|
Author
|
Topic: Guns
|
nator
Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: 12-09-2001
|
Re: Lies on top of lies
quote:
If a woman keeps a handgun in her purse, she can use it as a weapon much more easily than mace or a knife.
source For all of the promises made on behalf of the self-defense handgun, using a handgun to kill in self-defense is a rare event.5 Looking at both men and women, over the past 20 years, on average only two percent of the homicides committed with handguns in the United States were deemed justifiable or self-defense homicides by civilians.6 To put it in perspective, more people are struck by lightning each year than use handguns to kill in self-defense.7
|
nator
Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: 12-09-2001
|
|
Message 106 of 301 (398103)
04-29-2007 11:00 AM
|
Reply to: Message 83 by Jon
04-29-2007 3:36 AM
|
|
Re: Lies on top of lies
quote:
Sure, at first that might have been the reason for inventing the gun, but that doesn't mean someone now cannot get one for a totally different reason. Maybe they are a gun collector. I mean, what you are saying is similar to asserting that the only reason anyone would want to collect”own”a silver dollar would be to spend it. They get their dollar, and sometimes take it out to look at it... show it off, etc. Well, can they not also do the same with the gun? Does their only reason for getting it have to be to use it for its intended purpose?
They can collect it, but it should then be permanently rendered incapbable of firing ammunition. Edited by nator, : No reason given.
| This message is a reply to: | | | Message 83 by Jon, posted 04-29-2007 3:36 AM | | Jon has not replied |
|
nator
Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: 12-09-2001
|
|
|
Message 107 of 301 (398106)
04-29-2007 11:05 AM
|
Reply to: Message 89 by Jon
04-29-2007 4:44 AM
|
|
Re: Sexual Assualt vs Rape vs Hand gun
quote:
Personally, if someone started grabbing me in a sexual manner, and I had a gun, and the legal right to do so, I'd put a bullet between their eyes faster than they could blink.
Wow. See, it's people like you that give lots and lots of credence to the gun control argument. Edited by nator, : No reason given.
| This message is a reply to: | | | Message 89 by Jon, posted 04-29-2007 4:44 AM | | Jon has not replied |
|
nator
Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: 12-09-2001
|
Re: You, on the other hand, are a freedom fighter?
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you're going to need bigger guns. quote:
i know. which is why i've decided to start opposing all size- or action-based gun control.
But it won't matter, Brenna. Unless you are suggesting that every private citizen and every town and city spend billions of dollars arming themselves to the teeth, it simply won't matter. Any invading military will not be stopped. The US military certainly won't be stopped. Liberalizing gun laws will only get more people killed.
|
nator
Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: 12-09-2001
|
quote:
Without guns there would be no one shot to death, and yet, we seem to forget that murder was around long before their inception.
It is the ease of killing from a distance that is the issue with guns, juggs. It is quite difficult, more intimate, and far more risky to the attacker to stab or bludgeon a victim to death.
quote:
But the fundamental problem is that we are bound by the understanding that there are very real consequences for using guns inappropriately. Cho knew it. But he did it anyway.
Cho was insane. He lied on his application to buy the guns, saying that he was never involuntarily committed to a mental instution. Why on earth should we depend upon the person wanting to buy the gun to be truthful?
quote:
When we buy a car we know that we are not supposed to use them for vehicular homicide. But occasionally that happens anyway. When it does happen, should we blame the manufacturer or should we blame the person?
Cars are not manufactured for the sole purpose of killing other people.
quote:
Making guns illegal doesn't stop crime because taking it away from people who use it for protection are now disarmed.
Can you show statistics that support the contention that many crimes are prevented with guns used in self-defense?
|
nator
Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: 12-09-2001
|
Re: You, on the other hand, are a freedom fighter?
quote:
just that we bring back local armories, especially in border areas and around the capitals and big cities. it has been clearly demonstrated in every major disaster in the last 6 years that the federal government is incapable of responding properly to domestic issues (and clearly not so well to foreign ones either). we need to be able and prepared to respond--for our own safety.
What do you think the rates of familiarity with guns and knowledge of gun safety are now compared with the days where armories were common?
|
nator
Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: 12-09-2001
|
Re: You, on the other hand, are a freedom fighter?
