# 18 Dead In First European High School Shooting - What About The Gun Control Argument? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 26, 2002, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/18-dead-in-first-european-high-school-shooting-what-about-the-gun-control-argument/105809 "2002-04-26T16:48:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Riboflavin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Riboflavin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riboflavin)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2002, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/18-dead-in-first-european-high-school-shooting-what-about-the-gun-control-argument/105809/141 "2002-05-05T01:10:10Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by quixotic78 \* > You obviously will never be pleased with any cite I provide, and yet you refuse to provide any cite of your own to trump mine. If the only cites you plan to provide have glaring flaws, you’re quite right that I’m not going to accept them. And I don’t refuse to provide cites, I am unable to provide one because I don’t freaking have one. No one has any obligation to accept obviously flawed ‘cites’ as fact, whether or not they have access to the inforamtion in dispute. (Today I found one with US infomation, but I still don’t have one with european information). > [@](#): > > When I posted this link, I said, “Keep in mind, this page gives more than just deaths at schools from firearms.” If you’re willing to ignore that, then I might as well take this debate up with my hamster. :rolleyes Yeah, right, I’m going to spend an hour or so going through the columbine-angels page, sorting through what are relevant incidents and what aren’t, then adding up totals, only to have you, flowbark, or one of the others go ballistic because I excluded an incident by mistake, included an incident by mistake, or made an arithmetic error in totaling them up. I notice that **you** didn’t go through your supposedly comprehensive cite to come up with totals for US and European school shootings… > [@](#): > > Also, if said list contains a fistfight among coaches, is it entirely reasonable to believe that this list is, for lack of a better word, “overcomplete” for the purpose of illustrating school shootings? No, that’s not reasonable at all, especially for pre-Columbine incidents. If anything, the jumbled, ad-hoc manner in which incidents are chosen should lead one to doubt the comprehensiveness of the page on any topic. I mean, do you really think that they’re going to include a fist fight among adults but are going to leave out a shooting incident?? [/QUOTE] You mean like the school shooting that happened on 1/26/94 at Eau Claire High School in Columbia SC (see the cite below)? Earnest Dunlap (17) was shot three times by Floyd Brown (18) in a hallway, yet it doesn’t seem to have made your allegedly comprehensive cite. There are a whole host of others, and it’s pretty obvious to anyone with half a clue that the page you cited just collects stuff that hits the bigger papers and any papers local to them and isn’t an attempt at a comprehensive study. > [@](#): > > I’d wager that not even my hamster would take such a ludicrous position. Funny, the National School Safety Center does appear to take that position. Maybe you should stop using your hamster to practice arguing, it’s a lot easier to win an argument with a hamster than with a person. Take a look at [http://www.nssc1.org/savd/savd.pdf](http://www.nssc1.org/savd/savd.pdf) (or go to their [front page](http://www.nssc1.org/) , go to the ‘School-associated violence report’ link, then grab the PDF) (BTW, Quix, this is exactly the sort of site I would have accepted as a cite. I only found it today, and haven’t seen a similar one for Europe, so it’s still not all the needed information. For future GDs, it’s the sort of thing that’s FAR more likely to be accepted as a comprehensive list - not only does it purport to be a complete list, but it’s not just a newspaper article or anecdotal collection. It’s also roughly 5000 times as the columbine-angels page would be if it were complete, since it includes compiled numbers at the end - again, I note that you never gave a total for ‘US school shootings’ and ‘European school shootings’, most likely because compiling such a total from the page would be annoying and error-prone.) > [@](#): > > So there’s my First Point – if you won’t accept any **facts** I can provide in this debate, I’m not going to expect you to accept any conclusions that can be derived from them, either. LOL! Your **“facts”** that I refused to accept consisted of a newspaper article that, _during the time of the debate_ changed the content of their page (so it was either wrong before or wrong after the change) and a newspaper clipping collection that is not only not complete, but includes all kinds of irrelevant information! > [@](#): > > [Emphasis added] Well, you certainly allowed yourself an impressive amount of wriggle room there, and now I don’t know what to think. Earlier in the same post, you said that you’re going to concede things “for the sake of argument.” Now, you’re allowing yourself an out: “I don’t accept that there are more shootings in the US than in Europe! I said probably, and this might sound Clintonesque, but that doesn’t mean that I accept it!” This is getting just plain insane. In this very post of yours, you both go ballistic because I try to say that you’ll probably agree with me (attempting not to assume your position) then get angry when I assume (apparently incorrectly) that you think that the biggest piece of gun control legislation ever passed by the US government, the 1968 GCA, had **some** effect in reducing gun availability. Since I did also say “From what I’ve seen the US does have more instances of school violence, but the ‘far’ part is what I’m interested in seeing numbers for,” (which you didn’t see fit to quote, probably because it doesn’t support your rant) it’s pretty clear that the ‘probably’ is referring to your agreement on using ‘more’ instead of ‘far more’. > [@](#): > > I didn’t even notice this at first, but it serves as a nice Point Three. You just made a claim–that [I presume “era” = pre-1968] guns are less available now than they they used to be. Prior to 1968, you could legally sell guns at any store (no FFL required) manufacture guns for sale when you felt like it (no manufacturer FFL), sell guns directly by mail order (no requirement to ship to an FFL), buy guns anywhere (no ‘pistols only in home state, long guns must follow state law’), buy guns without ID (no 4473 form), buy guns as a non-citizen (no citizenship requirements, and no requirement for a dealer to ask) and sell a gun to a felon (no federal ‘no felons’ law, and