18 Dead In First European High School Shooting - What About The Gun Control Argument?

Great Debates
101

I had no idea that Johnny LA was such a fervent supporter of social research. Well done, sir. The first prison where we keep passport violators will be named in your honor. :smiley:

Back in reality, I should clarify to ExTank [sub]that I haven’t picked up the book yet.[/sub]

Attacking his weakest point, IMHO, ExTank ignores the rather extensive regulations that exist for motor vehicles. Air bags alone add about $300 per car, IIRC. And of course there are license and registration requirements.

I admit that the brouhaha regarding the history of guns in America has been an embarrassment for gun control advocates.

While we’re waiting for Riboflavin to supplement his opinions with some links, I found the source of the 2000 Crime Victimization Survey data. The report is available here. It consists of a standardized telephone survey of about 2000 respondents per country. (Since homicide rates are measured in single or double digits per 100,000, I wouldn’t expect that this survey would proxy that particularly well).

I invite all posters to download the entire survey in pdf format. Let me give my interpretation of the results, at the risk of receiving tomatoes and brickbats from certain ahem posters.

From h2.pdf: Victimization rates, measured by number of criminal incidents per 100 inhabitants, were average for the US, based on the 90% confidence interval. Incidence -which measures the share of people victimized by one or more criminal events- are somewhat below average for the US.

Most of the crimes above, though, are nonviolent.

Summary by the authors of the report for the US: “Burglaries and thefts of personal property feature rather more in the make-up of crime in the USA than in other countries. Thefts of two-wheelers, in contrast, take a smaller share of crime. Otherwise, deviations from the average are not pronounced. Since 1996, thefts of personal property and car vandalism both increased in their share of all offences. This goes in tandem with a smaller share for assaults and threats.”

It appears that the US has made great progress in crime reduction over the past decade or so. Although it could still work on its homicide incidence, which remains the 2nd highest in the first world, after Northern Ireland. (Caveat: The dates in the link that I base that statement on vary a bit. For the US, the data was for 1999; other countries had data from the mid 1990s.) GunCite-Gun Control-International Homicide Comparisons

Interesting table. Note that Finland, showcased by myself on page 1, has gun ownership rates of 23-50%. I don’t know whether they allow Tek-9’s and handguns, though.

(For those who care, I found a site which purports to compare gun laws across countries: http://www.uncjin.org/Statistics/firearms/index.htm )

102

Well, if only to point out that someone already mentioned that it’s illegal to buy a handgun outside of your state of residence…

No way. I don’t think it’s right to hold someone responsible for someone else’s actions. What if they guy DID have it securely locked up, but the thieves were determined and still got it? It doesn’t seem reasonable to make him responsible for it in this case. No, I don’t think people should be punished for being robbed…

103

I foresee unintended consequences here, in spades. You may mean well, but this sort of punishment for being victimized would keep guns out of the hands of the people who are most likely to be the targets of crime: those with a lower-than-average income.

Do you know what a “Tek-9” actually is?

104

flowbark: my four-points of automobile control weren’t really meant to be a literal cross-comparison to possibly effective gun control measures, but rather an attempt to illustrate some of the ludicrous measures suggested to combat gun violence.

If the average homicides are crimes of passion (and I’m not suggestingthey are; I rather believe them to be crime/gang related), then banning high-capacity magazines to combat mass-shootings (which are quite rare and are given disproportionate visual and psychological impact by over-reporting in the media [a talking point in the aforementioned book- Ex.]) isn’t really effective towards stopping the vast majority of gun crimes, much less suicides, where one shot is probably all that is needed or is going to be fired.

Bans on certain weapons bearing visual resemblance to military weaponry is also going to be ineffective (look at Federal “Assault Weapons Bans,” and the weapons on CA’s ever-expanding list of banned weapons). It seems to reinforce my claim that a certain segment of the gun control faction tends to think that firearms, especially firearms resembling military weapons, possess a certain allure that compels people to crimes with guns.

Regardless, do you (or anyone) seriously believe that my four-points of automobile control will stop or reduce high-speed police chases anymore than certain gun control measure will (or have) reduced gun crime?

105

I knew people would hate my Gun Owners Responsibility Plan.

Phoenix*: No, I don’t think people should be punished for being robbed…*

Oh, but I do. I want to increase the incentives to lock up your weapons. If you want to keep an unlocked loaded handgun in your drawer, fine. But you should be held liable for the associated risk.

