Summations Only

I'm not sure why this isn't getting across, so let me try again.People without the necessary training are not aware of what they don't know. How could they be? They haven't been trained to distinguish between these situations:

• Drawing the firearm is a good idea.
• Drawing the firearm is a bad idea.
• You don't know if drawing the firearm is a good or a bad idea, so drawing is a bad idea.

Someone without training has no competence at telling which of these situations he is in, and so when a situation arises he is very likely to make the wrong decision. We've been over this. Shouldn't you have continued this paragraph with, "Now I know it's been argued that..." More likely than not. That's bad odds for gun owners no matter how you cut it. I'm sure 95% of gun owners believe the same thing. Obviously most of them are wrong. What leads you to believe you're one of the special people who are safer with a gun than without?--Percy

You're drawing an incorrect logical inference. Undeniably the average gun owner will far more often do the wrong thing than a trained and highly competent gun owner. I'm sure most gun owners do acknowledge the dangers, but that wasn't my point, nor was it what I said. You said you're not less safe owning a gun, and I said I'm sure 95% of gun owners believe the same thing. The statistics say the odds strongly favor being less safe with a gun, but the vast majority of gun owners don't believe that. That's why so many gun rights advocates argue that they need guns for personal defense, because they believe carrying the gun increases their safety. Many gun rights advocates are making this precise point through both the media and the Internet. Including you. Interesting phrasing, and you avoid the question and don't say what leads you to believe this. Anyway, the data says that being in the vicinity of a gun makes you less safe. If you think you might be more safe in spite of the statistics then you are very likely wrong, and you don't seem to know why you think this.There's an interesting article at Wikipedia titled Illusory superiority. It explains the effect where most people believe they're above average, which is, of course, impossible. For example, 80% of participants in a study believed they were above average drivers. The illusory superiority effect probably explains why most gun owners believe they're safer with a gun than not, with the result that we're all placed at greater risk.--Percy

Hi CS,I checked your figures for murders in Chicago and Illinois and found them accurate, but it still doesn't add up to a good reason for owning a gun. You argue that you're safer from crime if you own a gun, but not in a city where crime rates are much higher than in the more rural areas where you live. If a gun were actually effective for personal defense then you would be arguing the opposite, that your safety increases in a city when you're carrying, while in the country your safety does not increase because there's less threat of crime.But you're not arguing that, and that's because despite all the noise from the gun lobby gun's are not really very effective for personal defense. The degree to which they increase personal safety because of their deterrent effect is vastly outweighed by their contributions to personal risk from yourself, family and friends.The reasons owning a gun is a threat to safety have very little to do with the threat of crime. Most of the risk comes from yourself and people you know, and that's true whether you live in the city or country.--Percy

It's the good people who are committing a good number of the murders. Many murders could be eliminated if there were no gun available when a good person becomes angry or distraught or upset or careless or crazy. Rights have to be balanced against public safety. 30,000 gun deaths a year is a significant public safety issue. Automobile deaths peaked around 50,000 annually in the early 1970's, and automobile safety regulations have reduced that to around 34,000 in a recent year. That's a 1/3 reduction over a period when annual automobile passenger miles increased by 1/3. We can't seek restrictions on car ownership because cars are economically essential, but the same isn't true of guns. A gun is more likely to be used against someone the owner knows than a criminal. Purchasing a gun puts one's life and the lives of those one knows and loves in greater danger. The "quiet law-abiding" gun people commit thousands of murders a year. Times change. When the 2nd amendment was written a gun was a muzzle-loading musket, women couldn't vote, men could own slaves, and there was no income tax. Except that it's not true that we never hear from gun owners. They or someone in their household commit thousands of murders of year. We hear plenty from gun owners.By the way, the second amendment is not about defending oneself against the government. It's about making sure the people who form government militias have their own guns, because back in the 18th century soldiers owned their own weapons. But today governments supply the weapons and the amendment is an anachronism.--Percy

Very few murders are prevented by armed citizens, and thousands of murders are committed every year by persons who were "good people", as you call them, right up to moment they committed murder. They is no way to tell they weren't "good people" until after the fact.It is because people are, to varying degrees, unpredictable and temperamental and unstable and so forth that we need strategies to ensure safety for the greater good.--Percy

He's listening to you, Faith. He's reflecting back at you the very fears you've been describing. No one here wants to live in the world of your fears.--Percy

First you say you don't believe very few murders are prevented by armed citizens because there are no statistics: And then you say you don't trust statistics: So which is it? Do you want statistics or not?The real reason you stopped reading statistics was because they didn't support your position. Statistics reflect facts from the real world. In ignoring them you're just ignoring the real world.Anyway, in case you change your mind about statistics, concerning murders and crimes prevented by armed citizens the Wikipedia article on Gun Violence in the United States has a discussion about attempts to study this statistically, see the section on Self-protection. The statistics make clear distinctions between suicide, homicide and accident. The more guns the more gun deaths there will be. There is no law in Switzerland requiring heads of household to possess a gun.--Percy

