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Gun Control 5


Stubby

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First, I agree with IheartTesla (from an earlier post) that seismic shift in attitude could happen with in a generation (with the example of gay marriage). And given that several posters who were before the silent majority have came out and posted that their attitude have now changed, I think that there are now sufficient political capital to push for if not a ban then more severe restrictions on gun ownership. Second, I think that the idea of allowing teachers to carry guns into schools are beyond idiotic and should not dignify any further response from civilized human beings. Third, I think that we're giving up too much ground when we allowed the conversation to be framed by the gun nutz that it isn't possible to deal with the 300 mils guns in circulation. On the contrary, I think that once a successful legislation have been passed banning all guns, a systemic and vigorous program consisting of amnesty for turning in, expanding power of searches and confiscation of guns by the police, severe prison sentences for arms traffickers, along with a generous incentive programs for people to report and collect rewards on those who are secretly stashing guns will be able to remove most if not all of the guns from circulation. Heck, once the law is passed, they don't even have to pay me to tell ATF who among this forum are known to have guns and possible still hoard them.

Welcome to the Gulag. Are you channeling Josif Visryonovic Dzhugashvili, by any chance? If I comes to what you are suggesting, I'll favor a revolution.

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interesting article with some pretty good ideas

(This trend is at least partly explained by the decline of hunting as a sport. In 2011, about 6% of Americans aged 16 or over went huntingeven once in the year. ) In 2009, however, that trend away from guns abruptly went into reverse. Gun buying spiked in the Obama administration, pushing the share of households with a gun all the way back up to 47%, near the 1960 peak, even as crime rates tumbled to the lowest levels ever recorded, making guns less necessary than ever to self-defense. Black Friday 2012 set a one-day record for gun sales.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/17/opinion/frum-leadership-newtown/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

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I'm talking about a criminal breaking into my home and you're talking about a SWAT team. Apparently, logic has left the universe.

Well you're talking about "revolution" if guns are banned and polices are ordered to confiscated guns from hoarders, right?

When that happened, it would be interesting to see how you would fare when the ATF or a SWAT team comes knocking at the door.

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I am amazed at how this debate goes on, when there are so many more people are killed by things other than guns. But no one cares about those.

...

Basically because once you look across the border it is easy to see that the US death rate to firearms is an anomaly. So there is probably a whole set of readily available solutions to prevent a large fraction of those deaths. In other causes of death that anomaly might not be present.

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That's true, but I would suggest actually reading the Cato Institute article, because it includes a statistical analysis of the liklihood of accidents occuring. Otherwise, you're just arguing preconceptions rather than facts. Even the Atlantic article addressed this -- the myth that the law-abiding present some great risk with their weapons. It's simply not true when you look at the numbers.

There are a lot of schools in the U.S. that have an armed security guard/cop present in them. Generally, they're high schools. How many reports have their been of such an individual either 1) going nuts and killing students, or 2) treating the weapon unsafely in a school and a child getting killed?

The hypothetical fears you point out just aren't supported by statistical reality. And in contrast, there are documented incidents (I related some above) where a private citizen's use of a weapon prevented a greater massacre from occuring. It doesn't make international news, though, probably because 1) the number of dead was so much smaller, and 2) the idea that a gun in private hands actually saved lives is a concept with which a great deal of the media is uncomfortable. Doesn't fit their agenda, so it didn't happen.

What numbers FLOW?

Your article links to no studies. It is actually quite sparse on the numbers.

Meanwhile, in actual numbers, we know more guns correlates with more homicides and suicides at basically all levels studies are done. Nor is there any compelling statistics showing gun ownership prevents gun crime. (and quite a bit showing it doesn't: http://www.nber.org/digest/feb01/w7967.html)

The author there vaguely talks about some studies (that are contested but with no indications of why or which side was right or really much of anything). And even if we take it at face value, it cites "defensive gun use" (a dubiously measured metric) and doesn't even acknowledge the increase in gun-violence that goes with that.

The truth is that people who don't know much about guns tend to greatly overestimate the prevelance of accidents. Yes, accidents do occur and they are tragic. Some cops will make a safety error and someone will die. BUT, by that logic, we should then deprive all cops of guns because someone might get injured in an accident, and most folks familiar with the prevelance of armed criminals in the U.S. wouldn't support that.

No FLOW, we look at statistics are as-accurately-as-possible access the prevalence of accidents. And that prevalence is higher the more guns there are out there.

Quite simply, there is nothing backing your position or that of the article. No evidence (that I've ever read of) suggesting that guns prevent crimes to any statistically significant degree and plenty to suggest they don't and even more showing that a better armed populace is not safer.

This last bit is key. And it seems half the people in this fucking thread don't wanna read it but bitches, it true: http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/78171-gun-control-3/page__st__160#entry3908978

Your Atlantic article just wants to throw up it's hands and go "Well, there's too many guns, let's just go with my gut and hope more guns will somehow, this time, lower gun crime". It's a fantasy.

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Ok Ralph Nader expert.

Btw know it all, 90% of stats are made up on the spot

The other 10% are from studies being posted by the people you are vainly attempting to argue against.

Stop being the 90%.

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That actually should be a part of the law already, but I haven't heard of it being enforced. A restraining order should constitute a mental illness on the person that is receiving it and as such should automatically make it illegal for that person to posses a firearm.

It is up to the judge now. They can definitely order it.

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You, and others, have been repeatedly been asked to back up the "facts" you throw around, and then people get accused of making personal attacks. Open-ended rhetorical statements and anecdotal evidence are not evidence of anything.