And flowbark believes in freedom. That is, you can work out on your own the best way to store your handguns. If you want to entrust it to a local gun club, which has its own pooled liability insurance along with its own security, no problem. (But then self-defense goes out the window).
…
I should note that some laws are easier to enforce than others. If one can buy guns at a gun show without (in practice) having to reveal one’s state of residence, then laws against moving guns across borders are likely to be ineffective. At the same time, I should repeat my lack of comprehensive knowledge in these matters. It may very well be true that statewide gun control can save lives even in the absence of national gun control. I’ll concede that. If that is the case, then Eris is correct that the issue may be amenable to empirical analysis. I was wrong to dismiss this possibility out of hand.

Applying those results to the national level might be tricky for reasons we’ve discussed. But the cross-state exercise sounds like it would be worth doing.

ExTank asserts that certain gun control measures are cosmetic in nature. I must again confess my ignorance on these matters, alas. I do recall thinking during past legislative debates that curbs on assault weapons didn’t sound like that great a victory, except to the extent that they discouraged the manufacture of semi-automatic weapons that were easily converted into automatic ones. And that didn’t seem to be the essence of the matter.

To evaluate Demise’s point, that gun liability would hurt the poor on average, we would have consider the lives and physical damage saved by the extra handguns in question relative to the lives and physical damages caused by the handguns in question. Among the poor.

I have not read the studies saying that 23/47/1000 innocent lives are lost yada yada from Anthracite’s post so I can’t comment on them. I seem to recall that the central objection to these studies involved the way they ignored that for some people a gun makes them safer, while for others a gun is a hazard, on balance. Tricky policy question. But a somewhat different issue than the one Demise brought up.

If Demise wants to tell me about Finnish gun laws, I’m all ears; that, after all, was the point I was making. (Well, actually I’m not all ears; I repeat that gun control really isn’t my forte.)

106

  1. I should say that I honestly have not seen a decomposition of homicide figures.

  2. It is true that media events have disproportionate influence for good but mostly not so good reasons.

  3. To the extent that the suicide is an impulsive act (associated with depression, for example), the method matters. My understanding (for example) is that female suicide attempts are less likely to lead death than male suicide attempts, largely because the latter choose firearms and the former pills. Relatively speaking. Sorting through all that is difficult (and, alas, somewhat grim). But I find it plausible that having a gun in certain homes may reduce expected longevity due to enhanced risk of successful suicide. Again, it’s an empirical matter. (Eeg. No wonder I avoid gun threads!)

107

One cannot (legally) buy guns at gunshows or anywhere else with out revealing one’s state of residence.

In practice one cannot buy from a dealer at a show or elsewhere without showing ID which matches a real person’s records in the government’s computers (the dealer has to call it in for a background check). A legitimate dealer is not going to risk their whole business as well as jail time for one sale.

A private individual is committing a crime by selling a firearm to someone one who is not legally allowed to buy one because they are from out of state, so they OUGHT to check your ID although some might neglect to do so.

Did you know I could go to prison for using the wrong type of solder to repair a loose part on my rifle? Or that I could own two absolutely identical firearms which rolled off the same assembly line right after one another, differing only in the date they were imported, and putting certain cosmetic accessories on one is 100% legal, the other is a very serious crime, and sometimes even experts are unable to determine which category a given firearm falls into? Or that normal capacity magazines are legal if they were made before a certain date but not after- but they don’t have serial numbers or dates so there’s no way to tell?

108

I gave a cite of a paper source, I didn’t claim that it was online. Are you now asserting that the only valid information for a debate is online information? Of course, someone HAS turned up an online source of the study, so I’ll drop this point, but it’s pretty dishonest to claim that anything that is not online doesn’t exist.

Are you defining ‘honest analyst’ as ‘analyst who thinks that gun control is good’? How would you respond to these hypothetical arguments:

Creationist: Funny how your interpretation of the evidence always seems to point in the same direction. Evidence is never mixed; creationists are always wrong. I wonder who the honest analyst is.

Homophobe: Funny how your interpretation of the evidence always seems to point in the same direction. Evidence is never mixed; homophobes are always wrong about homosexuals being child molesters. I wonder who the honest analyst is.

Relativity Skeptic: Funny how your interpretation of the evidence always seems to point in the same direction. Evidence is never mixed; aether theories are always wrong. I wonder who the honest analyst is.

