Summations Only

I can see that you are totally impervious to both fact and reason - you seem to prefer your personal ideas to actual research and information. So be it.

I was responding to your Message 4515, which was a reply to Straggler that didn't make any sense. You talked about Earthlings and the UK military and how it was somehow related to guns in Missouri. It didn't make sense to me, Straggler seems to be having trouble making sense of it, too, you had other recent posts that made little sense, and I was asking you to take the discussion seriously.Your most recent reply doesn't make sense either. I'll touch on just a couple items. Obtaining guns was made easier for everyone over 19 in Missouri. Knowing that the law had changed is not a requirement for obtaining a gun. The percentage of people succeeding in obtaining a gun increased and caused a feedback loop in the denser urban areas causing even more people to want guns. In my view you're misapplying the Fallacy of Division, and there's no need to introduce it anyway. If somebody's wrong then just straightforwardly explain how they're wrong. Plus a number of your other recent posts seemed more aimed at frustrating discussion than furthering it, so please, let's not argue about the Fallacy of Division. That's something else. Let's keep our attention on the central points of the topic.The key point is that guns in a household are more likely to be used against their owner, friends or family than anyone else, and that's ignoring the 2/3 of gun deaths that are suicides. This is true in the city, and this is true in the country.No one denies the higher crime rates of cities, so more guns will have a bigger impact on cities because of their higher crime rates. But that doesn't change the fact that adding a gun to a household puts residents in greater danger. And combining this with the lower rural crime rate tells us that obtaining a gun for self-defense there makes even less sense than in the city.Did you change your residence from the city to the country? I seem to recall that a few years ago your argument for carrying a gun was because the areas of the city you frequented were very dangerous and that gun control would cause more deaths, not less, because people would be unable to defend themselves. Now you seem to have flipped and believe that gun control in cities would reduce the death rate.--Percy

You may think that but Tangle's point is that the statistics prove you completely wrong.

A rebuttal to your argument can be found in the very message you're replying to, and in an earlier message from Tangle (see Message 4528), and I see Tangle repeats the argument again in Message 4536. Reading forward it appears to me that you're working hard to ignore facts about suicide, such as that fewer people commit suicide when there are fewer guns available (or as Tangle puts it, the more inconvenient you make the available means of suicide, the fewer suicides there are).Another fact already mentioned that you're also ignoring is that a gun is the most effective suicide device out there. A higher percentage of people successfully commit suicide with a gun than by any other method. Since only 15% of people who fail at suicide eventually succeed in subsequent attempts, obviously reducing the availability of guns with their very high success rate would reduce suicides a great deal. The other methods have much lower success rates, and 85% of people who fail at suicide live out the rest of their natural life. Figuring out the "internal problem" would be a bit easier after a failed attempt with sleeping pills than a successful attempt with a gun, don't you think? You're just arguing the NRA position that the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. No, that's not best way. It's not even a good way. It's a terrible way because it only increases gun deaths. The more guns, the more gun deaths. There's no way around that equation.I suppose one could say that the best way to increase a person's sense of power and safety is to give him a gun. It's also the best way to increase his chances of injury or death by gun.--Percy

If a car was more likely to kill you than get you to your destination, people would be clamoring to make cars safer (they're too necessary to ban, and cars have been made safer anyway). If buildings were more likely to be the means of suicide or death than to serve as places of work and residence, people would be clamoring to make buildings safer (they're too necessary to ban, and buildings have been made safer anyway). Similar arguments hold for bridges and pills and razor blades.Among all these things, guns are unique by doing the opposite of the claimed purpose of providing greater safety by instead placing people in greater danger, yet the gun lobby shouts down all efforts at increased safety and reasonable control. A quality many gun advocates hold in common is their lack of expressions of concern for human life, like yours just up thread concerning those who attempt suicide, claiming it's an internal issue and they'll just do it eventually anyway, so little point in doing anything that might make suicide more difficult. Their greatest concern is that their guns might be taken away. In the name of keeping their guns they raise one irrational argument after another (yours have all been considered and dismantled earlier in this thread), all in the name of a fantasy encouraged by the NRA that they're making themselves and those around them safer.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Wordsmith 1st and 2nd sentence of last para.

Huh? As with Cat Sci, I'm beginning to wonder if we're having a serious discussion. If we're having a serious discussion then demand to see Tangle's evidence about suicide, examine it, describe how it's wrong, etc. What you think? All you're providing us is what you think. How about telling us something that is true?Only 15% of people who attempt suicides are later successful. See the section on Repetition from the Wikipedia article on suicide attempts. The facts say your position is wrong. A suicide attempt is not a death sentence. The majority of people who attempt suicide and fail live out the rest of their natural lives. Tangle didn't say anything about blister packs or cite numbers of saving "untold millions." In your recent messages you're getting facts wrong, you're ignoring facts, and you're distorting what people say. If guns are the best way to be safe then it won't be because of your talents at exaggeration and sarcasm. Again, are we having a serious discussion here or not?If we are then check out this article and maybe you'll find some actual factual information for rebutting Tangle, instead of the stuff you're making up: Fall in paracetamol deaths 'linked to pack limits'Unless you're against reducing the number of suicides, literally you haven't a fact to stand on. Instead of repeating your opinions, find some facts.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Wordsmith 1st sentence of my 3rd para.Edited by Percy, : And "and fail" to last sentence of my 3rd para.

