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Author | Topic: Gun Control Again | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
OK. Illinois came 39th out of 51 states with a rate of 8.2 per 100,000 as compared to the US figure of 10.1 What point are you making specifically about Illinois? Looking at gun crime from the state level doesn't tell the whole story. In Illinois, most of the gun crime is focused in one spot in the state while the rest of the state looks really good. 2/3 of the murders occur in 1/4 of the population. There were 145 kills per million within Chicago, but only 27 kills per million in the rest of the state. So when you look at it from the state level, with the average kills per million being 54, you're getting a false sense of the problem. Someone might go: "Oh look, they've got strict gun laws and they have a low amount of gun deaths" but that doesn't realize that the gun laws completely failed to solve the problem. People are still shooting each other left and right in Chicago, its just that the rest of the state is so good that it brings the average down to a level that doesn't seem so bad. The truth of the matter is that the gun deaths in Chicago are outrageous despite all the gun control laws we have.
This is what Percy actually said: "seems to indicate that states with stronger gun control laws tend to have lower firearm death rates". Where is the mention of Illinois in that which you felt the need to "disabuse"? Percy used Illinois as one of the examples of a state with strong gun control laws having a lower firearm death rate. He's glossed over the fact that the gun laws in Illinois completely failed and the gun crime is outrageous, its just that its all concentrated in one area of the state so when you look at the state as a whole you get a different picture than if you look at what they actual problem is.
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Percy Member Posts: 22503 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Catholic Scientist writes: I didn't say anything about Chicago.
You mentioned Illinois. Chicago is in Illinois. I mentioned Illinois, New York, California, Alaska, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama, each of those states also have cities, and I didn't say anything about single one. I didn't say anything about Chicago, or about New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Louisville, Nashville, Memphis, Fairbanks or Birmingham. But urban areas, especially low income urban areas, almost always have higher homicide rates than less densely settled regions. Chicago isn't particularly unusual.
The point is that looking at the state level doesn't get to the root of the problem. The point is that looking at the state level indicates that stronger gun control laws correlate with lower gun death rates. You do raise a good issue:
That table doesn't tell us anything about how strong the gun control laws for each state are. How are you judging their strength? Do you have a resource for that? It be interesting to lay out the firearm death rates with some quantification of the strength of a state's gun control laws, even if we just did a scale of 1 - 10 or something, and see just what kind of correlation is really there. Yes, it would be good to have this data. Meanwhile, if you don't like Illinois as an example because of Chicago then substitute New Jersey. New York, New Jersey and California have significantly lower gun death rates and stronger gun control laws than Kentucky, Tennessee, Alaska and Alabama.
So what means do you propose for reducing gun deaths? Stronger penalties for minor gun crimes. You gotta get the guns out of the hands of the criminals, or get the criminals out of the public. Passing rules for the law abiding citizens to obey doesn't do anything to the people who aren't obeying the laws in the first place. You gotta lock up the people who are actually using guns for criminal activity, for a long time. Stronger penalties for gun crimes is fine by me, but I was hoping for something that might address gun deaths like those at Newtown, CT. --Percy
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
The point is that looking at the state level indicates that stronger gun control laws correlate with lower gun death rates. Here's your correlation:
I don't think that's impressive at all. Is that what you thought it would look like?
Stronger penalties for gun crimes is fine by me, but I was hoping for something that might address gun deaths like those at Newtown, CT. Considering that Connecticut already had very strict gun control laws (they got an A), and a low amount of gun deaths across the state (6th place at 5.9), can you see that those things don't affect the gun deaths like those at Newtown? Edited by Catholic Scientist, : Fixed image link
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Considering that Connecticut already had very strict gun control laws I don't think strict versus non-strict is the kind of analysis we are looking for. CT's gun laws had at least one gaping hole in it that even the majority of American gun owners agree ought to be closed. So no, I don't agree that gun laws can have no affect on gun deaths like those in Newtown. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
CT's gun laws had at least one gaping hole in it that even the majority of American gun owners agree ought to be closed. What's that?