Communist kid: Funny how your interpretation of the evidence always seems to point in the same direction. Evidence is never mixed; communist advocates are always wrong. I wonder who the honest analyst is.

109

I gave you a specific and very good reason for believing the list was incomplete, to wit that it didn’t claim to be a complete list. When a paper (or similar source like the CNN web site) publishes a list of ‘some events’, it generally is not even attempting to publish a complete list and one should not count on the list being complete.

And I had to keep repeating myself because you kept ignoring me ad nauseum. You didn’t have a reasonable cite, I said that it wasn’t reasonable, and you simply ignored where I spelled out why I didn’t believe it was complete. You even persisted in claiming that it was complete after CNN trimmed a bunch of items off of the list!

Are you going to address any of the other issues I raised with your post? I’m not going to bother continuing to seriously debate your points if your response to my arguments against your points is going to be to simply ignore them.

I am going to look at the site that is your current cite because the topic interests me, but I don’t really see any reason to spend time responding to you if you’re not willing to defend your arguments.

110

What do you think a Tek-9 is, flowbark? Surely, you’re not just listing off a name of a ‘scary’ gun without knowing what it is, right?

111

I would also note that the ATF routinely sends agents to gunshows and firearms dealers to attempt to buy weapons illegally, so this is not just a theoretical risk.

Here’s another amusing one: Let’s say I’m in a state that allows machine guns and (following state laws) I have a registered pre-86 drop-in full-auto sear (a part that you put into an AR-15 to make it automatic like an M-16). According to federal law, if I take an AR-15 made this year and put a bayonet on it, I’ve just committed a felony by creating an illegal assault weapon. If I put the auto-sear into the AR-15 and put a bayonet on it, I haven’t broken any laws as only semi-automatic guns qualify as assault weapons under federal law. If I then put remove the auto-sear and put the semi-auto sear back in, I’ve just committed the same felony as above! I find it amusing that you can be penalized under the ‘assault weapon’ law for converting a weapon away from the military meaning of ‘assault weapon’ by putting it back in a semi-auto configuration.

112

Why not be honest and call it the ‘Crime Victim Punishment Plan’? Oh, wait, you earlier stated that you believe that one can only be honest if they support ‘gun control.’

So, do you support making people liable for what someone does with other stolen property? If someone steals my propane tank and blows something up with it, should I be liable for that? What if they steal my car to use as a getaway vehicle? Or is it only guns that you hate enough to punish the victims of theft for?

Also, you’ve already stated that ‘locked’ weapons don’t protect the person from liability. That means that if I followed your idea of locking all of my guns up, and someone broke into my house, stuck their own (illegal) gun at my head and forced me to unlock the safe, I would still be liable for their actions! That’s just absurd, but it’s not really suprising for a gun control proposal.

Furhter, you support this absurd rule without any actual data showing that locking guns up would significantly affect the availability of guns to criminals.

Finally, you haven’t explained how this doesn’t infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Of course, since the real goal of your proposal is to keep people from keeping, much less bearing, arms, that’s not suprising.

Flowbark doesn’t believe in freedom to defend one’s own life if he wants have self-defense go out the window.

In practice, one can’t buy a gun from a private party without showing a driver’s license (at a gun show or not) unless one goes to one of the whacky groups (Montana Militia types) or someone who routinely deals in illegal arms. In practice, it’s extremely risky to try buy a gun without an ID at a gun show because ATF agents frequent gun shows specifically to attempt to buy and sell guns illegally then arrest people for it; sales outside of a gun show are actually less policed, but that doesn’t make as good of a soundbyte as the ‘gun show loophole’.

Of course, you haven’t shown that any gun control can save lives, which would seem to be a prerequisite of arguing whether state or national gun control can save lives.

The ‘Assault Weapons’ ban does NOTHING to discourage the manufacture of semi-automatic weapons that are easily converted into automatic ones. As long as the weapon doesn’t hit the external characteristics (bayonet, threaded barrell, folding stock, grenade launcher attachment), none of which have anything to do with ease of converting to full-auto, it’s allowed.

113

Funny, I felt like asking you the same thing. But more on that in a moment. First, I’d like to clear up the CNN cite nonsense. You claim that

Well, I may very well be wasting my time here, because my new cite doesn’t claim to be complete either. When I check a list of baseball scores from the night before, it also doesn’t explicitly say that it is a complete listing–do you not read ANYTHING unless it says that it’s the be-all and end-all of information on the topic? However you respond, I (and I think any outside observer) would consider my burden of proof met with my most recent link. If you would like to prove that it’s incomplete, I humbly suggest that the burden of proof has shifted over to you. Either trump my cite, or stop whining about it and deal with what it addresses.