no requirement for a dealer to ask - hell, you could even run ). ALL of that was legal before the 1968 GCA, none of it is legal afterwards (there are some minor exceptions, pardoned felons and certain resident aliens can buy guns under some circumstances, for example). If you don’t think that reduced the legal availability of guns, you’re simply insane. If you don’t think that made an iota of difference to the availability of illegal guns, why do you think **any** law is going to make a difference in it? [QUOTE] And what do you offer as proof for this claim? I don’t offer a cite for claiming that the sun rises in the east either. And if you don’t believe it, you could just **ask** for a cite instead of throwing a hissy fit. > [@](#): > > This Point (Four, if you’re keeping count at home) burns me up the most. I pointed out something that is easily verified and eminently true–the ICVS survey _ **makes absolutely no conclusions about the rates of “violent” crime** _. It doesn’t use the word “violent”, true, **however** the ‘contact crimes’ are what are normally considered violent crimes. > [@](#): > > Rather than conceed that point (and, incidentally, even my hamster acknowledges that you fucked up), You might want to get a better debate coach than a hamster. > [@](#): > > you add your own conclusions (uncited, of course–see Point Three) to the conclusions of the ICVS, as if you’re going to give them credibility. What do you want a cite for? That crimes involving a threat of violence are normally considered violent crimes? That the murder rate (as cited by **you** ) is roughly .01% the size of the contact crime numbers from the ICVS (should I quote a math textbook on calculating percentages)? > [@](#): > > , bucko, that shit don’t fly. Point Four in a nutshell? Even when you are dead wrong about something, you refuse to withdraw it. That doesn’t make for a healthy debate. Except that I’m not dead wrong - even **your** cite of alleged school violence included crimes using the threat of force with no actual violence occuring. If I can use **your** cites to back up the “shit” that allegedly “don’t fly”, you might want to invest in an umbrella. > [@](#): > > As an aside–so, you’re admitting that your ICVS survey has a flaw, i.e., it introduces an element of subjectivity? Well, first tell me if your definition of ‘murder’ has a flaw, ie it introduces an element of subjectivity, then tell me if your definition of ‘attempted murder’ has any subjectivity. (I’m not even going to bother with the bit on self-defense as a legitimate use for a gun). > [@](#): > > Remember where I succinctly stated my thesis? Probably not, given Point Five, so here it is again, _verbatim_: “The greater availability of guns in the US leads to more homicides in the US as compared to, say, Western Europe. This trend is poignantly illustrated in both statistically verifiable homicide rates as well as instances of school violence.” And yet you **still** have not shown that A **leads to** B; correlation is not causation. I could just as easily make the argument that ‘The greater availability of far-right political organizations in the US leads to more homicides in the US as compared to, say, Western Europe. This trend is poigantly illustrated in both statistically verifiable homicde rates as well as instances of of school violence’. And it’s got just as much support as the one you’ve made. > [@](#): > > Both **flowbark** and I established that there is a greater rate of homicide in the US. You rejected his data in a “Clintonesque” manner as not recent. That’s an outright lie. I rejected his data on **violent crime** , but on **no** occasion did I assert that Europe had a higher homicde rate than the US, or dispute the claim that the US homicide rate is higher. It’s not suprising that you’d make this false claim, though - I’m quite used to your crowd switching ‘murder’ and ‘violent crime’ and hoping that no one notices. > [@](#): > > Finally, I offered up the cite that you refuse to accept, You mean the one that collects newspaper headlines that the people running the site happen to see and which clearly is incomplete, or the one that was removing entries during the course of the debate, again being clearly incomplete? > [@](#): > > and guess who is #1 in school shootings? So what? ---
**Author:** ![GusNSpot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gusnspot/32/436_2.png) [@GusNSpot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GusNSpot)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2002, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/18-dead-in-first-european-high-school-shooting-what-about-the-gun-control-argument/105809/142 "2002-05-05T06:54:19Z")
Okay guys, when did ‘cites’ by others overcome common sense? A debate with just facts as in just ‘numbers’ means what? A debate? I don’t think so. if you can not draw logical conclusions from the numbers then there is no debate. IMO. So try some thinking guys and do not get so lost in the **numbers**. YMMV 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2002, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/18-dead-in-first-european-high-school-shooting-what-about-the-gun-control-argument/105809/143 "2002-05-06T08:28:14Z")
Good point, **Gus.** Unfortunately, the “numbers” are the underlying issue. The “numbers” of people killed with firearms; the “numbers” of “children” (I italicize the word children because some questionable research included “children” up to the late 20s in age; the well known “13 children a day” figure?); “numbers,” their relevance and their causes are one of the major underpinnings of the whole debate. Before we can debate what the numbers mean, I think it would be useful to be able to establish, within an acceptable margin of error, _just what the numbers truly are._ Because some people, even on this board, yet not necessarily in _this_ debate, aren’t above fudging numbers to score a point where guns are concerned. When their mathematical legerdemain in exposed, they usually fall back on the ol’ reliable “even _one_ death from a gun is too many!” routine. I was curious to see if this debate was actually headed in that direction. I didn’t think it was; inspite of the little side fra ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2002, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/18-dead-in-first-european-high-school-shooting-what-about-the-gun-control-argument/105809/144 "2002-05-06T09:44:11Z")
Dang 'puter. As I was saying, inspite of the little side fracas between **Ribo, Quix,** and **flowbark,** this debate has overall been fairly intelligent and reasonable. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/18-dead-in-first-european-high-school-shooting-what-about-the-gun-control-argument/105809.md?page=7)