Senate Gun Control

Kimball_Kinnison
You're using your daft stats and false premises again. You say 99% of handguns are not used in murders, so don't ban guns. Fine. 99.9% of people are not murderers, so don't ban murder. 99.9% of nuclear weapons are not used, so we don't need proliferation treaties. Most crimes are not murder, so we shouldn't ban crimes. Poisons are controlled substances, but most poisonous material in the world is not used in murders, so everyone should be able to buy as much poison as they like...?

Shifting from made up stats to single unwritten testimonials isn't convincing either, considering your stated aim was to argue the facts.

The USA is 12th in the world table of firearm related deaths, with 9 firearm related deaths per 100,000 people. My country (the UK) has all but prohibited guns and is 65th on that table, with 0.25 firearm related deaths per 100,000 people.

You do not find countries with stricter gun laws than the USA above the USA in the rate of firearm related deaths.

I realise that correlation is not the same as causality, but you'd have to be exceptionally stupid or blindly devoted to keeping your guns to fail to see the connection.

 

The statistics I gave are relevant for the purpose I gave them: demonstrating that the vast majority of gun owners are responsible and don't hurt others with their guns. It is absolutely wrong to punish the vast majority of people who are responsible because of the fraction of a percent who are not. Do we outlaw alcohol or cars because some people drive drunk? Do we even require every car have a breathalyzer steering lock because some people drive drunk? No, because it would disproportionately affect law-abiding citizens. Instead, we focus on the people who actually cause problems. The principle here is the same. (In fact, a higher proportion of cars will have a drunk drive in any year than guns will be used in a homicide.)

Your statistics there are cherry picked quite a bit. The overall homicide rate in the US in 4.2 per 100000. In the UK, it's 1.2 per 100000. When it comes to firearm homicides, the US rate is 3.59 per 100000. That means that the UK's rate for non-gun homicides is significantly higher than the US's. That clearly shows that merely comparing deaths due to one tool doesn't give the complete picture.

Quite simply, it's not the tool that is the problem. It is the people who misuse it who are the problem.

 

V-2 you are not helping. Your analogy was terrible.

 

Sorry.

I was trying to come up with arguments of equal 'merit' to the idea that because most guns are not used to kill people, everyone should be allowed to own them. Thinking that dumb doesn't come easily to me.

 

It clearly shows that you're making stuff up. The deaths related to the tool IS the problem.

The UK's firearm related homicide rate is 0.04 per 100,000.
The USA's firearm related homicide is 2.98 per 100,000, which is some 74.5 times higher than the UK.

 

Do we outlaw drugs because some people are irresponsible?

 

I think we should outlaw everything since people are so destructive.
DOWN WITH EVERYTHING! DOWN WITH EVERYTHING!

 

But if we outlaw everything, wouldn't that include outlawing the outlawing of things?

 

If I was allowed to post the Scanners exploding head gif (which we're not allowed to post at all) it would totally go here.

 

I never thought I'd see someone of your integrity stoop to such levels, KK. Your brother? Yes. You? No.

What bothers me most about this - and a lot about yet another mass shooting in the USA bothers me - is that gun owners are essentially pricing their right to own firearms over the inherent right to life we all share. The dominant purpose of a firearm is death. The means of achieving this vary from legitimate - say, in the discharge of duties by a law enforcement officer; to the illegitimate, like someone indulging in a revenge fantasy **** scenario shooting a burglar.

(The secondary purpose is sport and recreation, i.e. skeet or target shooting).

And that tool of death is more crucial to you than the right of citizens to enjoy a life not cut short in senseless violence.

I realise you don't intend this to be the case, but it is.

So, suggesting cars for drunk drivers etc is disingenuous. Firstly, the purpose of the car is to facilitate transport. When it is used irresponsibly you don't tend to find 20+ people dead whose only "crime" was attending a particular school, university, or theatre. And, moreover, drivers don't rally around defending the car when it happens.

Gun owners are conspicuously silent in asking for better regulation of firearms and more mechanisms to restrict access.

It's not dissimilar to Muslims after 9/11. When the terrorist attacks were framed in the context of being Islamic, moderate Muslims didn't say, "We agree that this sect of Islamic thought is un-Islamic and should be stopped!" They instead defended Islam. Thus, the people who could make the most meaningful impact chose poorly and we know how that's panned out.

I would like you to take another object where the dominant purpose is death, and show me firstly that comparable levels of violence can be achieved. Don't use cars or airplanes; that's idiotic and insulting to everyone's intelligence because you know it's BS but it suits your purposes.

Next, explain to me why your right to own a firearm should be more precious than the right to life of people who have been shot dead in senseless tragedy. Because, I'll be honest with you - besides raping and soiling the object and purpose of the second amendment, gun owners appear to care more about not being punished than they do about the victims. That, or you're just prepared to appear cold of heart in order to keep a Glock or six.