If you aren't going to institute a mandatory program of marksmanship and gun safety for everyone, then having a local stockpile of weapons for the citizenry to use should some foreign or domestic military threat emerge sounds like a waste of money at best and a disaster waiting to happen at worst.
|
nator
Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: 12-09-2001
|
Cho's manifesto clearly indicates someone who was profoundly disturbed and incoherent. He had been involuntarily committed to a mental institution. He had been referred to mental health services several times. I think in light of these facts, chances are very, very good that he was not playing with a full deck.
|
nator
Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: 12-09-2001
|
|
|
Message 130 of 301 (398150)
04-29-2007 12:47 PM
|
|
|
here's your stats
Just a moment...
Statistically, the United States is not a particularly violent society. Although gun proponents like to compare this country with hot spots like Colombia, Mexico, and Estonia (making America appear a truly peaceable kingdom), a more relevant comparison is against other high-income, industrialized nations. The percentage of the U.S. population victimized in 2000 by crimes like assault, car theft, burglary, robbery, and sexual incidents is about average for 17 industrialized countries, and lower on many indices than Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. "The only thing that jumps out is lethal violence," Hemenway says. Violence, pace H. Rap Brown, is not "as American as cherry pie," but American violence does tend to end in death. The reason, plain and simple, is guns. We own more guns per capita than any other high-income country”maybe even more than one gun for every man, woman, and child in the country. A 1994 survey numbered the U.S. gun supply at more than 200 million in a population then numbered at 262 million, and currently about 35 percent of American households have guns. (These figures count only civilian guns; Switzerland, for example, has plenty of military weapons per capita.) "It's not as if a 19-year-old in the United States is more evil than a 19-year-old in Australia”there's no evidence for that," Hemenway explains. "But a 19-year-old in America can very easily get a pistol. That's very hard to do in Australia. So when there's a bar fight in Australia, somebody gets punched out or hit with a beer bottle. Here, they get shot." In general, guns don't induce people to commit crimes. "What guns do is make crimes lethal," says Hemenway. They also make suicide attempts lethal: about 60 percent of suicides in America involve guns. "If you try to kill yourself with drugs, there's a 2 to 3 percent chance of dying," he explains. "With guns, the chance is 90 percent." Gun deaths fall into three categories: homicides, suicides, and accidental killings. In 2001, about 30,000 people died from gunfire in the United States. Set this against the 43,000 annual deaths from motor-vehicle accidents to recognize what startling carnage comes out of a barrel. The comparison is especially telling because cars "are a way of life," as Hemenway explains. "People use cars all day, every day”and 'motor vehicles' include trucks. How many of us use guns?" Suicides accounted for about 58 percent of gun fatalities, or 17,000 to 18,000 deaths, in 2001; another 11,000 deaths, or 37 percent, were homicides, and the remaining 800 to 900 gun deaths were accidental. For rural areas, the big problem is suicide; in cities, it's homicide. ("In Wyoming it's hard to have big gang fights," Hemenway observes dryly. "Do you call up the other gang and drive 30 miles to meet up?") Homicides follow a curve similar to that of motor-vehicle fatalities: rising steeply between ages 15 and 21, staying fairly level from there until age 65, then rising again with advanced age. Men between 25 and 55 commit the bulk of suicides, and younger males account for an inflated share of both homicides and unintentional shootings. (Males suffer all injuries, including gunshots, at much higher rates than females.)
