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Gun Control discussion


Ser Scot A Ellison

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Just now, DanteGabriel said:

All right, next time you advance one of your poorly sourced, self-contradictory arguments, the board liberal hivemind will choose a single representative to address it so you don't feel overwhelmed.

I guess I just assumed, since you were getting mad at me for things other posters said to you, that you were under the impression you were only arguing with one person.

No, I understand I'm arguing with the board. Quit being condescending. Why is it so hard for someone to give me data, other than what I provided, on homicides/violent crimes before and after ban in countries with a ban. The one I linked is the one I find over and over when I Google "data on homicide/violent crimes before and after ban in countries with ban". Is it the only one that exists? The raw data has to be out there. I will look at @dmc515 link later, he tried at least and I can respect that. I can't respect you just repeatedly being a condescending, well, you know what. Not the way to win one over. Hurt you in that election last year too. Well, hurt all of us.

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If you understand you're arguing with the board, why were you consistently acting as if I'd thrown the "blood on your hands" argument at you? I had no part in that at all yet you kept gnawing on that grievance, and never seemed to acknowledge my own comments that I wasn't engaging on that topic.

It's frustrating to argue with you because you seem to want everyone to do your research for you and then when someone does provide you information, you sneer about manipulated statistics. Not to mention your ignorance of basic facts and the inconsistency of your positions. It's like being asked to hit a moving target in the dark. 

Lastly, I am about done with the line of argument that goes, "I am an average white American man who's thoroughly centrist even though I'm skeptical about anything that seems vaguely left, and if you're not endlessly patient with my inconsistent logic and shifting goalposts, then me and people in my demographic will continue to support obvious monsters like Trump." It's the height of lazy privilege, and I'm tired of having to coddle fragile egos on the threat of electoral malice.

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3 hours ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Ok, so until something is done, the odd is on all of our hands, right? Fair enough.

Blood, you mean?

These days I'm taking the position that it boils down to a simple matter: whether you see the abnormaly high death rate by firearms in the US as a problem, a collective problem that must be addressed, even if it involves compromise and sacrifice...

Or:

1 hour ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

I believe law abiding citizens have the right to bear arms. A constitutional one. Until the 2nd amendment can be repealed or what have you, Its a right the same as freedom of speech.

If you see bearing arms as a constitutional right, there's not that much that can be done.

This is case where -I believe- an individual right conflicts with the collective better good. There are decent arguments for the individual right approach (legal, philosophical, historical... etc) but the existence of the collective problem is clearly shown by all cross-country studies.

I don't think it's possible to have your cake and eat it too. The hardcore defenders of the 2nd amendment are essentially correct: a constitutional right, by definition, cannot and should not be heavily regulated. Even the reasonable restrictions you agree on would put an end to bearing arms as a constitutional right.

For better or for worse, you have to choose. For or against the current interpretation of the 2nd amendment, or even the amendment itself. I don't think there actually is a middle ground here.

1 hour ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Gangs don't buy legal guns. You can't when you have a felony. So, what stops those from getting guns when they get them now when their not allowed? Its all just a bunch of hypotheticals.

Well, yes. If you ignore the rest of the developed world it is.
How does the rest of the world do it? Obviously there is a way to make regulations work. It'll never be fullproof: some criminals will always get their hands on a gun. But if you reduce the number of guns in circulation it's significantly harder for them to do so. Which mechanically means that the odds of a potential murderer having a gun at the precise moment when he decides he wants to kill are significantly lower.

And while I think it would take decades for regulations to have a significant impact in the US (what with the gun culture and the 300 million firearms in the country), there are still ways. For starters most guns seem to be owned by a relatively small portion of the population (or so I've been reading lately). And assuming you can't do much about the guns...

... You can always make sure the bullets are no longer available.
 

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13 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

And while I think it would take decades for regulations to have a significant impact in the US (what with the gun culture and the 300 million firearms in the country), there are still ways. For starters most guns seem to be owned by a relatively small portion of the population (or so I've been reading lately). And assuming you can't do much about the guns...

... You can always make sure the bullets are no longer available.
 

Aside from this being unconstitutional obviously (regulating ammunition is not going to be a particularly different step from regulating guns themselves, and no court in the US would see it otherwise), it's not particularly difficult to manufacture at home your own ammunition. It won't be as reliable, but it's certainly doable.

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Just now, Kalbear said:

Aside from this being unconstitutional obviously (regulating ammunition is not going to be a particularly different step from regulating guns themselves, and no court in the US would see it otherwise), it's not particularly difficult to manufacture at home your own ammunition. It won't be as reliable, but it's certainly doable.

