Gun Control Discussion 2

[Hereward]

23 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Yeah, this line of argument seems entirely counterproductive. If you're wanting to point out that violent crime isn't reduced by gun bans, sure - but this points out that violence as a whole is a baseline in a given culture, but shooting people to death because of that violence is not. 

In fact, a gun ban advocate might argue that one reason to ban guns is because humans get violent. And the difference between a serious assault and a homicide is often, in fact, a gun. Similarly, the difference between suicidal ideation and suicidal success is, in fact, a gun. 

I don't get this. My point is that even in a country where violence is more common than in other parts of the civilised world, i.e the UK, the murder rate is massively lower than the US and the gun rate death toll is incomparable. The whole issue is the ability to escalate.

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Hereward said:

I don't get this. My point is that even in a country where violence is more common than in other parts of the civilised world, i.e the UK, the murder rate is massively lower than the US and the gun rate death toll is incomparable. The whole issue is the ability to escalate.

I'm agreeing with you and disagreeing with people who are saying that violent crime being the same means gun bans don't work. Sorry I wasn't more clear. I was trying to say that one could reasonably argue that without cultural change the overall level of violence in a culture will remain consistent, but the degree of damage is not.

The point isn't to stop people from being violent; that requires a whole set of different policies and views. The point is, like you say, to stop people from having the ability to escalate to maiming and death.

[Mother Cocanuts]

34 minutes ago, Hereward said:

It's utterly ridiculous to say that the UK was the violence capital of the world in 2007 to 2009 when the total number of murders was 13 per million. The US rate was 49.

My mistake. I should have said that it was the violent crime capital of Europe:

UK is violent crime capital of Europe

34 minutes ago, Hereward said:

It's also irrelevant to say that violent offences increased after the gun ban without noting that firearm deaths massively declined. Yes, more people punched people, or even stabbed people, in arguments and disputes, because they didn't have a firearm. Fewer people actually died and there were no mass shootings.

I never disputed that. But if the interest of indiscriminately banning firearms was in effort to reduce violent crimes overall, then should we ban all knives and sharp objects, as well as force everyone to wear mittens?

[Hereward]

I see, thanks.

[The guy from the Vale]

3 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

My mistake. I should have said that it was the violent crime capital of Europe:

UK is violent crime capital of Europe

I never disputed that. But if the interest of indiscriminately banning firearms was in effort to reduce violent crimes overall, then should we ban all knives and sharp objects, as well as force everyone to wear mittens?

Isn't reducing death and grave injuries that result from violence a worthy goal in itself, even if overall violence is reduced? Now of course, this will be a tradeoff, which is almost no place restricts access to kitchen knives, but almost every country on earth restricts access to guns. But the overall point is that violence involving guns is far more lethal than violence involving knives, which is again far more lethal than violence involving bare knuckles.

[Hereward]

2 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

My mistake. I should have said that it was the violent crime capital of Europe:

UK is violent crime capital of Europe

I never disputed that. But if the interest of indiscriminately banning firearms was in effort to reduce violent crimes overall, then should we ban all knives and sharp objects, as well as force everyone to wear mittens?

Yes, the UK is more violent than the rest of Europe (except where they get themselves organised). Perhaps that is where the US gets it from. I would only say that the defnition of violent crime changed in the the 2000s to include hate speech and sexual harassment, so it is understandable, or right, that the figures would increase, but is wholly irrelevant to the crime figures with reference to guns.

[Mother Cocanuts]

2 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

Isn't reducing death and grave injuries that result from violence a worthy goal in itself, even if overall violence is reduced?

There isn't sufficient evidence that suggests that stringent regulations have reduced overall violence.

5 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

Now of course, this will be a tradeoff, which is almost no place restricts access to kitchen knives, but almost every country on earth restricts access to guns.

This is not a sound justification. You're basically saying that we should do it "because the others do it."

8 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

But the overall point is that violence involving guns is far more lethal than violence involving knives, which is again far more lethal than violence involving bare knuckles.

Since when was the effort against crime relative? You ban guns because you can; you can also ban knives and force people to wear mittens. Why not do it?

[Mother Cocanuts]

6 minutes ago, Hereward said:

Yes, the UK is more violent than the rest of Europe (except where they get themselves organised). Perhaps that is where the US gets it from. I would only say that the defnition of violent crime changed in the the 2000s to include hate speech and sexual harassment, so it is understandable, or right, that the figures would increase, but is wholly irrelevant to the crime figures with reference to guns.

Do you have a reference suggesting that the statistics gathered when concluding that the U.K. was the most violent in Europe included sexual harassment and hate speech? (I'm sincerely interested to see if that's the case.)

[Guy Kilmore]

19 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

Isn't reducing death and grave injuries that result from violence a worthy goal in itself, even if overall violence is reduced? Now of course, this will be a tradeoff, which is almost no place restricts access to kitchen knives, but almost every country on earth restricts access to guns. But the overall point is that violence involving guns is far more lethal than violence involving knives, which is again far more lethal than violence involving bare knuckles.

That is true in the US.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/table-20

If Violence occurs, you are more likely to die as a result of firearm than of a knife or fists.

[Hereward]

1 minute ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

There isn't sufficient evidence that suggests that stringent regulations have reduced overall violence.

This is not a sound justification. You're basically saying that we should do it "because the others do it."

