Summations Only

The comments on how Switzerland has many guns but comparatively low gun violence leaves some of the details out. Everyone points out that the militia requires men to keep their issued weapons at home. Government ammo is no longer issued but is stored in arsenals. The gun holder may purchase his own ammo.From Wikipedia (Firearms regulation in Switzerland - Wikipedia), gun owners must have a license to own a gun and even to buy ammunition. All gun transfers are recorded (not in the US). The ammunition purchase is reported to the regulatory bureau. Carry permits require justification as opposed to the US just 'cuz method.

You make a bogeyman out of guns. In the Rwandan massacre, thousands of people in the course of a few hours were hacked to death by machetes in the absence of availability to guns. Neither the gun nor the machete were the culprits. Whether you are in a dank Brazilian Favela or a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, the hardware means very little. What matters most is why Rwanda and Brazil have these issues and why Canada, for the most part, doesn't.And what are the citizens of Brazil supposed to do living there? Acquiesce? Roll over and die? Because these criminals down there are armed whether they are supposed to be or not. And they have no problem cutting you down. So what is your solution for those people? Become the statistic?The strict gun control advocates talk about the people who get cut down by gun violence. And aren't you privileged to live in a place where the chance you are cut down by an assassin is low. But what is your solution for those who live in places less fortunate than you or I? Agreed. So lets focus on those measures. That is comparing apples to apples, you just don't like it because it undermines your victim narrative of demonizing the gun before looking at the cultural situation. I compared first-world nations with other first-world nations. Please tell me how I'm not comparing apples to apples.How's this for comparing apples to apples: New Hampshire is a pretty pro-gun state, and they don't have the same kind of levels as their neighboring Massachussets which is very anti-gun, yet has much higher incidents of criminality overall. Comparing that apple with the other apple, explain why Mass has more problems than NH.

I don't think it will produce better results necessarily. If your only goal is to cut down on "gun violence," then sure, it's a small victory but ultimately a moot point. Does cutting down on gun violence have any measurable influence on cutting down overall violence? Because it seems to me that we are offering a Band-Aid to an amputee. We aren't really addressing the underlying issue, which is why America is such a violent society.

Not at all. Ralph Nader wasn't making a bogeyman out of automobiles when he wrote Unsafe at Any Speed, and we're not making a bogeyman out of guns when we point out their dangers and call for measures to reduce gun deaths and injury. The irony is that automobiles are not designed to injure and kill, it's just an associated risk. Guns are actually designed to injure and kill, yet they have far fewer safety requirements. We all know murder can be committed in a variety of ways. The problem we're addressing is guns here in the US, not Rwanda or Brazil or Mexico. The only reason comparisons with other countries come up in this discussion is to convince pro-gun people that there actually is a problem, and you do that by comparing with other similar countries, like Canada, Australia and countries in western Europe. Comparing with countries that are broadly different like Brazil or Rwanda or Mexico makes no sense unless you correct for the differences.That being said, I do understand your point. You're arguing (for example) that if strict gun control doesn't work in Mexico but does work in the United Kingdom then gun control must be irrelevant to the problem of gun injury and death. But we know the official count of guns in Mexico is off by at least a factor of two, and that Mexico has a severe problem with drug cartels to the point where a couple hundred students can be murdered at once and mayors who oppose the cartels are murdered on a regular basis. Comparisons between Mexico and the UK have no validity unless you correct for differences, some of which cannot be estimated with any precision, such as the number of illegal guns in Mexico.But as I've said before, I'm not here to argue about gun control. Before any progress can be made on gun control we have to develop a consensus that guns are inherently dangerous, and that the more guns the more gun injury and death. You've said you understand this in Message 4716, but that denying people access to guns doesn't mean they won't get them anyway. But if we communicate the right message, that without a great deal of planning and effort one is at greater risk of injury and death with a gun than without, then people won't want guns for self-defense, and the motivation to acquire a gun illegally will evaporate. Do you mean we should focus on those measures in this discussion? Or that the focus of gun control should be on those measures? If the latter then I fully agree. People who own guns should be required to register them, get regular training, engage in regular practice, pass a proficiency test, have a home inspection of their gun storage, and get the gun regularly inspected and tested. The training portion should drum into them that shortchanging these requirements places they and those around them in greater danger. Once people start wrestling with the problem of how a gun in safe storage is going to be available for self-defense the illogic of gun ownership for self-defense without placing all in the vicinity in greater danger will become abundantly apparent. Again? Please see above in this message, my Message 4707, the next to last paragraph from my Message 4720, and 14174dm's Message 4726. The percentage of people owning guns is higher in Massachusetts than New Hampshire, and the firearm murder rate is also higher in Massachusetts.But you're also failing once again to make an apples to apples comparison. Despite that these two states are close neighbors, Massachusetts includes the Boston metropolitan area. New Hampshire has no urban area anything like Boston. Drive five minutes out of Manchester, the state's largest city with a population of maybe 110,000, and you'll be in cow country. If you want to draw fair comparisons between the two states this significant difference must be taken into account. For example, you could remove the Boston metropolitan area (and possibly also Worcester and Springfield, the 2nd and 3rd largest cities) from the comparison. What's left would be largely rural and would look a lot like New Hampshire, which is also largely rural.--Percy

But I would contend that one of the reasons for the violence in the US is the proliferation of guns. We aren't talking about guns used for hunting but about guns owned for the presumed point of keeping people safe from other people. In some states they can be carried openly like the wild west.This then presumes that the people owning the guns are quite prepared to use them in order to kill or maim. In some cases it obviously will mean shooting first and asking questions later, which even seems to be happening with the police. Do you really think that this mindset doesn't go a long way towards producing a more violent society?