| Replies to this message: | | | Message 131 by Nuggin, posted 04-29-2007 12:51 PM | | nator has not replied | | | Message 132 by nator, posted 04-29-2007 1:14 PM | | nator has not replied |
|
nator
Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: 12-09-2001
|
|
|
Message 132 of 301 (398158)
04-29-2007 1:14 PM
|
Reply to: Message 130 by nator
04-29-2007 12:47 PM
|
|
more from that article
The ways in which people die by guns would not make a good television cop show. Rarely does a suburban homeowner beat a burglar to the draw in his living room at 3 a.m. Few urban pedestrians thwart a mugger by brandishing a pistol. "We have done four surveys on self-defense gun use," Hemenway says. "And one thing we know for sure is that there's a lot more criminal gun use than self-defense gun use. And even when people say they pulled their gun in 'self-defense,' it usually turns out that there was just an escalating argument”at some point, people feel afraid and draw guns." Hemenway has collected stories of self-defense gun use by simply asking those who pulled guns what happened. A typical story might be: "We were in the park drinking. Drinking led to arguing. We ran to our cars and got our guns." Or: "I was sitting on my porch. A neighbor came up and we got into a fight. He threw a beer at me. I went inside and got my gun." Hemenway has sent verbatim accounts of such incidents to criminal-court judges, asking if the "self-defense" gun use described was legal. "Most of the time," he says, "the answer was no." Most murderers are not hired killers. Instead, killings happen during fights between rival gangs or angry spouses, or even from road rage, and leave deep regret in their wake. "How often might you appropriately use a gun in self-defense?" Hemenway asks rhetorically. "Answer: zero to once in a lifetime. How about inappropriately”because you were tired, afraid, or drunk in a confrontational situation? There are lots and lots of chances. When your anger takes over, it's nice not to have guns lying around." Many suicides, similarly, are impulsive acts. Follow-up interviews with people who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge reveal that few of them tried suicide again. One survivor volunteered this epiphany after jumping: "I realized that all the problems I had in life were solvable”except one: I'm in midair." In the United States, suicide rates are high in states with an abundance of guns”southern and western mountain states, for example”and lower in places like New Jersey, New England, or Hawaii, where guns are relatively scarce. Nine case-control studies have shown that guns in the house are a risk factor for suicide. Firearms turn the agonizing into the irreversible. Virtually all industrialized nations have stronger firearms laws than the United States. We have no national law, for example, requiring a license to own a gun (though some states require one). Almost all other countries have licensure laws, and many demand that gun owners undergo training, also not required here. Hemenway scoffs at the rote objection, "A determined criminal will always get a gun," responding, "Yes, but a lot of people aren't that determined. I'm sure there are some determined yacht buyers out there, but when you raise the price high enough, a lot of them stop buying yachts." In most of these United States, many types of gun sale trigger neither a background check nor a paper trail. "You can go to a gun show, flea market, the Internet, or classified ads and buy a gun”no questions asked," Hemenway says. It is illegal to sell a firearm to a convicted felon or for criminal purposes, although sting operations have proved that some licensed vendors flout even this proscription. "In 1998, police officers from Chicago (where possessing a new handgun is illegal) posed as local gang members and went firearms shopping in the suburbs," Hemenway writes. "In store after store, clerks willingly sold powerful handguns to these agents, who made it clear that they intended to use these guns to 'take care of business' on the streets of Chicago."
| This message is a reply to: | | | Message 130 by nator, posted 04-29-2007 12:47 PM | | nator has not replied |
|
nator
Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: 12-09-2001
|
|
|
Message 135 of 301 (398168)
04-29-2007 2:32 PM
|
Reply to: Message 133 by Jon
04-29-2007 2:22 PM
|
|
Read the article I most recently posted. The US crime rate is roughly the same as 17 other comparable industrialized nations. The difference is that lethal violence is much higher here. The difference is handguns.
quote:
You can take away the guns... but the minorities will still be oppressed. You can send all the poor children to good schools... but the minorities will still be oppressed. You can pass”and have passed”laws declaring equality... but the minorities will still be oppressed.
It's better to be "oppressed" than dead. Besides, your error is in assuming that we can only ever work on one societal problem at a time.
| This message is a reply to: | | | Message 133 by Jon, posted 04-29-2007 2:22 PM | | Jon has replied |
| Replies to this message: | | | Message 138 by Jon, posted 04-29-2007 2:50 PM | | nator has replied |
|
nator
Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: 12-09-2001
|
quote:
They say that Cho had access to guns, therefore guns are bad.
