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Author | Topic: Gun Control Again | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
dwise1 Member Posts: 5946 Joined: Member Rating: 5.5
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The answer is so obvious... Clearly we have to uninvent the gun. But with 3-D printing, the genie has clearly left the bottle.
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xongsmith Member Posts: 2587 From: massachusetts US Joined: Member Rating: 6.4 |
How about inventing "phasors set on stun"??
- xongsmith, 5.7d
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Phat Member Posts: 18298 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.1 |
These statistics force us to really look at the big picture in terms of spending more money on security/bombs or spending more on education and quality of life in the US.
Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
But with 3-D printing, the genie has clearly left the bottle. I was being facetious because nothing is going to undo this and it's about as functionally useless as saying we should just uninvent the gun. There's no way you could disarm the bulk of America at this point without massive bloodshed and civil unrest. So some more common sense legislation is necessary. "Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8527 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
So some more common sense legislation is necessary. Far-right wing, fundamentalist Christian, NRA. Halloween was more then a month ago but this scary trifecta is still here all rolled into one in the Republican party. We can dream of "common sense" gun control but right now we are in the midst of an unending nightmare.
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
We can dream of "common sense" gun control but right now we are in the midst of an unending nightmare. If you had your way, how would you tackle the issue?"Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8527 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.2
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If I had my way, if I were the Emperor, the 2nd Amended would be gone. But that is just a pleasant dream.
The Republicans need to be kicked off Capitol Hill. But I fear too many people in the electorate have succumbed to the fanning of the flames of fear and the drumbeat of war the Republicans habituate. Overturn both the Citizens United v FEC and the McCutcheon v FEC decisions to stop big $$$ from warping political speech? It will take decades for SCOTUS to correct those errors. Modify DC v Heller will take even longer. This is how it starts. The religious right-wing rose up and has fashioned the political landscape after their own desires. Now the extremes of that movement have taken control of the Republican party with their hatemongering bigotry and their fearmongering penchant for war. Civil liberties fall in the name of security. Individual rights succumb to majority fears. Where is the body politic of moderate America? Disgruntled, disgusted and sitting on their thumbs. The only course open is the long hard struggle to educate, jawbone, protest and oppose. Maybe, just maybe, if we're lucky, the Moderate Majority will get up off its ass and stop this shit. Voice ... Volunteer ... Vote.
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
It's a dangerous proposition for any politician to undertake, because the people within the military are almost entirely composed of people who support to the 2nd Amendment. A president could literally be ousted by insurrection and uprising if they didn't play it cool. Moreover, the culture is simply too engrained and too armed at this point to capitulate.
So instead it would be advisable to introduce legislation that restricts or at least clearly defines what constitutes legal arms. "Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8527 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
A president could literally be ousted by insurrection and uprising if they didn't play it cool. There are plenty of weird folk in our military as it reflects our society, but, since a president (even with a supportive congress) cannot unilaterally repeal a Constitutional Amendment, if done constitutionally (congress passes the repeal, resolves it to the states, 3/4ths of which adopt the resolution) then the "military" will have no objection. But, again, this is only a pleasant dream and I cannot see such a movement taking hold in this society for some generations yet.
So instead it would be advisable to introduce legislation that restricts or at least clearly defines what constitutes legal arms. Thus my rant against that far right-wing, NRA-driven Christian fundamentalist religious cult we call the Republican Party. Effective limits on firearms can only be accomplished with them pushed to the side. And for that to happen we need the Moderate Majority to stand up in unison and kick some republican ass. That will not happen easily or soon. Though, if the Republicans continue to flirt with either of their two leading candidates and bring one of them to the dance we may all enjoy the spectacle of the Republican Party imploding into political oblivion next November. They can't be that stupid ... can they? Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.
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Minnemooseus Member Posts: 3944 From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior) Joined: Member Rating: 10.0 |
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Percy Member Posts: 22479 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
Last week the New York Times ran an article titled In Missouri, Fewer Gun Restrictions and More Gun Killings. The article best describes itself, so here are some excerpts that get right to the point:
quote: The article at this point mentions that for the first time in our nation's history, the gun death rate equaled the motor vehicle death rate.
quote: This is followed by the obligatory paragraph stating that other opinions about causation exist, but it's reminiscent of the tobacco industry:
quote: Mass shootings get the most attention but form a small proportion of all gun deaths. Where gun laws really help is in reducing the many more but less attention-getting killings:
quote: About the impact of the gun law changes in Missouri, Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, has this to say:
quote: --Percy
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
Homicide Rate in the US: The U.S. homicide rate declined by nearly half (49%), from 9.3 homicides per 100,000 U.S. residents in 1992 to 4.7 in 2011, falling to the lowest level since 1963.
