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Author | Topic: Gun Control Again | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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Cat Sci writes: The question is whether or not throwing guns into that mix will make things better or worse.
Why is that the question? And what is the point of asking it? Obtuseness as a debate strategy. Interesting. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
Theodoric writes: This is a gun nut fantasy that has no basis in reality. The founding fathers never expressed this interest and it has never happened in real life. The Whiskey Rebellion? --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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Omnivorous writes: Sure, stop every manner in which the U.S. helps funds get to terrorists--support for whoever, etc. ISIL will still have funds because they, like many terrorist organizations, are at least partly self-funded by looting, narcotics and other criminal means; they also have wealthy individual backers. All that, too, I suppose, can be countered in time, at least in theory. 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
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
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. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Fix message link
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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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 Gun
Click on this article and watch the headline change every few seconds. A couple examples:
quote: quote: --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
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:
quote: 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.
quote: This is followed by the obligatory paragraph stating that other opinions about causation exist, but it's reminiscent of the tobacco industry:
quote: 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:
quote: 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:
quote: --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
Tangle writes: Homicide Rate in the US: The U.S. homicide rate declined by nearly half (49%), from 9.3 homicides per 100,000 U.S. residents in 1992 to 4.7 in 2011, falling to the lowest level since 1963. 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:
As for the numbers, self-defense by gun is 80 times higher than that of homicide, suicide, and accidental shooting combined. Don't hear about that in the media though, because it's not sensational enough. Source: Guns in the United States — Firearms, gun law and gun control 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
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
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.
Take a look at this link that Cat Sci once provided: https://www.reddit.com/r/dgu (see Message 4043). Are you still standing by the claim that dgu is a myth that never happens? 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:
Percy in Message 1508 writes: A person just going about his daily life never knows the when or where of a criminal attack, and when the goal is murder there's no time since no one's asking you for your wallet or where the safe is. No one answering the door knows what a criminal looks like. No one suspects that some other person in a parking garage is going to shoot them. No one sitting in a taxi examines every single passerby to see if they're about to pull a gun. No one exiting their car first looks in all directions to make sure there's no one suspicious nearby as they exit. That's why it's a myth that guns are of much use against a criminal bent upon murder. Guns cause murders to a much greater degree than they prevent them, and as has been commented in this thread a number of times, the irony is that many people intent on increasing their safety are actually placing themselves in greater danger. 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
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
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.
A big part of the problem I have with your side's approach, is that you are zoomed too far out and are not focusing on the actual problem, but instead just want to pass sweeping legislation. 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).
But hey, statistics never lie and they say what they say - so you just cannot be wrong. And since your heart is in the right place, then you cannot be mislead. I realize this is a fruitless endeavor on my part, but you need to think about focused laws that address that real problem, not feel-good laws that don't help. I guess when the hard data is against you, all you can do is dis it.
I'm willing to trade the lives of a handful of felony gang members fighting turf wars in the city to prevent the injury of my neighbors out here in the sticks. 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
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
Cat Sci writes: You're talking about 3000 posts ago from 3 years back? Was it that long ago? Feels like yesterday.
I explicitly said that a person could get a jump on me. You were saying that I could never see a criminal coming, and that's still bullshit. 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:
Cat Sci in Message 113 writes: Percy writes: In the real world you'll never see the criminal coming. You'll be confronted by the criminal unexpectedly from out of the blue. Pssht. The last time a criminal approached me he walked right up to my face and asked me for help. Obviously I wasn't using "never" literally. "Never see it coming" is a common colloquial expression not intended to be interpreted literally. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
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
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
Cat Sci writes: Percy writes: Cat Sci writes: I'm willing to trade the lives of a handful of felony gang members fighting turf wars in the city to prevent the injury of my neighbors out here in the sticks. The real world isn't offering that trade. Except that's exactly what your article talked about... The repeal of the PTP somehow caused black men to shoot each other 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
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
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:
Cat Sci writes: I'm willing to trade the lives of a handful of felony gang members fighting turf wars in the city to prevent the injury of my neighbors out here in the sticks. 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):
quote: --Percy Edited by Percy, : Grammar.
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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Cat Sci writes: It seems you are capable of recognizing the Fallacy of Division when it works against you, that's excellent. When you posted Message 4510, were you aware of committing it or did you just not care? 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
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Percy Member Posts: 22507 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
caffeine writes: I do find it hard to justify gun control on this basis philosophically, however. More deaths are caused annually in the US by drugs than guns, after all, and I have always argued against drug prohibition on the grounds that the state has no right to limit my freedom to protect me from my own decisions. Wouldn't the same logic apply to guns? 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 also unconvinced by the gun-suicide link - even though it seems so intuitively obvious. 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.
The US certainly has a high suicide rate, but there are other developed countries, such as Belgium, where an even higher proportion manage to kill themselves despite strict gun laws (The UK's suicide rate, incidentally, is identical the the rate of suicide by means other than firearms in the US, but I suspect this is fortuitous coincidence). 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. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Grammar.
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