Corvinus85 Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 32 minutes ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said: Brazil has quite restrictive gun laws, and they (like many Latin American countries) have extreme amounts of gang violence. The ones that can't get their hands on firearms hack each other to pieces with machetes instead. At least innocents don't get killed in drive by knifings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swordfish Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 1 hour ago, James Arryn said: Legal drugs harm the user, and that harm is a side-effect. Guns harm others and that harm is the design. It is amazing to me that after all the discussions that have been had about gun control, people still make bad arguments like this. If you honestly believe that drugs only harm the user and guns only harm others, then i don't really know what to tell you. The societal harm from drugs is extremely high (pun intended) and they add almost no positive societal value. Quote Not that complicated, really. Right. Nothing complicated or nuanced about regulating guns or drugs. it's totes simple. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 The most harmful drug worldwide is probably alcohol (because it is so common). This is also the case where we have data to compare times/regions of prohibition/restriction and those with liberal rules. To my understanding the experiences with prohibition largely speak for liberalization. Unfortunately, alcohol is also the most culturally entrenched drug in the West, so it is a special case. Prohibition has among others, two possible effects: drive trade underground and thus foster organized crime and reduce demand and thus the bad social and health consequences of drug use. The deterrence of strict rules to reduce demand probably works better for drugs that are more rare, more recent and used to be illegal in most countries for the last 100 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Ent Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 12 hours ago, James Arryn said: Legal drugs harm the user, and that harm is a side-effect. Guns harm others and that harm is the design. Not that complicated, really. I don’t follow it. The argument I was questioning goes, somewhat simplified: “People kill each other because commodity X is illegal. If commodity X were legal, they would stop killing each other.” for X = drugs. Why does the argument not hold for all X? In particular, for X = guns? There may be a perfectly good answer, but if so then that seems central the argument but I haven’t seen it here. For instance, it may have to do with how much money is generated from the illegal sale of X. Then you would need to argue that drugs have very high utility to the buyer but guns don’t. I’m sure this argument can be attempted, and if completed, it would convince me, thereby improving the discourse. I’m not emotionally invested in this matter (using neither drugs nor guns), so I’m eager to update my position. But I don’t understand how X’s direction of harm affects the argument. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
denstorebog Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 4 hours ago, Happy Ent said: I don’t follow it. The argument I was questioning goes, somewhat simplified: “People kill each other because commodity X is illegal. If commodity X were legal, they would stop killing each other.” for X = drugs. Why does the argument not hold for all X? In particular, for X = guns? There may be a perfectly good answer, but if so then that seems central the argument but I haven’t seen it here. For instance, it may have to do with how much money is generated from the illegal sale of X. Then you would need to argue that drugs have very high utility to the buyer but guns don’t. I’m sure this argument can be attempted, and if completed, it would convince me, thereby improving the discourse. I’m not emotionally invested in this matter (using neither drugs nor guns), so I’m eager to update my position. But I don’t understand how X’s direction of harm affects the argument. Because guns are a means to getting an end, whereas drugs are an end. If everyone has the drugs they need, there's nothing to fight over. If everyone has guns, they have the lethal means to fight over what they're really after. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Ent Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 1 hour ago, denstorebog said: Because guns are a means to getting an end, whereas drugs are an end. If everyone has the drugs they need, there's nothing to fight over. If everyone has guns, they have the lethal means to fight over what they're really after. Owning guns is not an end? I did not know that. Thank you. Inspired by this thread I’ve done some reading. Is my understanding that Chicago has relatively strict gun control laws correct? