Two wrongs don't make a right (the (ir)rationality of revenge) - also gun control

How are you RAZD? OOC RAZD, what would be effective gun controls that would have prevented this event from occurring?I frequently see and hear individuals speak of how better controls could have prevented X incident, but rarely do they provide a real plan.So, what improvements would you suggest RAZD? Also, what preventive measures would you implant to prevent criminals from purchasing guns? QFT.Might I also add, "Guns don't cause problems, people cause problems" Seems you have dug to the core of the issue. It isn't that Cho was armed with a gun that caused the problem. Any old tree branch, or shard of glass would have done well for him to kill a few students before he was "taken out".It is clear the gun was merely an extension of his mind's effort in alleviating the stress of what it perceived reality should be, and what it was. Obviously a psychological/psychiatric effort could have done him some good, and saved some people's lives.So how do we solve this social malaise? I am going to bold what I perceive to be the true issue.Guns are a tool, rarely are they treated as such. The glamorization of guns in Hollywood action films certainly hasn't helped.I can't tell you how many parents I have run into that don't keep their guns in a gun safe, or locked tough box, With small children living in their home!.I have called these people idiots, to their faces, as they greatly increase the chance of accidental death to their child through easy access to their guns.Let me relate a story.An individual was relating a story on how unruly his 3 year old son was. I stated that his son was probably like any other 3 year old, and to hang it tough.This is when the kicker came, and it nearly knocked the wind out of me.He then went on to explain how little I knew on how "bad" his son was, and told me a story which involved his son hitting his daughter. He told me he lashed his son's bare buttocks several times with a leather belt, and then promptly told the boy to "Go to his room".His boy left to "walk to his room" and return about a minute later with the father's shotgun, which was loaded!I interrupted the individual right at that point in the story and called him an idiot, right then and there for not having his gun locked up.The father then went on to tell me how didn't have to have his guns locked up because he knew "how to handle them... etc etc" (think of any other macho cliche you can"Clear cut, most people are idiots when it comes to knowing the destructive capacity of guns, and sadly their children have to suffer. Yes, that is a true example of why not everyone should be allowed to possess the power and authority of a firearm.Looking forward to your reply.

Do you really think that introducing access to guns in British society would make places like the Gurnos estate safer? Honestly? Well proven? I looked up one of the authors you cite and found this. http://pearlyabraham.tripod.com/htmls/myth-guns2.html I don't remember citing this as evidence in any way? I simply stated that I thought arming the populations of places like Brixton and Merthyr, places already considered "dangerous" by most British standards, would be a truly insane thing to do.I remain of that opinion. I would argue that I remain of that opinion based on the evidence available.

So your argument is that you have no facts? All the facts seem to strongly indicate that they facilitate people's ability to kill each other.But I forgot you don't care about facts.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

LOL! I like the fact that while I'm talking about crime rates you cherry-picked firearm homicide figures.What have you shown other than more guns lead to more gun-related deaths? Maybe you'd also like to demonstrate how more cars result in more car-related deaths.But since you're so keen on figures, allow me to indulge you: Gun ownership (guns/residents):
Switzerland : 0.46 (3 out of 34)
UK : 0.056 (29 out of 34)so we've established that Switzerland has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world, more than *8 times* that of the UK. Let's move on, You're right, I concede that Switzerland's crime rate isn't among the "lowest in the world". It's still *quite low* and more importantly: it's much lower than other countries with much lower gun ownership rates. Let's have a look, shall we? Burglaries (per capita)
# 7 out of 54 United Kingdom: 13.8321 per 1,000 people
# 13 out of 54 Switzerland: 8.06303 per 1,000 people
weighted average: 5.1 per 1,000 people Murders (per capita)
# 46 out of 62 United Kingdom: 0.0140633 per 1,000 people
# 56 out of 62 Switzerland: 0.00921351 per 1,000 people
weighted average: 0.1 per 1,000 people Total Crimes (per capita)
# 6 out of 60 United Kingdom: 85.5517 per 1,000 people
# 20 out of 60 Switzerland: 36.1864 per 1,000 people
weighted average:33.7 per 1,000 people Robberies (per capita)
# 8 out of 64 United Kingdom: 1.57433 per 1,000 people
# 43 out of 64 Switzerland: 0.290827 per 1,000 people
weighted average:1.0 per 1,000 peopleThe Murder figures in particular are quite interesting: despite 8 times the number of guns in Switzerland than in the UK, the UK murder rate is more than double that of Switzerland! Which puts your gun homicide rates into perspective. It also puts to sleep the argument that proliferation of guns causes an increase in violence. That you don't have one!

