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Author | Topic: Gun Control Again | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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PaulK writes: You can't do a cost-benefit analysis without considering the benefits that are actually being sought. So purpose is very relevant. The benefits of owning a gun for protection are more likely to be achieved by not owning a gun. The desired benefits of going out for supper are rather less likely to be achieved by staying in. Thus there is no analogy. Here's a Bloom County cartoon I like about the absurdity of following concerns to their ultimate end:
Every activity of life carries with it some risk to oneself and/or those around you. I agree that there's no analogy, but for a different reason. The key factor is the incredible irony of purchasing a gun for protection that in reality places you in greater danger. The analogous irony for a vehicle would be purchasing a car for transportation that always takes you in a direction opposite to the one you're going. Among recent participants, with the possible exception of MikeChell I think we all agree that the nation should make the same commitment to gun safety that's been made to car safety. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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mikechell writes: Among recent participants, with the possible exception of MikeChell I think we all agree that the nation should make the same commitment to gun safety that's been made to car safety.
That's funny! But your comment shows that people will read what they WANT to,... Sorry I wasn't clear enough, but I wasn't saying that we should make the same commitment to firearm education that we do to driver education. Personally I think driver education today is inadequate in this country and hasn't made much contribution to the reduction in vehicle fatality rates. Firearm education doesn't seem adequate, either. What I meant was that the same commitment to car safety that resulted in seat belts and air bags and impact absorbing structures should be made to gun safety. I think we should make guns safer. The reason I excepted you from the list of people who think we should make a commitment to gun safety is because in your Message 3532 you said, "No, making guns 'safer' is ... unproductive." --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
More guns is not the solution because the data suggests that the more guns, the more gun violence. The likelihood of a gun being used successfully for defense is outweighed by the likelihood of the gun being used against oneself, family or friends.
--Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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Faith writes: More guns isn't the point, better ways of using the ones we've got would help more. Both for availability where needed and for safety. Turning schools and churches into armed camps is the anti-answer of the gun lobby. It wouldn't surprise me if they proposed that school and church outings require a designated shooter for defense. It doesn't matter how you slice it. The more guns the more gun deaths. We already have too many guns. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
Faith writes: Isn't it obvious that if just one person in the Bible Study had a gun many would not have died? No, it isn't obvious. I think you must have some Hollywood movie shootout in mind, but the truth is that if someone in the church were armed then there are an entire range of possibilities, most of which still result in many deaths. Police in this country are mostly armed, and they're frequently shot and killed. Being armed is not a panacea. What is clear is that any guns owned by members of the congregation were more likely to be used against themselves, family members or friends than for defense. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Grammar.
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
marc9000 writes: Should the number of government guns be reduced then? By government do you mean police, military or both? I'm in favor of reducing gun prevalence among the police as circumstances warrant, the military no. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Typos.
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
ThinAirDesigns writes: Percy writes:
While the data for that may exist Percy, I have yet to see it. Do you have it? What is clear is that any guns owned by members of the congregation were more likely to be used against themselves, family members or friends than for defense. This thread has been active for over two and a half years with more than 3500 posts, so I guess it wouldn't be reasonable to ask you to just read the thread, so I went through some of my old posts to see if I could dig out some links for you:
I spent a half hour finding these and didn't get even halfway through the thread, but I have to stop now. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
marc9000 writes: Now do you believe the citizens of all those countries fully understood what can happen when their government imposes gun control, when it begun each time? Everything seems fine in your country so far. I enter Bizarro World reluctantly and with trepidation, but I'm having trouble understanding why you think an armed citizenry would be any match for the military. Don't you need to eliminate not just gun control but weapons control in general so that citizen groups can prepare for the coming attacks by the military by arming themselves with fully automatic weapons, mortars, bazookas and tanks?
The U.S. borrows billions of dollars per day to pay its bills, including the bill of keeping food on the table of millions of welfare and social security recipients. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? If those entitlement checks stopped coming, it would only be a few days before there was enough unrest in every U.S. city to make Ferguson and Baltimore look like elementary school playground skirmishes. I'm having trouble seeing how you imagine this playing out. The entitlement checks stop coming, and there's "unrest in every U.S. city," and then what? Don't they call out the National Guard to restore order? And you want the citizenry to be armed so they can do what? Surely you don't want them to battle the National Guard, who are only trying to restore order. I don't get it. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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Straggler writes: That is why the prevalence, proliferation and easy access to guns that you guys seem so rabidly intent on preserving no matter how many toddlers accidentally shoot their siblings or deranged young men go on killing sprees seems so unfathomably bonkers to so many outside the US. I'd just like to note that it also seems "unfathomably bonkers" to many inside the US. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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marc9000 writes: ...all my frantic opponents... More like agog and dumbfounded. You're saying a lot of crazy things that don't make sense to other people, so your goal should be to put your ideas into a rational context that will show you're not just some kind of kook. Instead you're just piling on more crazy things. Leaving Bizarro World now... --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
Today's NYT reports the sad case of a young man shot in the back and paralyzed as he drove away from an apartment complex security guard: ‘Illegal Activity’ Fine Print Leaves Some Insured, but Uncovered. He later died because he was denied medical insurance coverage, which is extremely sad and disturbing in itself, but the insurance coverage issues are not relevant to this thread.
The backstory of the article is what's relevant. Oklahoma has a "stand your ground" law, and because the security guard was (he claimed) struck by the car as it backed out of the parking space, it was ruled that he was justified in firing into the car because he thought his life was in danger, even though the car was by then speeding away. Compounding the puzzlement of this ruling, the security guard had marijuana on his person and in his system. What was the young man's crime? He wasn't charged with one. Sympathy over the tragedy would likely have prevented charges being brought even had the young man been guilty of a crime such as theft or using drugs, but it seems that at most he ignored a security guard's instructions (not a crime) and left the scene of an accident (allegedly). --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
USA Today has released a brief report on mass killings in America: Behind the Bloodshed: The Untold Story of American's Mass Killings
They followed the FBI definition of a mass killing as four victims or more. Mass killings occur about every two weeks. Check out the diagram titled "A Timeline of U.S. Mass Killings" around page 4 or so. The size of the red dot is proportional to the number of victims. Hover over the dot for specifics. Family members are most often the victims. Guns are by far the most common weapon, and most are handguns. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
I just happened to turn on BBC World News for a couple minutes before dinner and heard this gem about the Louisiana theater shooting:
"They are scenes with which Americans are painfully familiar, a mass shooting inflicted on yet another community." Europe just doesn't have a mass volume of mass shootings. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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Timothy Egan writes in his editorial Guns and the Two Americas in today's NYT:
quote: --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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People are people the world over. There is nothing that makes one set of people in one region any more or less likely to obey laws than any other region. The variable is circumstances, and the one most significant circumstance that exists in the US (firearm homicide rate 3.55 per 100,000) that doesn't exist in other western style countries like Europe, Canada, Australia, etc. (firearm homicide rate much less, maybe an average around 0.5 per 100,000) is the easy availability of guns.
--Percy
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