And how is it the government's business whether someone is acting rationally or irrationally in taking their own life? It's their right to do so, even if I disagree with them actually doing it. It's not my place or your place to try and force them not to (or even make it more difficult for them). Where do you draw the line? Virginia got rid of its 30-day time limit because it was shown to be ineffective, and yet that's the "gold standard" that pretty much all gun control advocates have called for. How long would you make it? 90 days? One gun a year? At some point, it's clearly excessive. And that's not even looking at collectors (who, for example, often want to purchase matched sets or consecutive serial numbers). Kansas was just the first I had pop up from a Google search. There are no complete nationwide statistics, because a lot of states don't release information on CCP holders. I've seen similar reports from Florida, Texas, and Utah, which all issue a significant number of permits. I'll see if I can dig those reports up for you. EDIT: This looks at a NY Times article about North Carolina and shows that CCP holders are 5 times less likely to kill someone than the rest of the population. The chart on page 58 of this PDF provides data from some more states. I'm not saying that the problems can't be overcome, but there would be significant legal ramifications in other areas as well. It's not a quick or easy thing.
China has a totalitarian regime, hardly the sort of thing that we want to be emulating, and India still has a radically different social structure from the rest of the world. Both of those factors make direct comparisons almost impossible.
It looks like you're admitting that your population-based reasoning was flawed and tacitly admitting that the availability of guns has an effect on the rate of gun related deaths. Bravo!
You sound like your brother here. That's not a compliment. So, reconcile this for me - the next on the list has roughly 1/60th of the population of the US. Explain it away.
Remember that, my fellow JCCers: We can't forget those who want to purchase matched sets or consecutive serial numbers.
I'm not saying we should force them not to. However, I can't comprehend how any policy that reduces the suicide rate is negative. Find something different to collect. I honestly have 0 sympathy sorry.
Also, here is some data from the Guardian that you can play around with. Ranking countries by homicide by firearm per 100k is striking, as we are the clear outlier among OECD countries. I'm also going to highlight these again to prove a point. These are headlines since Friday in the U.S. Oklahoma HS student arrested for plotting massacre Man Fires Some 50 Shots at Calif. Mall Parking Lot Indiana man who owned 47 guns arrested after elementary school threat Gunman killed in Alabama hospital shooting
Does it help if I thought of them and found them not worthy of more than 2 seconds worth of a thought?
And you sound like KnightWriter, in your inability to civilly disagree with someone. Care to respond without trying to insult people? Statistical variation explains most if not all of it. Beyond that, the sample size for smaller countries creates a rather large statistical margin of error. I never said that the population based reasoning accounted for everything, only that it explains the distribution when comparing with Europe (which is the context that you and others were using). The question was primarily asked in the context of comparing with Europe, which doesn't contain either China or India last I checked. You can't change the context after the fact to invalidate my responses. Firearms are valuable items, many with historical significance. Collecting is a perfectly legal hobby, just as much as collecting swords, cars, or any other valuable item is legal. In general, the collectors aren't the ones going on shooting rampages. Also, that was a great job of avoiding my main point to focus on an aside. Care to respond to my main point about the ineffectiveness of one-gun-a month laws? Or can you only provide ridicule of a minor side point to support your position? Whether reducing the suicide rate is positive or negative is irrelevant. It's not your place or the government's place to use that as a basis to restrict people's rights. It's nothing more than a red herring in this discussion.
So, KK, since this subject has come up before, what do you as a responsible gun owner suggest be done?
Understood, but as ES has said several times, you're ascribing a grotesque amount of significance to the fact that many people enjoy guns for perfectly benign purposes. That's undoubtedly true. Is that, however, so important that it ultimately outweighs the mass murders that gun ownership also facilitates? You keep citing all sorts of things to indicate that this would actually make us less safe...i.e, in shooting sprees that ended with a civilian firing a gun, x amount of people were killed, but when it was a law enforcement offer, more than x amount of people were killed". Great, only you're completely eliding a third option; if the shooter had never had a gun in the first place, the average number of people killed would have been less than x. (Insert "But he might have gone on a stabbing spree instead!").
No 'right' is restricted by a waiting period to buy a gun and how is reducing the suicide rate not relevant to the discussion? Are you honestly arguing that a higher rate of people killing themselves is good?
Kimball_Kinnison You must be mistaken. You replied to this point: With this: If it only stands to reason that a more populous nation would have a greater likelihood of any sort of tragedy, then India and China should both have significantly more gun related death/homicide/massacres.
Kk, your point about the subjectivity of mental evaluations is a tiny bit off. While it's true that diagnosing people with mental difficulties does meet with a certain amount of subjectivity--there is also a very high degree of predictability in most mental conditions. That's why the DSM exists, because it makes diagnosing problems easier because there's a high predictability. So your point is a little bit of BS on your part. Unless you don't believe in the psychological field like some crazy Scientologist or some such. Your point on suicide is also a bit silly since suicidal thoughts are often a temporary thing and the people that want to die are going through some very tough times. Some will go to extremes and choose suicide from some other means if they can't do it themselves. Or they'll take out their rage on society before dying. So, if you know that there's a group of people out there that can go off in public then it's most certainly the job of the government to take public health and safety matters into consideration when thinking of any sort of bans or regulations.