Your psychoanalytical bullshit is way off. If you want to know what I'm thinking then you can just ask.You were responding to the criticism of a gun safety technology with a shocking anti-gun statistic. When I looked into what the statistic was of, that is; "gun-related incidents", I found that it contained things that were completely unrelated to the gun safety technology under criticism. The stat you dropped ended up looking pretty bad.So I questioned the utility of the stat, I was thinking: how am I going to use this information for considering this criticism of this technology?It's like:A1. This gun safety technology has this flaw.
R1. ZOMG! GUNS ARE BAD, MKAY?Did you not get the The Simpsons reference that followed?Even with the 1200 deaths you've offered, a proximity device is not the solution to the vast majority of those. Your stat still sucks in this context.

What relevance does that have when considering that the availability of guns is the issue? The argument is that more guns equals more gun violence. Whether they are required to keep them, allowed to keep them, not allowed to keep them but have them anyway bears no relevance to the point that... they have them... and that their incidents of gun violence is still much lower.The only logical deduction is that there are other factors contributing to why some countries are plagued by violence and why some are not.

Of course there are other factors. Other factors have been provided to you, and so far your eyes slide right by them and you repeat, "There must be other factors."One more time (with a bit more detail), you were comparing Switzerland to Mexico. In Switzerland most males enter the military where they are issued a firearm and are provided training. When they leave the military they enter the military reserve. They have the option of retaining their weapon, but they have to pay for it and apply for a permit. Whether they keep their weapons at home or at an arsenal, they think of their weapons as serving the defense of Switzerland, not home defense. Purchase and guns and transfer of ownership of guns is regulated, as is the sale of ammunition. Enforcement of gun laws is effective. Switzerland is a relatively wealthy country with a poverty rate of 7.6%.In Mexico it is estimated that illegal guns outnumber legal guns by at least 2 to 1. The exact figure figure cannot be known. Police forces are corrupt and largely ineffective at enforcing gun laws. Mexico has a severe problem with drug gangs and cartels. Presumably the people who obtain guns receive no training and want them for personal defense, or in the case of gang and cartel members, offense. Mexico City includes one of the largest ghettos in the world. Mexico is a relatively poor country with a poverty rate of 46.2%.As can be seen, there are a number of difference factors.--Percy

Like availability of ammunition for those guns?OK lets be like Switzerland. Own whatever gun you want, but all ammunition is highly regulated and all reloading components are highly regulated. Does that work for you?The point you keep missing and this last post totally exposes this, is that the call is not for banning of guns, but for more regulation. The regulation people like Percy are calling for is common safety measures.Edited by Theodoric, : No reason given.Edited by Theodoric, : No reason given.

Hi, Cat Sci. Well, I'm not a psychologist. On the other hand, I got a response from you, like I wanted, so maybe I'm not so bad at this psychology stuff after all. I don't think anyone has ever had to ask for you to say what you're thinking. Well, then this is the source of our miscommunication. I was responding to a broader pattern of comments, rather than to a specific point about a specific technology. My central thesis was that pro-gun arguments seem to be built on anti-empirical principles. Data sets are irrelevant, because they can be nit-picked; but hypothetical scenarios are valid objections, even if they'd be obvious statistical outliers or exceptions to the rule. It seems like gun enthusiasts prefer navel-gazing to rationality.So, in a nutshell, you've been doing exactly what I originally said gun proponents do too much of. I'm not anti-gun, and I'm not out to prove that safety-measure X is the solution to our problems: I'm just frustrated because I can't figure out why gun proponents apparently find paranoid navel-gazing more reliable than empirical data.So, now that you (hopefully) understand the intended context of my comment, does that change anything about your assessment of the statistics I provided?

That turns out not to be true. Verse 35 provides context for the statement you cite. I did not say that it was figurative. I recommend a literal, in context reading versus a quote mining.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Good thing she was armed so she could take care of this guy. Bad Hair DayDraw your own conclusions.

and people don't have to want a response from me to get one. And gun opponents don't care how bad the data is, or how illogical the argument is, as long as the conclusion isn't pro-gun then it's good.Any question on the data or logic is branded as an irrational rejection and is discounted, or just left unaddressed.The whole debate is a farce. Well, it's a start...A lot of people have died from guns. Okay, go on. What do you want to do about it?Harrowing statistics and the amazement to the negative reactions to them is not an argument. You do have more than "Guns are bad, mkay?", don't you?**Actually, I've gone through your posts now and I see that you do.From Message 4289:

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Larni writes:

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The sad fact is that Americans do not seem to be able to be trusted not to go on killing sprees.

