Gun Control!

[Disch]

admkrk wrote:

Even better stats to base a decision on. It is just that sort of (mis)information that gets the ball rolling behind gun control. I had to give up my (grandfather's) gun several years ago for personal reasons, but I live in an area where I hear gun fire several times a day. One neighbor stopped shooting his rifle after I told him about the lead buzzing through my property. The rest is mainly shotguns that are too far away to matter even if they were aimed in my direction. Sensationalism is absolutely the worst case to base any kind of decision on regardless of the topic.

I'm greatly confused by your posts. You seem to be saying guns are great, yet in the same paragraph say how you are surrounded by guns and gun violence and how horrible they are.




Anyway... here's my take on the situation... and is why I keep going back and forth on the issue:

It's true US has more violence than other westernized countries, but it isn't clear that gun ownership is the cause. There are other contributing factors that are equally (or more) likely direct causes:

- The US is extremely racially charged. Particularly in the south. The US is also racially diverse. Particularly in the south. This is a bad combination, and if you look at gun deaths at individual states and compare them to % whites vs. % minorities per state... there is a clear correlation between gun deaths and racial diversity.

- There is no correlation between states with heavier gun control laws and gun violence. I looked. This doesn't necessarily mean that gun control doesn't work... since it's easy to purchase guns out of state, but it certainly doesn't help the gun control side of the debate.

- The wealth gap in the US is terrible, and we have a significant portion of the population below the poverty line. Violent crime increases as poverty grows more severe.

- The public education in the US is terrible. Particularly in areas plagued by poverty and crime. Only worsening the problem.



So in a way it's unfair to compare gun violence in the US to that of other countries... because other countries don't have these problems anywhere near the scale that the US does.

And the "slippery slope" argument, while it might seem absurd, actually does have a lot of historical precedent. The federal government has been increasingly been encroaching on individual rights since at least the Reagan administration. Even now it's legal for the federal government to arrest and indefinitely detain a US citizen without trial if they believe that citizen to be a "terrorist". (Of course... since they don't have to have a trial... they can literally just claim anyone to be a terrorist and there's no recourse if they're wrong.)



On the other hand...

The US has a ridiculously high rate of school shootings. It is obvious to anyone with common sense that if automatic weapons and assault rifles were not readily available to 16 year old kids with a grudge, there would not be as many school shootings.

The US law enforcement and judicial systems are extremely racially biased, and blacks are given much harsher treatment than whites. Mix that with gun culture and you get terrible and racially charged legislature like the infamous "stand your ground" law, which has repeatedly shown to be unfair towards blacks both in finding them guilty, and in letting their killers get off the hook.

Gun culture also leads to degenerating society in other ways... like the "open carry Texas" nutbags who walk around town and into shops brandishing assault rifles. And while they may not actually commit crime, how is the poor sap behind the counter of a 7/11 making minimum wage supposed to know he isn't about to be robbed?




So I don't know. I'm still largely on the fence. Ideally, I'd like it if there were no guns at all, but that's obviously not realistic.

[admkrk]

I'm greatly confused by your posts. You seem to be saying guns are great, yet in the same paragraph say how you are surrounded by guns and gun violence and how horrible they are

.
What I am trying to say is that I am not a stranger to guns. I have been around them almost my whole life, some times in bad situations so I can see both sides and not just from news stories. To say guns are great might be an overstatement, but I certainly would not say they are horrible and I am not afraid of them.

My biggest concern is centered more around:

The federal government has been increasingly been encroaching on individual rights since at least the Reagan administration.

Actually it goes back to around WWI, but Reagan and Bush made huge leaps and bounds in taking freedoms from the people in the name of national security.

[cire]

NoXzema wrote:

To be honest, you're comment bothers me because even though I gave myself a disadvantage in my sources and most of my arguments are based on logic and basic statistics, you try and discredit that simply by saying my sources are bad.

If your premises are incorrect, all the logic in the world won't help you.

NoXzema wrote:

The only other reference I've made is to other countries which have implemented said gun control. Is that also bad? The only website I've provided, which is gunpolicy.org, actually cites their statistics themselves which you can look at, similar to how wikipedia works.

I wonder if you would take another look at the post you were responding to here and tell me how this is relevant to it. Is there some set of statistics present on gunpolicy.org that supports your assertion that "In most occasions, people probably would have taken shots at a person instead of the ground as well?"

NoXzema wrote:

So if my "nebulous hodgepodge of impressions" aren't good enough, what is? Just because you claim I don't have firm impressions doesn't dismiss any of my arguments.

I was asking you to support your arguments. So far, you've done nothing but say, "my unsupported assertions are good enough. How dare you say otherwise?"

NoXzema wrote:

If you want, target the website on how it's folly, why referencing other countries is a bad idea, or the reasoning of one of my arguments. You shouldn't target my grasp or understanding of something.

If you do not want your opinion challenged, do not post on public forums.


I still don't know what you meant by:

Comparing the occasions where guns are misused to these occasions doesn't even compete.

[NoXzema]

Wooooooooooooooooooooooosh.

Alright.
1) Premise is appropriate here. Stop changing the subject.

2)

I wonder if you would take another look at the post you were responding to here and tell me how this is relevant to it. Is there some set of statistics present on gunpolicy.org that supports your assertion that "In most occasions, people probably would have taken shots at a person instead of the ground as well?"

