lowbrass, you are going to get your ass handed to you on this one. The data is there. I can’t access it from the school computers, but studies have shown that less than 2% of CCW holders have had their permits taken away, usually for something completely unrelated to firearms. So far as I know, there have been a statistically insignifigant number who have used their weapons in an illegal manner. (I phrase it that way because I’m pretty sure that the number is zero, but I’m not going to bet on it.)
Once again, the last time there was a school shooting in VA, people ‘like myself’ (not really, I don’t have a CCW license, nor especially want one at the moment) stopped it.
As for ‘the rest of us’, Lightnin, there are no dangerous weapons. Just dangerous people. Guy with the motivation to buy two guns, over a month apart, file off the serial numbers and chain the doors is the same kind of guy with the motivation to build a bomb.
Maybe it wouldn’t have happened. Maybe it would have. Prove it.
And it has to be either/or because…?
Regards,
Shodan
It doesn’t have to be either or, but having a gun is far down the list of useful things you can do for personal safety.
Turkeys and chickens are in the same ball park since both are domestically farmed animals used for food.
Handguns and nuclear bombs are not even the same sport. Handguns are arms, nuclear bombs are ordnance. The right to bear arms is specifically protected by the Constitution. The right to bear ordnance is not something I’ve ever even heard suggested.
Your argument is absurd alright.
Emotional responses to terrible events that curtail the rights of ordinary citizens are not a good thing, IMO. This includes the ‘USA Patriot Act’ as well.
So long as we’re in the land of absurd arguments (you chose to go there), and we’re going to regulate any object that could be misused, I suggest we lock up all men because they could be rapists and all women becuase they could be prostitutes. They’ve got the equipment to be.
My argument has never been that every potentially dangerous thing should be unregulated. That’s your straw-man.
Had I ever made that claim, I would be prepared to defend it.
However, you do not get to invent claims and then demand that I back them up.
Bridget Burke: What about the other fourteen studies including the DOJ sponsored research?
Yes I do. Your fantasy that killers are being downed by righteous gun-toting citizens just isn’t true. The hypothetical being envisioned here, where a private citizen with a gun kills a felon in his attempt to commit a crime, is exceedingly rare.
In 2004, there were only a dismal 170 justifiable homicides (felon killed by a private citizen during commission of felony) by private citizens with firearms, compared to 9,326 murders committed with firearms. Less than 2% of people killed by private citizens with guns are killed in the process of committing a felony. Yet some people have this crazy notion that having more armed citizens will prevent crime. This is real life, not a Rambo movie.
These are real statistics, not some “survey” of gun owners offering their fantasy of how many times they think they prevented crime with their guns.
They probably counted the time they pointed a gun at their neighbor “cuz he looked at muh wife”. 
Then I take it you agree with me that the assertion that CCW holders do not commit gun crimes is FALSE.
Isn’t that what I said before?
Look up the definition of “arms.” (Hey, that’s what Second Amendment textualists are supposed to do, right?) You will find that it is defined as “weaponry,” or “weapons considered collectively.” In any event, if you can’t get past the example I chose, feel free to replace “nuclear weapon” with “nuclear missile,” “flamethrower,” “bazooka,” “AR-15.” Whatever.
Your argument is that guns should not be regulated (or at least not regulated very much; I’m not sure of your precise view) because they are not inherently dangerous and merely possess the potential for misuse. I am NOT arguing that all non-inherently dangerous things should be regulated if they have any potential for misuse. My point is that to say a thing is not inherently dangerous, which you have done, is an insufficient basis for rejecting regulation of it. Rather, we have to look to other criteria in deciding whether to regulate it. Don’t paint me into a corner I’m nowhere near.
But I’m still waiting for the principled distinction between the potentially dangerous thing you do want unregulated (guns), and the potentially dangerous things I’ve cited in response, which I assume you want to regulate. Like I said, when people make these arguments, the principled distinction on which they are relying is usually based on what they have hanging above the fireplace.
(Oh, and “argument ad absurdum” does not mean the same thing as “absurd argument,” in case you were actually confused about its meaning.)
The problem with this statistic is that it doesn’t account for all of the crimes stopped by the mere presence of a firearm, with no shots fired. Nor does it cover those instances where shots were fired but no-one was killed. What about all of the times that cops weren’t called? That is real life.
Your assertion is conspicuously missing a cite. I’m sure you’re familiar with this from the Brady website, right?
Still gonna go with “zero”?
The reason why I steadfastly refuse to justify myself are thus:
- Anything I say will be an appeal to emotion.
- Anything I say will be a request for an approval that I don’t seek.
- Anything I say will be commented upon and potentially criticized, which happens whether I say anything or not.
- Anything I say can be dismissed by saying “OK, you have a good reason, but so-and-so’s reason sucks”, or vice versa.
I will not be a party to the dismissal or approval, even in the court of public opinion, of someone’s right to own and carry a gun because someone sees my circumstances as either more or less justifiable that someone else’s. I have my reasons, and that is good enough for me, the Federal government, my local law enforcement agency, and the Constitutions of Pennsylvania and the United States.
That is why I don’t do it. It’s not out of any intransigence. If you asked me in person I’d probably tell you. But I don’t do it publicly because of the above reasons.
Until I can access an unrestricted computer, yes I am. I trust Brady Center stats about as much as I do those coming out of the White House. The data I was trying to remember came out of Florida, and was from an unbiased source. I’m willing to bet that the Bradys massaged the snot out of that data.
You’re welcome to provide statistics (not a biased survey of gun owners) to back that up. But what we’re debating here is whether having armed students would prevent incidents like the Virginia shooting. In such a case, do you believe an armed student could have stopped the shooter without firing at him?
The question is, would having more guns keep this kind of thing from happening, without resulting in more gun crimes? The evidence suggests that it wouldn’t.
So you’ve got one out-of-hand dismissal of my cite, vs. your total lack of a cite.
Let me know when you’ve got something…
he did
Do you have any reason to believe that all of the fifteen surveys conducted on the rate of defensive gun uses are wrong by orders of magnitude, or is this just your own personal bias talking?
I must say, as an educator, the idea of standing on a platform in front of an intro-level class of 800 during a difficult exam and knowing that a number of these people are armed would not make me feel safer. If I knew that the number of people packing heat in my classroom could be roughly equivalent to the number in the same room who are congenitally unable to turn off their cell phones during an exam, well. And I sure don’t want any implicit new role of ‘great protector of the students’.
Some dopers don’t see this as much of a gun control issue at all. I know I don’t.
This was a sick person hell-bent on exacting a price from his peers for reasons unknown. If gun control laws prevented him from getting one, he could find other means. If controls were lifted so that some number of his peers were regularly armed, I expect he would find a means that made their weapons a non-issue, too. There are ways to hurt large numbers of people which don’t require shooting, and which don’t allow alert marksmen to prevent the attack.
How many deaths would have been prevented by either more or fewer gun restrictions seems like baseless speculation to me. I am sure there are useful points to be made by debating the issue (and it’s something the U.S. needs to figure out) but I don’t have much stomach for it yet.
Huh? He doesn’t have a cite yet. What the fuck are you talking about?