KK I reserve the right to be disappointed with uncharacteristic dis-ingenuity on your behalf and to express that disappointment. Your argument smacks of vested self interest with a blithe indifference to the consequences on society as a whole. As per my comments earlier, you fall squarely in that group of people that value your right to own a firearm over the rights of people, as a whole, to life. I'm sorry, no society would feel that a fair transaction took place when you trade a child's right to life for a citizen's right to own a half dozen handguns. You want me to not think you're making lazy and inane arguments because you just don't want to give up your gun, then stop sounding like your brother and start sounding like KK.
In Australia, when we banned automatic and semi-automatic weapons (excluding handguns) we also took them out of circulation by implementing a compulsory "buy back" scheme whereby the government paid fair compensation for weapons which were handed in by the general public. We also implemented an 'amnesty' for those people who handed in weapons which were not legally ownded in the first place (the Bikie lobby really pushed for this). With our small population of 20 odd million, the government collected something like 600,000 weapons and paid approx $300 million in compensation. Presumably, in the US, the government would have to do something similar if it wanted to take automatic/semi-automatic rifles out of circulation (I mean, you could ban them all tomorrow but there are probably enough of those kinds of weapons in circulation that everyone in the US could still own three each) because you can't take a person's property without compensation. I wonder what kind of money the government would be looking at to 'buy-back' these kinds of weapons as part of a comprehensive gun control regime? Also, how much revenue is made from firearm sales in the US? The cynical part of me wonders if government indifference to gun control reform is more than just an unwillingness to stare down the 'gun lobby' types, as it appears to me as somebody looking at it from outside that the US starting to push the conservatives on subjects like same sex marriage, abortion etc. Practically speaking, how would fundamental gun reform actually work in the US? Would it have to follow the Aussie example for it to work? If so, what would a 'buy-back' scheme cost?
It's also worth noting that handgun ownership requires the firearm to generally be stored on premises at a gun club and you must attend a regular number of club meetings per year to meet the licensing criteria. Other restrictions included limiting magazine size to 5 rounds on rifles (and limiting general use to bolt action, unless you can demonstrate special needs), and only allowing single or double shot shotguns (so over-under, double-barrelled etc). So far I've never needed by gun to defend myself from break ins, muggers, or the English.
My nephew who lives in Potts Point has never needed a gun to defend himself but I can't say the same for anyone who lives in Macquarie Fields or Fairfield!. It's gangland out there. http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/100-shoot...rylands-tops-driveby-list-20120911-25psc.html Personally, I think the $300 million in taxpayer money was a good investment. I would love know how much US taxpayers would fork out to fund a similar buyback scheme. What is the price tag for a child's life? That is the question that needs to be asked in the US. Money needs to be spent on gun reform, mental health reform and it looks like extra security for public schools.
I'm not going to comment on the underlying trends behind violence in SW Sydney... I'm not going to comment on the underlying trends behind violence in SW Sydney... I'm not going to comment on the underlying trends behind violence in SW Sydney... I'm not going to comment on the underlying trends behind violence in SW Sydney...
Well, if you want to know how much our society values children just look at how well we treat our teachers and schools. The first thing on the chopping block on any budget is always education. So as many platitudes as will be spilled because of this crime, we'll still treat them like dirt after the news coverage switches. Wow...that sounded deeply cynical, but very true in this case.
I will argue that the need here would be for compromise. Obama lumped all of us gun owners together as "clinging to guns and religion" back in 2008, and I say it's far past time time we slough off the stereotype and show them all that there we in the grand majority of gun owners are neither backwoods rednecks nor psychopaths. If that means settling for waiting periods (apply for a pistol, then purchase in 30 days really isn't an inconvenience for me) or full-auto bans (which I have no use for nor any intention of ever owning), then so be it. Assault Weapons would be any weapon that functions in full auto or burst fire mode. Semi-autos are not assault weapons and I skeeve every time someone in the media says "semi-automatic assault weapon". And oh god I caught "teh Boston" from my girlfriend. I just said "skeeve".....next thing you know I'll start calling things "legit" and "wicked".
This has some very significant civil rights implications, because of how subjective some mental health diagnostic tests can be. It's easy to point to the more extreme cases and say "that person needs to be committed", but it's a lot harder to deal with criteria for the edge cases, and that's where the law ultimately has to work. As I said before, there are no quick, easy, and clean answers.[/quote] Yeah I think if your offspring foams at the mouth about "teh gubbermint", actively harms him or herself, and makes verbal threats with a gleam in their eye indicating that they just might act on it, I say get them to a hospital by any means necessary. We don't know all the facts about the guy in Connecticut....but Arizona shooter Jared Loughner was crazier than a sack of cats, and EVERYONE KNEW IT. Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were both hopped up on antidepressants when they started screaming "Heil Hitler" and building miniature pipe bombs in their town....and everyone knew it. Cho at VT...actually wrote and shared a gory fanfic play about how he was going to kill his father. Nutball Joker guy in Aurora was expelled from the University and had all his access to the labs suspended after he apparently made threats against the professors. Each of these cases had warped individuals, and everyone knew they were warped, and yet nobody did anything.
