Summations Only

Was it that long ago? Feels like yesterday. That's not how I remember the discussion. I don't know what posts you're looking at, but I did find this from Message 1113 that pretty much reflects the attitude I remember from you: Obviously I wasn't using "never" literally. "Never see it coming" is a common colloquial expression not intended to be interpreted literally.--Percy

Could we return the discussion to a serious level? The concern is about gun prevalence in the general population being responsible for too many gun deaths. By no logic does that imply disarming the military would address the problem.--Percy

The article didn't at all make the connection you're claiming. That's your own concoction.It's beginning to feel like you're not taking the discussion seriously, that you're just throwing random nonsense out there as a diversion.--Percy

Uh, that's pretty much the entire point that it gets at.Tthe title is "In Missouri, Fewer Gun Restrictions and More Gun Killings". And it says:

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In the past decade, Missouri has been a natural experiment in what happens when a state relaxes its gun control laws. For decades, it had one of the nation’s strongest measures to keep guns from dangerous people: a requirement that all handgun buyers get a gun permit by undergoing a background check in person at a sheriff’s office.

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But the legislature repealed that in 2007 and approved a flurry of other changes, including, last year, lowering the legal age to carry a concealed gun to 19. What has followed may help answer a central question of the gun control debate: Does allowing people to more easily obtain guns make society safer or more dangerous?

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Research by Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, found that in the first six years after the state repealed the requirement for comprehensive background checks and purchase permits, the gun homicide rate was 16 percent higher than it was the six years before. During the same period, the national rate declined by 11 percent. After Professor Webster controlled for poverty and other factors that could influence the homicide rate, and took into account homicide rates in other states, the result was slightly higher, rising by 18 percent in Missouri.

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Other measures suggested that criminals had easier access to guns after the permit law was repealed. Professor Webster analyzed data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and found that the share of guns that were linked to crimes soon after they were bought doubled in the state from 2006 to 2010. The portion of guns confiscated by the police in Missouri that had been originally bought in the state ordinarily a very stable statistic rose to 74 percent last year, from 56 percent before the law changed.

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Missouri was the only state in recent history to repeal a law requiring background checks and permits for all handgun sales, and Professor Webster said he had been drawn to study the aftermath because many had considered that type of law to be the most effective at keeping guns from people who should not have them.

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Kansas City’s mayor, Sly James Jr., said he had argued against the gun control changes, but to no avail. He called gun homicides in his city slow-motion mass murder.

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I’m a black mayor in a state with a rural representative conservative legislature that gives the rights to carry arms to 19-year-olds do you really think there’s anything I can say that’s going to bother them? Mr. James said.

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I’m tired of the fact that we have disproportionate numbers of African-Americans who are dying, he said. Legislators, who are predominantly white, seem to ignore the racial implications of the laws they make.

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There is this idea that law-abiding citizens’ rights are being secured, said Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. In fact, it’s the people most inclined to do harm whose privileges are being secured.

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As Rosilyn Temple tells it, guns have become so prevalent in her Kansas City neighborhood that owning one is about as common as owning a cellphone. You can’t buy liquor, but you can carry a gun, she said, alluding to the legal age to obtain a concealed carry permit. The legal age to buy alcohol in Missouri is 21.

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The problem is that this urban culture that has a fetish for guns does not care about following the laws, in fact the article says that they weren't even aware of the permit system that was repealed, so the idea that the law has a big impact on whether or not they get guns is wrong.The truth of the matter is that the cultures who do care about following the laws, the ones that the laws actually impact, are not the ones that are causing all the gun deaths. So all the law effectively does is hurt their abilities to protect themselves.

In this global de-gunning process you are putting forward I personally wouldn't advocate starting with the U.K. military. As already stated I'd start with the dangerous idiots who think a prevalence of guns in society somehow makes them safer.Why would you start your de-gunning process with the military rather than less professionally qualified gun users?

Wait. Are you saying that it would be better to have the solution focus on where the problem is actually occurring?Weird. That's just like how I was saying that the majority of the gun deaths are a problem with an urban culture that doesn't follow laws, so it's a bad idea to enact blanket state-wide legislation that would only affect the people who are not a part of the problem.Your response to that was to zoom out even further and call this an American problem.It's so strange that you can identify the Fallacy of Division in one case but not the other. I guess as long as its an anti-gun law then you're cool with it, regardless of how irrational and illogical it is.

