Summations Only

Obtuseness as a debate strategy. Interesting.--Percy

The Whiskey Rebellion?--Percy

The West has been surprised by the rapid rise of ISIS and its ability to project its power beyond its "borders." ISIS must have access to significant funds, and I think it's oil: U.S. Steps Up Its Attacks on ISIS-Controlled Oil Fields in Syria. ISIS's annual oil income is estimated at $500 million.--Percy

From today's New York Times: Also posted this over at Message 441.Non-Islamic extremists are apparently in a real horse race with Islamic extremists.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Fix message link

From today's New York Times: Mortality Rates: In Other Countries, You’re as Likely to Be Killed by a Falling Object as by a GunClick on this article and watch the headline change every few seconds. A couple examples:

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Gun homicides in England are about as common as deaths from agricultural machinery accidents in the United States.

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Gun homicides in Germany are about as common as deaths from thrown or falling objects in the United States.

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--Percy

Last week the New York Times ran an article titled In Missouri, Fewer Gun Restrictions and More Gun Killings. The article best describes itself, so here are some excerpts that get right to the point:

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In the past decade, Missouri has been a natural experiment in what happens when a state relaxes its gun control laws. For decades, it had one of the nation’s strongest measures to keep guns from dangerous people: a requirement that all handgun buyers get a gun permit by undergoing a background check in person at a sheriff’s office.

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But the legislature repealed that in 2007 and approved a flurry of other changes, including, last year, lowering the legal age to carry a concealed gun to 19. What has followed may help answer a central question of the gun control debate: Does allowing people to more easily obtain guns make society safer or more dangerous?
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It is difficult to isolate the impact of gun laws in a single state, given the pervasiveness of interstate trafficking and illegal markets, but a variety of measures, including a marked increase in police seizures of guns bought in-state, suggest the changes in Missouri’s laws have had some effect.

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Research by Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, found that in the first six years after the state repealed the requirement for comprehensive background checks and purchase permits, the gun homicide rate was 16 percent higher than it was the six years before. During the same period, the national rate declined by 11 percent. After Professor Webster controlled for poverty and other factors that could influence the homicide rate, and took into account homicide rates in other states, the result was slightly higher, rising by 18 percent in Missouri.

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Federal death data released this month for 2014 showed a continuation of the trend, he said. Before the repeal, from 1999 to 2006, Missouri’s gun homicide rate was 13.8 percent higher than the national rate. From 2008 to 2014, it was 47 percent higher.
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The article at this point mentions that for the first time in our nation's history, the gun death rate equaled the motor vehicle death rate.

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Other measures suggested that criminals had easier access to guns after the permit law was repealed. Professor Webster analyzed data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and found that the share of guns that were linked to crimes soon after they were bought doubled in the state from 2006 to 2010....

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This is followed by the obligatory paragraph stating that other opinions about causation exist, but it's reminiscent of the tobacco industry:

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In interviews, researchers cautioned that causation is hard to prove, and that just because the gun homicide rate rose after 2007, it does not mean the repeal was the reason. Still, most of them were convinced that the data suggested an effect.

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Mass shootings get the most attention but form a small proportion of all gun deaths. Where gun laws really help is in reducing the many more but less attention-getting killings:

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But supporters say mass shootings, while attention-grabbing, account for fewer than 2 percent of the more than 30,000 gun deaths in the United States each year. They say tougher gun laws help reduce the slow, steady stream of killings that pile up quietly in communities like this one, often poor, often of color, and cut down on suicides, which make up two-thirds of all gun deaths in the United States.

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About the impact of the gun law changes in Missouri, Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, has this to say:

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There is this idea that law-abiding citizens’ rights are being secured. In fact, it’s the people most inclined to do harm whose privileges are being secured.

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--Percy

As Tangle noted, the firearm homicide rate in the US is still an order of magnitude higher than in other western countries, and they all declined pretty much in tandem, indicating broader forces at work. What might be going on here is that the percentage of gun-owning households is declining, certainly here in the US, and that might explain the decline in the rest of the western world, too: Since the number of guns in the US continues to rise, obviously the number of households owning multiple guns must be increasing: Are you sure that's the right link? The word "defense" doesn't even appear on that page, let alone "self-defense".As a society we seem to we wounding and murdering a great many friends and relatives just so we can be prepared to wound and murder actual criminals who are often unarmed. Take a look at this link that Cat Sci once provided: https://www.reddit.com/r/dgu (see Message 4043). The headlines on the current first page describe a wide variety of shooting victims: home intruders, burglars, robbers, armed robbers, carjackers, girlfriends, sons and fiances. We should all be in favor of approaches that reduce the number of injured and killed due to guns, because our own loved ones will be among those saved.--Percy