**
Go to the link again and show me where it says that it’s a list of “some events.” You put that particular phrase in quotation marks, so show me where it is. Because I don’t see it, and I didn’t see it either when I first found the site.
**

Maybe I originally missed where you spelled out why you didn’t believe it to be complete. So, I just went through this thread again, searching for your name and what you said. With regards to the cite, you say:

And that’s it. That’s where you “spelled out” why you didn’t like my original cite :rolleyes:. Again, you turned out to be right, but for the wrong reasons.

One last note, and then I’ll drop it and get onto something more substantive.

Now you’re either (a) deliberately being misleading or (b) there was a misunderstanding. What I said was, “Incidentally, I just checked the cite, and they’ve severely trimmed it from when I originally posted it. I hope that’s not the cause of the confusion. You can see the breakdown by region I did on the first [page of this thread].” How does this equate to me “persisting in claiming” the list was complete after CNN trimmed a bunch off of it??

Bah. Enough of that crap. I’m happy with my new cite. On to other things.

Well, now that we have the 2000 International Crime Victims Survey online, we can actually evaluate this claim. The only problem would be that this survey doesn’t even detail the rates of violent crimes. They break it down to car theft, theft from cars, vandalism from cars, motorcycle theft, bicycle theft, burglary, pickpocketing, consumer fraud, corruption, and “contact crimes,” which are robbery, sexual incidents, and assaults. Nothing leads me to believe that you can equate the “contact crimes” statistic, where Australia is #1 and E/W is #2, with the “violent crime” number, as you would have us do. Two of the more glaring caveats to your rationale are: (1) homicide is not included (as it is a victim’s survey), and (2) “the threat of assault” is included in this statistic – if I call you on the phone and tell you that I’m going to whup you silly, you could respond that you were a victim of this contact crime, even though it seems to me that no violence has occurred.

So I’d like you to either find a cite that says that violent crimes are most prevalent in Australia and England/Wales, or else retract your statement.

Speaking of retractions, I’d like to make one myself: I was not aware that people did actually hunt with handguns. Can I assume that it’s a fairly low percentage? (I’m not trying to wiggle out of it here–I’m just wondering why I’ve never heard of it before). Consider me educated.

Riboflavin, this post is lengthy enough, so rather than flounder around, I’d like to say: re-ask, re-phrase, or re-C&P the issues you’d like me to address that I haven’t addressed yet. It need not be a complete list; just give me something to get started on. I, in turn, have two questions for you:

(a) Do you concede that the U.S. has had far more instances of school violence than the rest of the world?

(b) If you do accept that fact, then why do you suppose that is? (I know, burden of proof is on me, yadda yadda yadda. I’m not asking for a rigorous chain of causality. Just brainstorm for me.)

Quix

P.S. Does anybody have some statistics about percentage of gun owners on a state-by-state basis handy?

114

Skill in manipulating numbers is a talent, not evidence of divine guidance.

115

I can’t see how punishing someone for someone else’s action is either “freedom” OR justified. You conveniently ignored the comment about someone who has their firearms securely locked up, yet some determined thief still steals them. They do just about everything they could to keep it from being stolen (Short of not owning it), yet it still gets stolen. And you’re saying they should be responsible??

Punishins someone for the actions of someone else, much less for being a VICTIM of those actions, flys in the face of all that is just.

Youre “Gun Owner Responsibility Plan” seems more like just an excuse to blame gun owners for everything you can, because it has NOTHING to do with responsibility.

116

I don’t want to tell you about Finnish gun laws, mostly because I don’t know much about them at all. I was just curious if you know what a “Tek-9” is. The reason I asked is because you said “I don’t know whether they allow Tek-9’s and handguns, though.” This struck me as odd, since a Tec-9 is only a handgun. It’s a scary looking gun that has suffered for purely cosmetic reasons. It is possible to get high capacity magazines for them, but the same is true for almost any handgun. Here’s a pic. Oo, scary, eh? Regardless of how it looks, it is not functionally different than any other semi-automatic handgun.