You can quote the entire article (In Missouri, Fewer Gun Restrictions and More Gun Killings) if you like, but it still doesn't support what you said, which was: The article does not say anything like this. It does not say that an increased urban gun death rate was accompanied by a decreased gun rural death rate. The "trade" that you are claiming was made in Missouri did not happen in the real world.What actually happened is that the urban death rate went up dramatically while the rural rate must have remained unchanged (the journal paper doesn't comment on rural rates: Effects of the repeal of Missouri's handgun purchaser licensing law on homicides), but both the urban and rural suicide rates increased substantially. Here are some relevant excerpts from an interview with the paper's author, Daniel Webster, from this past Sunday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri homicide, suicide rates jumped after repeal of background checks, researcher says):

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With the repeal of the 2007 law, we see a sharp increase in both homicides and suicides committed with guns. Importantly, there were no such changes in homicides and suicides committed by other means.
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It shows the new norm in Missouri, which is a higher level of gun violence. It’s an increase of roughly 50 homicides a year because of the change and 60 additional suicides a year.
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We have a study looking at what happened in Connecticut when they did the reverse of what Missouri did. They had a significant reduction of homicides committed with guns and no change in homicides committed by other means. And, we saw a significant decline in gun-related suicides.
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Having a gun in a farmhouse in a rural place in Missouri does elevate the risk for suicide, but probably has limited or no effect on street or community violence. The availability of guns increases the chance of lethal outcomes. The vast majority of people who attempt suicide by means other than a gun go on to survive.

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--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

I don't know of any evidence linking the number of guns owned by the UK military as having any effect on the number of gun deaths in Missouri (or anywhere else in the US)I am aware of evidence linking the prevalence of guns at a national level, state level and community level to the number of gun deaths at those same levels.It's not my fault the evidence is against you here.

Nor is there any evidence linking the number of guns owned by Florida as having any effect on the number of gun deaths in Oregon.There also isn't any evidence linking the number of guns owned by rural Missouri as having any effect on the number of gun deaths in urban Missouri. The same evidence works at the Earth level. According to the arguments from your side, since reducing the number of guns owned by the UK military would reduce the number of guns owned on Earth, then we should pursue it because that would reduce the total number of gun deaths on Earth and somehow that would transfer down to the local level. That's retarded, right?It seems you are capable of recognizing the Fallacy of Division when it works against you, that's excellent.When you posted Message 4510, were you aware of committing it or did you just not care?

This is an issue which I feel is addressed relatively little in gun control debates, which is surprising considering that the number of people who intentionally shoot themselves annually in the US is about double the number intentionally shot by other people, according to CDC stats. A small majority of US suicides are done with guns.I can't help but feel that having a gun in your home dramatically increases the risk of someone with suicidal inclinations going ahead with the act, whereas if they didn't have such an easily available and potentially painless option available they'd still be alive the following day when the feeling had passed.I do find it hard to justify gun control on this basis philosophically, however. More deaths are caused annually in the US by drugs than guns, after all, and I have always argued against drug prohibition on the grounds that the state has no right to limit my freedom to protect me from my own decisions. Wouldn't the same logic apply to guns?I'm also unconvinced by the gun-suicide link - even though it seems so intuitively obvious. The US certainly has a high suicide rate, but there are other developed countries, such as Belgium, where an even higher proportion manage to kill themselves despite strict gun laws (The UK's suicide rate, incidentally, is identical the the rate of suicide by means other than firearms in the US, but I suspect this is fortuitous coincidence).There's no conclusion to this post, I'm just thinking aloud (or whatever the equivalent term would be for typing).

I'm looking directly at Straggler's 3-line message, and I can't see how you're making any sense. Are you sure you referenced the right message?It's been gratifying in this thread I started so long ago that for the most part it has been a coherent and constructive discussion. It would be nice if we could keep it that way. If you have a reasonable point then please make it in a way that can be understood. And if you're just trying to throw the thread into disarray, then please stop.--Percy

I think our drug laws are as misguided as our gun laws. I never intended to advocate for specific solutions in this thread, but just to throw a couple general ideas out there for drugs and guns, we could tax what are now illicit drugs to fund drug education and rehabilitation programs, and to fund research to make them safer. And we could tax guns (the NRA claims gun taxes are illegal) to fund gun education and restitution programs, and to fund research into how to reduce gun deaths and make guns themselves safer. I'm not myself aware of arguments that guns are why the US suicide rate is too high. I think just hearing the numbers, that more than 20,000 people in the US kill themselves with guns every year, is what shocks people. I don't know that apples-to-apples comparisons between statistics from different countries, with all the differences in definitions and backgrounds and histories and standard practices and so forth, are that meaningful. What I do believe is that the suicide rate in the US is too high, the suicide rate in Belgium is too high, the suicide rate in the UK is too high...You made an excellent point when you said that one's life shouldn't end just because one's state of mind had reached low ebb and a gun was available. Making guns less available would save a great many lives in the US. Checking out a little Wikipedia information about suicides I see that only around 15% of people with a failed suicide attempt eventually do commit suicide, and of course most of those failed attempts could not have used guns since the success rate of suicide by gun is the highest of all methods. This means more than 85% of those attempting suicide who would have used a gun were one available would be permanently saved.That could be more than enough reason to reduce gun prevalence all by itself.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

The intuition is correct. It's been empirically shown that the more convenient suicide methods are, the more deaths there are.The changeover from poisonous town gas to natural gas lowered suicide rates because 'putting your head in the oven' no longer worked.Reducing the number of paracetomol individuals can buy and even putting them in bubble packs reduced suicide attempts using them.

If you were waiting for a joke, I got nothing.

Here. Let's read that again. She had access to the home because she lives with the couple.How do you live in a house containing three people, hear someone moving about the house, and not consider the possibility that it might be the other person who lives in the fucking house?