That last one's what I've been wondering about throughout this religious diversion. Faith seems to believe she's chosen the exact right religion with the exact right interpretation of God's will, which is that in our dangerous fallen world we must arm ourselves in order to go about our lives in safety, and that if our nation restricts access to guns He will punish it.Hopefully we'll soon conclude this examination of the religious beliefs behind Faith's position on gun control and can return to discussing actual gun control.--Percy

Hi ICANT,The goal isn't the thwarting of crime but the reduction of gun deaths. The actual number of defensive uses of guns is likely something we can never reliably know, but whether it is 10 or 10 million per year, the fact remains that gun ownership increases the risk of gun death for you and those you know.If we actually did live in so dangerous a country that there was a significant risk of being murdered just in the course of daily life then carrying a gun for self-defense would make sense, but we don't live in such a country. Because the risk of being murdered is so incredibly low, just owning a gun increases, not decreases, the risk of gun death. As incredibly low the probability that one will make one's brother-in-law so angry that he'll go home and get his gun, or that one's retired father shoots a suspected burglar who is actually just the neighbor walking his dog in the alley, or that a boyfriend gets drunk and shoots a girlfriend, or that one gets depressed and takes one's own life, they're all still more likely than getting murdered just going about your daily business.--Percy

You're just repeating your position while ignoring the rebuttals. Your message needed more on the end, beginning with, "Now I know it's been argued..."--Percy

ICANT, did you seriously reply to a message noting that you're just repeating yourself while ignoring rebuttals by doing it yet again? Impressive! You might want to reread the arguments you made in the last three paragraphs of your Message 1435. It's ground we've been over before - you just repeated your arguments as if no one had ever responded with counterarguments. That's why you should have continued with, "Now I know it's been argued..."--Percy

Hi ICANT,Simple numbers is the problem with your position. First, one number you mention a couple times is wrong, that eleven people are murdered every two days in the US (I assume you meant by firearms). That comes out to 2008 murders per year, except that there are more like 8000 or 9000 murders a year.Second, the number of people murdered by firearms every year far exceeds the number whose lives might have been saved by firearms, and then there are all the suicides by firearms.The argument that guns prevent murders is silly. It isn't that they can't - it's that the confluence of circumstances necessary for an armed but otherwise unprepared person thwarting someone intent on murdering them is incredibly unlikely. And of course, the goal of the vast majority of premeditated crimes is not murder. A gun can easily thwart theft, particularly if the criminal himself is unarmed, but a murderer whose goal is to kill you is not going to drop his gun and run when you reach for your own weapon - he's going to shoot you.The bottom line is that the odds of getting shot by a gun while just out and about on your daily routine is incredibly unlikely. But buy a gun and the odds go way up.--Percy

It isn't a fantasy, Faith. You've described over and over again how much we need our guns because of how dangerous a country we live in, attempting to scare people into rejecting increased gun restrictions because it will put them in greater danger.But the fact of the matter is the more guns the more gun deaths.--Percy

This is always your answer. Whenever you receive effective rebuttal you always respond with, in effect, "I didn't say that." Then you go on to repeat what you just claimed you didn't say, just in different words, drawing distinctions without a difference.You believe this country is a dangerous place, too dangerous to be walking around without a gun. What you refuse to recognize is that guns increase the danger, primarily to oneself and those one knows. Keeping in mind that a school shooting was merely the precipitating incident for this thread and that this is not a topic about mass shootings but about gun control in general, adding more guns to the population in this way would merely increase the number of gun deaths, probably more in schools than elsewhere. Times change. Guns are not muskets and muzzle loaders anymore. We're discussing this now because there was a notable precipitating incident. The desire for gun control has been around for a very long time. Yes, we know. You've already told us that the 2nd amendment is more important to you than life itself. I can already hear you claiming you didn't say that, so here are your own words from Message 1450: The constitution is a living document, open to change. Nothing in it is sacred, as ICANT can't seem to stop telling us. About the 2nd amendment I think I can safely say that any amendment open to such widely differing interpretations is definitely in need of revision. I think you may be referring to mass murders here, and of course this is true in a literal sense, but the primary concern is the large number of gun deaths that occur each year, and in this regard the people who own guns and advocate gun ownership *are* indirectly responsible for many of these gun deaths because every gun is a tiny vortex of increased probability of violence.--Percy

So let me get this straight. If the US as a nation earns God's displeasure then He will make judgment against us or abandon us, and loss of our guns will be punishment? That sounds wonderful.And you know God's thinking on guns how?By the way, your God has a kind of Old Testament flair about him.--Percy