fold; on one hand, focusing resources chasing diminishing returns means that we're not saving lives we could have in other areas; on the other, making it hard to use guns even for good reasons means that we're losing lives who could have been saved had they had easier access to guns.
Now, the calculus of preventing three schoolchildren from being shot at the cost of one additional person dying during a robbery (for instance, or one person shot needlessly by police executing a search for an illegal firearm) is a calculus I can live with. But at some point, you're increasing the number of deaths during other crimes in exchange for a diminishing amount of schoolchildren saved. That's the stopping point, in my view - where your next legislation costs more lives than it saves - but you don't seem prepared to admit that anyone might be killed by what you propose.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 35 by Rahvin, posted 12-14-2012 5:40 PM Rahvin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 45 by Rahvin, posted 12-14-2012 7:03 PM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


(2)
Message 44 of 5179 (683984)
12-14-2012 6:56 PM
Reply to: Message 36 by Tangle
12-14-2012 6:06 PM


Re: guns versus mentality
The rest of the world looks at you and can't understand your lack of obvious action
I don't understand why you can't understand it, when it's been explained to you - we have a Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, and you don't. You don't have that.
That's why you can enact gun control and we can't. We have a law that says we can't. I don't know how to make it any simpler than that.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 36 by Tangle, posted 12-14-2012 6:06 PM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 59 by Tangle, posted 12-15-2012 2:48 AM crashfrog has not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


(4)
Message 46 of 5179 (683986)
12-14-2012 7:04 PM
Reply to: Message 38 by hooah212002
12-14-2012 6:33 PM


So ....where were all the gun owners who have all these guns "for protection" when a fucking shit load of KIDS were gunned down in school?
They were away from the school, where gun control laws said they had to be. Under Connecticut law it's illegal to carry a gun near a school.
I'm not trying to say that more guns would have made the situation better, I'm just answering your question. Where were all the people who could have used their legal guns to stop this guy? They were exactly where you said you they had to be - far away from the school.
I mean, all of you who think this tragedy justifies more strict gun control need to grapple with the fact that this tragedy happened in the state with the second-strictest gun control laws in America; the state with the fourth-lowest rate of gun ownership; the state with no "shall-issue" concealed-carry law; the state where assault rifles are banned. Isn't calling for more gun control at this point the same as observing that tax cuts ruined the economy, and therefore the answer is more tax cuts?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 38 by hooah212002, posted 12-14-2012 6:33 PM hooah212002 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 47 by hooah212002, posted 12-14-2012 7:11 PM crashfrog has replied
 Message 49 by hooah212002, posted 12-14-2012 7:32 PM crashfrog has replied
 Message 63 by Faith, posted 12-15-2012 3:55 AM crashfrog has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


(1)
Message 79 of 5179 (684053)
12-15-2012 9:44 AM
Reply to: Message 45 by Rahvin
12-14-2012 7:03 PM


Re: guns versus mentality
Evidence?
What do you mean, "evidence"? It's trivially true; guns save lives in some circumstances. Make guns less available, and you take a gun out of some number of marginal situations where it would have saved a life. Therefore your gun control has taken one life. If that lost life is matched by two or more lives saved in other circumstances, that's one thing. I think that's justifiable.
But diminishing returns kicks in, as it does in all things. Eventually you're losing one life in exchange for one life. Eventually you're losing two lives for each life saved. That's trivially true. I don't know where those inflection points are; gun control is kind of a multivariate thing, you can't really say "we need X amount of more gun control", but I just don't see how it can be denied.
The data is freely available, and it clearly shows that countries like Japan, the UK, Norway, Sweden, and so on all have significantly fewer deaths per capita due to gun violence than the US.
But that's not the right comparison, now is it? It doesn't follow that if a gun would have saved your life, that you died as a result of what would be categorized "gun violence."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 45 by Rahvin, posted 12-14-2012 7:03 PM Rahvin has not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


(1)
Message 81 of 5179 (684056)
12-15-2012 10:13 AM
Reply to: Message 49 by hooah212002
12-14-2012 7:32 PM


I expect a reasonable amount of safety to be granted my kids, what with living in the fucking United States of America as opposed to some 3rd world country ravaged by war daily. You're right, Connecticut IS supposed to be a safe as shit place.
But look, they're just as safe today as they were yesterday. It's not like this is the first school shooting ever. It's not even like a school shooting is a statistically significant way to die. It's like being hit by a meteor.
I sympathise with, and grieve for, the parents who lost children but it's still the case that the leading cause of death in children is traffic accidents.
You know how it's a problem? When god damn CONNECTICUT gets shot up.
I just don't get that. The fact that it happened in Connecticut indicates, to me, that this is an incredibly rare event that's going to happen in some statistically-uneliminateable small number of cases, regardless of our legal gun control regime.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 49 by hooah212002, posted 12-14-2012 7:32 PM hooah212002 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 84 by NoNukes, posted 12-15-2012 10:53 AM crashfrog has replied
 Message 110 by hooah212002, posted 12-15-2012 6:33 PM crashfrog has replied
 Message 137 by Larni, posted 12-16-2012 7:41 AM crashfrog has replied
 Message 157 by xongsmith, posted 12-16-2012 12:21 PM crashfrog has not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


(1)
Message 82 of 5179 (684058)
12-15-2012 10:16 AM
Reply to: Message 47 by hooah212002
12-14-2012 7:11 PM


Then maybe the laws aren't strict enough?
Then maybe the tax cuts weren't deep enough? Sure, more tax cuts, that's the ticket.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 47 by hooah212002, posted 12-14-2012 7:11 PM hooah212002 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 111 by hooah212002, posted 12-15-2012 6:35 PM crashfrog has not replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


(5)
Message 83 of 5179 (684059)
12-15-2012 10:27 AM
Reply to: Message 63 by Faith
12-15-2012 3:55 AM


Thank you for that information. I'd argue that if we were better educated about these things, and the people who possess guns were informed and trained and expected to carry them in more ordinary situations than people now think necessary, that it COULD have definitely made the situation better. it could have stopped this murder spree cold. Yes it could have.
Sure but that's not the only concern, is it? Surely we have broader concerns than keeping one school in Connecticut safe from a shooting spree. Isn't our concern broadly with the safety of every American schoolkid?
I just don't see that posting armed amateurs at a million American schools makes things safer in aggregate. Sure, you might stop the astronomically-unlikely possibility of a shooting spree - at the cost of turning a huge number of safe situations into accidental shootings.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 63 by Faith, posted 12-15-2012 3:55 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 106 by Faith, posted 12-15-2012 6:22 PM crashfrog has not replied

Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024