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 On 1/11/2017 at 3:22 PM, Iskaral Pust said: I know there is no political will to ban guns in America but I don't want us to pretend it's because it would not be effective. We have an excellent natural experiment that says it would work very well. So the persistence of guns and gun violence is preventable but we choose not to. I agree that we need to address the "gang" violence. I keep using "gang" because a lot of the violence seems to be between social members of gangs rather than hardcore professional criminals waging war over big dollars. Traditional gang wars end when a victor consolidates and the cycle renews when the police break up the big gang, but a population of disenfranchised, unemployable young men in a culture of violence will keep on going. But there's very little political will for most of the viable solutions: eradicate dense clusters of poverty, ban guns, fix the culture of poverty and/or legalize all narcotics. Legalizing drugs is the least effective of that list because it alone could still leave a culture of social disenfranchisement and violence. IP, Widespread possession of firearms doesn't have to lead to a violent culture. Isn't firearm ownership fairly widespread in Canada?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord of Oop North Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said: IP, Widespread possession of firearms doesn't have to lead to a violent culture. Isn't firearm ownership fairly widespread in Canada?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country While true, that gun ownership is dis tributed very unevenly across the country. And especially between urban and rural areas. Here are some figures from the RCMP; http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/cfp-pcaf/facts-faits/index-eng.htm If you look at the number of licenses and then compare against population of those Provinces, you will find major discrepancies. I.e. 560618 licenses in Ontario, which has a population of 13.6 million people, versus 5240 licenses in Northwest Territories, which has a population of 42,000. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swordfish Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 9 hours ago, Jo498 said: The most harmful drug worldwide is probably alcohol (because it is so common). This is also the case where we have data to compare times/regions of prohibition/restriction and those with liberal rules. To my understanding the experiences with prohibition largely speak for liberalization. Unfortunately, alcohol is also the most culturally entrenched drug in the West, so it is a special case. Prohibition has among others, two possible effects: drive trade underground and thus foster organized crime and reduce demand and thus the bad social and health consequences of drug use. The deterrence of strict rules to reduce demand probably works better for drugs that are more rare, more recent and used to be illegal in most countries for the last 100 years. There are also lot fewer people dying from drinking bathtub gin than there were during prohibition. 4 hours ago, denstorebog said: Because guns are a means to getting an end, whereas drugs are an end. If everyone has the drugs they need, there's nothing to fight over. If everyone has guns, they have the lethal means to fight over what they're really after. What a strange, silly argument. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcbigski Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 95% of the homicide victims in Chicago were minorities per the OP. If only there were an activist group dedicated to stopping the murder of blacks. Could do a lot of good focusing here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Week Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 11 minutes ago, mcbigski said: 95% of the homicide victims in Chicago were minorities per the OP. If only there were an activist group dedicated to stopping the murder of blacks. Could do a lot of good focusing here. What makes you think there isn't? Is this one of those lovely "BLM should pay attention to black on black crime instead of State violence against black and brown people (e.g. poverty, incarceration, killing by police)"? This is ignoring the culpability of the State and society in creating a segregated environment of poverty, poor health outcomes, etc. but blaming those who have suffered for the effect. Yes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arakan Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 Regarding legalizing drugs...we can speak about Marijuana, maybe about cocaine. But heroine, LSD, meth? Sorry but no. For so many obvious reasons that I do not need to list them here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Week Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 Let's also not pretend that events like those linked below have no bearing on the genesis of troubles in Chicago. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/01/13/justice-dept-to-announce-results-of-investigation-into-chicago-police/?utm_term=.e9ea9f89dcbb http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/05/462040444/decades-later-victims-of-chicago-police-torture-paid-reparations http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/chi-chicagodays-pantherraid-story-story.