Homicide by Gun Rate in the US: The rate of homicides involving a firearm decreased by 49% from 1992 to 2011, while the percentage of homicide victims killed by a firearm (67%) remained stable. Source: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hus11.pdf As for the numbers, self-defense by gun is 80 times higher than that of homicide, suicide, and accidental shooting combined. Don't hear about that in the media though, because it's not sensational enough. Source: Guns in the United States Firearms, gun law and gun control Additionally, there are 130,000 knife attacks in the UK alone, which goes to show that in the absence of guns, other means are not only available but also utilized. This goes to show, once again, that it's not about the tool being used but the intent of the person utilizing it. "Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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Tangle Member Posts: 9504 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
Hyro writes: Homicide by Gun Rate in the US: The rate of homicides involving a firearm decreased by 49% from 1992 to 2011, while the percentage of homicide victims killed by a firearm (67%) remained stable. All crime rates with the exception of cybercrime - have fallen all round the developed world by 50% or more since the mid 90s. There are longwinded reasons for this. You need to compare relative rates not cherrypicked crime rates.
Additionally, there are 130,000 knife attacks in the UK alone, which goes to show that in the absence of guns, other means are not only available but also utilized. This goes to show, once again, that it's not about the tool being used but the intent of the person utilizing it.
In the UK there were 537 murders or 9 per million population. Care to tell us the US rates? It's worth asking yourself too, given a choice would you prefer your gangs armed with knives or guns? I've said this before here, we have a problem with knife crime and gangs, so we brought it tougher knife laws, I'm not sure whever that has made any difference, but what we didn't do was allow more people to carry knives - that would have been insane wouldn't it. Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. 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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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
All crime rates with the exception of cybercrime - have fallen all round the developed world by 50% or more since the mid 90s. There are longwinded reasons for this. You need to compare relative rates not cherrypicked crime rates. They aren't cherrypicked, they are relevant to the place with the highest collection of arms in the world. And still the rate of both crime and gun crime are half of what it was and continues to fall. So if guns are truly the problem then we should be seeing an increase not a decline.
In the UK there were 537 murders or 9 per million population. Care to tell us the US rates? You're missing the point entirely, but the murder rate is 4.5, the lowest since the 60's. That's about 10,000 out of a population of 318 million, which is approximately 5 times higher than the UK at 65 million or so. So, you're comparing apples to oranges. My point in using the UK is to demonstrate that whether there is access to guns or not, the heart of the issue is that violence still occurs regardless. And the real metric is how sane or insane your society is. And America is a rather violent society. That's the issue. If guns themselves are the reason for the violence, then countries like Switzerland should be off the charts and countries like Russia or Mexico should be low. But it's actually the opposite. That means there are other factors at play and that guns and gun laws cannot account for the disparity. "Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
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Tangle Member Posts: 9504 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
Hyro writes:
Which still has the highest murder rate in the developed world. If ALL crime rates are falling all over the developed world, the US murder rate would be in double the trouble it is in if it too hadn't fallen.
They aren't cherrypicked, they are relevant to the place with the highest collection of arms in the world. And still the rate of both crime and gun crime are half of what it was and continues to fall. So if guns are truly the problem then we should be seeing an increase not a decline. No, you'd expect gun crime to fall too, unless something exceptional was also happening - particularly as a major cause for the fall was a reduction in the drug epidemic that created the increase in crime starting in the 70s.
You're missing the point entirely, but the murder rate is 4.5, the lowest since the 60's. That's about 10,000 out of a population of 318 million, which is approximately 5 times higher than the UK at 65 million or so. So, you're comparing apples to oranges. No, murder RATES compare apple with apples. Where you're going wrong is comparing the UK 9 per million with the US's 4.5 per 100,000.
But it's actually the opposite. That means there are other factors at play and that guns and gun laws cannot account for the disparity. Gun laws alone don't account for the disparity, there are certainly other factors but you can't avoid the simple causation of guns and gun deaths. You also need to factor in gun death and injury by accident and suicide....how many are those? Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. 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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