So to be clear you are indeed arguing for banning guns.
We don’t get such honesty in most threads or from politicians. We are told that you just want to ban bump stocks, or AR-15s, or 30 round magazines and that nobody has any intention of telling you that you cannot keep guns in your home or own hunting rifles and shotguns.
We are told that is the slippery slope logical fallacy and that your side only wants “reasonable restrictions” on guns.
It’s a pity that I cannot post one of the many “missing the point” gifs on this board…
Yes. I’ve also heard of homeowners disarming armed home invaders. I’ve heard of home invaders that couldn’t get in the house in the first place. I’ve heard of home invasions where the homeowner handed over a wad of cash and the gunmen thanked him profusely and left without firing a shot. I’ve heard lots of scenarios.
And stop calling me Shirley. If you’re going to get personal, call me Laverne.
Okay, let’s explore this, shall we? I propose compiling a list of the largest 40 or 50 or any reasonable number of cities in Canada and the U.S. (for the purposes of this proposal, these two nations are considered to comprise “North America”) and gathering data for each on:
How “homogeneous” each is (for which we will obviously have to define the term).
How much poverty each has (ditto).
How much violent crime each suffers.
How much violent crime specifically involving guns each suffers.
The per-capita gun ownership rate.
Any other relevant criteria, for which I am open to suggestion.
I propose one potential null hypothesis could be:
H[sub]0[/sub]: The nationality of a city plays no significant role in the per-capita gun-crime rate.
I’m inclined to think this could readily be rejected, but I’m prepared to do the whole stats thing if anyone is interested. According to wikipedia, the 30 largest cities in “North America” (as defined above) are, with Canadian cities underlined:
New York City
Los Angeles
Toronto
Chicago
Houston
Montreal
Philadelphia
Phoenix
San Antonio
San Diego
Dallas
Calgary
San Jose
Ottawa
Austin
Edmonton
Jacksonville
San Francisco
Indianapolis
Columbus
Fort Worth
Charlotte
Mississauga
Winnipeg
Seattle
Denver
El Paso
Detroit
Washington, D.C.
Boston
If there’s already a flaw in the proposed methodology, best to hash it out now before data collection begins.
But you have no evidence that is true. You want to do something that will cost tens or hundreds of billions, triple the prison population, and certainly cause additional deaths due to show downs- and you can’t prove it will do much.
Tells you what- let’s ban cigarettes. That would save 500000 lives a year. No Bill of Rights to get in the way. Wont cost much, other than cig taxes drying up.
And anyway only around 10000 gun murders a year.
When considering the racism aspect that has led to high murder and incarceration rates for black people in the USA and high murder rates and incarceration rates for indigenous people in Canada, indigenous populations in large Canadian cities tend not to be analogous black populations in similar sized American cities. Why? Gun control.
(That being said, I live in what more often than not is the murder capital of Canada, where our police department’s Board of Commissioners was just sacked for what comes down to institutional racism, but even then Baltimore’s murder rate is almost ten times higher than our murder rate. Racism leads to more murders, but racism and guns lead to a hell of a lot more murders.)
It is misplacing the blame. Several years ago my cousin got drunk and crashed his brand new Nissan Altima with 8,000 miles on it and totaled it. Luckily he was unhurt and nobody was killed.
Was that Nissan’s fault? Your side’s argument implies that it is and that is silly.
You admit that your policy would keep guns in the hands of Jimmy the Crack Dealer but take mine away. How is that a net good for society?
I’m with DrDeth here. You have not at all shown that your policy would save even a single life, let alone have any societal impact except to keep guns in the hands of criminals and leave law abiding citizens at the mercy of those criminals.
Maybe you will answer the question? I am not playing any gotcha games. We hear all of the time that your side does not want to ban guns but only wants “reasonable restrictions.”
And then we get into multiple pages of these threads where you are talking about banning guns. Which is it?
I have had posters say they “only” want to ban all handguns or all semi-automatics. In one case, everything but single shot rifles. But they’re not in favor of a Gun ban, oh no. :rolleyes:
You know there are hundreds of criminologists in North America that spend their professional lives studying crime, gathering data, conducting experiments and doing research, writing articles and books, and working with Gov’t’s and private entities to understand the causes of crime and how to reduce its frequency and impact on society. Criminology is a multi-discipline field covering, among other things, economics, sociology, biology, psychology, and law. And it’s highly specialized, I had one professor whose specialty was “defensive space” which involved the design of areas such as low-income housing (layout, stairways, lighting, parking etc) in order to minimize opportunities for criminal activity. That should give some indication of the complexity of these questions and their ultimate answers. So I’m pretty sure any answer is more complicated than: guns.
The problem with crime having so many possible causes is it’s hard to control for any one of them. And each theoretical cause is itself amazingly complex. And it suffers from the difficulties of any social science, even “simple” people are incredibly complicated when it comes to their behavior and its root causes and also that people in general make horrible test subjects in that context.
But I’m sure your little experiment will finally get us some real answers.
What aspect of racism in America and its criminal justice system are you referring to that has lead to a higher murder and incarceration rate for blacks? Offender rates? Policing and arrest rates?Prosecution? Racism in the trial process? Sentencing?
Because while racism is a factor in all of those things it is not the only factor and not even close to the primary cause. This is common knowledge among criminologists.
Right. That is part of the equivocation that happens in these threads and also done by politicians. When they say, “We do not support banning guns!!! No WAY!” they mean that they do not support completely and unconditionally destroying every single gun in existence and would allow you to keep a single shot shotgun locked up at the local armory which you could own after paying a hefty tax and registration fee and only check it out when target shooting or hunting.
See, guns are still legal and we are not banning them!
But the equivocation part comes in because people hear that statement and reasonably believe that it means that they will be allowed to keep the guns that they own in their home in the same way that they do now except that there will be extra regulations for new purchases and such. It is a dastardly little untruth.
Banning guns at this point would indeed be pretty useless. I’d kinda like to see the Americans embark on a generational effort to reduce the amount of fear they wallow in - fear of their own government, fear of each other, and fear of immigrants. A large part of that will be to stop voting for politicians who try to stoke those fears and then pander to them. After a few decades, one can hope the desire for lots and lots and lots of guns will seem quaint, almost silly.
Batman was right, but he limited his view to criminals. Americans overall are a pretty cowardly and superstitious lot.