Which is why almost all “assault weapon” bans make no sense and are punitive at best. They are purely based on cosmetic enhancements that make a hunting rifle look “evil”. Things that are banned in California, for example, are thumbhole stocks, folding stocks and pistol grip stocks. Do you really think that having a hole in the stock of a gun will make it more dangerous than it already is?

117

This is on page 3, and has remained relatively civil. Let’s see if we can keep it that way a little longer. In flowbark’s and quix’s defense, tey have remained rational and intelligent throughout the debate, let’s not pile upon them too harshly.

People who are amenable to reasonable discourse (whether opinions or attitudes are swayed or not) are a rarity in GCDs; I’d hate to lose them, because then it’s back to the same-old, same-old.

flowbark: some of the assault weapons bans are fairly cosmetic in nature. For instance, the Ruger Mini-14 (a carbine, or light rifle) comes in several different styles, some with wooden stocks, some with plastic/synthetic. Some have full-length stocks (the typical rifle look) while others have folding stocks with pistol grips.

Regardless of whatever cosmetic accesory, the rifles are all the same caliber (5.56 mm, or .223 [older-style caliber designation]) and accept identical magazines, whether it is the factory 5-round or an after-market 20-, 30-, or even 40-round.

Without devolving into the debate over why anyone needs a high-capacity magazine, it is interesting to note that the full-length wooden stock rifle is legal, while the folding stock and/or plastic stock versions begin to encroach upon the gray-area of "assault weapons, when all versions are mechanically and ballistically identical.

As far as weapons “easily converted to full-auto” are concerned, the manufacture and general sale of such weapons is generally illegal, and is regulated by the BATF. I say “generally illegal,” because even federal regulations (note that I didn’t say “federal laws;” there is a distinction, one often lost in the hubbub) are becoming increasingly byzantine and subject to flexible interpretation, putting gun dealers, distributors and manufacturers increasingly at risk of becoming instant criminals from one moment to the next because one BATF Agent decides to stringently or creatively interpret BATF Regs.

I’m not a Federal-phobic type either; I’ve dealt briefly with the BATF and the FBI when I researching the feasibility of opening an indoor shooting range in Colorado Springs, CO, and both agencies were polite, professional and helpful in aiding my research. YMMV.

And suicides: again, the Int’l Journal of Epidemiology’s study found no correlation between gun ownership rates and suicide rates. It is eminently reasonable to assume that in the presence of firearms, an “impulsive suicide” or what I believe is referred to as “acting out” will certainly be more permanent than with other methods; however, I am given to understand that people who “act out” as a cry for help typically choose less-than-optimal suicide methods, that is dangerous but non-lethal drug dosages, light, shallow cuts about the wrist, etc,.

No cite for the above assertion other than a 17 year-old Intro to Psychology college course I took in 1985, and some independent reading done over the years in everything from weekly news periodicals to various on-line articles.

It is interesting to note that while Homicides predominate in the Black Males age 17-24 demographic, Suicides predominate in Whites, typically males, between roughly the same age bracket (a little older, perhaps, IIRC).

All suicide rates taper off in the late 20’s to early 30’s depending upon gender and race, dwindling to near-zero, until the 60+ age bracket where they again begin to creep back up to around 50% of the earlier year’s levels.

Hence my assertion that firearm suicides should not be included in the Deaths From Fireamrs stats when making an argument for more gun control; evidence strongly indicates that gun ownership rates have no correlation to suicide rates.

Just as most pro-control arguments don’t have the final, coclusive hamer-lock on research, neither does the pro-gun side. It is a puzzle, a relatively large and complex one, that must be pieced together patiently over time, even as the picture that will be formed by the final assemblage of pieces changes.

Or, in gun-guy vernacular, “we’re trying to hit a well-camouflaged moving target, in the dark, while moving along ourselves.”

There is not yet, and I doubt there ever will be, one single article of research that will be the Rosetta Stone of puzzling out the greater Gun Control Debate.

118

I agree entirely. I’m actually learning a hell of a lot. Thanks, you gun nuts :smiley:

119

Nothing halts knowledge in it’s tracks so quickly and so completely as contempt prior to investigation. Or something like that. YMMV

It is the mating call of the closed mind.

120

Actually, .223 cal and 5.56mm refer to slightly different rounds, rounds labeled .223 are made to a slightly different spec than 5.56mm rounds and aren’t safe to fire in something chambered for 5.56 like an AR-15, though I think recent guns can safely fire either.

(BTW, it will probably be tomorrow before I have time to do any long responses in this thread).