Possibly? IMNSHO, I think gun safety education should begin in kindergarten, no, even earlier, like as soon as there’s enough strength to pick up a gun. There’s no such thing as too much gun safety education, and I think that if there’s any minimum requirement, that should be it.
The trouble with gun registration is history. Remember, “Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it?” It is true. So far, historically speaking, every gun registration scheme that has been played out to its conclusion has ended in gun confiscation. Also, no gun registration scheme has reduced crime, in fact, the opposite is true.
No, they are already regulated and Joe Citizen cannot own one. There is a distinction, ie, explosive or destructive devices and also crew-served weapons as opposed to handheld firearms.
Hemenway’s book begins with a flawed premise that leads to a pre-determined conclusion. He claims that guns kill about ninety people each day in the U.S. A figure which yields more than 32,000 dead people. This is only true if one includes suicides by firearm and accidental gunshot deaths in this statistic. Gun murders total only about 12 to 13 thousand each year in the United States. Suicides should not be included in Hemenway’s figures. And here’s why: Several studies have failed to show any causal link between firearm availability and suicide rates. What these studies do show is that persons who wish to commit suicide where a firearm is unavailable to them, most often will simply substitute another method.
I’m not wrong. That was my point exactly. The only way we can reach a conlcusion identical to Hemenway’s, that there are ninety gun deaths each day, is if we include all deaths from all gunshot injuries - including suicides and accidental shootings. Hemenway even includes legitimate defensive shootings, by the public at large, and policemen in his figures. I’ve explained why suicides should not be included in the figures used to calculate the daily gunshot death totals and it should be obvious that legitimate shooting deaths should also be discluded. Hemenway has tossed 'em in to the salad because it inflates the totals to more than double what’s actually reasonable. He can thus present his case for action as more necessary than it in reality is; his pet problem becomes bigger and more urgent. It’s the same dishonest tactic that many of the major gun control groups, such as VPC, use.
No, I haven’t read the book. I have, however, read several critical reviews of it. It is on my list of books to purchase in the near future.
And just how does Hemenway propose to collect this data for murders? Very often, even the caliber of bullet cannot be determined in the laboratory. Let alone the type of weapon the bullet was fired from. As for the number of gunshot deaths by itself, this is an easily determined number and it’s in all likelihood quite accurate. I mean, all ya gotta do is add up all the deaths by gunshot from the county coroners’ reports. There’s damned little ambiguity that can be introduced. Right? Hemenway’s misleading his audience when he makes statements like this.
Neither did I say Hemenway is calling for bans and/or confiscations; nobody here has made that claim. But even requiring safety locks on handguns, as Hemenway would have, is ridiculous. It’s one of those things that only law-abiding citizens are gonna follow and it has the effect of making the gun less readily useful in a legitimate self-defense situation. Also to be noted is there are damned few accidental shooting deaths already - and they’ve been declining steadily, despite a vast increase in the number of guns in circulation in the United States, for the past couple decades. He’s trying to fix a problem that quite simply does not exist on a scale anywhere near what he’d have you believe. This is another dishonest trick used by the gun control advocacy groups.
This is very much incorrect. If this were true, the vast majority of the guns available to the public would be small, lightweight, easily-concealed handguns of .38, or larger, caliber. A double-barreled shotgun ain’t very efficacious for killing people. Neither is a single-shot .22 rimfire pistol. Most guns are designed for either target shooting, or hunting game.
And if we wish to discuss only the efficacy of registration schemes, I don’t know exactly what Hemenway has proposed, but here’s a thread that talks about the pros & cons of handgun registrations in general. You’ll see registration just isn’t that useful a tool to law enforcement. And it has absolutely no utility in preventing accidental shootings. These two deficiencies alone make registration bad medicine.
I’m not talking about what the law is. I was asking what people in this thread believe should be the case, especially people who, like SenorBeef, think that the state should not regulate stuff in my private property as long as I don’t take it out in public.
I also noticed that the particular post from which the above quote came seems to indicate that you aren’t reading the earlier posts very carefully. Please be so kind as to pay attention so we don’t have to waste a lot of time.
It has already been stated that guns have a variety of uses and purposes.
Only because you are asking for opinion, otherwise I wouldn’t touch this on Great Debates: (see uncle? even I can learn!)
IMNSHO: As long as my use of a device does not threaten others, I believe it should not be regulated or prohibited.
If, for instance, I had enough property area to safely use a device, and to use it in a way that did not disturb my neighbors, and adequate security to ensure the devices used did not fall into hands that would abuse them, then what’s the problem?
Taking the road Snakespirit did, my own opinion is that a private citizen should not be able to own a device which can cause a large explosion or damage on a large scale. That would include nukes, crew served weapons (anti-aircraft guns, howitzers, etc). I think all others devices should be obtainable with a Class III license, ie, pay the $200-300 tax and undergo a background check which is currently in place for owning a machine gun.
This is what you are wrong about. If you are only going to address illegitimate gun deaths, or murders, or accidental shootings, or any other category of gun deaths, then you would be correct. In such a case, a good percentage (those which do not qualify for the sub category you have decided to focus on) should be ignored. However, if you are simply going to look at total deaths due to gun wounds, then they all should be included.
I agree that many gun control groups use this trick dishonestly. However, from what I heard Hemenway himself say, he is not equating all such deaths with murder. He is not even saying that we should do away with all of them. He is simply suggesting that certain things should be investigated to reduce them, and that some of these things can be investigated regardless of the training or intentions of the gun holder. Just as many things were done to cars to reduce auto deaths (per mile driven) that had little or nothing to do with driver training.
Mine too along with “More Guns Less Crime” by John Lott.