-Forgot quoted text.
You take that out of the context I presented in, ironically after griping to me about context. Fantastic. That specific paragraph was to show validity of that website instead of just being an impressionable source as you claimed it to be (or rather, you claimed all of my source of information to be). It's also to question why you think my claim is unsupported.

3) My arguments are supported by that website, news, and personal experience. There's nothing else that can literally support it. I'm not upset that you claim my assertions are unsupported, I'm upset that you're ignoring my said personal experience, that website I've linked several times (which is based on official statistics in the USA and of other countries), and the hundreds of reported cases concerning gun violence.

If you do not want your opinion challenged, do not post on public forums.

You are not challenging my opinion, you're challenging me. I do not appreciate that.

Comparing the occasions where guns are misused to these occasions doesn't even compete.

There are far more stories of gun violence than there are cases of a gun being used for safety. It's also difficult to hold a story for gun safety. For instance, man shoots two teenagers who go into his basement... as he sat there waiting for them because he knew they would come back. He recorded the entire thing and expects to be held for self-defense although it's clearly premeditated murder as well. Is that a story about using guns for safety?

[Computergeek01]

Man, having gone through this thread there are a few points I feel compelled to put in.

As for self defense, I'll never understand why people assume that if someone is going for your wallet they have a gun. If they have a gun, then it's to make the robbery as smooth as possible for them meaning they will make sure you know. If you see the gun, or they are pointing something at you out of their pocket then yes it makes sense to cooperate, they got the drop on you, they are at the advantage, don't make things worse for yourself. Otherwise you have the right to defend yourself.

Also why do people only self defense from "bad guys"? Last week I was talking to a PI who was hired to investigate one of my neighbors. This "neighbors" pit-bull terrier had escaped from his yard last year, not difficult at all I have a picture of his dilapidated excuse for a fence as proof, and tore half of a kids face off. The kids mother, this 5'4" 90 lbs black women, ran out of the house as fast as she could with a kitchen knife to get the dog off of him and lost the use of her left hand for her trouble. The kid looks like a stroke victim from the loss of muscle tissue on that side of his face. The father was at work, the siblings were too young to get involved. What's the solution here? To ban all large dogs? Teach self-defense courses to children against a breed that was engineered to bring down cattle? You can't tell me that animal attacks uncommon occurrence. They are not the sole reason for private ownership of firearms, but they don't get enough attention either.

[Disch]

You are almost twice as likely to die of a bee sting as you are of an attack dog. Granted, your anecdotal example did not result in a fatality.


It's very easy to cherry pick examples of when a gun might have come in handy. No one will disagree that in those rare cases it is beneficial to have one. The question is whether or not those rare cases are worth the downsides.

[helios]

Moving target + inexperienced shooter + child within firing range. Sounds like a winning combination.

You are almost twice as likely to die of a bee sting as you are of an attack dog.

Is that in general or assuming that you are currently being attacked?

[Disch]

In general there are twice as many bee sting deaths per year than there are dog deaths.

On a lighter note:

http://buttersafe.com/2010/10/21/serving-the-queen/

[Computergeek01]

@ helios: Inexperienced shooter is an assumption. I'm pro regulation and operator responsibility, I encourage people who own a firearm to practice with it. I'm not dumb enough to think that simply owning a gun would have saved the kids face or that the mother would necessarily have had a viable shot. But as it stands the fact that the dog didn't continue attacking more people or decide to kill either person is due to nothing but luck. Again, this is not a stand alone reason to allow private firearm ownership. It is only one that I think gets too little attention and should be considered in the debate about personal protection. Ultimately we are responsible for our own protection and I have never seen an argument that convinces me that it is a good idea to take away a tool which allows an otherwise helpless person the ability to do that.

@ Disch: Yes it is easy to cherry pick, such as saying that certain laws hurt minorities more then others regardless of factors in those individual cases. But anecdotal evidence is not a logical fallacy. I would personally rather have one and not need it, then need it and not have one. I'm sure you've read that a hundred times in debates like these but it's true for some of us. It probably boils down to old fashion paranoia, but that's an evolutionary trait. Our species didn't survive by playing the numbers, we survived by knowing what dangers might occur and planning accordingly. You mention the downsides of allowing private ownership. I would like to go over those. Let's start with what I see sighted most often; when a child gets a hold of a weapon and kills themselves or another person. I agree, this is a tragedy but this is also gross negligence on the part of the owner; which by the way is why these incidents don't get reported as accidents but they get categorized as negligent homicide. Dangerous things should always be secured when children are present. If some parent left hydrocodone on their coffee table and their child OD'd who would you say is at fault?

I should point out that I'm a "2A". I cringe whenever I see videos of idiots walking around with loaded rifles and yelling about their right to carry. This is called brandishing and it boarders on assault with a deadly weapon; these jerks should not be discouraged, they should be prosecuted. I seem to be the only one alive who thinks that our laws the way they stand actually work.

[helios]

Inexperienced shooter is an assumption.

Either way, I'm very skeptical that a gun owner chosen at random could have pulled off that shot in a panic situation.

But as it stands the fact that the dog didn't continue attacking more people or decide to kill either person is due to nothing but luck.

Adding a gun, what does the outcome depend on? Firing a gun is inherently a gamble, however small.

It is only one that I think gets too little attention and should be considered in the debate about personal protection.

Maybe it gets little attention because, as Ditch pointed out, most people have more to worry about other people than about other species.