(And the underlying reasoning is that in the US, the right to life is not consistent with the right to own an object whose dominant purpose is death.)[/quote]

 

I of course agree with the rest of your post, but these situations are dissimilar. In fact, all the major intellectual hubs in Islam did denounce Bin Laden, and noted that both his theology and tactics were illegitimate. Just because it didn't receive a lot of Western press coverage doesn't mean it never happened. Secondly, I think it's pretty disingenuous to suggest that anything subsequent, be it the wave of anti-Muslim bigotry in the US and Europe, or continued radicalism in various pockets of the world are really owed to some failure to speak out, even if there had been one.

 

I'm not suggesting that there would be a difference, and honestly I could have kept going with instances in which Muslims have generally, as a group, felt the need to defend Islam rather than decry the actions of idiots. I understand why it happens; "I am not as they are, so please don't paint me with that brush". The issue though is that it comes across as defense of the indefensible. There's no way you cannot argue after these shootings that something is rotten in the US, but gun owners are selfish in their ways and don't want anything as messy as a school shooting to interfere with their right to own firearms.

EDIT: I guess what I am saying, Wocky, is that any point at which a genuine dialogue could and should be established is sidetracked by adding a pointless third side to a debate. Make sense?

 

Nobody's asking for anything to be outlawed. It's more about making the application process more extensive... waiting periods, background checks, psychological evaluations, requiring gun cabinets, etc. Nobody is screaming that all guns should be banned (well, that's not true... some are, but I'd say the majority see how ridiculous that notion is and are looking at this more rationally).

 

Is that the point she was making? I wasn't quite sure what the original point was since . . . yes, actually we do outlaw drugs because people are irresponsible. Don't we?

 

Not sure... that's what I got out of the post.

Arwen?

 

I will say that guns should largely be outlawed. I agree with a columnist (I think it was from the Economist and it makes me feel dirty) who said that a ban is really the only form of gun control that would make a difference.

 

I think regulation is a much better first step.

 

I agree; I thought it was a lovely satire of the blindly stupid arguments put forward by people opposed to gun control. They make ridiculous statements which i assume have the sole purpose of making gun ownership en masse seem less absurd, i.e. "Would you ban someone with AIDS because they could infect others?"

Incidentally, can we have a gentle-person's agreement going forward that neither the pro- or anti- gun control sides are allowed to make blindly stupid arguments in defence of their position? Going forward, you either make a valid argument or for example just admit the feeling of adequacy and potency owning a gun gives you, and be done. Abandon the pretensions of reasoned debate, etc, if your post is going to suggest a ban on all guns/or that just because a person could drown doesn't mean we outlaw water.

 

At least I've given what my criteria is for accepting such regulation.

The problem is that pretty much every proposal for how to implement gun control doesn't work, or doesn't actually address the problems people claim to want to target. After all, consider the usual recommendations:

Magazine size limit? Even when one was in place (1994-2004), it did nothing to stop anything like this (see the Columbine massacre, for example). Even then, most proposed limits are artificially low and completely arbitrary.

Eliminating private sales/closing the "gun show loophole"? When was the last shooter who bought a gun in this fashion? Pretty much all of them have either bought the guns through dealers (going through the same background check) or stolen then guns (which will never involve a background check). There's no evidence this would actually stop any shootings.

Implementing a new assault weapons ban? The ATF has admitted that the previous ban had no measurable effect on crime rates. Additionally, the ban was completely ineffective because it primarily regulated cosmetic features (such as having a fore grip or bayonet lug). None of those features make a gun more lethal than any other gun.

Waiting periods? They were once necessary to provide time for a background check, but are no longer needed. Almost every major mass shooting involved a gun that the person either stole (no waiting period) or had owned for a time longer than any proposed waiting period (which wouldn't have stopped them from getting the gun).

As far as restricting who can carry in public, there's some evidence that it would get more people killed. One recent examination found from about 100 mass shootings, in shootings where a civilian stepped in to end the shooting, the average number of deaths was 2.33. When the police are the ones to end the shooting, the average jumps to 14.29 deaths. Armed civilians can and do step in, too, as you can see in the Clackamas Town Center shooting last week. In any event, how many of these mass shootings have been carried out by someone who was legally carrying at the time? (The answer? One: the Tuscson shooting, because Arizona didn't require any permit for carrying concealed.)

I do support efforts to tighten the background checks and help prevent people with mental issues from being able to buy guns. The big issue there is how do you do that.

The one thing I refuse to do is blame the tool for the actions of the wielder.

 

Limiting access to firearms is a rational response to an epidemic of firearm related death.

 

Mexico.

 

As far as I'm aware, you can legally purchase guns in Mexico. They may have tighter rules regarding carrying weapons or something, but you're probably right.

 

Not exactly. They only have one legal gun shop in the whole country, and it's owned and operated by the military.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/w...tive-approach-to-gun-laws.html?pagewanted=all

 

OK but Mexico is racked by a spectacular war between drug cartels and the government, no?

 

Except the tool and the wielder are linked to a systemic rot in the American model. Token measures, such as restricting functionality X or Y, will of course have no measurable effect. It's like using leeches to treat cancer.