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

In your mind, perhaps. Not in this tread however.And for the record, my argument has been that gun ownership seems to discourage certain types of crime, property crime in particular. Statistical data from the US and Switzerland support my argument. Yet related stats show you wrong: Murder rate (per capita)# 46 United Kingdom: 0.0140633 per 1,000 people
# 47 Italy: 0.0128393 per 1,000 people
# 48 Spain: 0.0122456 per 1,000 people
# 49 Germany: 0.0116461 per 1,000 people
# 50 Tunisia: 0.0112159 per 1,000 people
# 51 Netherlands: 0.0111538 per 1,000 people
# 52 New Zealand: 0.0111524 per 1,000 people
# 53 Denmark: 0.0106775 per 1,000 people
# 54 Norway: 0.0106684 per 1,000 people
# 55 Ireland: 0.00946215 per 1,000 people
# 56 Switzerland: 0.00921351 per 1,000 people
# 57 Indonesia: 0.00910842 per 1,000 people
# 58 Greece: 0.0075928 per 1,000 people Gun ownership (per 100 residents)3 Switzerland 46.0
11 Germany 30.0
12 New Zealand 26.8
14 Greece 23.0
22 Italy 12.1
24 Spain 11.0
29 United Kingdom 5.6 Once again, the numbers prove you wrong: Burglary rate (per capita)
# 7 United Kingdom: 13.8321 per 1,000 people
# 13 Switzerland: 8.06303 per 1,000 people
# 31 Greece: 1.49035 per 1,000 people
# 44 Spain: 0.591359 per 1,000 peopleEdited by Legend, : added source for stats

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

Hi Michamus, hope you made it back well from Afghan.I haven't had the time to debate in this thread for a while but I'm following it.Just wanted to point out something about your question(s). Here's a good article that addresses that: Gun Control

quote:

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Consider that since the Columbine High School shootings in 1999, not a single major gun control law has been passed by Congress. In fact, restrictions on certain weapons have actually been relaxed.

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In 2003, Congress passed a measure that prevents local enforcement agencies from consulting police in other states regarding firearms traces.

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Then in 2004, the assault weapons ban enacted by the Bill Clinton administration expired. That expiration included the ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, which allow as many as 33 cartridges to be loaded at a time to allow more rapid fire. The pistols used in Norris Hall had those high-capacity clips, which greatly increased Cho Seung-Hui's firepower.

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But I usually think where there's a will there's a way, and people who have the will to cause harm will do so no matter what laws are implemented. However, reducing their fire power can help the overall casualty numbers. So while agree that the event probably wasn't avoidable, I think that the high number of casualties was made possible by the legal sales of assault weapons. Those weapons should be absolutely illegal IMO.Frankly, if one needs an assault rifle for home defense, they should really think about moving. You kinda shoot (no pun intended) yourself in the foot here. If it's a criminal buying a gun, as in: already determined to have a criminal background, then by not allowing people with prior criminal records to buy guns takes care of "criminals buying guns." Right?- OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.

Can you provide the source of your stats? No need to reply to this post just edit your post to include your sources.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

No, not really. The anti-rightsists argue for stricter gun control, more laws regulating guns, more restrictions on what guns can be bought, sold, etc. ... Such things require the writing of laws, the debating of laws, the passing of laws, the passing of laws again, the approval of laws, and the enforcement of laws, (sometimes the reviewing of laws and the amending of laws, etc). All of those things require money, time, etc.. This money, time, etc. is a cost, a resource cost. It is money, time, etc. that could be spent on many trillions of other things. As someone proposing stricter gun control, it is up to anti-rightsists to show how the expenditure of such resources is a cost worth the end benefit.The first step is to show that there is a benefit. The next step is to measure the benefit. The third step is to measure the cost. And the final step is to subtract Cost from Benefit and hope that your result is positive , i.e., that there is a net gain in benefit.Now, this is what the pro-gun-banners must do. All I must do is sit back and show where they are wrong. As the good attorneys always say: the burden of proof rests with the prosecution. Well, I burden thee! Present thy proofs or rest thy case! So far, the only evidence presented has been RAZD's mockery of sanity with his reference to firearms deaths. And, as I promised, I showed it was ridiculous, irrelevant, silly, goofy, disingenuous, foolish, and above all unsupporting. I am not Legend... forget that not.