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I realize you're just making a rhetorical point, but I think the way you've phrased it is a bit unfair.

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The vast majority of Americans can be trusted to not go on killing sprees.
In fact, the vast majority of American gun-lovers can be trusted to not go on killing sprees.

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I recently learned that this was called an ecological fallacy: assigning group statistics to individuals from the group.

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This message is a reply to:
Message 4271 by Larni, posted 10-04-2015 8:25 AM Larni has not yet responded

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You got no response from anyone...From Message 4669:

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Percy's specific proposal (in the post you just responded to) was to end the practice of falsely claiming that guns make people safe, and stick to the statistically-supported narrative that guns are more likely to harm than protect.

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Is this not the same fallacy?I don't like proposals that are blanket solutions to aggregated problems.From Message 4501:

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Hyroglyphx writes:

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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.

Where did you get this number from? I can't find numbers for "self-defense by gun" at the website you cited.

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If you're looking for instances of self-defense with a gun, check out the Defensive Gun Use subreddit:http://www.reddit.com/r/dguThey're not all good cases, there's flags for bad ones n'others, but there's probably more "numbers" than you think.You can't use crime statistics to find things that aren't crimes, like self-defense, so these things don't get accounted for. And dgu's aren't really news-worthy so people think that they aren't really ever happening.Still though, the major problem is an aggregated one, and blanket laws simply do not solve the problem.And trying to get people on-board with believing what amounts to a logical fallacy is never going to work.Edited by Cat Sci, : clarified response to first [quote]Edited by Cat Sci, : do => don't

Hi, Cat Sci.I am not opposed to guns. I am, as I have said from the beginning, opposed to bad arguments. I haven’t read this entire thread, but from the ten or so pages I’ve read, there seems to be a repeated pattern:Anti-gun person cites data.
Pro-gun person says, but that data is flawed.Anti-gun person makes a proposal.
Pro-gun person says, but ____ could still happen.This pattern makes the pro-gun side look very tenuous to me, and both you and Hyroglyphx frankly sounded like you were doggedly ignoring data that were presented to you on several occasions. And it bothers me that I see the same thing from more official pro-gun arguments, as well (like the one I linked to a few posts upthread). So, I commented on it.But, I am not opposed to guns. Guns are not necessarily bad. I am not trying to argue that guns are bad. M’kay?----- This is what I was talking about: again, you’re saying the data is flawed. Sure, anti-gun arguments are not always perfectly rational, and some gun opponents are stupid and ignorant people. But, flawed data doesn't necessarily mean ignorant people. One of the first things I learned in grad school is that literally every data set is flawed. That’s just the nature of data. There’s nothing wrong with pointing out the flaws in a data set; but, if you’re saying things like I question that entire data set because I saw a couple flaws, you should start running a self-diagnostic for other signs of confirmation bias.The Gun Violence Archive data really isn’t as bad as you think it is. Each report includes the number of deaths and injuries, so it’s easy enough to eliminate the BB-gun brandishings and loose bullets in backpacks by disregarding reports with no injuries or deaths. I looked through 5 pages, and found that 33 of 125 reports listed 0 injuries and 0 deaths. That’s about one quarter, so let’s just adjust the total number downward by one quarter. That gives us 3207 real gun incidents (or 4177 after the last week of updates).It’s crude, but it’s at least reasonable. There are probably plenty more nits to pick, but it’s still a reasonable place to start. And that's what data is for, isn't it? To give us a place to start?----- There are probably many wrongs committed by gun-control advocates, and I hope you don’t interpret any of my comments as denying that.Still, the arguments you’ve raised in responses to my posts could be classified as hasty generalizations (BB guns, therefore bad data) and arguments from ignorance (no data because DGU’s are probably under-reported).If I try to make sense of this, I might conclude that you want people to make decisions based on data that doesn’t exist, while simultaneously apparently rejecting all data that does exist. I'm sure you're not actually doing that, but it does kind of sound that way.----- Actually, the Gun Violence Archive I keep referring to also has DGU reports listed. Your Reddit link has about 8 pages of reports from 2016, which translates into about 200 DGU reports. The Gun Violence Archive lists 172, so they’re in reasonably good agreement. I understand that most experts believe the actual number of DGU’s to be higher than, but the estimates seem to be all over the place, so I don't know what to do with that information. I'd be inclined to use the more conservative estimates for DGU's, not the millions that the NRA claims. The most conservative numbers I've seen might give a ratio of about 1 or 2 DGU's for every gun-related death.Hypothetically, one could work out a ratio of lives saved to lives lost as a basic metric of the benefit or detriment of guns to our society. Surely somebody has already tried to do this. If so, that would be an excellent place to start our discussion about what we should and shouldn't do in relation to guns.

Texas being it's newest member. If it means anything to you, I actually oppose Open Carry and am in favor of most of the pieces of legislature concerning regulation. No more than football (soccer) is the underlying cause of hooliganism.