New open carry laws in Texas took effect today. In today's New York Times: Gun-Friendly Texas Is Getting Even Friendlier. Some excerpts:

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Texas is so gun-friendly that it is easier to get into the Capitol in Austin with a firearm than without one licensed, gun-carrying lawmakers and members of the public have their own no-wait security lane, and the unarmed masses have to stand in line and slog through the metal detectors.

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But on Friday, gun rights throughout the state expanded still more, as a new law took effect that allows certain Texans to wear their handguns in holsters on their hips or in shoulder holsters, Dirty Harry-style openly displaying the fact that they are armed as they work, shop, dine and go about their day.
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Members of the pro-gun group Open Carry Texas were to gather at noon Friday on the south steps of the Capitol for a gun-on-their-hips celebration before walking down Congress Avenue. Other groups plan to display their weaponry at events in Houston, Dallas and other cities.

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Mass group displays of weaponry? Really? I wish these modern Texas gunslingers could muster mass group displays of sincere and informed concern for human life. Even Texans must realize that a certain percentage of people are complete yahoos and understand, at least on some level, that getting anywhere near a mass display of weaponry by amateurs is unwise.Fortunately only a small percentage of Texans qualify for open carry:

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The change directly affects only a small fraction of Texans 925,000 men and women with active state-issued licenses to carry a concealed firearm, close to 4 percent of the state’s 27.4 million residents. Only those with a concealed-handgun permit are allowed to open carry, and all of them must submit their fingerprints and pass a criminal background check.

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But this small percentage will likely grow as the cachet of open carry catches on, just as gun ownership acquired a certain cachet in urban areas of Missouri after its gun laws were weakened, and we saw what happened there.--Percy

Open carry extends to public university dorms and residences.I anticipate reading about the Texas gunfight where a football game broke out.

After the first few thousand isolated incidents I'd start to wonder if they were actually isolated.

Well, first of all you really cannot control for something like that since a high number of people who were suicidal, but didn't go through with it to completion, would not report it.Out of 41,149 total suicides in the U.S., 21,175 were committed by the use of a gun -- about half, which perfectly represents what I've stated -- that people find other methods or prefer other methods.Source: FastStats - Suicide and Self-Inflicted InjuryRegardless, I still don't see how that is a good reason for banning guns anymore than we should be banning razor blades or ropes or whatever other tool people might use to kill themselves.But I digress, as we're going around in circles.

He made an unsupported assertion. There was no indisputable fact because you cannot empirically count the number of people who didn't report having been suicidal but were inconvenienced back to sobriety. Seriously, contemplate that for a minute.Even supposing it was, how that is a good reason to repeal a very important amendment to the Constitution is still elusive. Reducing the availability of guns certainly would reduce gun deaths, absolutely, just like reducing one's driving time or reducing the amount of vehicles on the road would result in less vehicular deaths. What is in dispute is that people find other ways to kill themselves in the absence of other things. Changing externalities doesn't change the inward fact that they want to die. I would think there would be no significant difference between the two. We all agree that more guns mean more gun deaths just like more cars mean more car deaths and more availability to electricity means more electrocutions, etc, ad infinitum. But as I've stated, short of uninventing the gun, do you really think repealing a nation's second right is the solution? If you want to see an exponential increase in gun deaths, that's the surest way right there, because the thronging masses won't go quietly or without a fight. It's too ingrained within the culture at this point.Moreover, who do you think runs the nation's police force and military? That's right. All proponents of guns. So, with that inescapable reality, my point in all of this is to come up with a common sense approach, not a total abridging of rights.Any suggestions?

So are guns. Just ask British police officers if they want to go unarmed again and see what they'll say. My concern for human life could just as easily be demonstrated by desiring the availability of guns to protect oneself and the life of other innocents from thugs who, I can assure you with or without a law, would access guns to harm others. So it's really rather ironic to say how calloused I must be without looking at the flipside of your argument.If you were truly so concerned, you would also seek to ban police officers from having guns because, according to gun control advocates, having the law is enough to thwart it, yes?The fact that police officers carry around guns at all, especially in places that have outlawed private arms, really just makes the point for me.

I said that in the absence of guns, people find other means to kill themselves. Tangle quoted me saying that, and then stated that I was "wrong," even though that is an indisputable fact. I then restated the question as simply as possible, and he conceded that people do kill themselves by other means. Jesus Christ, people killing themselves with guns is not a good reason to ban guns anymore than it is a reason ban any other tool people use to kill themselves with. That's my sole point! You don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Then let me put it more simply. You'll never do away with suicide or homicide. Ever. In light of that, perhaps we should be looking at practical solutions versus knee-jerk reactions. Instead of getting rid of things, maybe we should be figuring out why people are either so violent or so suicidal.We're having a serious discussion here [trying to, anyhow], but some of the responses are hard not to respond with incredulity or sarcasm because of how asinine they are.

Even I agree with your sentiment here. Just because you have a right to do something doesn't mean it's wise to employ it. I see these open carry guys doing more harm to their own cause than good, as it appears to be needless hectoring and the creation of self-fulfilling prophecies.Actually, a lot of gun advocates either don't like the law or how some people are going about it.

What do you mean "go unarmed again"? No-one has armed them. They are unarmed. They seem happy that way. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.