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 59 minutes ago, Arakan said: Regarding legalizing drugs...we can speak about Marijuana, maybe about cocaine. But heroine, LSD, meth? Sorry but no. For so many obvious reasons that I do not need to list them here. What is obvious? That this stuff can be very bad for people? Nobody denies that. Legal drugs can also be quite bad and their sale is regulated. The question is whether usage of the potentially really bad and highly addictive stuff would explode if it was legalized. In any case it seems that the war on drugs has not done a lot to reduce drug use - so the bad stuff is used anyway with all the fatal consequences. For avoiding the bad consequences of drug trafficking, drug related crime, gangs, bad quality street drugs exactly the same arguments apply to heroine as to pot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swordfish Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 1 hour ago, Arakan said: Regarding legalizing drugs...we can speak about Marijuana, maybe about cocaine. But heroine, LSD, meth? Sorry but no. For so many obvious reasons that I do not need to list them here. Actually, it's not obvious at all, so yeah, if you're gonna make that argument, you really do need to list them. We have examples of legalizing these kinds of drugs from other countries, so we are not limited to pure speculation when it comes to predicting outcomes and weighing benefit vs cost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
all swedes are racist Posted January 14, 2017 Share Posted January 14, 2017 at this point, this topic probably deserves its own thread... but yeah, count me in with those who fail to see these oh-so-obvious reasons, and would actually like to see the list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry of the Lawn Posted January 14, 2017 Share Posted January 14, 2017 On 1/12/2017 at 6:08 PM, Swordfish said: It is amazing to me that after all the discussions that have been had about gun control, people still make bad arguments like this. If you honestly believe that drugs only harm the user and guns only harm others, then i don't really know what to tell you. The societal harm from drugs is extremely high (pun intended) and they add almost no positive societal value. Right. Nothing complicated or nuanced about regulating guns or drugs. it's totes simple. Like Bill Hicks says, why don't you just burn every album you've ever listened to that didn't suck. You don't get the Beatles after Hard Days Night (not even the early stuff if you count booze). No jazz. No blues. No Motown. Some drugs have awful social consequences. Others not so much. Opioids and alcohol certainly take a large societal toll. Weed, LSD, and shrooms.... Not so much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted January 14, 2017 Share Posted January 14, 2017 The standard of "adding societial value" is necessarily subjective. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted January 14, 2017 Share Posted January 14, 2017 Maybe this should be exported to another thread (not sure if this works in this forum) but the conflict in the case of drugs is not some "societal value" (as if artists would not produce or produce lesser art without drugs, and FWIW I personally can easily do without any drug-induced popular music of the last 60 years although maybe not without some booze-powered Mussorgsky). But to what extent the state should forbid things that give people pleasure (or in any case are desired by people) but have some risk of (sometimes very) bad consequences, e.g. eating lots of sugary treats, sex without condoms, booze, tobacco, other drugs, driving faster than 20 mph, rock climbing, medically non-necessary surgery, killing animals for sport, letting animals kill each other for sport, beating up each other for sport etc. While everyone has probably a different attitude to where to draw lines, most will agree that some lines should be drawn, whereas others would be paternalist restrictions of freedom. And it is by no means obvious where to draw such lines in many of these cases, including drugs (and guns). (I for one think that it is a pity that non-legal social pressure does not really work anymore for many such grey areas, so it seems the choice between puritan paternalism and gross and irresponsible libertinage.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Ent Posted January 14, 2017 Share Posted January 14, 2017 23 hours ago, Swordfish said: We have examples of legalizing these kinds of drugs from other countries, so we are not limited to pure speculation when it comes to predicting outcomes and weighing benefit vs cost. We have? Just reading this thread, the issue seems to be very strongly related to the demographics of the criminal population. (It seems that most of you disagree with the explanation of why crime in Chicago is correlated with ethnicity – culture, structure, history, etc. – but nobody seems to deny the fact of this correlation.) So in order to make a meaningful comparison to another country you’d need one with the same demographics. Are there good examples of this? The Netherlands? (This would be a very interesting and could move the thread forward!) However, I wouldn’t understand the explanatory value of pointing to countries with, say, free drugs, no guns, but also no African–Americans, and which work just fine. If my cursory understanding of this issue is correct, one can point to Chicago-with-no-African–Americans and the crime problems disappear as well. This would be a monstrous argument that turns the entire line of reasoning against itself. But you’ve all thought about this much longer than me and can probably point to the error in my reasoning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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