You asked previously for someone to post actual evidence from the pro-gun ownership side. I did. Someone previously asked why, if guns are so useful for self-defense, there wasn't evidence of that happening. So I posted links to articles that contained statistics on things such as the number of times firearms are used in defense, the number of gun accidents that occur (much lower than some assume), and various other statistical data. Someone else commented that there wasn't any evidence that the presence of a gun in the hands of a private citizen had stopped any massacres in the past. So, I posted links to occasions where that exact scenario occured. Not a single person actually discussed those numbers. OTOH, someone posts a claim that:

Now, perhaps the intruder is in fact a rapist or a psycho killer, in this vanishingly rare situation it is actually in your interest to have a gun. But the probabilities of this are so low that your owning a gun has already statistically killed you many times before this is likely to happen.

without even a hint of statistical analysis or support, and it goes unchallenged. Is that actually true, or is it just "rhetorical statements and anecdotal evidence" that is not evidence of anything?

Others lament the likelihood of security guards in schools going berserk or leaving weapons unattended, but fail to cite a single incident, much less any statistics, supporting the likelihood of that actually occuring, despite the fact that such guards have been present in a great many schools for years. They just offer more rhetoric devoid of evidentiary support, but it goes unchallenged because it fits with the prevailing mindset.

The only real evidence I've seen posted on the other side is the general number of gun-related deaths in the U.S. But so what? Nobody seriously disputes that the prevalence of guns makes such deaths more likely, but fancying a U.S. without guns is nothing more than an academic exercise devoid of practical application. The reality is that there are tremendous numbers of guns here, and there are going to be tremendous numbers of guns for decades into the foreseeable future. I'd suggest that anyone who doesn't understand that either is not sufficiently familiar with the U.S., or needs to expand their circle of acquaintances.

As a final point, I'm mystified by the people who advocate metal detectors but not armed guards as a means of protecting schools from things like this. A metal detector only alerts you to the fact that someone has a weapon. It doesn't stop them from actually shooting (as demonstrated by Neo and Trinity), and in the case of a shooter, you don't need a detector anyway because you'll hear the bullets and the screams.

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FLOW,

1) DGU stats are crap. I'm gonna thank Relic cause his link actually lead to a nice, concise look at the problem with your numbers:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/30/opinion/frum-guns-safer/index.html

Basically, DGU (defensive gun use) stats are extremely dubious and tend to vastly over-estimate the use.

2) Yes, someone did actually show that guns are more likely to harm you than an intruder. It's within the studies I linked. Having a gun in the house, the most likely outcome is it ends up being used on you or someone in your family.

3) Talking about an america without guns does seem rather fantastical given the number of guns out there now. That does not, however, mean that MORE guns make America safer. The opposite is what all the stats say actually happens.

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Well you're talking about "revolution" if guns are banned and polices are ordered to confiscated guns from hoarders, right?

When that happened, it would be interesting to see how you would fare when the ATF or a SWAT team comes knocking at the door.

Then, I'll remember the words of G. Gordon Liddy. :P

Basically because once you look across the border it is easy to see that the US death rate to firearms is an anomaly. So there is probably a whole set of readily available solutions to prevent a large fraction of those deaths. In other causes of death that anomaly might not be present.

What you say sounds reasonable, until I remember which some of the nations that ban private ownership of guns, are.

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http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/mother-of-sandy-hook-gunman-adam-lanza-was-a-gun-obsessive-living-in-fear-of-societys-collapse-16251468.html

Article shedding more light on the psychology of the mother of shooter ............ her sister-in-law disclosed that she was an obsessive "prepper" who been hoarding foods and guns in preparation for an economic collapse.

I'm also puzzled about Senator Feinstein's call for a ban on automatic and semiautomatic guns as a response to this when the murdering weapons were rifles.

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http://www.belfastte...e-16251468.html

Article shedding more light on the psychology of the mother of shooter ............ her sister-in-law disclosed that she was an obsessive "prepper" who been hoarding foods and guns in preparation for an economic collapse.

I'm also puzzled about Senator Feinstein's call for a ban on automatic and semiautomatic guns as a response to this when the murdering weapons were rifles.

"Assault Weapon Bans" or the like are the safest and least controversial gun regulation stance a politician can take. It's basically "I want to do something, but the political realities are that this is about all I expect to be able to even propose".

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No evidence (that I've ever read of) suggesting that guns prevent crimes to any statistically significant degree and plenty to suggest they don't and even more showing that a better armed populace is not safer.

I haven't seen anyone successfully dispute this, so I put to you a different hypothesis: gun owners know that they make America less safe, but believe they make their family safer. So it's a trade off: a safer family in a dangerous country. I'm not saying they're right, I don't think they are, but I suspect this is a common line of reasoning. It reminds me of Keynesian economics: in a recession, families stop spending as much, which is good for them but, counter-intuitively, bad for everyone overall.

Great job on collating all those articles by the way, involvement in this discussion is basically one big stat search and it's pretty hard wading through all of it.

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Yeah, it all seems very half-assed measures (if not completely useless) to me, about as effective as restricting magazine size.

But I'm thinking that the political realities may be changing, and we might be in a totally different place within a generation.

What happened at the elementary school was a wake up call for many people who were sitting on the fence before.

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http://www.belfastte...e-16251468.html

Article shedding more light on the psychology of the mother of shooter ............ her sister-in-law disclosed that she was an obsessive "prepper" who been hoarding foods and guns in preparation for an economic collapse.

I'm also puzzled about Senator Feinstein's call for a ban on automatic and semiautomatic guns as a response to this when the murdering weapons were rifles.

I'm curious as to why this first appeared in foreign newspapers. Just seems unusual.

Have you never heard of automatic and semi-automatic rifles?

The UK?

It takes its place along with such notables as China, Romania and others. Not surprising considering some of its other laws, but I won't stray that far off topic.

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