And which of those mass school shootings would that be? Where were these guns registered?
They misapply evidence regularly.
Let’s take the front page of their site, where they claim that the background check stops 300 purchases by “dangerous people” per day.
Now, for that to happen, 300 people must have illegally tried to purchase a firearm. Ask them how many arrests have been made. After all, those 300 have filled out the form, signed their name, provided an address, etc. If they are all, for example, convicted felons trying to purchase a firearm - they have now committed an additional felony. How many were picked up?
This is not evidence, it is hyperbole.
Does it come with cammo painting?
Anyway, I want three.
And do contact me if you go for 8-magnum.
All too easy: Congress puts together an economic stimulus package, or perhaps a worker’s relief package, extending unemployment benefits. In a move worthy of William J. Hughes, any or all of the Assault Weapon Renewal Act (the permanent version, new and improved, lemon scented, with 20% more restrictions!), The Brady Comprehensive Handgun Safety Act, The Moynihan Memorial Ammunition Accountability Act, get tacked onto it at the very last second.
The O-Man signs it. He can wash his hands by saying, “Hey, we really needed this economic stimulus, and the American Worker needs relief in this time of recession. I had no choice.” He can say it with a straight face, and even really mean it. And then laugh his ass off and do the Happy Dance with Clinton, Clinton, Schumer, Feinstein & Biden.
If anyone says anything against it, because of the gun-control provisions, they will be branded as haters, as “inhuman monsters incapable of feeling the plight of the American Worker,” etc., etc. All the usual lefty blather.
Bricker’s.
By a factor of approximately 4 at the time of the study’s publish date.
That’s a conservative estimate, published by a notoriously anti-gun-biased researcher.
Your “pile” also includes all homicides, suicides, accidents, and legal interventions (essentially, justifiable police shootings).
If those trends have continued downwards the way they have, then today Bricker’s pile would be larger than yours by a factor of ~6.
Sure. But they don’t, so your hypothetical is irrelevant and, frankly, pointless.
You’re asking someone to prove a negative.
And I think you know it. Ass.
Crime statistics report crimes. Yes? You understand this?
If a burglar kicks in someone’s door in the middle of the night, but the owner grabs a gun and scares him off, the police are only going to report a breaking-and-entering, and maybe a trespassing.
Because, a few jurisdictions aside, it isn’t a reportable crime to defend one’s self, family, or home with a firearm.
Thanks for being frank.
But it wasn’t my hypothetical. And it isn’t irrelevant, since as you surprisingly concede, it is what the entire debate turns on.
For the record, first of the two of us to resort to name calling was you, butt munchkin. As far as reading my mind goes, show us your Certificate of Telepathy and maybe I’ll listen. You don’t want to read my mind anyway, too many big words, bubba.
Why, thank you for bringing it down to my level. Yes, I do believe I grasp that. But this doesn’t quite reach, now does it? We are given statistics, and then assured that these statistics must be regarded as much too conservative, since so few of these are reported. As statistical arguments go, that’s a mite flimsy. I mean, if you’re going to suggest that the numbers are suspect, then isn’t any extrapolation off of those numbers equally suspect?
Really? And you have the encyclopedic and encompassing knowledge of police procedure, nation wide? And would it be different if the prospective victim explicitly mentioned the brandishing of a weapon?
Brandishing a deadly weapon is potentially a crime just about anywhere, it is a threat. Now, if the brandishee is protected against such charges due to the nature of the circumstances (self-defense), then he cannot justly be found guilty.
But such determinations are not usually the purview of the officer on the scene, no? It isn’t up to him to decide, and make a ruling.
From the link
Its going to take a whole lot of substantiation before I’m going to swallow that hairball. Oh, yeah. 83%? Who’s kidding who, here?
Thank you for your answer. However, my question was not so much about “what series of events could unfold that would cause a ban are you concerned about?”, but rather “what series of events do you forsee happening after that ban is put in place?” that cause you concern.
Only because it is illegal to shoot at humans. Or are you expecting to be attacked by a cardboard cut-out?
Do you think if it wasn’t illegal, a significantly greater percentage of those multiple billions of rounds would end up in human beings?
Do you think they wouldn’t?
I am sorry if I come across as nit-picking here, but what do you mean by “could be subject to further regulation?”
Are you talking in a legal sense? As in, given the present constitutional structure, would a negative cost-benefit analysis of guns grant the government the power to further regulate them? Do you mean more regulation than is present now, or more regulation than is permitted now?
No, I don’t think that there would be a major increase in the number of people shooting other people if it were not illegal. I would bet, and I don’t have the numbers handy, that the overwhelming majority of bullets ending up in bodies occur in situations of either combat, or in scenarios where society is in undeclared warfare. I just don’t think many people are sat there thinking “I want to pop a cap in Jimmy’s ass, but it is against the law.”
Well, they may be thinking it, but if push comes to shove, I doubt they would do it. Wide receivers for the NY Giants excluded from this analysis, of course.
When push comes to shove, people generally don’t kill other people because there’s a (usually) equal force shoving back- people’s fear of a cellmate named Bubba, specifically.
You have a very low opinion of the average person, then. Is that the only thing that keeps *you *from killing people?
We have a bottom line disagreement here.
At some point, that balance scale will obviously tip in favor of more regulation, sure.
But how do you balance it? Suppose, arguendo, we could show 1000 purse-snatches prevented by guns and 5 innocent deaths from guns? Someone might claim that the answer is obvious: human life is worth more than 1,000 purses, no matter their contents. So suppose, then, it’s one death and 100,000 purses stolen?
The point being that crimes, both completed and inchoate, don’t have little weighted tags by which we may agree that they deserve some definitive weight in our analysis.
But I find it curious that when we discuss the First Amendment, there’s seldom an effort to quantify this – even though the First Amendment protects virtual child porn, “hit man” instructions, and KKK hate literature, it’s exceedingly rare to hear arguments that talk about eliminating it or substantially modifying it.
But the Second Amendment is apparently the red-headed stepchild of the Constitution.
I’m not saying the average person would kill someone if it were legal; I’m saying there are would be a lot more killings, though.
I suppose we have to define what context it becomes legal within; if rapists would face no stiffer penalty if they killed their victims afterward, it’s safe to assume a lot more of them would do so, yes?
I think you are right that there are some who favor the repeal of the second, and I know nobody who favors the repeal of the first.
But where I disagree is that I think a lot of what you are talking about is a matter of terminology. There are huge repeated arguments over the scope of the First - people may not talk about modifying it, they just talk about what counts as “speech” or “endorsement.”
I am sure you would agree there is a huge spectrum of opinion over the coverage of the First amendment. For the majority of the debate, I think that spectrum is as big as the arguments over the Second. Which is almost inevitable, seeing as the issue addressed by the Second is narrower (not in an importance sense necessarily) than that addressed by the First.
I don’t know what qualifies as “many,” but I do think that some deaths are prevented simply because of the law’s existence. And I think there would be a small number of people who would kill a large number of people, rather than necessarily a large number of people who would kill one each (or a similar ratio).
No doubt. I am just disputing that would cause a significant increase in the percentage of the billions of rounds of ammunition that ended up in a human being.