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[O]ur tiny half-kilogram rock just compeltely fucked up our starship. - Rahvin

Thanks for supplying the sources to your stats.Can I ask what the reason is for the ommitted numbers in your lists?Looks like cherry picking to me but I'll let you defend your omissions before I make that accusation.

what ommitted numbers? What I did was that I went to Nationmaster and selected the murder rates for UK and the subsequent 12 countries below it. I then looked up the gun ownership list for those countries and all of them (at least the ones that appear on the list) have a higher ownership rate than the UK. I then correlated these countries against the Burglary rate figures on Nationmaster and lo and behold they all but one had lower burglary rates than the UK too. My only intentional ommission is New Zealand which has a slightly higher rate than the UK (# 6 New Zealand: 16.2763 per 1,000 people).

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

You didn't think the US position in your quoted stats lists was relevant in any way to this discussion?

If only we had elected officials to do this job... shit! Maybe we should have elections and vote to have appointed government employees who's job it would be to write laws, debate laws, pass laws, approve laws, enforce laws, etc... Oh wait, WE ALREADY DO.And there's an entire budget for them to write laws, debate laws, pass laws, approve laws and enforce laws... And guess who pays for that? Such as military weapons and international wars? This is bullshit. Why do you consider this a party divided issue? Why is it up to one (media created) side to be responsible, as citizens mind you, for the cost effectiveness of gun control? Don't we have elected officials who are PAID to handle this? - Or are they too busy being lobbied by the pro-gun people and the NRA to do their fucking jobs? - Sad. So now it's pro-gun-banners? First it was anti-rightsists arguing for stricter gun control, now it's banning? Make up your mind. Which fake group do you have a problem with?In this entire thread, no one is arguing for a gun "ban," except for personal opinions perhaps, I expressed some, but I was also being realistic in saying that a ban won't happen.It's just gun control, not gun bans, that we are debating.- Oni

Like I said I started off with countries with lower murder rates than the UK so the US wasn't amongst them.But, you know what, I was the first one on this thread to compare UK with the US -and only with the US- as I insisted it's the country closest to us both culturally and socially so many other factors that affect crime could be narrowed down. I was then accused of cherry-picking and selectively comparing and such like so then I started bringing other countries stats into the equation.Karma's a wonderful thing, isn't it?

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

Maybe it is.Can I ask you what you think the effect of American style gun laws would be on a place like the Gurnos?What would be considered "Karma" on the Gurnos estate? We both know the place well. Yet at least in part we have both come to diamterically opposite conclusions regarding the world based on that experience.Lets try and apply what we each think to a situation that we both know and see where we ultimately disagree.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

In Message 259 did you not say? Is this what we call moving the goal posts?First you say they have among the lowest crime rate in the world. Now when that is proven wrong, you change the argument and say well compared to UK they do.It helps to know facts before you pull them out of your ass.Also, I love how you cherry pick your stats.How about Murder by Firearm (per capita)? Do you ignore anything that doesn't support you?Comparing UK and Switzerland is a bogus comparison in many ways. Switzerland is a much more homogeneous society then UK.Do you think poverty might be affecting these figures more than gun ownership?

quote:

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A report issued in 2005 by the UN agency UNICEF on child poverty in 26 OECD countries found that 6.8% of children in Switzerland were affected. Families were defined as poor if they received less than half the median income for their country. In this respect only the Scandinavians had a lower rate. Switzerland tied with the Czech Republic. The rate in Australia was 14.7%, in Canada 14.9, in Great Britain 15.4, and the US 21.9%.

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SourceOr do you throw out everything that doesn't not support your views?Switzerland also score higher on the Human Development Index than UK, or the US for that matter.
Human Development Index - WikipediaAny chance that might have an effect on number of robberies and crime in general?Oh wait according to you the ONLY thing that affects crime rates is gun ownership.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts