guns

[unclviny]

let the great gun debate commence,
i am very pro gun, in this world i do not want to have to depend on anyone! else to defend my life, the lives of my family members or my property and i think anti gun people are really saying “i’m unarmed, please don’t hurt me”.

unclviny

[Fear_Itself]

Statements of position without support are called opinions, and belong in the IMHO forum.

[unclviny]

i was “called out”, challenged to a debate in gd in another thread, this is my acceptance of that challenge.

unclviny

[SPOOFE]

Well, Unclviny, let’s just say that the ol’ Gun Debate has been done to death numerous times on the SDMB… nowadays, most gun debates relate to recent developments, new law proposals, statistics, studies, or the like.

[unclviny]

you have my most sincere apologies, when i saw the words “message board”, i was fooled into thinking that this was a board for messages, silly me.

unclviny

[Fear_Itself]

Message received.

[Jaakko]

I’m also quite pro-gun, but unfortunately I’m mostly interested in the heavier stuff, like tanks. That’s why just build models.

But if you want to have something debate, then how about gun registration? I’m having a hard time seeing how it’s any different from registering automobiles, something accepted and commonplace.

[andros]

OK, I’ll bite. Just so unclviny doesn’t have to open up another can of snide on our asses.

Jaakko, one point is that there is no explicit provision in the Constitution[sup]*[/sup] that the right of US citizens to own automobiles shall not be infringed.

[sup]*[/sup] [sub]hereafter in the thread referred to as CotUS, so mote it be[/sub]

[Jaakko]

I don’t think registration should be classified as infringement, as long as it doesn’t discriminate.
And if it is infringement, wouldn’t the 9th amendment kick in to prevent registration attempts on other property, such as automobiles?

[andros]

Oh dear.

<cracks knuckles>

First, I agree that registration doesn’t constitute infringement, but I’m sure someone will disagree soon.

Second, even if it were infringement, the 2ndA only deals with guns, and leaves dealing with all other property to the states (with a few exceptions). In theory, states could infringe on gun ownership all they want, but the Supreme Court might not see it that way. But states and local gov’ts can impose all sorts of restrictions on other things. IOW, there’s not gonna be any tie between guns and cars, simply because guns are explicitly in the CotUS.

[Mangetout]

I’m convinced there is no way of satisfactorily resolving the gun debate.

[andros]

That’s because you’re rational, Mangetout.

[Jaakko]

So how does the 9th amendment work then? It doesn’t look very useful if securing any given property right requires explicit protection for that right in the CotUS.

[Bryan_Ekers]

*Originally posted by unclviny *
**you have my most sincere apologies, when i saw the words “message board”, i was fooled into thinking that this was a board for messages, silly me.

unclviny **

Don’t get snippy. There was nothing in your original post added anything original or particularly interesting to this rather worn-out debate.

let the great gun debate commence

Oh, please. We’re not trained seals, here. You are, at best, the two-hundredth person to start a gun debate thread in 2002 alone.

Come up with an angle that is unusual or interesting and we might debate THAT. How about unlimited personal firearm ownership but each weapon must have a fingerprint (or similar) scanner so it can only be used by its legal owner? The technical barriers are not insurmountable.

[Calenth]

In 2000—a year that witnessed the antigun Million Mom March in Washington, D.C, as well as surging membership in the pro-gun National Rifle Association (NRA)—the issue of gun control was at the forefront of American political debate. Two facts define the poles of the controversy. On the one hand is the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” The exact meaning of the Second Amendment has been debated, but few people would argue that an outright ban on firearms would be possible as long as this text stands. On the other hand is the indisputably high rate of gun-related homicide in the U.S., both in absolute terms and in comparison with other industrialized countries. Each side of the gun-control debate has busied itself with gathering data to support the pro- or antigun stance. The evidence they have presented, however, is not as clear-cut as each side has suggested.

Through use of misleading definitions, advocates on both sides of the debate have distorted some data. The organizers of the Million Mom March, for example, made much of the figure of “12 children dies every single day from gunfire.” This figure holds true only If persons aged 15-19 are counted as children. Deaths in this group usually occur because older teenagers’ involvement in distinctly unchildlike activities, such as drug-related crime. Using a more usual definition of children—aged 14 or below—1.7 children die daily from gun violence and the number drops to 1.3 when suicides are excluded.

Pro-gun lobbyists, meanwhile made much of the “defensive use” of guns, but the order-of-magnitude range of scientific findings makes these arguments suspect as well advocates argue that if more crimes are foiled by citizens defending themselves with guns than are committed by criminals using guns, then possession of firearms may actually provide a net benefit to society. Statistics from a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) survey, however, suggested that guns are used defensively in this sense only about 100,000 times a year, compared with 400,000-plus criminal gun uses. Other surveys indicated much higher levels of defensive firearm use. The figure of 2.5 million defensive uses a year proposed by Florida State University professor Gary Kleck was seized on by gun rights advocates such as the NRA. A more recent study undertaken by Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig for the National Institute of Justice, a government agency in Washington, D.C., estimated that 1.5 million owners used their guns defensively at least once a year. Kleck and others explained their high figures by pointing out that merely displaying or referring to the weapon can often deter crime. Cook and Ludwig argued that surveys like this are vulnerable to “false positives”—cases, for example, when the person being interviewed remembers that an incident had taken place in the past but assigns it, erroneously, to the year about which the pollster is asking. Researchers such as Cook and Ludwig suspect that the truth lies somewhere in between the “official” DOJ figures and those of Kleck.

In addition to the careful research of academics such as Kleck, Cook, and Ludwig, advocacy groups also produced their own data, sometimes lacking in statistical rigour. In the U.S. the Brady Law, a measure implemented in February 1994, enforced a nationwide series of background checks of potential gun buyers. In July 2000 the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence (CPHV) issued a report that claimed the Brady Law had significantly reduced the number of homicides nationwide. About a week later, however, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study (once again by Cook and Ludwig) that found that the introduction of background checks had not reduced homicide rates or overall suicide rates. What happened is that the CPHV researchers constructed a set of figures for what could have been the level of violent crime after 1993 and attributed the negative difference to the Brady Law. The Cook-Ludwig study, on the other hand, compared the numbers of gun-related deaths in states that previously had background check programs with those in states that introduced the checks after February 1994 and found no significant difference between the two sets of figures. In other words, the Cook-Ludwig study employed a “control” (states where the Brady Law was essentially already in effect), while the CPHV study had no such basis for comparison. Cook and Ludwig admit that their study is not the end of the matter—further work needs to be done, they say, in assessing the Brady Law’s impact on interstate gun traffic and other factors. Nevertheless, it is clear that the matter is not quite as simple as the CPHV study suggests.

The work of Yale University economist John Lott has also stirred controversy. His 1998 book More Guns, Less Crime summarized extremely detailed research into what happens when states (most famously Florida) liberalize laws to allow citizens to carry concealed weapons. He concludes that states that adopted such laws experienced significant declines in crime that could not be attributed to other factors, such as demographic changes, new policing methods, or tougher sentences. Many researchers, including Ludwig, attacked this work for supposed methodological weaknesses, and Lott’s work came under intense scrutiny. Repeatedly he refined his data to control for a very large number of influencing factors. He could therefore counter all of the methodological criticisms, although many researchers remain unconvinced.

While the academic jury was still out, Lott’s work was seen by both sides in the gun-control debate almost as a litmus test—if you were pro-gun, you believed Lott’s findings; if you were pro-gun control, you dismissed them. The level of contention is so high that acceptance of a set of data by one side often means a knee-jerk rejection by the other. The research of U.S. government agencies should be objective enough to be acceptable to both sides, yet some data produced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have been criticized for being biased in favour of gun control. As Cook said, “Many of the basic statistics bout guns are in wide disagreement with each other depending on which source you go to. That’s been a real puzzle to people who are trying to understand what’s going on.” The result is that the debate over gun control is dominated by interested parties who “cherry pick” data to suit their arguments.

The media are often not very critical of the statistics they are presented with either. With a vested interest both in reporting crime stories and in recording the views of those proposing solutions, the media often provide a platform for those who link gun ownership casually to gun homicide. The conservative Media Research Center found that from 1997 to 1999 television news stories “advocating more gun control outnumbered stories opposing gun control by 357 to 36….(Another 260 were neutral.)” Probably understandably, newspapers, especially those based in the large metropolitan areas that suffered the most during the gun-homicide boom of the early 1990’s, often adopted an editorial policy in favour of gun control and were more willing to accept numbers proposed by gun-control advocates on trust. Even so, the figures of pro-gun groups were sometimes conveyed uncritically as well. During the Million Mom March, members of the pro-gun group Second Amendment Sisters were quoted in the press as stating that “every day 550 rapes, 1,100 murders, and 5,200 other violent crimes are prevented just by showing a handgun,” but these numbers which derive from Kleck’s work, are themselves disputable.

The gun-control issue in the United States is extraordinarily complex. Careful, scientific research and truthful, well-founded statistics can be the means to shed light on the root causes of firearm misuse and crime as well as other pressing social problems. Society will be best served when the general population and especially the public’’ chief source of information, the media, adopt a responsible approach and critical skepticism toward the claims of the parties at interest.

STATS check - Sense About Science USA

[robertliguori]

One thing I’ve wondered about these debates is what happenes to the guns that have no registration/fingerprinting mechanisim? I see no feasible way for the government to make people register the guns they have on their walls and in their closets. If all guns made after a certain date must carry this tech, won’t the criminals just stock up on pre-law guns? What about forgien guns. Bloody 'ell, we can’t even stop drugs, and cocaine users aren’t a powerful lobby in Congress.

[Calenth]

another problem with scanners and the like is reliability. sweat and dirt clogging up fingerprints, etc. Added bulk and weight. easily breakable electronics. so forth.

But even then, a scanner wouldn’t prevent a Bad Person from doing something Bad with a gun that was keyed to them.

[HPL]

*Originally posted by Jaakko *
**

But if you want to have something debate, then how about gun registration? I’m having a hard time seeing how it’s any different from registering automobiles, something accepted and commonplace. **

The difference is that there are no organizations that keep pushing for new resrictions or even a total ban on automobiles each time someone is killed by one. On the other hand, this is true for firearms, which makes many gun owners just a wee bit wary about having on their guns on a list somewhere.

And the fact you don’t need to register your car to buy or own it, just to drive it on public roads.

[David_B]

Mangetout said:

I’m convinced there is no way of satisfactorily resolving the gun debate.

Sure there is! But it involves first inventing a time machine in order to go back to the framers of the Constitution, slapping them around a bit, and asking, “What the HELL did you mean when you wrote that?! Why couldn’t you just spell it out without the compound sentence?!”

Hmmm. OK, yeah, I guess you’re right after all…

[minty_green]

No time machine added. Just ask the courts. Of course, the gun crowd doesn’t like their answer, but still.