Summations Only

The interests aren't in competition, though. The people for whom ownership of a gun will increase safety doesn't, by definition, decrease the safety of others. It is, unless it's your plan to pass a law that nobody should privately own firearms except for those people whom it would make safer. I've not seen that proposed by you or anyone else. Percy, fully half of the participants on your side are advocating for a prohibition on the private ownership of firearms. Maybe you'd like to get with them and hammer out some of the confusion you're apparently experiencing.

I suggest you stick to the topic. We're only off it because you insist on ignoring arguments in favor of making personal accusations. But, fine, if you have no support for what you've asserted I'm happy to accept your surrender.

The position of CS - I can't speak for the NRA, but I can speak for CS because I'm reading his posts - is that private ownership of guns has a deterrent effect on homicides. Merely reducing gun deaths by shifting homicide modalities is useless.He's been pretty clear about it. When I accused you earlier of playing fast and loose vis-a-vis "gun homicides" versus "homicides", this is what I was talking about. I'm glad for once that you've decided to follow the forum guidelines against not simply repeating previous points without elaboration.

The mere presence of a gun makes everyone in the vicinity less safe. There's tons of examples, but at the moment I'm reminded of something that happened a long while back in the next town over. A man was cleaning his rifle in his apartment when it went off and killed a man sleeping on his couch in the apartment upstairs. Passing a law against private ownership of firearms is not an assertion that no one is ever safer with a gun, and I've already explained why. I think if would be very helpful if you would keep your focus on the topic and not on the people you're discussing with. You're now forcing me to defend myself over a silly point, which is one of the things you keep doing to people. There's no confusion. I referred to "most gun control advocates," not "the participant on your side," and if there's been a poll of the participants here I'm unaware of it.--Percy

That's consistent with what I just said, and CS also believes that more guns will reduce homicides (to be more precise) because of their deterrent effect. If you say so. I didn't make any comment about that concerning CS. About "shifting homicide modalities", you still haven't addressed the fact that some gun homicides will still happen in the absence of guns, some won't. Since you can't have deterrence of a gun death in a non-homicide situation, the meaning was very clear from context. How could deterrence play any role in the other kinds of gun deaths, namely suicides and accidents? This is just you making up accusations and acting out again.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Clarify first response.

I've stated several times that I have no interest in discussing this matter with people who want only to focus on gun deaths.When you're ready to discuss things that matter, give my post another reply and we can talk.Jon

The topic is gun control set in the context of the school murders - if you don't want to discuss gun deaths, why are you here?

Just to add my 2 cents, if he's saying he wants to talk about non-gun deaths, since in this thread the topic is gun control it doesn't seem like the right place for that discussion. But if he's saying he wants to distinguish between various types of gun deaths instead of lumping them all together, then I don't think anyone here has a problem with that.--Percy

I can remember or last UK school massacre which was Dunblane in 1996.The whole country was appalled by it and the response was almost unanimous "we want the guns out of our country." There were complaints and argument from gun clubs and a few individuals, but no-one - and I do mean no-one - thought the answer was to liberalise gun ownership.The whole country wanted to do whatever it took to prevent another Dunblane. Of course most people knew that it would be impossible to prevent a deranged person getting hold of a weapon and trying, but they wanted to know that they'd done what was possible to reduce that risk.The US situation is quite different, it seems that about half the population has the same feelings as the UK did but the other half desperately want to keep etheir guns and I'm really struggling to understand why.It seems like quite a tussle is going on in the US between left wing and right wing politics that underlies all this. The left wing seem to have rather 'Old' European liberal, pluralist views whilst the republicans appear to me to want to be back in the 18th century frontier country, with extreme religous beliefs, hang 'em high' justice, fear of government, unregulated capitalism and total liberty of the individual to do pretty much as he likes on his land.The gun control issue is then not about creating a safer society but about left and right wing politics - an erosion of individual rights. If things have got so politicised that rational decisions can't be made because of the main political game, it's not going to get done anytime soon.

The search function on that site coupled with me manually searching still yields no results. Has anyone else found what crash was referring to? I've even tried a google search.

As I said a while back, you have done nothing but create an environment in which only evidence that supports your position can be considered, because all other evidence is 'off topic', despite its obvious relevance to the issue of gun control's effectiveness.Which reminds me of why I stopped posting in this thread in the first place...Have a nice day.

Nope, can't find it.
Your simple request for citation has again not been met. Yes - it seems it is.

I'm not moderating this thread, I'm just the originator. This thread has been and still is unmoderated. No moderator has said anything about what evidence is allowed.My opening post was very brief ("See any news source."), so at one point when Kofh2u began posting about welfare mothers I posted one message clarifying the topic. I've don't recall even doing so much as offering opinions about admissibility of evidence, and until today you never replied to me and I never replied to you.So if you want to discuss gun control then I don't see anything stopping you.--Percy

I didn't find it either....

CRASHFROG! You apparently led us astray. Please repair yourself and get it right. No such link within your link.
Usually when posters supply a link supporting their argument, it goes directly to the page they are citing information from, not the front door into a foyer of some kind of maze you have to play games with to get to that link. You should be ashamed twice. Firstly, that you waited so long to provide the link, and secondly, that you actually STILL havent provided the link, despite trying to deceive us into thinking you had. What are we to make of you?Oh - I see now that you got suspended. Oh well. Never mind then. You have some time to think it over.