Since when was the effort against crime relative? You ban guns because you can; you can also ban knives and force people to wear mittens. Why not do it?

Yes, there is sufficient evidence. Fewer guns result in fewer murders. The problem with your example is that you are comparing a 95% ban with a 100% ban in the UK. Not being able to show a massive decrease in an already low murder rate, while having a demonstrable lack of gun massacres is counterintuitive to you. 

PS Actually, though I realise I'm creating an open goal, the UK has attempted to ban knives. Possession is illegal, and sale is highly restricted.

[Kalbear]

10 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

Do you have a reference suggesting that the statistics gathered when concluding that the U.K. was the most violent in Europe included sexual harassment and hate speech? (I'm sincerely interested to see if that's the case.)

Literally the article I linked states precisely that.

[Hereward]

18 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

Do you have a reference suggesting that the statistics gathered when concluding that the U.K. was the most violent in Europe included sexual harassment and hate speech? (I'm sincerely interested to see if that's the case.)

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/compendium/focusonviolentcrimeandsexualoffences/yearendingmarch2016/overviewofviolentcrimeandsexualoffences

[Mother Cocanuts]

1 minute ago, Hereward said:

Yes, there is sufficient evidence.

Please reference or provide said evidence.

5 minutes ago, Hereward said:

PS Actually, though I realise I'm creating an open goal, the UK has attempted to ban knives. Possession is illegal, and sale is highly restricted.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/20/official-figures-show-biggest-rise-crime-in-a-decade

[Kalbear]

34 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

I never disputed that. But if the interest of indiscriminately banning firearms was in effort to reduce violent crimes overall

It wasn't.

 

 

[IamMe90]

1 hour ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

It's obvious because the assumption is that it merely exists because it does exist. So if I write "Peaches." That's not a fragment. It's elliptical. In the absence of any other action, I assume it is. So the extension of the statement would be, "They are peaches." It's both a complete sentence and independent clause. When we see "A well regulated Militia," the obvious predicate is "It is." (Now I personally think that the predicate is "There shall be" but it doesn't really matter.)

I don't agree with this line of reasoning; by that token, you could claim all sentence fragments are just elliptical clauses. The predicate should, again, be self evident and identifiable immediately. By your own admission it's not, since you've considered two predicates ("it is" vs. "there shall be"). In every example I've seen, the predicate has already been or will soon be used in the sentence, which is how one derives the omitted predicate in the first place. That is clearly not the case here, as the predicate "it is" is not used at all in the language of the Amendment. 

1 hour ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

Let's assume you're correct, and for argument's sake, "A well regulated militia" is a fragment; then, the NRA's point that the second amendment doesn't exclude private use is valid. If its inclusion makes no sense as either an independent or a dependent clause, then it cannot serve as a condition to the right to bear arms. Therefore, the argument that the right to keep and bear arms is exclusive to "well-regulated Militias" is invalid, right?

I disagree. I think the correct conclusion is that we can't make inferences about the intent of the founders from the grammar of the Amendment alone, because as it is written, it does not make sense. One has to change the sentence construction to make sense of it, and there are multiple ways of doing that, with no non-arbitrary (grammatical) means of selecting which one. 

25 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

There isn't sufficient evidence that suggests that stringent regulations have reduced overall violence.

 

[Hereward]

1 minute ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

Please reference or provide said evidence.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/20/official-figures-show-biggest-rise-crime-in-a-decade

When the UK figures are 10%  per capita of the US figures, come back to me.

[The guy from the Vale]

My reading of that clause is that the first comma in it is either archaic or a typo. Can't tell, I'm not a native speaker or a linguist. But the comma in there makes no sense syntactically. Without that comma, the sentence seems a lot clearer.

[IamMe90]

26 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

There isn't sufficient evidence that suggests that stringent regulations have reduced overall violence.

 

Double posting, since the quote machine got fucked up. I believe theguyfromtheVale meant, "even if overall violence isn't reduced." Why do gun bans need to reduce overall violence in order to be justifiable to you? Do you not believe that there are different categories of violence? If gun bans reduced gun violence, but vehicular violence contemporaneously increased at a faster rate, would that, in your mind, have any bearing on whether the gun ban was justified? If so, why? They aren't related. 

26 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

Since when was the effort against crime relative? You ban guns because you can; you can also ban knives and force people to wear mittens. Why not do it?

Knives serve a myriad of useful purposes that guns do not, and they do not enable people to inflict fatal or grave harm nearly as easily as guns. We don't do it because the relative utility of banning them doesn't even come close to outweighing the cost it would pose to people. 

[Mother Cocanuts]

3 minutes ago, Hereward said:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/compendium/focusonviolentcrimeandsexualoffences/yearendingmarch2016/overviewofviolentcrimeandsexualoffences

I don't see hate speech, but I will concede to sexual harassment. I asked if you had reference that suggested that these elements were factors in gathering the statistics which determined the U.K. to be the violent crime capital of Europe in 2007-2009? Can you provide a reference that?

[The guy from the Vale]

Yes, that was indeed a typo. I meant that reducing fatalities counts as a success for me even if the number of violent crimes stays the same or evne if that increases, as deaths are far more consequential than bruises or even broken bones. I'm surprised to have to state this like some out-there radical new idea, to be quite honest. Because that's definitely not what it is.