No. It should read, "Cho had ridiculously easy access to guns, therefore it is clearly far too easy to get guns."
|
nator
Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: 12-09-2001
|
|
|
Message 154 of 301 (398192)
04-29-2007 5:28 PM
|
Reply to: Message 138 by Jon
04-29-2007 2:50 PM
|
|
Re: ”CREDIBLE sources anybody?”
quote:
Well, no. I will read an article when it has raw data in it, or when it at least cites the sources of its raw data so I can go find it myself. As far as I know, the whole damn article could be just made up. Perhaps more credible sources?
Um, the guy stating stuff in the article IS the researcher. He is discussing HIS research on gun violence. Do you really think that Harvard magazine (as in the world-famous prestigious Harvard University) is in the habit of publishing completely spurious articles? Why don't you read the article and then tell me the specific flaws it has? You wouldn't know what to do with raw data, anyway, Jon, so it's silly of you to demand it. (It just occurred to me that you might not realize that it is very rare for even highly technical professional science journal articles to have the raw data in them. What you see in those charts and graphs and tables is not raw data, but the data that has been through statistical analysis. The raw data would appear as pages and pages and pages of numbers on Excel spreadsheets. Scientists will supply it to other scientists upon request but without the analysis it does nobody any good.)
quote:
It's the oppression that causes the violence, not the guns.
Yep. But it's the easy access to handguns that causes nearly all the death. People would be just as inclined to be violent, and would act on those inclinations just as often, but fewer people would die without such easy access to handguns. Why is this so hard to understand?
| This message is a reply to: | | | Message 138 by Jon, posted 04-29-2007 2:50 PM | | Jon has replied |
| Replies to this message: | | | Message 155 by Jon, posted 04-29-2007 5:41 PM | | nator has replied |
|
nator
Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: 12-09-2001
|
|
|
Message 156 of 301 (398195)
04-29-2007 5:45 PM
|
Reply to: Message 152 by Jon
04-29-2007 4:31 PM
|
|
Re: Got me? Got who? :-S
But that doesn't change the fact that owning the handgun makes you more likely to be a victim of violence across the board. quote:
Can you substantiate that claim with even a shred of evidence?
Yes. Read my posts in this thread.
quote:
Not to mention the fact that there has been violence in these communities long before guns were all that common.
Yes, but the lethality of that violence was much less before handguns were cheap and easy to get.
quote:
1)Statistics show no sign of [legal] guns and crime being related; why do you still think it's the guns' fault?
Jesus H. Christ on a pogostick, nearly all I've done on this thread is post statistics that show the opposite of your above claim. Perhaps you can post some actual numbers yourself?
quote:
3) People A have been killing off people B since the time there were people... whether you think that was 100 kya, 6 kya, or 2 mya. Haven't you overlooked the fact that people still kill people with or without guns?
Jesus fucking Christ! Nobody is saying that all violence would disappear if guns also disappeared, so you and everybody else, STOP USING THAT STRAWMAN. Now, I am going to type this, for I think the fourth time in this thread. Please read it. More than once if you have to. Easy access to guns makes the violence that is going to happen anyway much more lethal, especially easily concealed handguns that can fire many rounds very quickly.
| This message is a reply to: | | | Message 152 by Jon, posted 04-29-2007 4:31 PM | | Jon has not replied |
|
nator
Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: 12-09-2001
|
|
|
Message 157 of 301 (398196)
04-29-2007 5:55 PM
|
Reply to: Message 155 by Jon
04-29-2007 5:41 PM
|
|
Re: ”CREDIBLE sources anybody?”
You wouldn't know what to do with raw data, anyway, Jon, so it's silly of you to demand it. quote:
Personal attack? Our debate is over.
It appears that you are rather transparently looking for a way to get out of this argument because you are losing so miserably, but this ain't it. Are you saying that you actually DO know what to do with raw scientific data? Like, you've done statistical analysis of experimental results, or taken a scientific statistics course? I certainly wouldn't even begin to know what to do, as I have zero background nor any training whatsoever in statistical analysis. It is not a personal attack to presume that a non-science major freshman in college doesn't understand scientific statistical analysis. I'm sorry if I bruised your tender feelings regarding your educational levels.
| This message is a reply to: | | | Message 155 by Jon, posted 04-29-2007 5:41 PM | | Jon has not replied |
|
™ Version 4.2