I've seen arguments that gun control may as well be meaningless because people can manufacture their own guns if necessary. While I think that's overstated, and there's still plenty of a barrier to entry, this seems like another realm of technology that is now or will soon be beyond a government's power to regulate. So maybe the answer really is to bend efforts to changing our culture. But that may even be a taller order than somehow finding the political will to enact tougher national laws.

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This honestly was not hard to find....

Australia: http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp

UK:

Quote

Here are some pages from the UK National Statistics website of the British Government.

Firstly this shows that serious crime (homicide, etc) has fallen since 1981, even though recorded crime has increased. Scroll down for the graph.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/hub/cri...nds/index.html

Next, this page shows that homicide (including murder, manslaughter and other deaths through crime such as dangerous driving) has fallen since 2000, but it is has risen since 1960. The year 2000 is quite significant because Britain's really tough gun laws came in soon after the 1997 Dunblane school massacre.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/hub/cri...ime/index.html

ETA: The links take you to the index page. To see the charts you need to go to the Overview tab and then select the statistics you want.

ETA2: This Guardian page has an interesting table. The Guardian is one of the UK's more reliable papers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datab...hip-world-list

From the table:

In England and Wales 6.6% of all homicides are by the use of a firearm, in the USA it is 60%.

In England Wales there 0.07 homicides by firearm per 100,000 people - in the USA is 2.97. (eek.gif)

In England and Wales there are 6.2 firearms per 100 people, in the USA it is 88.8.

 

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1 hour ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

No, I understand I'm arguing with the board. Quit being condescending. Why is it so hard for someone to give me data, other than what I provided, on homicides/violent crimes before and after ban in countries with a ban. The one I linked is the one I find over and over when I Google "data on homicide/violent crimes before and after ban in countries with ban". Is it the only one that exists? The raw data has to be out there. I will look at @dmc515 link later, he tried at least and I can respect that. I can't respect you just repeatedly being a condescending, well, you know what. Not the way to win one over. Hurt you in that election last year too. Well, hurt all of us.

If condescension pushed people into the sexist, racist, war-mongering homophobe camp, where exactly do you think they stood without it?

Anyways, cool that you didn't know about the GOP 20 year ban on getting information. But now that you do, given your value of information re: making determination, do you have a response to my question? What do you think they're afraid of/avoiding, and why? Do you agree it's pretty suggestive?

edit: Do you know about the Big Tobacco parallels?

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There are surely studies from academics outside the U.S., or within the U.S. not using federal funding, regarding what Michael is asking for. In fact, this editorial from Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo discusses an OpEd in the Washington Post from a journalist who worked on a big analysis over at Five Thirty Eight which looked at the results in Australia and the UK after bans and buyback programs.

This could all be a useful starting point, but I think Marshal's TPM editorial is on the right track: there is no "quick fix". Public policy on health issues tends to be incrementalist, implementing multiple different things to lead to a positive effect; the solutions to gun violence are going to be the same thing, lots of incrementals that attempt to ultimately change the underlying culture that privileges the mystique of the gun over the well-being and safety of the American people.

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44 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

If condescension pushed people into the sexist, racist, war-mongering homophobe camp, where exactly do you think they stood without it?

Anyways, cool that you didn't know about the GOP 20 year ban on getting information. But now that you do, given your value of information re: making determination, do you have a response to my question? What do you think they're afraid of/avoiding, and why? Do you agree it's pretty suggestive?

edit: Do you know about the Big Tobacco parallels?

Of course it's suggestive. Its why I said it was a rhetorical question.

I'm not in that camp, so I have no idea where they stood. But, the condescension doesn't help matters. Its a proven fact that when you treat people without respect, that they tend to not care what you have to say and you push them away. A little bit of politeness goes a long way.

A matter of fact I just seen a show where a white supremecist who got out of jail was giving a black woman as his parole officer. Her kindness and willingness to get his life on track changed his life. He got all of his swastika's removed and they are close friends. Seems like that's a better way to handle hate.

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10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Aside from this being unconstitutional obviously

I'm obviously assuming that the 2nd amendment is pretty much gone to implement any meaningful regulation.

10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

 it's not particularly difficult to manufacture at home your own ammunition. It won't be as reliable, but it's certainly doable.

Sure. But it's still an obstacle for any nutjob wanting to shoot into a crowd of people. And I don't think it's that small an obstacle tbh.

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