We need to work cooperatively to find ways to reduce gun deaths. As your quotes from the NYT article I provided make clear, guns as toys or status symbols exacerbate the problem, but I don't see any reason that should affect our resolve to reduce gun deaths.Reducing the number of households with guns obviously helps. This graph I showed earlier shows household gun ownership declining: And this graph shows the homicide rate dropping roughly in tandem with that decline: Statistics show that a gun is more likely to be used on friends or family than in thwarting a crime. Reducing the prevalence of guns reduces gun deaths. Making guns safer would do the same. That's not the argument I made. You were in the middle of making a somewhat daffy claim of superhuman alertness to threats, that no one could ever get the drop on you when you had your gun. In Message 1508 I replied: What I was actually talking about in the message you replied to was not the effectiveness of guns against a criminal bent on murder. That's much more rare than a friend or family member coming after you with a gun. For people who are being targeted by criminal murderers, I guess a gun might be very useful. For everyone else, the likelihood is that the gun will be used against you or someone you know.--Percy

When I began that paragraph with, "A gun-packing good guy getting the jump on a criminal is a myth," I was back to addressing your claim that no armed criminal intent on murdering you could ever get the jump on you while you were walking around in public with your gun, because you were ever vigilant. The "gun-packing" phrase (as opposed to "households with guns") was intended to make clear that that's what that paragraph was about, and that argument for concealed carry is still absurd. Actually, I'm willing to consider any reasonable approach that would reduce gun deaths. You oppose approaches that would make guns less available (gun control) or less fun (making guns safer). I guess when the hard data is against you, all you can do is dis it. The real world isn't offering that trade. That's just your fantasy. What is true is that the presence of a gun in a household makes gun injury or death more likely. Studies show this, and the national statistics show gun deaths and the number of households with guns declining roughly in tandem.--Percy

Was it that long ago? Feels like yesterday. That's not how I remember the discussion. I don't know what posts you're looking at, but I did find this from Message 1113 that pretty much reflects the attitude I remember from you: Obviously I wasn't using "never" literally. "Never see it coming" is a common colloquial expression not intended to be interpreted literally.--Percy

Could we return the discussion to a serious level? The concern is about gun prevalence in the general population being responsible for too many gun deaths. By no logic does that imply disarming the military would address the problem.--Percy

The article didn't at all make the connection you're claiming. That's your own concoction.It's beginning to feel like you're not taking the discussion seriously, that you're just throwing random nonsense out there as a diversion.--Percy

You can quote the entire article (In Missouri, Fewer Gun Restrictions and More Gun Killings) if you like, but it still doesn't support what you said, which was: The article does not say anything like this. It does not say that an increased urban gun death rate was accompanied by a decreased gun rural death rate. The "trade" that you are claiming was made in Missouri did not happen in the real world.What actually happened is that the urban death rate went up dramatically while the rural rate must have remained unchanged (the journal paper doesn't comment on rural rates: Effects of the repeal of Missouri's handgun purchaser licensing law on homicides), but both the urban and rural suicide rates increased substantially. Here are some relevant excerpts from an interview with the paper's author, Daniel Webster, from this past Sunday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri homicide, suicide rates jumped after repeal of background checks, researcher says):

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With the repeal of the 2007 law, we see a sharp increase in both homicides and suicides committed with guns. Importantly, there were no such changes in homicides and suicides committed by other means.
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It shows the new norm in Missouri, which is a higher level of gun violence. It’s an increase of roughly 50 homicides a year because of the change and 60 additional suicides a year.
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We have a study looking at what happened in Connecticut when they did the reverse of what Missouri did. They had a significant reduction of homicides committed with guns and no change in homicides committed by other means. And, we saw a significant decline in gun-related suicides.
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Having a gun in a farmhouse in a rural place in Missouri does elevate the risk for suicide, but probably has limited or no effect on street or community violence. The availability of guns increases the chance of lethal outcomes. The vast majority of people who attempt suicide by means other than a gun go on to survive.

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--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

I'm looking directly at Straggler's 3-line message, and I can't see how you're making any sense. Are you sure you referenced the right message?It's been gratifying in this thread I started so long ago that for the most part it has been a coherent and constructive discussion. It would be nice if we could keep it that way. If you have a reasonable point then please make it in a way that can be understood. And if you're just trying to throw the thread into disarray, then please stop.--Percy

I think our drug laws are as misguided as our gun laws. I never intended to advocate for specific solutions in this thread, but just to throw a couple general ideas out there for drugs and guns, we could tax what are now illicit drugs to fund drug education and rehabilitation programs, and to fund research to make them safer. And we could tax guns (the NRA claims gun taxes are illegal) to fund gun education and restitution programs, and to fund research into how to reduce gun deaths and make guns themselves safer. I'm not myself aware of arguments that guns are why the US suicide rate is too high. I think just hearing the numbers, that more than 20,000 people in the US kill themselves with guns every year, is what shocks people. I don't know that apples-to-apples comparisons between statistics from different countries, with all the differences in definitions and backgrounds and histories and standard practices and so forth, are that meaningful. What I do believe is that the suicide rate in the US is too high, the suicide rate in Belgium is too high, the suicide rate in the UK is too high...You made an excellent point when you said that one's life shouldn't end just because one's state of mind had reached low ebb and a gun was available. Making guns less available would save a great many lives in the US. Checking out a little Wikipedia information about suicides I see that only around 15% of people with a failed suicide attempt eventually do commit suicide, and of course most of those failed attempts could not have used guns since the success rate of suicide by gun is the highest of all methods. This means more than 85% of those attempting suicide who would have used a gun were one available would be permanently saved.That could be more than enough reason to reduce gun prevalence all by itself.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.