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Diomedes Member Posts: 996 From: Central Florida, USA Joined: |
CT's gun laws had at least one gaping hole in it that even the majority of American gun owners agree ought to be closed.
What's that? My guess is he is referring to the lack of adequate background checks? Which in the case of Newtown would not have helped since the firearms were purchased legally by Adam Lanza's mother.
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9199 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.2 |
Ok. Where do you think the guns used in Chicago, and other urban areas, come from?
Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
My guess is he is referring to the lack of adequate background checks? Which in the case of Newtown would not have helped since the firearms were purchased legally by Adam Lanza's mother. That is absolutely true and you are also correct about what my point was. But I also think you are being a bit too literal. Background checks that keep people with mental problems from getting guns would would be successful in many cases. But no, they don't keep you from taking your mom's guns. But mom knew her son had problems and did nothing to keep guns out of her own sons hands. And she paid the ultimate price for her error. My guess is that most parents in that situation would do a bit better.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Ok. Where do you think the guns used in Chicago, and other urban areas, come from? All over the place. The one the guy bought at a licensed dealer probably came straight from the manufacturer. The one the guy bartered from his gang brother has probably been around a bit more. I'd bet there's some vatos that got theirs right out of mexico.
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9199 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.2 |
So are you for or against more consistent national gun laws?
Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9512 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
And the one common factor? They all had access to guns.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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marc9000 Member Posts: 1522 From: Ky U.S. Joined: Member Rating: 1.3
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Yes, I know you didn't make 'em up yourself. But you should have checked. Yes I should have - I stand corrected. I hereby apologize to Theodoric, since he asked nice.
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9199 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.2 |
I don't want an apology. I want people to actually research what they post. Anyone can parrot crap. How about you show you are a little above the typical right winger and actually do some research? Just because something feels right in your gut does not mean it is and since you are a rightwinger it probably isn't. Facts tend to have liberal bias.
Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
So are you for or against more consistent national gun laws? No, not really. I don't think consistency is a worthy endeavor, though. You don't have to travel far to see that the U.s. is inconsistent. What doesn't work in some places might work in another. Our diversity is one of the beauties of America. And I certainly won't like letting those buffoons at the federal level decide. The shit they put out that I actually pay attention to makes them look like they don't know what they're talking about. Its not just guns, that SOPA crap made me think that they didn't even have a basic understanding of how the internet works, let alone the capability of governing it well. Well shit, I guess that makes me against it. Don't get me wrong, the Feds have their place. And we're doing pretty well so far. They don't do well with the particulars (which is understandable if you're gonna go with a partisanship ), but you gotta admit that from their view its a jumbled mess down here. Sometimes things are better left with the localities that probably have a better understanding of what particulars should work. One last thing, I think the founding fathers were genius to look at the situation of governing a body of people and realize that you don't give the governing body the control of the guns. Thank God they put that shit in our Constitution.
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Diomedes Member Posts: 996 From: Central Florida, USA Joined: |
But I also think you are being a bit too literal. Background checks that keep people with mental problems from getting guns would would be successful in many cases. But no, they don't keep you from taking your mom's guns. Agreed. And I wasn't implying I disagree with the notion of background checks. I am merely stating that in this circumstance, it would not have mattered as the onus was on the mother to keep these firearms away from her mentally ill son. Incidentally, I am speaking as someone who is for gun control and is a gun owner themselves. But I guess I am falling back on my background as being someone who works in the software industry, whereby we have a concept called 'root cause analysis'. What that essentially states is that you attempt to discover the low level underlying problem with a piece of software rather than attempting continuous patches and Band-Aid fixes. In a similar vein, I can acknowledge that background checks are beneficial, but ultimately, I would like to see greater efforts in the fields of mental illness. We often take a very archaic notion of how to deal with folks that are mentally disturbed, probably due to our old world ways of thinking about people being 'evil' or 'possessed'. But ultimately, these people are sick. Rather than focusing on the instrument of these people's actions, I would like to focus on the cause and see better treatment options and a better support network for parents who have to deal with children with mental illness. Guess this is my long-winded view that we need universal health care that is accessible by all. And a society that recognizes mental illness as being a legitimate medical condition as opposed to putting a stigma around it.
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