Well, he is simply proposing that we standardize the collection of data when gun wounds result in deaths. As I said, I haven’t read the book, so I’m not fully briefed on the details of his proposals. However, I think he is simply calling for educating police departments in what sorts of things to record regarding gun deaths.
No, he is not saying that we miscount the number of gun deaths. He is saying that insufficient or irregular data is collected about such deaths. I understand that you cannot always tell everything about a particular gun wound. But many policies are enacted, and laws passed with just the number of deaths to rely on. For instance, he mentioned the “ugly gun laws” in his talk. The idea that certain guns are banned because of their look. He suggested that there is very little evidence that such guns are more responsible for deaths than other guns. His point being that lawmakers need more reliable data not on the number of gun deaths, but on other circumstances surounding such deaths.
Well, now, let’s not throw the word ridiculous around unless you know of a specific proposal he is advocating. As I heard him talk the other night, he said simply that safety locks on guns not intended for self defence" seemed a prudent policy. He did not say that such things should be required, just that it might help prevent some accidents. He was not proposing that gun locks would prevent murders. Or suicides or anything other than the few instances where kids find guns and shoot themselves ot others without meaning to.
His point all along was that no one policy can “solve the problem”. Just as no one safety policy regarding cars has solved that problem.
I thought this too about him. After hearing him speak, however, I added his book to my list. He does not seem to be falling into this category. He is not suggesting that gun locks would reduce the death toll by a huge number. He specifically said that it would only reduce a small number. His argument is that if this would reduce the deaths by a small number, and another policy would reduce them by another small number, perhaps a collection of such policies would reduce them by a significant amount. That is the sum of his argument as I understood it.
I had read critics of his book online before I saw him speak this weekend. CSPAN had him and John Lott juxtaposed one after the other. It was quite fascinating. I was struck by Hemenway’s arguments. They were not as radical as I had been lead to beleive by the quotes I had read from critics and supporters. I agree with you that gun grabbers tend to fall into various logical holes on this issue. Some gun advocates fall into similar holes, however. I think the truth lies somewhere inbetween.
As I said, I have not read the book. I am not comfortable defending it any further. So, I’ll my opinion on his book alone for now.
As noted, guns can have many uses. As with all other technological inventions of man, the basic designs are optimized for specific uses.
No. Whatever gave you that idea? You stated this in a quite absolute fashion: “Guns are devices created for the sole purpose of killing people.” I gave you other uses for which guns have been designed. I didn’t say anywhere which uses, and by extension which types of guns, I feel should either be banned, or permitted. Again, as with all other technological inventions of man, guns can either be used as intended, or misused. I see very little utility, or logic, in banning objects; much better it would be to criminalize behaviors, rather than objects. If we were to simply do that, persons with no purposes objectionable to society, are put upon least. My opinion on banning firearms, and indeed pretty much anyobject, is identical to Snakespirit’s where he says “As long as my use of a device does not threaten others, I believe it should not be regulated or prohibited.”
Those are reasonable conditions on owning such a device, but I do in fact see a problem.
If one night you get drunk and you launch the device outside your property, you would cause enormous damage and loss of life. Of course, if you are captured you will be punished for breaking the law, but then it will be several hundred thousand lives too late.
So, my personal opinion is, people (even law-abiding citizens) can sometimes get out of control due to drugs, alcohol, anger, etc. If we allowed citizens unlimited destructive power, then, while everyone was behaving things would be fine, but when someone decided to use that destructive power against other people (and someone inevitably will), then the power of the law to punish that act would be insignificant compared to the damage caused.
Therefore, I believe that the amount of destructive power citizens can own should always be regulated, so that when the inevitable abuse happens, the destruction will not be too high, and the punishment for the crime can “balance out” the damage.
I don’t know enough about guns to know which ones have how much destructive power, so I can’t say which ones should be banned.
You’re right, of course. I should probably refrain from debunking Hemenway’s proposals until I know exactly what they entail. I am basing my objection solely on what I’ve seen written in reviews of this book. Well, that and his (at least partial) authorship of *Guns and the Constitution: The Myth of Second Amendment Protection for Firearms in America, which has this as part of the description by the publisher: “Use this collection of various contributors’ arguments to fuel an anti-NRA classroom debate.”
I think Americans definitely have the right to possess firearms. I think attempts to interpret the 2nd Amendment any other way are foolish attempts to destroy explicitly stated liberties.
However, we also have other rights, like freedom of speech, press, property, et cetra that are enumerated in the Constitution.
And for all of those rights, speech, press, property, et cetra, we accept certain limitations. We accept that obscene speech is not protected speech and we also don’t protect libel and slander, so we do not have unlimited free speech. I can give similar examples for almost any other right we have under the constitution [even the right to life, for 228 years we have as a nation accepted that people can be executed and forfeit their right to life (minus the years of the USSC moratorium.)]
So, I don’t ever want to see gun rights destroyed, I think Americans should always have to right to keep and bear arms. But saying that is an unlimited right is wrong, no right in the Constitution has ever been accepted as unlimited and I think it would be dangerous if they were because they would then interfere with those same rights that other citizens posess.
But isn’t this also true of government employees? Aren’t police or soldiers likely to “get out of control”? Note, I’m not saying more likely or even just as likely. I’d be willing to grant that soldiers recieve training and are “less likely” to get out of control. For a given value of less likely. My point is only that police and soldiers are, in the end, people. If we have to prevent people from possesing or using some things, do we not also have to prevent soldiers and police from possessing or using them?
The problem here is that I’m debating two people with different points - one is saying that guns are for defense, the other that they are for sport shooting and hunting.
To the defense one, I asked why you need a gun for defense, to which I got no answer.
To the hunting one, I asked why you need semiautomatics, assault rifles, and the like for sport shooting, for which I got yelled at.
As to the hyperbole, well, guns certainly can be weapons of mass destruction, albeit ones we are used to.
